Lessons for Year A, the half-year of the Lord
LESSONS FOR YEAR A, THE HALF-YEAR OF THE LORD
Prepared for Luther Seminary, October 6, 2010
By Walter Wangerin, Jr.
I. ADVENT
Develop Epic here, together with the whispering wait before the hero arrives
Advent I, Matthew 24:36-44 Nov 28
A number of themes and images which will continue hereafter are established in this first Sunday of the year:
A division of the peoples
Righteousness (here it is obedience always, always, and yet without knowledge)
Water imagery
The reference to Noah on this first Sunday of Advent looks forward to Jesus' baptism on
the first Sunday after the Epiphany.
It is to be noted that the general population in Noah's day are not now characterized as
evil. Merely, they are going about their common, daily lives when the end comes.
Likewise, there is no evident difference between the two in the field or the two grinding
grain; not in their common, daily doings. But at the coming of the Son of Man
the difference will be made known. (See Matt 25)
That the parousia is compared to a flood of complete destruction and to the thief who
steals the possessions of someone else, does not necessarily mean that the King's
coming is a ruinous catastrophe. Rather, it will make complete what the faithful
have done in spirit all along: God is supreme. Nothing is ours. Nothing has been
ours ever since our "following" began. (See Matt 4:18-22, the 3rd Sunday after
Epiphany)
Jesus said, "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the
money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow
me."
Narrative: Story that which happens at and after the coming of the Son of Man.
Set the scene with descriptions of our daily lives.
1. The breaking in of the kingdom. According to this text, we need not spend
time on dramatic, cataclysmic events. This would have little effect on the
congregation anyway. Rather, make the parousia sudden, a clean cut
between one world and the other—all at once the end of one and the
fullness of the other. Use the "lightning" of v. 27 in this chapter.
2. Time itself ceases. Eternity is available.
3. In a twinkling every invisible thing is visible—
4. —exactly as the resurrection of Jesus happens so suddenly that it is quicker
than the eye; quicker, that is, than Matthew or any other being can
perceive it. For Christ's resurrection is not described. Jesus is out of the
tomb even before the earthquake and the angel's rolling of doorways back.
And the angel is the lightning.
5. Now what happens to those who have been awake? (There's no reason to
develop what happens to the others.) It is Jesus who comes. It is Jesus
who calls. It is Jesus whose first coming saved the wakeful, Jesus whose
second coming will fulfill the persistent, sweet anticipations of those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness.
In a letter to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger writes of the explosions of Mt. Vesuvius:
"On August the 24th, in the early afternoon, my mother drew my uncle's attention
to a cloud of unusual size and appearance." Pliny's uncle then went toward the
volcano in order to help those at the foot of the mountain. "Ashes were already
falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of punice and
blackened stones, charred and cracked by the flames.... On Mt. Vesuvius broad
sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare
emphasized by the narkness of night. My uncle tried to allay the fears of his
companions by repeatedly declaring that these were nothing but bonfires left by
the peasnts in their terror, or else empty houses on fire in the districts they had
abandoned. Then he went into a house to rest and certainly slept....
In time the courtyard, which gave access to his room, was full of ashes mixed
with pumice-stones, so that its level had risen, and if he had stayed in the room
any longer he would never have gotten out....
The buildings were now shaking with violent shocks, and seemed to be swaying
to and fro as if they were torn from their foundations..... As a protection against
falling objects they put pillows on their heads tied down with cloths....
"My uncle decided to to go down to the shore to see if there was any
escape by sea, but found the waves still wild and dangerous. He lay down on a sheet. He begged for cold water. Then the flames and the smell of sulpher ...
roused him up. He stood leaning on two slaves, then suddenly collapsed.... When
daylight returned on the 26th—two days after the last day he was seen—his body
was found intact and uninjured, still fully clother and looking more like sleep than
death."
Pompey, the city built near Vesulius, has been escavated, revealing people still preserved,
people who had been going about their daily business, fixed, as was Pliny's uncle,
in houses, in the baths, in the streets—as was the scene in the days after Noah entered the ark.
Advent II, Matt. 3:1-12 Dec 5
The water imagery is evident. It is a continuous flow from Advent I in that 1 Peter 3:20-
22; identifuis the diluvial waters as a prefigurement of the saving baptism of the
One Who Is to Come—something far beyond the baptism of the Baptist. His
washing is a symbol of purification for the eschaton. Christ's is salvation.
The division of the people here becomes an emotional thing, for there are those who seek
John's baptism, but whose motive is fear, and who seem to want it for themselves
alone since their "repentance" shows no fruit, no blessed effort to feed (serve)
others.
Righteousness begins with repentance, purification, and its proof by the bearing of fruit.
Isaiah 40:3 reads "A voice cries out: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.'"
The word "wilderness" is midbar. The Septuagint translates the Hebrew word into the Greek, ερημη. When Mark first quoted the Isaiah passage, for whatever reason, he changed "A voice cries, 'In the wilderness prepare'" into "A voice in the wilderness cries, 'Prepare....'"
Midbar can be translated: a "wordless" place.
Hence one potential narrative:
1. The "wordless" wilderness is the place where one is not heard, is not
understood; where one does not hear, cannot understand, the speech of
others. A terrible isolation.
2. Consider a couple who cannot communicate. Consider the spiritual "divorce"
they suffer, the sadness, the anger, the deep frustrations, the hopelessness
of their lives.
Or consider those persons who, by some quirk of character, some
psychological defect (as the world defines defects), some physical quality
mocked by the world, something that draws the scorn of bigots; consider
the wilderness in which they live, cut off from society, cut off from the
whole network (the grammar, the laws) of human interaction.
3. As if in the absolute darkness of the ninth Egyptian plague ("People could not
see each other, and for three days they could not move from where they
were"), they don't know where to walk, where danger waits, where there
might be a safe path—but even if there were a safe path, what would be
the point? There is no purpose.
4. And suddenly a voice is heard! Suddenly there is direction ("Over here!
Come over here!"), and safety in the going, and by the going a path
discovered, and new purpose, which is to prepare for the coming of of the
Lord.
5. When the lights are turned on, behold! It is Elijah, passionate in his
proclamation and certain of his promise: "One who is more powerful that
I is coming," and with him, and by him, the beginning of the coming of
the kingdom!
Of course, this narrative—this lesson—prepares us for Advent III, which may be #6 in
the present story and #1 in the next.
6. The Baptist is highly favored, but his expectations for the future, the tenor of
his proclamation, and the nature of his promises are superceded by Jesus'
actions. In Christ it the promise is more than fire and axes and winnowing
forks.
Advent III, Matt 11:2-11 Dec 12
Jesus forestalls the division which might occur if John the Baptist remains skeptical.
On the other hand, there is a division between the Baptist's promises and proclamations, and Jesus' acts of mercy.
Righteous is the John whom Jesus praises, for he is Elijah; he does not shrink (as Noah did not shrink) from the curiosity of, and the odd gossip of, the people. And ever more righteous are the deeds of Jesus' ministry—for he, who need not repent, bears now the fruits of repentance.
Chapter One of the story was told last Sunday. Chapter Two is this continuous telling.
It turns on the turning of the Baptist, who last week preached with an unquestioned and passionate certitude, but who this week experiences personal uncertainty. His death is at hand, and he has yet to recognize the one he was expecting. John doubts.
The narrative:
1. The Baptist—whom Jesus will praise as the greater than anyone born of
woman—learns in prison what sort of work Jesus is doing.
Note: since Jesus will point to his own ministry as the sign and substance of the kingdom,
it is likely that John already knew these things. Jesus will grant no new
information then, but will grant the Baptist a new perspective.
Another note: this tale might be told as it reveals our anger and our disappointments with
the Almighty who does not punish those we think ought to be punished (the poor,
the stinking and disabled, the contagious, the obese, felons, homosexuals—
punished by aids, as some ministers declared—Muslims). The deity who seems
to treat the oppressed with mercy may seem so much not the God we worship that
we dismiss him in our hearts and create (by particular Biblical passages) the god
we think God is. Continue that sort of story throughout, and our confusion that
Jesus stoops to bear fruits of repentance—he who had no need to repent.
2. This is not the Christ the baptist had promised to the people. Given his
character, we can surmise that rather than being merely bewildered he is
accusing Jesus as a fraud.
3. So John sends disciples to Jesus to demand that Jesus prove himself to be the
right and the righteous One-to-Come. The real question is deeper than, "Is
there another one coming, in whose shoes you walk, but whose person you
are not?" The question reaches farther and with greater disdain: "It seems
to me that we must wait for another kind of Messiah altogether." (Let's
pretend that this attitude characterizes the fiercely judgmental
conservative.)
4. Jesus' (astonishing) response is to define himself as one with the common folk
who had come to John to be baptized in the Jordan. He is not an
assaultive, military Christ like David, the fiery judge with a sundering ax.
No, rather Jesus is doing what John required of everyone: "Bear fruit
worthy of repentance."
5. Look again, John, and do not doubt. This is the sort of Christ I am: I am "the
sun of righteousness arriving, arising with healing in my wings."
6. Next Jesus turns to the crowd of people who have misconstrued John as an
odd, dramatically clothed, screechy whippet of a preacher; or else as one
who distorts religion in order to suck out the wealth of his followers.
(Let's pretend that these are the fiercely judgmental liberals.)
7. These Jesus disabuses of their scornful notions. The legalistic are great insofar
as they demonstrate the importance of the law. Nevertheless, this kind of
greatness is superceded by Jesus Christ. All those who follow him into the
kingdom will be greater than they.
Advent IV, Matt 1:18-25 Dec 19
The division is revealed in Joseph himself, as he is changed by an Angel and (ultimately)
by the Holy Spirit from a legalistic attitude toward May to one of pure
acceptance.
Righteousness can be the narrative within the narrative contained in this Sunday's pericope.
The possible narrative here is a history, is the development of righteousness from Moses
up to the birth of the Messiah. This one cannot be set in our present, with
characters drawn from the here and now, because this tale is meant to be unique,
the Christ child's birth.
1. Mary and Joseph are betrothed to one another. Their marriage has been
arranged. Exclusive commitments have been established, and the money
that ratifies these commitments has been paid. It's a done deal. It only
waits for the happy procession from Mary's house to Joseph's as he "takes"
her there to be his wife.
2. But before the taking, ie. the wedding, Mary is found to be with child (of the
Holy Spirit, but who knows that except Mary herself?) Can you imagine
this as an event? How did someone discover her pregnancy? Can you tell
the event in story form?
3. Old Torah rightousness (Deut. 22:23-24) would require the severest
retribution: that both she and the man who laid with her shall be brought
to the gate of the city and stoned to death. If not Joseph, others would
contemplate the rightness of such a measure.
4. But an alternative and still righteous response is available to Joseph: "It was
because you were so hard-hearted," Jesus says to some Pharisees, "that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives." He has the choice to divorce her with nothing more than a public scandal.
5. But Joseph's personal sense of righteousness permits mercy—even if he is stepping out of the box of Old Torah. He plans to keep scandal away from Mary. With that in mind he falls asleep. He is in the house to which he had intended to bring his bride. The marriage bed is made up. Perhaps he has built a new room on the roof of his home. Or else an existing room has been re-caulked and whitewashed and swept and hung round with sweet smelling herbs. How sad he must feel, and how ironic his loneliness tonight.
6. An angel of the Lord appears in his dream and requests of Joseph an altogether new righteousness: "Don't be afraid ... to take Mary as your wife." This righteousness is based upon an altogether new, unique, divine initiation: "For the child conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit."
What is righteousness here? Joseph's obedience to the absurd; Joseph's conviction that the absurd is, in fact, conceived by the Lord God. This righteousness (when later he performs it) is accomplished in a perfect trust.
7. Moreover, his obedience (a) shall be a public naming of the infant; and since to name a child implies fatherhood, his obedience (b) shall be to adopt this boy; and whether he knows the full implication of the meaning of the name Jesus, his righteousness (c) shall be in the pronouncement announce by that name: "He shall save his people from their sins."
8. It is by Joseph's obedience that the child becomes a king in the line of David—anointed as a king like David. And so, by one man's righteousness is divinity just about to enter the world.
To put that another way, Divinity is manifested in the New Obedience.
Soon, soon the hero shall appear. See how exalted righteousness has become?
CHRISTMAS
Develop Fairy Tale here
The Nativity, Christmas Eve, Luke 2:1-14 (15-20) Dec 24
The Hero arrives! All Advent (the themes above and JB's descriptions) has prepared us for what sort of character/actor he is and is to be.
Division between Rome/David;
between Roman command/Mary's and Joseph's obedience
The act of righteousness is here to proclaim, as did the shepherds what had been
proclaimed unto them.
Caesar Augustus's Pax Romana is here superceded by Pax Christi, announced by
the host of heaven.
"When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears."
From "The Tyger" by William Blake
Note Luke's way of marking Joseph as "obedient, righteous"; for he following the
command and traveling to Bethlehem.
But this is a forced registration! Judea is oppressed—and Jesus would overthrow
the powerful and raise the oppressed. A commentary on Jesus' future role.
1st time in Rome but separate from Rome
Christmas Day, John 1:1-14 Dec 25
Develop Myth here.
Jesus now God, unreceived (like Zeus and Mercury) but generating new humanity
After appearance of hero, a marvelous, hymnic, philo/sophical deepening of the
character, the mission, the existence (now stretching further back than history
itself) of the hero. Hence, God.
That the evangelist introduces his prose narrative with an oral hymn like this places him
among Greek singers who had for centuries already introduced longer works of
oral narratives with hymns of holy pronouncements. These eighteen verses, then
(except for those that refer to John, the Witness) fall within an oral genre called
by the Greek word, υμνοι. We merely transliterated it.
Here's an example, the Homeric "Hymn to Earth, Mother of All"--
O universal Mother, who dost keep
From everlasting thy foundations deep,
Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!
All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea,
All things that fly, or on the ground divine
Live, move, and there are nourished—these are thine;
These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee
Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree
Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity!
The life of mortal men beneath thy sway
Is held; thy power both gives and takes away.
Happy are they whom thy mild favors nourish;
All things unstinted round them grow and flourish....
(translated by P. B. Shelley)
Make it visual: See God's mouth open and issue the WORD as a tremendous flood of
primal light!
Division is the very manner of Creation: light from dark; firmament from earth; land
from seas, etc. God's creating language from our first parents' naming language.
And water is the (presumed) Mythic chaos common to so many tales of the beginnings of
things.
1st Sunday After Christmas, Matt 2:13-23 Dec 26
The slaughter of the innocents, and the trick (the reversals) played on Herod's intentions by a watchful and almighty God, establish Jesus as the hero of several oral genres, heroes who begin life under threat and are hidden away during childhood:
Jesus, his life threatened, is kept in secret just as Arthur was. (Romance)
Just as Oedipus was threatened with death and kept in secret. (Tragedy)
Just as Moses was threatened and kept in secret. (Epic)
Just as cinderella is kept by wicked sisters in secret (fairy tale)
Now consider how Jesus is charactized by more than one sort of hero; consider how this
makes Jesus a braid of contradicting personhoods; consider how these
contradictions define the Christ as a collection of unresolvable paradoxes.
Narrative: "Out of Egypt."
Parallel Moses' departure from Egypt—and, by his epic leadership, the departure
of all Israel—under the threat of slaughter by Pharaoh's armies; parallel
that with the baby's hasty departure under the threat of slaughter by
Herod's soldiers.
God opened the roads for both. Moses, through the waters of the Red Sea. Jesus,
through the waters of baptism in the Jordan.
Moses, who during his lifetime spoke face to face with God, died on Mount Nebo,
having never entered the promised land.
Jesus, who during his lifetime spoke with the Father, died on another sort of
Mount: on a rocky spur which was the vertical wall arising from the
gardens; on a slope, the saddle of Mt. Gareb. At his death neither had he
seen the promised reign of God; and at his death, death was all
"No one knows [Moses'] burial place to this day."
The disciples knew exactly where Jesus was buried; but they did not truly know
that his tomb would be empty on the third day. Where is Moses? Don't
know. Where is Jesus? We're looking for him. Well, he's not here.
Because he has been raised from the dead! Jesus' story jumps beyond Moses',
back into life again! And we will jump with him.
Righteousness: the parallel between Joseph's obedience in Advent IV (Birth-dream) and
obedience to this dream; see 2:21
As on Christmas Eve, tell (preach) this story as a Fairy Tale, not only to children, but to
adults as well. The frightful elements will be changed from a realistic horror into
acceptable hyperbole. Fairy tale isn't real. It's true.
Think of the ogre in "Jack and the Beanstalk," of giants who want to eat little
children, and of the hag who is fattening Hansel for lunch—and, with Gretel, their clever escape.
2nd Sunday After Christmas—The EPIPHANY of Our Lord, Matt 2:1-12 Jan 2
The tensions and contentions occasioned by Jesus' birth.
Fairy Tale: Jesus' life begins in the conflict between evil and good,
between murderers and worshippers;
between divine approval shown in signs and the self-central sins which cause
personal fears and a serious misreading of signs (the which the wise men are).
This narrative (even as it is found in the pericope) might be designed on a pattern like
"Snow White." Don't leave out deaths and the possible death of Jesus. Fairy tale
makes death and the murderous intentions of Snow White's opposite (Jesus'
opposite in the person of Herod), acceptable.
Some facts about King Herod:
1. Bad king: Though he failed to kill the infant Jesus (Son of God), in the end—and for
the same self-serving sin!—he killed his sons: three years before his death two
sons, who were tried for plotting a coup. One week before his death, the son who
was the strongest and most obvious successor.
2. He was befriended by Caesar Augustus
3. Good king: He built lavishly—the temple, the city of Caesaria on the sea, etc. He
was a true patron of the arts, an excellent king for ennobling the kingdom. The
temple was meant (among other things) to draw the great diaspora into unity with
Jerusalem. Hence, Jews were raised in status around the world.
4. Bad, passionate king: His most beloved wife was Mariamne (Mary), the mother of the
1st two sons killed, whom he began to mistrust. She was (Josephus) beautiful,
dignified, "unexcelled in continence," though quarrelsome and fond of speaking
her mind. Herod, fearing she had committed adultery. Mariamne sent of triel and
finally put to death. Remorse drove him mad. He refused to believe she was dead
and spoke to her as if she were still present.
5. In the end he paid dearly for his beloved wife's death. Dispirited, he let the kingdom
slide; he was disabled. Drought and plague followed.
6. Good king: grown alert, was responsible for saving some of the people alive (though
many died and most were famished and diseased). He melted his gold and silver,
sold his jewelry. Went to Egypt and won priority for their help, their grain; doled
out relief provisions sparingly; for the aged and infirm set up bread-kitchens; gave
food supplies to Syrian cities. Herod's good will persuaded Jews to turn back to
him, and gave him an international reputation for generosity and innovation!
7. Terrible king: Likely died of syphilis: fever, itching, pains in the colon, swollen feet,
inflammation of the abdomen, gangrene of the penis, lung disease, convulsions,
eye problems. Expecting there to be an outpouring of grief at his death (days
away), he increased the probability by having the elite of Jewish society killed. In
such torment, tried to kill himself with a paring knife. But the joy of those
seeking to gain by his death was cut off; he hadn't yet died.
THE SUNDAYS AFTER EPIPHANY
Develop Romance here.
The Baptism of our Lord, Matt 3:13-17 Jan 9
The romantic Hero receives commission: Moses at burning bush;
Joseph in his dreams
Arthur, when his character is revealed
Jesus at Baptism
Transfer of power: Moses to Joshua
The Pharaoh to Joseph
Merlin to Arthur
God to Jesus (up to down)
and John the Baptist to Jesus (down to up)
Jesus, the hero, enters the world fully grown, taking action on his own and speaking for
the first time. His character and his purpose are signaled by a marvel, the audible
voice of God, and everyone is granted the opportunity to know the identity of the
Son of Man
Even so does Joseph, after being hidden in prison, also by a marvel (the interpretation of
dreams) signal his character and his purpose, and everyone is granted to know the
Hebrew's identity.
Even so, after Merlin has hidden him away, does Arthur signal his character and his
purpose by drawing the sword from the stone—and everyone knows his identity.
This is the story-form and the atmosphere of any romantic tale.
Water, the imagery and meaning of which was refined in various earlier pericopes, now
becomes the very means of Jesus' initiation into his ministry.
And here is the beginning of his righteousness, distinguished from those before him. In Jesus it can be "fulfilled."
Fulfilled = πληρόω, in the LXX, both a human act (to "fill up to the top," "to fill
one's hand with offerings to God," "to fulfill a divine commission") and an act of
God: "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" It is God's good pleasure to let his
shekinah dwell among the people(s), which shekinah "filled the sanctuary" (on
the basis of Exodus 40:34-35).
Hence a paradox: Jesus's fulfillment of righteousness, by reference to the Hebrew Bible,
is an act of human obedience together with an act of a mercifully present God.
The "righteousness" that Jesus fulfills is a baptism in water for repentance; thus JB finds
it wrong to baptize him who will baptized with fire and Spirit.
And by the Baptist's "consent" he too is fulfiller of righteousness.
Right here, therefore, do the old and the new covenants touch one another, then
separate for good.
Right here (following that separation) is revealed (whether understood or not) the
com/binding of the Father with the Son and the Spirit of God.
A possible (romantic and mythic) narrative might to enrich the brief story of Jesus' baptism by framing it with Noah's story of the flood. (Refer to Advent I, where in our year Jesus first speaks of the flood. This might be regarded as chapter two—or chapter one to that chapter two).
"Suddenly the heavens were opened" just as the windows of heaven were thrown
open in Noah's day.
In that primeval time the waters were chaos (as they are in the vast majority of the
world's creation myths)—chaos pouring down and fountaining up,
preparing to obliterate the bubble in which humanity lived.
On the other hand, the waters below Jesus (whence he comes up) and the waters
above him (whence the voice of God and the Holy Spirit pour down) are
calmed and controlled by the divine that moves in both.
Even so did the Spirit of God move upon the face of the chaos-waters in the
beginning.
Even so did the dove come (back) which Noah had released in order to learn
whether chaos had been subdued and order come again.
And the hero is completely in charge of events (as was God in Genesis). Not only
does he take the command away from John the Baptist, but also (we know
this by Matthew's use of the infinitive of purpose, "to be baptized") it is
apparent that he has already made up his mind: "Jesus came from Galilee
to John at the Jordan, in order to be baptized by him."
2nd Sunday After Epiphany, John 1:29-42 Jan 16
Here is an opportunity to bracket the whole Gospel; to bracket the ministry of Jesus first and last, its terminus a quo to its terminus ad quem; and to bracket the spiritual maturation of the disciples, whose sight is at the beginning flat, but at the ending is as deep as the Truth of the Resurrected One. At the start they scarcely know the depth of the questions they ask, but at the end these same questions are granted spectacular answers in the work and the person of the Lord.
A. The beginnings
1. Who knows exactly why two of John's disciples turn to follow Jesus? On account of
John's identification that he "takes away the sins of the world"? (This evangelist's
declaration which Matthew makes by interpreting the name "Jesus.") Do they
turn to leave John altogether? Or merely to check out this other teacher? Or what
do they make of the designation, "The Lamb of God"? None of this is explained.
Each disciple is at this point white paper, a blank
2. All at once Jesus rounds on them and makes everything very personal. If there is to be
a relationship, it will not be merely objective. He asks, "What are you looking
for?" In Greek his question is Τί ζητεϊτε;
3. They answer with another question: "Rabbi—" ah ha! this is how flat is their sight.
Jesus is a teacher and little more. "Rabbi, where are you staying?" The Greek for
"staying" is μένει.
It can be translated "continue" as in "if you continue in my word";
and translated "remain" as in "He on whom you see the Spirit descend and
remain";
and "a place" as in "The slave does not have a permanent place in the household;
the son has a place there forever;
and "abide" as in "Abide in me as I abide in you.... If you abide in me and my
words abide in you, ask...."
All of which gives a depth to the disciples' question which they likely do not yet
understand. It is the question humanity has been asking, yearning for an
answer even from the beginning: O God where are you? Where do you
dwell? Without you we despair. There is neither hope nor meaning. Can
we stay with you?
4. Jesus answers with words deeper than the disciples know: "Come and see." Perhaps they think: come and see my room. In fact, this phrase throughout John trolls as deep as, "See my true identity, that I am sent by the Father; see this and beleive it, and I will have a 'staying place' for you in my Father's house."
B. The fulfillment
1. Mary Magdalene stands at the empty tomb. She cannot "see" on account of the tears,
the grief that blurs her vision.
2. So she thinks it's the gardener walking toward her.
3. As at the beginning, Jesus initiates the conversation: "Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?" Now here is the bracket that comes when
everything has been accomplished. "Whom are you looking for" is τίνα ξητεις,
the very same question he had asked of the disciples at the beginning!
4. And she, like those before her, answers with a question: "Where have you laid him?"
And, again like the disciples begging to be with her Lord (who to her blind eyes is
where she isn't but wants to be), she declares, "I wqill take him away." What
ironies!
5. With one word Jesus opens her eyes, and finally, truly and faithfully, she sees: to the
other disciples, "I have seen the Lord!"
Moreover, by the one word the exalted Jesus is revealed to her, and she know
him.
Morever in that one word she discovers herself, her identity by her relationship
with the Lord: that as he is not dead, neither is she. (We are not in
despair. There is hope and meaning
The word he utters is her name. "Mary."
"He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." Ah ha! Here is an
explanation of John's earlier image: "The lamb of God who...." "I know
my own and my own know me."
And Jesus cried with a loud voice the name, "Lazarus! Come out!"
This narrative can be told in much less time than the notes above seem to indicate.
3rd Sunday After Epiphany, Matt 4:12-23 Jan 23
Jesus' "calling" must be more than that of the common rabbi seeking disciples. As happened with Abraham, (whom God called), as happened to Moses and Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah, et al, God's call broke their allegiances to the world and bound their allegiances to him. To God. To Jesus.
In fact, the call to a higher mission is not an uncommon element in the oral tradition of Romance.
Arthur is called to his father's (Uther Pendragons') throne.
Sir Galahad's is "called" by marvelous signs (a monstrous roll of thunder, a
brilliant light "seven times clearer" than daylight, and the gracious passage
of the Grail veiled) and by his passing the tests of the Perilous Seat—is
"called" to lead a life pure and chaste and chivalrous; to heal the wounded
Fisher King (whose weakness can blast the land); and in his shining purity
to accomplish the quest for the Holy Grail, to find and himself (all alone
among others) to see and experience the chalice from which Christ drank
and in which his blood is preserved; and then, having approached the
Grail's divine mysteries, to die in the ecstasies of the saints.
There are many narrative ways to preach the event in this pericope. Surely pastors will have experienced (either personally or by witnessing it in others) such a call. Surely the details of personal experience can track well with the text, using the patterns touched on above, and the patterns I'll map below.
Here I'll offer one example by comparing the apostle's call (Matthew names them "apostles" in chapter 10, just before Jesus "sends" the 12 out with instructions) to Isaiah's call. Language connects the two ("Who shall I send." "Send me" for which the LXX uses apostello), as does the radical change in those called.
1. Envision a young priest kneeling (perhaps between two older priests) on the threshold
of the great doors of the Temple, now standing open. They are facing inward
toward the Debir, that cubic room where the Lord dwells in darkness.
Let it be the autumn equinox, just before sunrise, the gates of the courts thrown upon to
the east and the Mount of Olives.
Perhaps it is the Day of Atonement according to the calendar Solomon established.
Sacred rites are soon to be performed.
2. Suddenly the sun's rays strike over the eastern mount, burn through the open gates,
and pierce the interior temple. The light explodes in the smoke rising from the
altar of incense.
3. And the young Isaiah is stupefied by the emergence of divinity. The blazing smoke is
the train of the Lord. The throne of the Lord emerges from darkness to a lofty
height. The Seraphs—those that blazed in the presence of God—flew attendance
on the King. Six flames shooting from each: two to show humility, two to cover
any offense, two to serve the High One. And they uttered the very character
(Separated unto itself alone: Holy) and the universal authority (the stunning
weight, the glory) of God. The divine Almighty overwhelms any visible ritual or
material mightiness on earth: the great doors tremble in their sockets.
4. The young priest—with nothing to cover his shame—comes to an intense awareness
of himself. In the presence of the fiery Seraphs, and under scrutinies of the light
that only the King, the Lord of hosts can utter, Isaiah's uncleanliness covers him
like a running puss. He gives voice to the fears that he must die for having seen
God face to face and filthy. "Woe is me!"
5. The brilliant ministers of God, however, move to cleanse him after all. (Please note
the power of the call, which can change poor fishermen into ministers of God
themselves! Surely, one can find all kinds of interpretations of the Gospel lesson
in this manner.) They burn (it is their character to burn) the lips of the young
priest clean. The puss is blotted away.
6. Pacing and pacing among his minsters in the courtyard of the heavens, the God of
Israel now muses out loud (in the hearing of this freshly washed human): "I
wonder who I can send."
7. In response Isaiah emerges as a prophet in waiting. As Jesus will send the apostles out
for him, and they will go, so Isaiah, now transformed, begs to be sent out himself,
and he will go: "Send me."
8. And what of the authority of the Son of God? Is it like the Father's? "All authority in
heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore...."
THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
Jesus' sermon began in an oral form, whether as spoken first by this preacher, or whether passed from lips to lips among the early faithful. And even after the sayings began to be collected as writings, the writing came to the people orally, read to them by those who could read.
Thus the pericopes for the rest of the Epiphany Season function primarily as oral and only secondarily as written texts.
The genre which frames the Sermon is called....
Chreia: a collection of sayings designed for utility, and often set as an introduction to
another work. These collections go as far back as the 4th century BCE. See
Diogenes the Cynic ("cynic" comes of the term for doggishness). For him and
those who came after it, wisdom must be a matter of action rather than
propositions of thought. This was a Socratic rejection of all the elements of
philosophy except practical ethics. It promoted a life of asceticism and poverty,
in which was happiness.
The wisdom of someone like Diogenes compares well with the Sermon on the Mount
As the mind and the will of God of Israel is made manifest—visible, in the world
apprehensible—by Israel's active obedience to Torah, so the disciples' active
obedience to the rejuvinated laws of Jesus will make the kingdom visible before
the world, tangible, available.
Jesus preaches in metaphors, swift pictures, tiny tales (each the slice of the whole round cake). Should we, then, preach only in abstractions?
(NOTE the story of the Hyena)
4th Sunday after Epiphany, Matt 5:1-12 Jan 30
Among other interpretations, the beatitudes may be read as the conditions within which the ethical life can take place. The rest of the Sermon builds on these conditions, which are a guide through the maze of contradictions that fill human life.
Here begins the Lord's lessons in righteousness.
The clear reference to Isaiah 61:
As it was upon the Suffering Servant, so is the Spirit upon Jesus, anointing him to
preach Good News. (Matt 12:17 indicates the Evangelist's knowledge of that
"servent" type)
It can be helpful to use the figures in Isaiah to perfume the slightly more prosaic words of
the Sermon
Each beatitude is: 1. A Declaration of favor
2. An Indicative statement; that is, each presents an objective fact!
3. An ethical expectation, for the community that hears itself
pronounced blessed cannot remain passive, but will act in
accord with the coming kingdom; will live the life Jesus
proclaims in the rest of the sermon.
4. And a Promise of God's future action.
Try these sociological interpretations on for size:
Verse 3: Blessed are the "poor" in fact, those "crushed in spirit" (Ps 24:18).
Crushed by economic injustice, and experiencing the corrosive effect of (our) economic injustices.
"Blessed" they are, for the Kingdom of Heaven is already dawning in Jesus' (the
Servant's) healing, defeating the demons, calming the waters (Chaos)
Matt 14:22-32
V 4: They "mourn" for they know the destruction of imperial power. Is. 61: "Them that
mourn in Zion," the hill where "they shall raise up the fomer desolations, and
repair the wasted cities." Read Isaiah 61 for sweet images of comfort; in Matt
comfort is already appearing in Jesus (his healings, etc), and the fullness of
comfort is promised to come with the eschaton.
V 5: The meek are the powerless, yet who renounce retribution.
(Always and always the beatitudes find their source, their patterned behavior, and
their fulfillment in Jesus).
They will inherit the "earth." When the Kingdom comes, God will redistribute
access to all the New Creation, the earth, source and substance on one's being.
V 6: Find "righteousness" already in father Joseph's obedience; already arising in Jesus'
baptism, where he himself begins to "fulfill all righteousness"—which
righteousness he will brings in his own person to those who are starving for the
perfect justice of the kingdom of Heaven.
Find it at the fingers' tips of the blessed, since the Preacher is just about to preach
the deeds of righteousness.
And to be "satisfied," finally, shall be to gorge on the perfect righteousness of the
Son of the Father, for the feast will be supplied with an endless abundance.
V 7: "Mercy" in the LXX (έλεος, hesed) is the attitude (of humans and of God) which
arises out of a mutual relationships: friends, blood kin, guests, etc. It is the
attitude each can expect of the other when they are pledged together. Rather than
a disposition, it is helpful action rooted in a relationship of trust and faithfulness.
The element of obligation yields before that of favor.
In Matthew "mercy" becomes a spiritual thing, dearer to God than any religious
ritual. Check out Matt 9:13 and 12:7 and to enrich the meaning Jesus has here;
and 18:33 where God's demand for mercy is based upon (and empowered by)
Divine mercy.
V 8: "Heart" the core of one's will, thought, knowing, deciding, doing. Therefore it is an
internal purity which is demonstrated by an external purity—even now as children
of our "Heavenly Father" Shall see God...
1. in the eschaton, where God's purity invades and transfigures all life;
2. Already in the face of Jesus, who is (as the Voice of God declares twice
in Mt) the son of God, the one alone who knows the Father as the
Father knows him (Mt 11:27)
V 9: The peace proudly declared in those days as the work of Rome, the Pax Romana,
was defined by and experience by the elite of Rome. They thought of peace as
the proper ordering of human affairs throughout the whole world (the great circle
of land around the Mediterranean)—even if order required the military defeat of
foreign nations.
The Pax Dei, on the other hand, is bestowed by the will of God through his wise
providence This "peace" is defined by the common folk, the slaves, women,
nations oppressed. It is regarded as the "wholeness" of personhood and
relationships and the life in the eye of God.
And peace is made by those who live as Jesus lives and as God desires; therefore
they are right now the evident children of the Father (as Jesus spills possessives
left and right: "My" father, "Your" father, "Our" father).
And in the future, in the kingdom, they shall experience such a full intimacy with
God, that of Lord and the land and the people an everlasting whole shall be
established—peace forever and ever.
Vv 10-12: All that has been gathered in the preceding beatitudes sets the "Blessed" and
their manifest righteousness in conflict with the economic powers, the rulers of
this present world order—divided from those who unjustly oppress others, who
keep the poor poor and the afflicted afflicted, whose bigotries (known or
unknown) "crush" the hopes and spirits of others. Oppression and injustice will
be focused directly on these blessed (as it was upon the prophets of old) and on Jesus.
"For my sake" indicates that righteousness is not finally an abstract concept, but
founded in and upon Christ. It ought to be a shock when his use of the third
person ("those which are persecuted for righteousness' sake") suddenly becomes
the most personal "you." Preach it so!
For the eighth beatitude is the first to pronounce straight out a persecution—and
the ninth, like a search-light, beams "persecution" directly into our faces.
If our self-serving, smilingly "righteous" attitudes wished to avoid any one of the
beatitudes, it would be the eighth. Therefore, the terrific shock of the ninth!
And yet worse:
we are to be treated as the prophets of old ("O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that
kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!" Mt 23:37). So it is the
ninth beatitude that can divide the hearts of a congregation, and the ninth that
certainly divides the blessed from the aggressive. This is a fore-shock, a
forewarning of the king's judgment and the cosmic whack of division.
But the "reward" has already been declared in each of the seven beatitudes above.
There lurks a narrative within each beatitude—so long as, between the present conditions and the present calls and the heavenly promises thereafter, there fall the twin beatitudes, eight and nine.
5th Sunday After Epiphany, Matt 5:13-20 Feb 6
Jesus's use of salt and light are the figures which are called "schemes."
Note what light this particular tradition shines on Jesus' figures.
Aristotle defines "schemes" as an outward appearance—a perceptible form, shape, and sequence of events, which constitutes a plot—used by the speaker in order to represent thoughts/abstractions as concrete realities.
If these active metaphors are not quite parables, they are at least parabolic because with each one a tiny narrative is implied.
It's possible, then, to preach these little parables as short stories (though you can lengthen
them, so long as you adhere to the steps of the tale as Jesus tells it).
The disciples, the main characters, are introduced as ... what? What is meant by
"the earth" and "the world"? With regard to the metaphors salt and light
and the city, there are many places to find interpretations. (What salt does
to food; how it exists in the word "salary," since Roman soldiers might be
paid in precious salt.)
Think of the various charismata with which God has graced certain
ndividuals in your life, your parish. Consider how every such gift is to be
given away in the name of the Lord.
1st action: The disciples have what good effect on others? on the earth and the
world? (meaning those outside the community, outside the church)?
Likewise, what good effect has your talented one on those who receive
his, her talent? This is where the story develops details and motion and
the interest of the listeners.
2nd action: How do they lose the savor (have their light snuffed, their city
buried) by which God intended them to serve the world? What if the
talented one either destroys her talent or else refuses to use it? How does
that look?
3rd action: (Following the plot of the salt story)—What, in consequence happens
(a) to those who have lost their savor?
And (b) to those now denied a the salt that lends taste and richness to their
lives?
(this story ends in sadness; the next two counter the sadness by ending in hope)
3rd action: (Following the light story and the city)—What would happen if the
lamp were hidden under a clay bowl? What would happen to the house?
To the people in the house? To the communities losing the divine
charismata set burning within this member and that?
4th action: But what does happen when the flame waves above the lampstand
after all? The talent shines! All the house, thereby, all its furnishings, all
its people emerge from the dark; all are given place and presence in the
community—and the community in the (you are the light of the) world
5th action: And beneath the metaphors storied above, what is it Jesus seeks from
the disciples who have just experienced his tiny tale?
To put it another way:
What if (salt has lost its savor?) the disciples break the least of these laws?
Or what happens (when the light lights the house) when the law is kept,
and the disciple's righteousness exceeds that of the pharisees?
Look back on what we've written and thought. Do you recall how Disney characterizes candles and causes them to sing?
These tiny stories might, in fact, be tiny fairy tales. And if you imply certain theological meanings, there is no reason why adults can't respond as well as the children.
6th Sunday After Epiphany, Matt 5:21-37 Feb 13
The six antitheses are bracketed by two high, hard Sinaitic tablets:
V 20: "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you
will never enter the kngdom of heaven." That first.
and v 48: "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." That
second.
Here are two granite tablets: Torah as it has been practiced, and Torah as it must
be practiced with the whole heart and the whole soul and the whole mind
of those that love the Lord their God.
Two prophets, two God-speakers: Moses and Jesus.
Two mountains: one of the covenant ("Everthing that the Lord has spoken, we
will do"), which covenant was broken and later grew more and more
slipshod: "It was because you were so heard-hearted that Moses allowed
you to...."; and one Mount of the Preacher who tightened the shoddy
obedience, the merely external shows of righteousness, until the perfection
of the Father is required.
But let's use that granite set of brackets to characterize Jesus' message throughout the six antitheses.
"Perfect as your Father is perfect." τέλειος:
In the LXX the word means "undivided," "complete," "whole." It is most
associated with καρδία, "heart." So it speaks of an undivided heart. It worships
the Lord exclusively, is wholly obedient to God alone.
Matthew renders the word almost the same as does the LXX. See chapter 19, the story of the rich young man; there such perfection—that is, such wholeness—is clarified.
I submit this as a story to be told with the antitheses.
"What good must I do...?"
Jesus and his disciples are traveling through Judea east of the Jordan River. They have left Capernaum and Galilee behind. He has begun the long trip at the end of which he shall become the perfectest perfect for the sake of the world.
Perhaps they are strolling away from the marketplace where Jesus has laid his hands on the little children. Perhaps the disciples are pitiful, having been rebuked for rebuking those who brought the children to Jesus.
So this young fellow has slipped from the village and caught up with him. Well-dressed. Possibly wearing Anotolian slippers, those whose toes turn up.
He the wants eternal life. He wants to know how he can himself obtain it. There's no reason to doubt his desire. No need to blame him as a pretender or a seeker after status.
Jesus answers, "Keep the commandments."
Still yearning to learn, he asks, "Which ones?" Perhaps this is the teacher who knows the right road from here to the hereafter, some mysterious road he has not yet been able to find. He wants to know the way in which he ought to walk.
So Jesus chalks a quick list of the covenant laws. This is, of course, the way. It has been before the rich man all along. He has known them. Here there are no mysteries.
In some distress, then, he declares, "But I have kept them. I've kept all of these." What else can there be? Has this teacher nothing new to offer? In spite of the blessed gentleness he had just shown to the children? No particular blessing for him? The fellow's eagerness fails him. He is close to desolation, because keeping of the commandments isn't working. Eternal life is no nearer now than it had been before. What? What should he...
He begs Jesus to tell him one new thing: "What do I still lack?"
And now Jesus opens a door in that granite wall, Perfection. Yes. In fact there is a way in which to walk, a road on through to eternal life.
"If you wish," he says to the young man, "to be perfect (τέλειος), go, sell your possessions, give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, child. Follow me."
That he grieves—grieves!—at this last and first request, reveals the man to be schizophrenic (in the old sense of the word, of a divided mind). He is the very picture of the unperfect, however well he may have kept every last commandment. He is not whole as his Father in heaven is whole.
"My child, give me your heart, and let your eyes delight in my ways."
God's hesed, tender-mercies and loving kindness (as the translators once strove to
communicate the nearly inephable) for the people is ever and ever undivided. It is
whole, all of the Deity and all-encompassing. It is perfect.
Nor is that perfection impossible for the child whose whole purpose and whose whole
person is turned to God exclusively.
So: by means of his antitheses,
Jesus offers a practicum for the external behaviors which derive from an internal
wholeness, where one worships the Lord God alone, serving only him.
Another take on the difference between how we deal with a friend and how not to deal with an enemy is captured in Wm. Blake's "A Poison Tree." This is to the Gospel lesson a what-if: what if I treat my enemy as do those who do not obey Jesus' injunction?
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I stunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceiful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole.
When the night had veil'd the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretche'd beneath the tree.
7th Sunday After Epiphany, Matt 5:38-48 Feb 20
Under the grace and the beauty of the Lord's Wholeness, it will not be difficult to search the roots of the last two antitheses.
It is no longer a whimpish, humiliating, anti-heroic, anti-Wall-Street-ish, anti-self-reliant-ish, milk-toasty kind of thing to love one's enemies, to pray for those who may still be persecuting the one who, yes, prays for them.
To be children of the heavenly Father is to allow the Father's spirit into our spirits.
Having arrived at this place, now a preacher may story the sacred strength in walking against the flow of the world's traffic.
The Saint's Tale, is a short form in the romantic tradition. Here is an excellent opportunity to bring one before the congregation, to tell it in a sermon.
Besides Jesus, there are a number of wonderful examples immediately available:
Martin Luther King. Jr. (But read a good biography first)
Dietrich Boenhoeffer.
In The Fire Next Time James Baldwin writes a letter to his nephew which
counsels something very close to Jesus' call to divine perfection.
But we ought also to think about St. Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, who died somewhere near the year 155. His feast day is just three days from this day: February the 23rd.
There is an ancient, stirring account of his martyrdom which, soon after the martyrdom itself, was written and sent as a letter from the church at Smyrna to churches everywhere abroad. Eusebius preserves this letter in his History.
Though a Saint's tale is often so ornamented by pious imaginations that it bends under the unnatural burden, Polycarp's deserves telling even today. There are wonders in it, and treacheries, and expressions of the perfection the Preacher preaches from the Mount. Modern readers will meet it with a curled scepticism. But children and those who can reserve criticism (as a good story-teller can compel them to do) will enter into it and experience it with delight.
8th Sunday After Epiphany, Matt. 6:24-34 Feb 27
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nautre that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old triton blow his wreathed horn.
The heart that we give to mammon, says Jesus the Preacher, sunders us from the wealth
of heaven, and from his and the Father's governance.
William Wordsworth (in the sonnet above) adds that it sunders us even from the mighty
movemets of great Nature. Given this desolating circumstance, he considers
himself as one alone, and would (though he can't) return to a pagan's citizenship
in the kingdom of creation. But those ancient creeds are "outworn." The
consequence? The man is left forlorn.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (Christian poet of the 19th century, a converted Catholic and a
Jesuit) reponds differently to the service humans give to mammon. Though he,
too, sets his sights on "nature never spent," and on our numbness to it, yet he finds
that the great God can use nature to return humanity to hope again. In the Holy
Spirit is hope, just as Jesus offers us an unworried hope in the dear watchfulness
of the Father.
God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Carry the above definition of "perfect" into this pericope: it requires a whole devotion,
which cannot exist if a disciple tries (unconsciously?) to obey the world's
economy and the economy of God. The effort will absolutely (however
unconscious) divorce the disciple from God.
From the very beginning of the relationship between God and humanity (that economy
which is storied in the creation narrative), love was not fondness. It was neither
ardor nor passion infatuation, not endearments, not an emotion at all. Rather, it
was a whole, focused devotion represented by an outward act.
The creator's love providence. God provided everything the human creature needed.
Humanity's love was manifested in an active obedience to the commandments of God.
("But of the tree of knowledge ... you shall not eat." I do not want even one of my
children to die.)
Love was covenant. Jesus declares that it remains the same today—or it ought to. For
God desires still to be our one and only provider. What hinders that ancient role?
Worry ... which is the distress of doubt. So it was with John the Baptist (Advent
II) when doubt first entered the longer narrative of the church year: doubt leaves
us "forlorn." Doubt breaks our covenant of love. Doubt blinds us to the true face
and the intent of the Creator.
This is not, of course, the suggestion that we lean back and passively expect the Creator
to shower down our necessities. (Oh, children, we are votaries of the cargo cult as
much as anyone else on earth.) It is a call, rather, to put our energies in the
Edenic covenant: in the manner the Preacher sets forth on the Mount, to "strive
for the kingdom of God and his righteousness."
Hans Christian Andersen wrote a tale that captures wonderfully the effect of life-long worry and a striving after self rather than a striving after the kingdom. It's entitled "The Pine Tree." It may be told as Andersen tells it. Or it may offer an outline by which to develop a story with contemporary circumpstances and characters.
The Transfiguration of Our Lord, Matt 17:1-9 Mar 6
Consider the mountains in Matthew's Gospel, from the sermon on the mount at the
beginning to the mountain of authority at the end.
The mount of Transfiguration looks backward (in Matthew) to the the Sermon on the
Mount (just preached to the church) and even farther back to the shekinah on
Sinai. It looks forward (in Matthew) to the Mount of Olives and to the last mount,
the mount of Jesus' authority.
On the first mount he is the teacher of his disciples. On the last he is the commissioner of
his disciples. On the first he teaches them the spirit of Torah and sends them
commands them so to manifest righteousness that the world will see them as a
city built on a prominent, but little, mount. On the last mount—with a complete
and divine authority—he will send them out to be teachers themselves who can
make disciples of all nations, just as Jesus had made them disciples.
The form of Matthew's story moves from Mount Sinai and the Mount of Beatitudes to the
Mount of Olives and the Mount of his Authority: the law, the law; the suffering,
the glory. And in the middle, the Mount of Transfiguration.
Near the beginning of the season of Epiphany (on the 2nd Sunday, directly after the
Sunday of Jesus' baptism) we had the opportunity to present the sweep of our
entire tale. Here again, on this transitional Sunday and by the touch-points of the
mountains, we are granted the opportunity again, but with a different emphasis
and a different quality of the sweep. Twice to outline the full Gospel story is not
too often. It places the congregation clearly within the narrative, both on the
upward slope of Jesus' active ministry and on the downward slope, the slow
descent of Lent, and the crash of the week of the Passion.
At his baptism Jesus is the Romantic hero. On the mount of Transfiguration, he is a
mythic hero. From the Temptations down and down to death, he is a tragic hero.
Myth: Consider the brilliance of Christ's transfiguration. His face is Helios the sun; his
clothes, Phos: he is robed in light—foretokening the glory with which he will
descend on the last day.
"But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its
wings." Mal. 4:2
See too Ps. 19 where Matthew's "sun" image translated is given a chapter of its own. He
is "the sun which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy ... runs
its course with joy.... Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to
the end of them, and nothing is hid from its heat."
LENT
Develop Theatric Ritual here
Ash Wednesday, Matt 6:1-6, 16-21 Mar 9
A prelude to the pericope due in just four days from now—the 1st Sunday in Lent—for the forty days of the church's commemoration in Lent are a parallel to Jesus's forty days in the wilderness.
Story:
1. See the collect for Ash Wednesday and its sequence
2. In a hushed tone, after the reading of the Gospel Lesson—and as the sermon—
orally present the stages of the dramatic action to come, the ritual reserved
for this Wednesday. (See p. 251, ELW) Then, after having treated the
stages, do them. That shall be a tale truly enacted in the theater of the
sanctuary.
The stages are:
(a) The invitation to Lent (explain it before you do/speak it)
(b) The confession of sins (which stage is its own short act of the Ash
Wednesday drama)
(c) The congregants' (theatrical) motion forward, taking a posture of
humiliation (kneeling, standing head bowed)
(d) The imposition of ashes. In the form of a cross. Why the words?
Why this reminder of each body's of its morality? Why are the
pastor's hands are laid upon the Christian's head
(d) The rising up and the return—
(e) The pastor's word of forgiveness uttered before the congregation
(f) And if communion is to be celebrated, say why this congregational
motion is repeated twice, one for our pentitence, one for God's
means of Grace. (Consider what love is revealed in the world "In
the night in which he was betrayed." That is, "while we were still
weak.... While we were still sinners.... while we were enemies," at
that right time he chose to died for us.
3. All this, when it is performed, is performed in atmospheres of
(a) penitential music and
(b) perfect silence.
First Sunday in Lent, Matt 4:1-11 Mar 13
Myth: And so the forces for good and for evil collide. Christ the protagonis, the divine hero, engages the supreme antagonist, the Devil, and the mighty, universal conflict begins.
Story: two stories, actually, one in Genesis (the first reading for this Sunday), the other in Matthew. Watch the parallels in both (the temptations of the antagonist), and the differences with which each protagonist meets the tempter
The 1st tale:
a. Humanity is the protagonist in the person of Eve.
b. That she is alone puts her in the way of danger
c. The Tempter challenges the word of God: "Did God say...?
d. The Tempter will, in the end, look for an act that manifests her separation from
the word, and from the God who spoke it. She will take of its fruit and
eat.
e. She chooses to answer in her own (human) words—and herself undermines the
sufficiency of the word of God: "Neither shall you touch it."
Her personal addition to the divine prohibition (a kind of a childish
whining: "You never let me have anything" prepares her to hear the
universal lie:
f. "You shall not die." God wants no other gods around. That lie, should she
believe it, turns God into humanity's (the Protagonist's) antogonist!
g. She believes it and humanity begins its long dying.
The 2nd tale:
a. Jesus is the protagonist, the tempter the antagonist
b. That he is alone puts him in the way of danger
c. The Tempter challenges the word of God: See 3:17 and the Voice whose
words are, "This is my son...." Three verses later: "If you are (what God
said) the Son of God."
d. The Tempter looks for an act that manifests his separation from the word, and
from the God who spoke it. "Command these stones to become loaves of
bread."
e. He chooses to answer not in his own words but in the words of Scripture (in
God's words). Even so does he refuse to manifest a separation, but rather
to manifest an intimacy. He did not take or eat.
Moreover, his answer is a direct hit at the Tempter's effort to implant
doubt: "We live ... by every word ... from the mouth of God."
f. By his choosing always to respond with God's word and not his own, the
protagonist becomes (for now) proof against the following blandishments
of his antagonist.
g. But dying begins nonetheless: his dying for the sake of humanity, suffering
still its long dying.
Second Sunday in Lent, John 3:1-17 Mar 20 (Purim)
Continuing myth:
John the evangelist, from the scratch-start of his gospel, knows Jesus as divine
(see the lesson for Christmas Day). The antagonist is represented in a
number of ways:
—Darkness opposing light.
—The devil, the father of lies whose very nature it is to lie opposing the Way and
the Truth and...
—The murderer from the beginning opposing ... the Life.
—The ruler of this world opposing the one whose coronation was the Cross.
Darkness, then: the darkness of the blind who cannot see and therefore cannot know
—until the light breaks in (Ch. 9); the darkness, the night into which Judas went
to accomplish his "Devil"-deed, betrayal (13, "And it was the night.")
Nick at night: a Pharisee—a teacher of Israel, and a ruler of the Jews—approaches Jesus
by night, aware of nothing more than that Jesus is a teacher of godly deeds. "No
one can can do the signs you do apart from the presence of God."
Immediately—and in much the same language as Nick uses (indicating, therefore, a
certain sword-play, protagonist/antagonist)—Jesus identifies the sort of blindness with which Nicodemus is afflicted: "No one can see the kingdom (the
'presence') of God ... without being born from above."
Nick responds to the pun-side of that άνωθεν by making a whopper of a joke: "What? Grown men can pop back into their mother's womb?"
Jesus ignores the joke and responds solemnly by speaking what one cannot see in the
darkness: "Born," he says, "of water and the Spirit."
Now Nick's lips whistle in astonishment. The fun has passed. But he's taken a first step
in that he has become away of his flat sight and his ignorance: "How can these
things be?"
And so the story goes on through to v. 21: Mythic, and made the more so by the
teachings Jesus yet imparts in this chapter—a monologue which
(a) weaves this Nicodemus-story into the vast fabric of all the signs and all the
teachings Jesus has yet to accomplish in the gospel of John; and which
(b) reveals here a full cosmology made new and known by the descent of the Son
from the Father, and the ascent that shall follow.
Some elements in this pericope which hold a mythic force:
Earthly things (the whole world, beloved of God), and heavenly things (the abode of the
Father and, fro-and-to, the place of the Son of Man) are altogether embraced by,
and named by, and profoundly contained in, the myth that shapes the whole of
existence—the storied myth in which we, the handiwork of God, will ultimately
dwell as children in the household of God.
And here is the point upon which the whole tale turns like a top, the hinge between heaven and earth, the cosmic dimple through which angels ascend and descend
upon the Son of Man: this, that because the love of the Supreme, Creating Being
wants no one to perish, he has sent his only son, the Son of Man, to bridge the
world below with the world above. Jesus is the vortex.
The final supremecy of the protagonist over the antagonist is prefigured in that most
ancient figure;
the bronzed cobra upraised and swollen on the Pharaoh's headdress (a likely
source of the bronze serpent since the Israelites had only just whined to be
back in Egypt again), upraised on Pharaoh's headdress to poison his
enemies and to protect himself;
the serpent that both afflicts and heals (mighty contradictions held in tension
within this single figure)
the bronzed serpent that Moses raised up in the wilderness which (when those
who had whined and were suffering fiery serpent-bites finally lifted their
eyes to behold it with perfect trust) healed them whole.
This is the Christ also to be lifted up, who is death on darkness and healing for those who
look at him with perfect trust—believing that he is, indeed, the one sent by the
Father.
Third Sunday in Lent, John 4:5-42 Mar 27
A Samaritan Woman, encountered in a mid-day light.
From this Sunday through the the 5th Sunday in Lent John's attentions turn us ever
deeper toward the water imagery with which we began in Advent.
Lent 3: baptism, water gushing up to eternal life;
Lent 4: baptism, blindness washed to spiritual sightliness;
Lent 5: baptism, dying the first death and rising to die the second in faith and
without fear.
This time let character carry the narrative, the personalities of the Samaritan woman and
of Jesus, bold in his choices, but not bold-faced in their executions. He need not
be some kind of enigmatic cabalist; for though the sense of his language makes
only slow sense to her, the quality of his speech, his person sitting in the sunlight,
and his reactions to her are not wierd. He is a fellow creature, more educated,
perhaps, more direct in his manner than other men would be (he will keep his eyes
on hers), and somewhat more magnetic than men she knows in Sychar, more than
anyone traveling through town—but he's as human as she ... until she catches on
when suddenly he (eyes, manner, person, speech) declares in unvarnished prose:
"I am he."
The story's parts move through the swift sequence of the Samaritan's moods. (Hers can
be the point-of-view)
Note that it is a dialogic dance, Jesus leading until she spins off to Sychar.
Jesus, "Give me a drink." Plain water to slake a natural thirst.
1. Forthright question, unafraid despite the endemic hatreds, unhesitating despite
the separate genders, she puts the issue right out there. Easeful her mind,
easeful her heart, despite the city's attitude toward her.
2. "Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob?" Hyperbole, a joke like Nick's joke.
(NOTE the quality of her character)
3. Next mood, genuinely interested;
4. Interest turns into an abrupt and forthright request, a perfect parallel to Jesus'
introductory demand. But hers "Give me this water" is a bit bold-faced,
since she's jumping the gun. She wants Eternal water never to
thirst again—and she says so without a by-your-leave. (Again, the quality
of her character)
5. next, confronted by her station in life, and how must that affect her? Nothing
is hidden.
6. next, astonished by Jesus' insight and prophetic word (out of the mouth of
God)
7. next, ancestors brought in, but she is changing;
8. next, the awe-ful recognition (as far as she is able) that Jesus is the Christ. 9. Next, picks up her skirt with good gossip for the city.
10. Then, if her relationship had been strained, it is made whole again, for she
has called them to the truth, and they came. And they believed. Then,
seeing Jesus, they believe on their own.
So the disciples, seeing his first sign in Cana of Galilee, came in some
(unfulfilled) measure to believe in Jesus.
So, Nick met Jesus, and liked him, honored him, and maybe had begun to support
him (Ch 7:50-52), but did not believe in him.
But here is a woman whose nascent belief already sets her free to dash into town
and to blurt out loud that she thinks she might have met the Messiah.
In any good story, a main character changes, develops, is not at the end what she'd been
at the beginning. In this story, that change represents the coming-to-faith which
Jesus hopes to see in any one of us.
Fourth Sunday in Lent, John 9:1-41 April 3
Humor in the story of the man blind from birth is not just something to entertain the
reader/audience. It is, in fact, a part of the joyful progression from darkness to
light; from depending on the world to depending on (believing in) the Son of Man
who names himself as "Jesus."
The humor increases, signifying the young man's increasing sense of freedom—
and at the same time inviting us to experience the freedom with him. It is a
wonderful use of the story-form. Both as it was transmitted orally, and as it is
written here, and as a preacher use it to the same effect!
And, like the Samaritan woman in last week's Gospel lesson, this character very
obviously changes too.
By his behavior learn his personality: he is consistently and openly honest in all he says
and does. The truth of his heart is always the truth in his mouth. Though not as
impulsive as the woman of Sychar, he is immediately able to obey someone of
whom he knows nothing more than that the fellow's name is Jesus and that the
fellow healed him.
So, then, tell the story of that man.
1. From the beginning he is a man defined by his personal condition (blind, a beggar,
known as a blind beggar to the people around him) and by his place in the Jewish
society (a son of his parents, a citizen of the city (Jerusalem?), a neighbor among
neighbors, a member of of the synagogue). This is his identity. Having no name
to speak of, this is he.
2. Then an intrusion begins to chip away at that identity, though not at his character.
Jesus begins a rough-hewn baptism by spreading a mud made of his own mouth-
water on the blind man's eyes. Without explanation or preamble, Jesus tells him
to wash in the pool of Siloam. Wash? Likely much more than the mud (the
darkness) from his eyes. The pool would invite a whole bath.
3. Without asking for an explanation himself, the man ups and obeys, washes, and comes
back (in the light), seeing.
4. Immediately his neighbors, noticing a change in him, question his identity, for he
was never anything but blind. (Yes, this is a story about identity.) "It's he." "No,
it can't be he." But the truth is ever on this fellow's lips. Brightly, forthrightly—
and quite patiently it seems, since he must say it over and over—he announces
both the sameness and the newness of his self: "I am the man. I have recovered
my sight. Well, you see, there was this man named Jesus...." "Where is this
Jesus?" "Well (and he easily admits to the limits of his knowledge), I don't
know."
5. So the citizens bring the blind/seeing fellow to the Pharisees. And now he is
questioned by rulers with greater authority than mere neighbors. Interrogations
and answer will carry much more weight with them. "How did this happen?" they
ask, and the fellow says what he knows and no more than he knows: "He put mud
on my eyes, I washed, and now I see."
6. As were the neighbors, so are the Pharisees divided: "That Jesus isn't from God."
"Well, but a sinner couldn't do what he did." So they intensify the interrogation:
"What do you say about him?"
7. The blind man's answer indicates that he's beginning to see something more regarding
Jesus than just the facts: "He's a prophet." No matter that such an answer might
begin to disconcert the rulers. He just says what he knows.
8. At the same time the rulers dis-believe everything the man has said. "He's a liar. He
never was blind!" Not trusting his word, they drag his parents into the their
inquisition. Though the parents confirm their son's blindness, they nonetheless
leave him to his own devices. In effect, the identity he had in relationship with
the family is torn away. Someting of the Self is lost. Moreover, their fear of
being put out of the synagogue indicates what else the blind/seeing man might be
stripped of.
9. The rulers now put the judicial screws to him: "Swear to tell the truth and nothing but
the truth!" Or, in their formula: "Give glory to God! We know the man is a
sinner."
10. Blithely in spite of the consequences, the fellow (if he cares about this) puts himself
in further danger by sticking to what he has already said: "I was blind and now I
see."
11. Chipping, chipping away at this son of the synagogue, "What did he do!"
12. Fearlessly, he lets loose his first joke—which can do nothing but raise the anger of
the authorities and make his situation all the more perilous: "What? You guys
want to be his disciples too?" Implying that he has changed past calling Jesus a
"prophet" to considering him a master worthy of his own discipleship. The rulers
notice the change, and name it themselves: "You are his disciple." And in a sort
of defensive (not to say humiliating) outrage, assert their credentials over-against
this ... this nonentity's testimonial: "We go back. We go all the way back to
Moses! (and all that that means regarding their lives, their adhesions, and their
identities). As for this man, well, we know nothing of his heritage, his authority,
his source!" Which source, in John, is God the Father of the Son. Oh, how much
the blind cannot see and do not know!
13. And now the last and most telling joke (for he is feeling his freedom from the
Pharisaical rigmarole): "I'm astonished at you guys! He opened my eyes!" Then
the seeing/blind man shows how far he has moved from Moses and the rulers of
the synagogue toward the man he has as yet not seen, but sees: "God wouldn't
listen to a sinner. God listens to those who worship and obey him. If this man
weren't from God, he couldn't do a thing. But he did."
14. Ka-boom! The seeing man is stripped of all his previous identity. He is "driven out"
of the whole tribe, cult, religion, society by which he had been shaped. He is
made a nothing.
15. And at the same time time he has been made (by the washing of Jesus) an infant
ready to assume a whole new identity. For when Jesus meets him and asks, "Do
you believe in the Son of Man," the fellow, trembling on the edge of newness,
answers: "Tell me who he is, and I will."
16. "You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he." That's enough and more
than enough. ""Lord, I believe." And he worshiped him.
Lo, a fresh, new identity emerges. More than a disciple, a believer.
And again, lo: this is how it happens to anyone willing to be stripped of old identities,
willing to be changed into a child of God.
Please forgive the length of the story as I have told it here. You need not pack all this
into a sermon. It can be trimmed to fit the time you have in which to preach.
But what a story! To be nothing until Christ makes you everything is freedom, and
freedom indeed:
If you continue (dwell, abide, stay) in my word, says the Word,
you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free.
Fifth Sunday in Lent, John 11:1-45 April 10
One last narrative before the Narrative That Saves Us.
What is baptism (especially as the early Church conceived and practiced it) but a dying to all that is old and a rising to the life whose death no longer has terrors for the baptized?
Thus the woman at the well.
Thus the blind man washed into seeing.
And thus Lazarus.
For those (in the early church) who had been instructed in the faith; who had been denied
communion until now, the vigil before the celebration of resurrection,
they are taken down into something like a grotto,
and stripped of all their (winding, binding) clothes,
and led naked into the water,
out of which they leap, crying, confessing, "Jesus Christ is Lord!" in the hearing
of many who recognized the glory of God the Father.
After which they are invited to "come forth"
to join the whole congregation, praising God,
and in the community with all the Christian share the food, the body and the blood
of him who died himself, and rose for out salvation.
This is narrated in the tale of Lazarus,
dead,
called out of the stony tomb,
unbound,
and let go to join Jesus and his family and the whole troop of believers who will
follow Jesus to the cross.
If, for the moment, we can accept the rather strong theory that Lazarus is the beloved
disciple, then it will make sense to us why—when Peter saw nothing in the empty
tomb of the master—the disciple whom Jesus loved immediately understood
resurrection;
for he himself has experienced and can interpret the meaning of winding, binding cloths
laid aside and folded.
He who died has himself come forth from the grotto, the stony tomb—and lives!
Using the method I illustrated in the previous Gospel lesson (the man blind from birth),
you might storify this Gospel lesson too—especially since it already is a well-
wrought tale. It won't be difficult to weave meanings throughout: what do and
don't the disciples know? Why does Martha meet Jesus with tears? (With a sort
of frustrated anger, I think.) Then does she supercede their shallow insight of the
disciples by her own confession? What about the (unsconsious) joke: "He
stinks"?
Jesus calls Martha toward a spiritual change by first asking (v. 26) "Do you believe this?"
and then at the tomb by declaring the consequence of a true belief. Right after her
rough and earthy objection, "But he stinks!" Jesus says to her, "If you believed, wouldn't you now see the glory of God?"
Go for it.
The Sunday of the Passion, Matt 26:14 – 27:66 April 17
Tragedy: Develop Aristotle's "Fear and Pity"
Jesus, like Oedipus, the "world-rim-walker," takes upon himself (becomes!)
the pollution, and obeys the promise to purify the city—and also accomplishes the
purification—by departing the city, departing this life.
It is said (by Christians and non-Christians alike) that there is not, nor can there be,
tragedy in our faith or in our story—because the story does not end in a suffering
of expiation. In fact, if we take the death of Jesus seriously, the tale ends with his
burial. For Christ's death was an altogether complete death. It was absolutely the end of his life and of his relationship with the father and of him. Hence the
grieving. That grieving cannot be read as based on a false premise. It was not an
unnecessary grief. For even as we tell the tale on this Sunday, we end (we do not
cut it off) with
So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.
Easter, you see, begins a whole new story. The resurrection must come as an astounding
shock—even as it did for the disciples.
This is why the story must be read (or told) as a tragedy, in the mode and the mood of a
tragedy. It was at his death that Jesus made right what had been wrong—not by
his rising again.
Maundy Thursday, John 13:1-17, 31b-35 April 21
This is the day of preparation for the Passover.
Let me outline a number of stories with which this Gospel lesson might be made visible:
1. Tomorrow the Lamb of God will be killed in front of the altar of holocausts. For all
the Passover lambs, it goes like this: The householder brings the lamb into the
court of the Israelites. In a swift, skilled motion he slits the arteries in the lamb's
neck. Some of the spurting blood is caught in a basin and flung against the high
altar. Some of the blood is saved. It will be taken back to the house where it will
be painted on the door posts and the lintel above the door. The rest of the blood
streams down to the floor of the temple's expansive esplanade, where it flows into
network of channels. By these channels the bloods of all the sacrifices run
outward finally to rain down on the Kidron valley. There the blood of sacrifices
has so enriched the soil, that vineyards flourish.
2. Surely the Baptist's image regarding Jesus, "The Lamb of God," is here fulfilled as the
Passover sacrifice.
But here, too, another sort of Lamb is established: the "Lamb standing as if it had been
slaughtered" (Rev. 5:6) The Lamb who lives in spite of a mortal wound is
depicted by the church with its foreleg around the staff of the banner of victory,
and with its head turned completely backward—a pose impossible while the beast
is living, because the neck must snap at the turning. We have, therefore, both the
saving death of Jesus and, in a paradox, his triumphant life.
3. The foot-washing (water, water, everywhere!) can likewise become the listener's
personal experience when it is told like a story: the disciples reclining, their
elbows on the bolster that surrounds the U-shaped table. Though elsewhere he
does, here John does not count the number of disciples eating with Jesus. The
twelve? Most likely. But not certainly. For women might have eaten with him as
well. His mother will follow him to the cross tomorrow. There's no reason why
she isn't eating with him tonight.
So Jesus squats at the sticking-out feet of each disciple and performs the duty of a
household menial. Peter does not want Jesus to disgrace his stature, himself, by
the shameful act. No, Peter will have no part in it—until Jesus declares that
without the washing he will have no part in Jesus at all.
"You will understand later" may refer to the giving of a new commandment: "Just as I
have loved you (stooping to be your humblest of servants) so you also should love
one another (by performing such service to one another as I have performed for
you)"
4. Once again (as we mentioned on the 8th Sunday after Epiphany) the love that Jesus
commands is not affection or an emotional state. It is to do. "For I have set you
an example, that you alse should do as I have done as I have done to you." Jesus
has done. When we realize that this discourse, written after the resurrection,
embraces the cross (prefigured by Jesus' humility here), then we can accept that
Do as I have done means to serve even unto the abnegation (the annihilation?) of
our selfs.
"Little children, I am with youonlya little longer. You will look for me, but Where I am
going you cannot come. [Therefore] I give you a new commandment" by which
commandment, Jesus implies, will he, his Spirit, abide among his "little children"
after all.
But note that the new commandment does not ask the disciples to love the whole world;
rather to love the one-anothers of their family/communty.
Good Friday, John 18:1-19:42 April 22
The Gospel story is, in every respect, our defining story. This is the story which was
from the beginnig of the baby church, most coherently and most often told—a
story whole, a story in the oral tradition.
Herein is our identity conferred upon us (just as the blind man's new identity was finally
confered upon him by Jesus).
Tell this story, trusting that those who listen will, experiencing the tale you tell, shuffle
off their old identities and rise to their new personhoods in Jesus.
In the Gospel of John the story is not a horrorific and devastating. In fact (though Peter
and Mary Magdalene can't this this for a while), the story turns the cross into a
throne, and the crucifixion into a coronation. Tell it that way.
Note how often Jesus is in charge of the proceedings (as opposed to his passivity in the
synopitcs). One can weave into the events of this tale much of the imagery and
the teaching that precedes it. "I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to
myself." The verb "lifted up" can mean "elevated" a positive thing, though dying
can be contrued as a negative thing. "What is truth?" asks Pilate. Well, recall last
night when Jesus declared of his person: "I am the way, and the truth, and the
life." Perhaps Jesus answers Pilate's question not by words, but by merely
standing there, presenting his person to Pilate. Those who have eyes to see, let
them see. Truth in John's community, is not a proposition, not a bundle of
historic, empiracal facts. No, truth is a person.
This, too, is a story carefully crafted through the development of several significant characters:
Simon Peter (a major character)
The high priest (a minor character, but significant to the plot)
Pilate (minor again, but a necessary foil to Jesus; it tale cannot do without him)
Mary his mother (major despite the brevity of her part, for she might represent the
new Israel, the church)
The beloved disciple (major, for he might represent every ideal follower—
fearlessly to the courtyard of the High Priest; faithfully to the foot of Jesus'
cross.
It is possible to narrate the (Romantic) tale as a coronation, seeing and then again seeing the sacred in the mundane:
1. Jesus is dressed in a king's purple robe (which, as John tells it is never
removed.) He is crowned and hailed as King of the Jews.
2. He is (formally) presented to the people by the highest authority in the place,
the governor Pontius Pilate.
3. His royal title is proclaimed in three languages, hence, internationally.
4. A seamless tunic is a priestly garment.
5. As a worldly king gives gifts once he is seated upon his throne, so Jesus gives
his mother to the beloved disciple, and that disciple to his mother.
6. Chapter 19:30b Jesus of his own accord gives away the profound gift of his
Spirit to the community of believers.
7. His preparation for burial and the burial itself are the customs by which kings
are buried: the a newly-hewn tomb where no body has been laid before
his body; the outrageously large weight of expensive spices.
8. And standing vigil throughout (besides his mother and the beloved) are Jesus'
aunt, and Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene
THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD
Easter Day, Matthew 28:1-10 April 24
It ought to be as explosive for us as it was for the guards that first Easter Sunday: an
earthquake; a mighty rolling and the opening of the tomb; an angel whose
whiteness is reminiscent of Jesus' on the mount of Tranfiguration—and the guards
collapsing into heaps as if they had just perished for terror.
Well, and it can approximate that exquisite surprise if the artist-preacher has involved the
parish in the graver stories, experiencing a real sorrow from within the stories.
To experience the death of the Lord is to have suffered finality.
On Friday night we left the church in a solemn and isolating silence. This Sunday
morning we cry with an astonished gladness, "He is risen!" We are the story.
Not only do we hear it told again—we act it out. We are overcome with fear,
creatures suddenly witnessing the terrible glory of the Creator; and at the same
time we are overcome with joy, for the Creator has created for us the life that
defeats death.
We are this story's principle characters, except for the protagonist, except for the hero,
except for Jesus, who meets us at the cross-road and greets us right out loud,
words audible to our ears: "Hush. Don't be afraid. Tell the rest of the disciples to
get on up to Galilee where we'll meet one last time."
In other words, on Easter Sunday the preacher-artist's primary business (for the service of the word) is to tell the new story—is to climax the entire Passion narrative with the radiant narrative of life and eternal life.
"I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He isn't here. He has been raised
from the dead."
Alleluia!
I see you and I do not die;
I see me in your seeig eye;
As you are life, in Life am I,
In love; in Christ the crucified.
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
Alleluia!
Amen.
Walter Wangerin
October 2, 2010
NOTE: All these genres characterize the person of Jesus Christ, a paradox of heroes!
Some Elements of MYTH
Creation Narratives
Greek; Japanese (in the Kojiki); Sandanvian the Eddas; Kikuyu, East Africa
Genesis 1, 2-3; Job; Psalm 104, etc. John 1:1-18; Col. 1:15-20; Revelation
Hero/protagonist: God(s)
Tale Teller: Oracle, speaking in the place/voice of God
Source: Revelation
Time: A timeless ordering of time
Scope: Embraces the universe, strange becomes familiar; the lost
and frightened becomes a citizen of the created world
The character of creation (by recounting its beginning)
The nature of humanity/relationships
NOTE: Paul's tripartate universe (Philippians 2:10)
Good and evil: God and its opposite, the Antagonist
Progression of the story: A sequential narrative
NOTE: The way things are is explained by means of the way things
came to be
The various means by which things came to be identifies
culture and cultus of the society who believes
(Hebrew, by the Word; Classical Greek, Roman, the
Japanese Kojiki, by sex and murder)
Some Elements of EPIC
The Jacob Cycle; the Israel Cycle from Egypt through its quest for the holy land
the Synoptic Gospels
Homer's Iliad
Hero/protagonist: One who embodies the character of the people
An ancestor much admired
Whose character also defines the individual self ("So that's
why I am the who that I am")
Tale Teller: This is a cultural role passed down generation to generation
By one of elevated thought and language
Inspired (the blind seer) vessel of a people's deepest history
Source: That which has been "received," (cf. I Cor 15:3, "For I
handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn
received...")
Time: The length of a culture's existence (as the culture measures
it) from its deep beginnings to the present
The epic tale is generally shaped by the cycles of nature
Scope: The full culture of a people
relationship to its God(s)
relationship to neighboring peoples
relationships (permissions, taboos) one to another
Good and Evil: Struggles within the human condistion
Antagonisms between this people and the others, aliens
The progression of the story: by episodic jumps
NOTE: An epic remains alive and effectively formative as long as
the people who continue to listen and believe; after that it
becomes a symbol, popular fiction, fantasy
Jesus = Moses' individual life, Hero
Jesus = Israel (quest cycle)
Some elements of ROMANCE
King Arthur
Joseph in Egypt
Hero/protagonist: Superior in degree to the people;
The "Golden" one, whose behavior manifests the highest
virtues, motives and purposes of the culture,
and whom everyone should strive to imitate
The teller: Priests (those in whom a moral authority is invested) by
means of sacred rituals, by preaching, by teaching;
the coming-of-age initiations (confirmation).
Grandparents
The source: Remembered, sanctified history/legend
Constantly, the faith and overt convictions of those who tell
the tale
Time: The goodest, oldest days, long gone by (and the dear hope
that in the far-off future they might come again)
An ideal other-when
Hence, the story is often told in a minor, melancholy key
Scope: Natural and supra-natural worlds joined together,
in which marvels can occur,
and the divine finger can touch the hero/protagonist
Good and Evil: In romance, the hero is the good, the victory is goodness,
and goodness always prevails;
Both good and evil are often represented by symbols
derived from nature:
monstrous beasts, outsized villains—winter
companions of extremest beauty, endurance, nobility—
spring, summer, autumn
Progression of story: Like epic, episodic;
It takes the form of a perilous journey:
begun in wonder,
engaging in a death struggle,
perishing;
but after the hero perishes,
it is proclaimed that the hero shall come again
Some Elements of Tragedy
Oedipus the King
Jeremiah; Gethsemene; Golgotha
Hero/Protagonist: Grand in Stature
Not like the people (Epic) but for the people
Moves between the worlds visible and invisible
(Old English: The World-rim-walker)
through whom we glimpse the invisible
Mysterious, attracting and troubling us both
Teller: Those who have survived the story/experience
Source: A past event re-presented in passionate declamation and
display (theatre, ritual, recitation, the triduum, etc.)
Time: The event may be out of the past, but in every re-
presentation the audience experiences the time as
now, and that world as mine
Scope: Embraces the universe, known and unknown.
For the "real"world exists within immutable laws, the
breaking of which sets in motion a fierce retribution
that will not cease until the law is righted by the
sacrifice of the wrong-doer.
Good and Evil: The good is defined as the universal law, and goodness is
accomplished by human obedience thereto.
Evilness is accomplished by human disobedience, and evil
is defined as the earthly suffering when the law has
been disturbed
Progression of the story: It is the turning of the great wheel:
1. The hero begins at the top, pure and obedient
2. The hero acts freely, knowingly or unknowingly
disturbing the laws
3. The hero's complication and decline—for the
country is suffering
4. The catastrophe, the hero's radical reversal of
fortune (fallen to the bottom of the wheel)
5. Recognition: the hero sees completely the law,
the grandeur of the whole mystery/universe,
and the expiation required of him
Some elements of Kinder und Hausmächen
Jacob und Willhelm Grimm; Hans Christian Andersen
Tales of little David; Esther; Samson; The Parables of Jesus
Hero/protangonist: Intrepid child; often clever, sometimes suffering, sometimes, at the
start, foolish.
Then the listener's doppelgänger; and then by a final identification, the
child istening to the tale read out loud.
Teller: someone with whom the child has a close relationship whom the child trusts.
By this living person the child feels companioned in a lonely trial; the kid
is no longer "crazy" or the old "bad" person around; or crushed by adult
"reason," "empiricism."
Laughter helps for make the child feel superior to bad guys.
Source: (a) Generations of folk; (b) the mouth and mind (so the child believes) of the
teller
Time: The fantasy-time of the imagination reflected in the now of the telling.
Scope: In fact, the fantastic context of a child's (natural) trauma, or (natural) fears or the
(necessary) hurdles of child-development.
By steps the child enters the tale in order to leave it with a genuine change,
and ability to face the otherwise dangerous world.
The child can enter a dangerous story, because there is the assurance of an
end. "Once upon a time" will always be followed by something like:
"And they lived happily ever thereafter."
NOTE: in Hans Anderen's tales, the hero goes to heaven.
1. The tale is a pleasant diversion (steps into the POV of the teller)
2. The child recognizes details of the "real" world, the familiar world
(The POV becomes the child, though outside the story, listening)
3. Recognizes the her/protagonist as a doppelgänger with her/himself
4. Only when ready(!) the child identifies fully with the—is the—hero.
5. As such, experiences both the radical shift and the triumph of the hero
as her own. She has lived the difficult passage even before she must meet
it outside herself. She is ready. Moreover, that her spirit chose when to
enter and identify, she also has achieved personhoood.
NOTE: When an adult is lost in "Shock" after some trauma, even the adult will approach
such a tale as if it were a child.
Good and evil: Evil is some mis-shapen (body and/or spirit) creature (which may
represent some external fear or trouble ("Hansel and Grethel";
"Cinderella"; "Snow White") At the same time it may represent some
portion of the child's "misshapen" spirit.
Goodness is likewise represented by the pure, the helper, a natural (but
heretofore hidden) talent in the children
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