4a Easter - I Ptr 3, 18-25 (CEB) Don't Preach on This!
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
In one of my sources for interpreting texts in the lectionary, there was one that was crystal clear about the Second reading. 'DON'T PREACH ON THIS TEXT!' (Emphasis added.)
This is the historic 'Good Shepherd Sunday'. Preach about the good shepherd of Psalm 23, Maybe the protective and feeding shepherd of the Gospel reading would be good to proclaim. But slavery? Especially in the United States, who still hasn't come to terms with the human cost of its establishment? In a week when our (Iowa) governor lashed out to punish Tyson workers who would dare act to protect themselves from COVID-19? In a city just a couple of counties away from here?
(But, in preaching the unpreachable in this sermon, I 'll will save that discussion for 2 m /6 ft apart later on.)
The actual question before us how our Christian community lives before God, with the assumption that the first Christians lived is an important illustration of that living. Acts 2 recounts that the first Christians felt called to hold a life in common around the apostle's teaching, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers." Verses 44 and 45 implied, I mean, made clear, that as a result they were inclined to share everything, food and property at centre. While my commentator was thinking about the Second reading, maybe this one is a difficult, too. Our life with material things and currency is a touchy subject. Our resource sharing quite flawed going back to the establishment of the tradition of the Lord's Supper in the congregation at Corinth. (c.f. I Cor. 11.23-29)
But as we turn to what Christian community is to be like in the world representing God here, we have "suffered" a recent crisis that is world wide in substance. Except for eccentric dictatorships here and there, the script for routine life has been altered. (For Christians, altered from the altar.) " Stay home except for necessities and if out and about physical distancing of staying 2 m / 6 ft away from others. Wear a mask if inside or within that space between others." And oh yeah, no large gatherings, even the smaller groups of religious gatherings in much of the world. Even rural expressions in the world are too large, it seems.
So here we are, suffering from this pandemic of novo coronovirus. At the start of this suffering is learning Latin - a novo or new coronovirus, causing the disease called COVID-19. It's newness has led to things that are different. Doctors, nurses, and patients have to figure out what the symptoms of this disease are. They're still at work on that (as of this writing.) We do know that COVID-19 is most contagious, with over double the morbidity of flu, pneumamonia, etc.. What drugs can treat the symptoms? What vaccination can be developed to prevent this disease? Without getting in the politics of this crisis, we can get into a modest bit of history about it. Pandemics uncontrolled have been responsible for many transformations in human civilisation and culture. When people begin dying (as 62, 000 plus have in our country in April) governments discover that things can change.
And people draw in violence, kicking, and screaming, while disease is without preference as to who wins or loses.
This is strange sermon language it seems to me, but "suffering" - I trust - is something many thousands of millions have been doing one way or another in the last months. As the First Letter of Peter speaks to the church and what it suffers in times and trials, the writer turns to "household slaves" to offer them advice. Be respectful to your masters, he says; good and just ones, bad and injust ones. Don't make an issue of them, but one may as well stay as much as you can in obedience to the master, the "good", as opposed to doing the "bad", because God finds it much more commendable; under the rubric, "Better to suffer for doing good, rather than doing evil and suffer."
If we're asking the text of scripture to solve the problem of chattel slavery, our expectation is misdirected. What changes in the crisis of slavery is the relationship to God, not the revolution of classes. To be clear, this justifies no one, no "system". What is going on in suffering, when we're wishing like everything that things weren't going on for us as we would like, the believer in Christ is called to look at the cross and Jesus' behaviour in His suffering. He didn't open his mouth to condemn, curse, or call armies of angels. "Instead, he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly." (v.23b)
Our commending of our lives to the just judge has to do with turning our destiny to Him and that happens in our baptismal promise in Jesus Christ. Our being buried with him, our expectation of being raised with him (c.f. Rom 6) is our commending ourselves to this judge's mercy. In our funeral liturgy, (should we ever have another, just kidding,) we commend the deceased to God with the words,
"Acknowledge we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming, (to receive this person) into the arms of your mercy."
"The Shepherd and guardian of our lives," came to be that as He "carried in his own body on the cross the sins we committed," in order that we "might live in righteousness," (God-style through Christ,) "having nothing to do with sin; " (that is by our own selfishness.) For all that their remains a kind of tension between religious folks and "modern medicine" based on science, my observation - no more and no less - is that the scientists are the ones expressing more generalised faith, while the religious are portrayed as looking for the instant fix, the magic bullet, the rabbit out of the hat.
In our creation, established by laws of God, we humans have the reason and various skills - vocations given by God to freely make decisions about the best way forward. Do we have a big problem in these days of COVID-19? You betcha! We will have successes and failures in handling this awful virus as our successes and failures in handling the slaveries that appeal to race, nationality, class, gender and any other lame excuse of warped human beings. However in the vicissitudes of life, all the changes and chances of life, our rest is in the eternal changelessness of God, which is to say the mercies of God we know through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We as the church of God are called to serve as the gateway to the Good Shepherd through Word and Sacraments shaping and molding of our lives - our baptsims,. our communions, our hearing of the word of absolution have not worn out or expired. While it's a sacrificial attitude to attempt to preserve lives at the expense of our usual gatherings, our appeal is to the Shepherd Who guides us to life in all of its' fullness.
My last words of this message were going to be a complaint against thinking of this as "fasting from Communion". I am changing my mind as I write. We are fasting, if by that we mean a deeper desire for Christ's Body and Blood, for Lutherans, an integration of the Sacrament into daily living over against the contempt we have had for this sacrament over many generations. As we may be rethinking our notions of contamination, let's come to terms with "germs" in the distribution of Christ's Body and Blood, turning from fear to confident faith that in our modern age, we can receive the sacrament in a way faithful to the belief of the loving heart.
All this said, there is nothing about faith that leads us to abandon the world, its' difficult issues, or astonishing lack of answers that are satisfactory to all of us. What faith in Christ does bring is the attention it brings to God's love and the life in which God wants all to participate in the Body of His Son.
My prayer is that the church be strengthened in its suffering toward new life as sheep of the Shepherd, and the goodness and mercy that is chasing us down (Ps. 23.6) through the valley and its shadows to life before God and His Light, now and for ever.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
In one of my sources for interpreting texts in the lectionary, there was one that was crystal clear about the Second reading. 'DON'T PREACH ON THIS TEXT!' (Emphasis added.)
This is the historic 'Good Shepherd Sunday'. Preach about the good shepherd of Psalm 23, Maybe the protective and feeding shepherd of the Gospel reading would be good to proclaim. But slavery? Especially in the United States, who still hasn't come to terms with the human cost of its establishment? In a week when our (Iowa) governor lashed out to punish Tyson workers who would dare act to protect themselves from COVID-19? In a city just a couple of counties away from here?
(But, in preaching the unpreachable in this sermon, I 'll will save that discussion for 2 m /6 ft apart later on.)
The actual question before us how our Christian community lives before God, with the assumption that the first Christians lived is an important illustration of that living. Acts 2 recounts that the first Christians felt called to hold a life in common around the apostle's teaching, the breaking of the bread, and the prayers." Verses 44 and 45 implied, I mean, made clear, that as a result they were inclined to share everything, food and property at centre. While my commentator was thinking about the Second reading, maybe this one is a difficult, too. Our life with material things and currency is a touchy subject. Our resource sharing quite flawed going back to the establishment of the tradition of the Lord's Supper in the congregation at Corinth. (c.f. I Cor. 11.23-29)
But as we turn to what Christian community is to be like in the world representing God here, we have "suffered" a recent crisis that is world wide in substance. Except for eccentric dictatorships here and there, the script for routine life has been altered. (For Christians, altered from the altar.) " Stay home except for necessities and if out and about physical distancing of staying 2 m / 6 ft away from others. Wear a mask if inside or within that space between others." And oh yeah, no large gatherings, even the smaller groups of religious gatherings in much of the world. Even rural expressions in the world are too large, it seems.
So here we are, suffering from this pandemic of novo coronovirus. At the start of this suffering is learning Latin - a novo or new coronovirus, causing the disease called COVID-19. It's newness has led to things that are different. Doctors, nurses, and patients have to figure out what the symptoms of this disease are. They're still at work on that (as of this writing.) We do know that COVID-19 is most contagious, with over double the morbidity of flu, pneumamonia, etc.. What drugs can treat the symptoms? What vaccination can be developed to prevent this disease? Without getting in the politics of this crisis, we can get into a modest bit of history about it. Pandemics uncontrolled have been responsible for many transformations in human civilisation and culture. When people begin dying (as 62, 000 plus have in our country in April) governments discover that things can change.
And people draw in violence, kicking, and screaming, while disease is without preference as to who wins or loses.
This is strange sermon language it seems to me, but "suffering" - I trust - is something many thousands of millions have been doing one way or another in the last months. As the First Letter of Peter speaks to the church and what it suffers in times and trials, the writer turns to "household slaves" to offer them advice. Be respectful to your masters, he says; good and just ones, bad and injust ones. Don't make an issue of them, but one may as well stay as much as you can in obedience to the master, the "good", as opposed to doing the "bad", because God finds it much more commendable; under the rubric, "Better to suffer for doing good, rather than doing evil and suffer."
If we're asking the text of scripture to solve the problem of chattel slavery, our expectation is misdirected. What changes in the crisis of slavery is the relationship to God, not the revolution of classes. To be clear, this justifies no one, no "system". What is going on in suffering, when we're wishing like everything that things weren't going on for us as we would like, the believer in Christ is called to look at the cross and Jesus' behaviour in His suffering. He didn't open his mouth to condemn, curse, or call armies of angels. "Instead, he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly." (v.23b)
Our commending of our lives to the just judge has to do with turning our destiny to Him and that happens in our baptismal promise in Jesus Christ. Our being buried with him, our expectation of being raised with him (c.f. Rom 6) is our commending ourselves to this judge's mercy. In our funeral liturgy, (should we ever have another, just kidding,) we commend the deceased to God with the words,
"Acknowledge we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming, (to receive this person) into the arms of your mercy."
"The Shepherd and guardian of our lives," came to be that as He "carried in his own body on the cross the sins we committed," in order that we "might live in righteousness," (God-style through Christ,) "having nothing to do with sin; " (that is by our own selfishness.) For all that their remains a kind of tension between religious folks and "modern medicine" based on science, my observation - no more and no less - is that the scientists are the ones expressing more generalised faith, while the religious are portrayed as looking for the instant fix, the magic bullet, the rabbit out of the hat.
In our creation, established by laws of God, we humans have the reason and various skills - vocations given by God to freely make decisions about the best way forward. Do we have a big problem in these days of COVID-19? You betcha! We will have successes and failures in handling this awful virus as our successes and failures in handling the slaveries that appeal to race, nationality, class, gender and any other lame excuse of warped human beings. However in the vicissitudes of life, all the changes and chances of life, our rest is in the eternal changelessness of God, which is to say the mercies of God we know through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We as the church of God are called to serve as the gateway to the Good Shepherd through Word and Sacraments shaping and molding of our lives - our baptsims,. our communions, our hearing of the word of absolution have not worn out or expired. While it's a sacrificial attitude to attempt to preserve lives at the expense of our usual gatherings, our appeal is to the Shepherd Who guides us to life in all of its' fullness.
My last words of this message were going to be a complaint against thinking of this as "fasting from Communion". I am changing my mind as I write. We are fasting, if by that we mean a deeper desire for Christ's Body and Blood, for Lutherans, an integration of the Sacrament into daily living over against the contempt we have had for this sacrament over many generations. As we may be rethinking our notions of contamination, let's come to terms with "germs" in the distribution of Christ's Body and Blood, turning from fear to confident faith that in our modern age, we can receive the sacrament in a way faithful to the belief of the loving heart.
All this said, there is nothing about faith that leads us to abandon the world, its' difficult issues, or astonishing lack of answers that are satisfactory to all of us. What faith in Christ does bring is the attention it brings to God's love and the life in which God wants all to participate in the Body of His Son.
My prayer is that the church be strengthened in its suffering toward new life as sheep of the Shepherd, and the goodness and mercy that is chasing us down (Ps. 23.6) through the valley and its shadows to life before God and His Light, now and for ever.
Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.
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