Lectionary Lab PREMIUM Edition for the Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
October 27, 2024
Thinking the Texts by John Fairless
Jeremiah reminds of just how long the reach of God is: “See, I am going to bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth….” You can’t really go any further than the farthest parts of the earth. Unless, of course, you are working for NASA or SpaceX, or some such. But I have an idea that the presence of God extends there, too!
Hebrews sets up the efficacy of the Hebrew sacrificial system. Over and over, as the people (both individually and corporately) turned away from God and God’s ways, the priest accepted offerings of repentance — tangible things like bulls and goats and birds and things (“…and my skin began to turn red.” Anybody else hear the tune from America with those words?) Anyhow, the fantastic news is that the new High Priest, the Christ, made his sacrifice once for all. No more coming again and again to the priest. Our repentance is now made through Christ to God. It’s there when you need it. But try real hard not to need it, okay?
Mark gives us the short form of the story of Blind Bartimaeus (because Mark generally gets straight to the point). How many different ways can we “come to Jesus” and express our faith? Bart sets up an awful howling, screaming profession of faith here on the side of the road. He upsets the relative decorum of Jesus passing by from Jericho, and is shushed by the crowd. Jesus has pretty good ears, I reckon, and calls him up. With a great focusing question, "What do you want me to do for you?", a miracle is about to happen. But notice that Jesus turns the emphasis back on Bart: “your faith has made you well.” Just what part do we play when we are seeking the help of God? I don’t think Bart would have been healed just a-laying up there beside the road, waiting for the healing power of Christ to fall on him.
And Just for Fun
My wife told me to take the spider out instead of killing him, so I did. We went out, had a few drinks, saw a movie. Great guy.
How many sailors are Pirates? 3.14%.
I like telling dad jokes. Sometimes he even laughs.
What did one Frenchman say to the other? No idea, I don’t speak French.
I was raised as an only child—and that got on my brother’s nerves.
Why don’t vampires bet on horses? They can’t handle the stakes.
Sermon by Delmer (DOUBLE BONUS TODAY)
Delmer is providing TWO sermons today, one featuring the regular texts and the other for Reformation Sunday. Enjoy, you Lutherans among us!
Hebrews 7:23-28
In the 1960's, the Rev. Walter Moore was a prominent figure in moderate Southern Baptist churches in Georgia, serving several terms as president of the state convention. He was in the forefront of their tentative efforts toward integration and racial reconciliation. He integrated his congregation in Macon, Ga., losing a third of the white membership in the process. In 1933, Walter Moore was serving in a small town in South Georgia. He and his family pulled into their driveway after a shopping trip downtown. As they got out of the car, a neighbor girl waved and beckoned to the Moore's five-year-old daughter Miriam, who quickly darted across the street,
directly into the path of an oncoming car. She was killed instantly.
Walter Moore ran to his daughter, gathered her up in his arms carried her into the house, and laid her on the couch in the living room. He went out to the porch, where he found the very sorrowful and frightened African-American man who had been driving the car. Moore went inside and called the sheriff and an ambulance. As Moore sat inside with his crying wife and other children, A shouting and angry crowd gathered, determined to lynch the driver. Walter Moore went into the yard and stood between them and the man who had killed his baby.
He told them, "You must not do this. To do it, you will have to kill me first." By the time the sheriff and ambulance arrived, the crowd had melted away.
Here are two questions for us. Where did that father find the strength to do what he did in that moment - a moment that had to be the most awful, shocking, devastating experience of his young life? And is such strength available to us? Our readings for today will guide us - they point us to the redemptive healing power of suffering – especially the suffering of Christ upon the cross.
And they invite us to join with Jesus in embracing the way of the cross as the way of true life.
For us today, an answer lies in the somewhat murky reading from the book of Hebrews. This clip is from a larger section of the book in which the author is making an important theological point about who Jesus was, and still is. It uses an image from Jewish life in and around the temple in Jerusalem - though it is written to Jewish Christians living in Rome. IN the Temple, the High Priest was the one chosen by God to make sacrifices on behalf of the people. The sacrificial system was complex, too complex to explain in a short sermon, so we’ll think about it the big picture.
“Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest offered a sacrifice for his own sins. He was then allowed through the curtain into the Most Holy Place (i.e. the Holy of Holies), to offer sacrifice on behalf of everyone else. (the writer of Hebrews maintains that) Now Christians have a high priest, Jesus Christ, who has passed through the heavens. He had no sins of his own for which to make sacrifice. Instead, he offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.” Anthony Knowles, The Bible Guide, p. 665 {italics in parenthesis, mine}.
As a pastor, Walter Moore knew that text from Hebrews. He had, no doubt, preached from it on more than one occasion. More than that, it had obviously moved from his head and his mouth into his heart. Walter Moore knew that because of what Jesus the Christ, his High Priest had done on the cross 0 years ago, his sins were forgiven. He also knew that the life, death and resurrection of his beloved daughter were also safely in the hands of a loving God. And most of all, he knew that no sin had been committed by the man driving the car that killed her. Most of all, Walter Moore knew that the most important thing he could do in that moment was to save a life and prevent a group of angry men from committing an almost unforgiveable sin.
So, when Walter Moore stood in his front yard facing a mob determined to murder
the black man who had accidentally killed five-year-old Miriam Moore. In his darkest moment of extreme pain, the pastor was able to reach through his own grief and suffering, cling to the suffering servant Christ upon the cross, push aside his own feelings of anger or revenge, and then make a stand for justice and mercy.
Jesus calls us to follow. It is not an easy way, it is not a painless path, it is not smooth sailing. Jesus’ way is the "Way of the Cross." It can, and probably will at some time, call forth from us our deepest faith, commitment, and effort. But the joyous paradox and mystery of the gospel is this – the Way of the Cross leads home. For all of us - from the greatest to the least, from the oldest to the youngest, from the power brokers to the powerless, from the first to the last - all roads lead to, and through, and beyond the cross to Christ.
Amen and amen.
Reformation Sunday
Texts: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36
In an Italian cathedral there was a beautiful statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A priest new to the cathedral noticed an elderly woman who came to early mass every day. This woman spent most of the service gazing at the statue of the Virgin with a look of rapture and longing on her face. The new priest mentioned this woman to an older priest who had served in the cathedral for over fifty years. He went on and on about her piety and her devotion and her regularity at worship. The wise old priest looked at the enthusiastic young minister with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Do not be deceived. Things are not always what they seem. Many years ago a young woman posed for that statute of the virgin. The old woman you see now is that same beautiful young woman. She comes here each day, not to worship God, but to worship who she used to be.”
Before we judge her, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and see if we are not sometimes guilty of the same thing, especially on days like Reformation Sunday. Now, I do not pretend to think that Christians are the only ones guilty of this, nor do I think it a particularly heinous or disgusting sin. For the most part, a little appreciation of the past is a good thing. The problem comes when the worshipping of who we used to be gets in the way of worshipping God. The danger arises when an honest appreciation of the past turns into false pride in our faith tradition, when history turns into idolatry and respect for our forebears turns into ancestor worship, when it becomes more important to us to be Lutheran, or Presbyterian, or Methodist, or, or, or. . . than it is to be Christian.
We have to be careful that we do not replace Faith in Christ with Faith in Churchiness. For this is the very danger Luther confronted almost 500 years ago. People had forgotten Christ, or so it seemed. They thought only about the Church and what it asked of them. Go to mass, go to penance, buy indulgences, go on pilgrimage, see the relics, obey the priest, etc, etc. And in this midst of this “Church” worship, an obscure little Bible teacher at an obscure little college, in an obscure little town in the middle of nowhere stood up and shouted no. Luther’s protest was not just about the sale of indulgences; it was about an entire system of belief and action which attempted to define what someone had to do and think and say in order to be acceptable to the church, and by the way, to God. Luther’s 95 theses were both a cry of pain and a cry for freedom.
Luther looked the entire system of indulgences and penance and acts of contrition and venial sins and mortal sins and going to see relics and making pilgrimages and saw that this system was blinding people to the simple Gospel. People had begun to believe that following the church’s rules made them a Christian and right with God. What Luther discovered and shouted from the rooftops was the simple truth that it doesn’t work that way. Actually, it works the other way around. Our hearts, our souls are changed and transformed by the overwhelming power of the love of God in Christ Jesus. As a result of that change, that transformation, we then go forth in love and service to our neighbor. We don’t do good things so that God will forgive and love us. Because God loves and forgives us, we love and forgive others, doing good things. How does this happen? What moves our hearts and souls and makes of us new creatures in Christ?
It is the Christ event, it is the Cross, it is the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. That is what does it, and that alone. But still today, we don’t trust God’s love. We constantly try to find out what the right thing to do is to prove that we are good people, worthy of God’s love. We want to say the right thing, to feel the right thing; we seek a new prayer technique, a special mission from God, or a sign from above; something, anything, that we can do or hold to prove to ourselves and to God that we are worthy. And the Gospel is, there is nothing we can do, nothing we can say, nothing we can be that can make God love us. All we can do is cling to Christ, in the words of Luther’s wife Katie, “Like a burr to the hem of a dress.”
This is what Luther discovered and proclaimed, there is nothing we must do to earn God’s love. And once we are aware of God’s love and presence in our lives, there is nothing we won’t do for God. Reformation Sunday is not just about looking back on our history and congratulating ourselves for being Christians. It is not a time to rehearse how the good heroic Luther challenged the evil Roman Catholic Church. It’s not a time to get misty over the many people through the years who took many risks to keep the faith alive. It’s not a time to worship who we used to be.
It is rather a time to remember the Gospel in its purity and its simplicity. It is a time to put away all attempts to impress God and each other with our goodness, our intelligence, our learning, our piety, our enthusiasm, our liturgy - whatever else we may hold up to prove to ourselves and others and God that we deserve to be loved. Today is a day to remember that we are loved for Christ’s sake and for Christ’s sake alone. And that is enough, praise be to God, that is enough.
Amen and amen.