Old Testament Reading: Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

For Sunday, May 26, 2013: Year C—Holy Trinity

In this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus has lots of laudatory stuff to say about himself and the rest of the Trinity, and some not so flattering things to say about the rest of us. But just when we think we know our place, Proverbs surprises us with a contrary voice to all of that negativity.

In a soaring passage, the personification of Wisdom bears witness to us about the entire process of creation, raising us up to the heavens before swooping down over a primordial earth shaped into beauty by God’s own hands. The climax of which is the crown of this creation: the human race. Wisdom was at God’s right hand, and they are both filled to overflowing about this apogee of God’s creativity, and respond in kind,

…rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. (Proverbs 8:31)

Wait, is God Actually Pleased with Us?

God creates Wisdom, who asserts her preeminence over all of creation. But the winsome Wisdom also lets us in on a little secret: she is pretty pleased that her project —the world as we know it —is inhabited by such wonderful creatures. She is ‘delighted’ in the human race. The writer of Proverbs envisions the instantiations of wisdom and folly as ladies, and it seems that wisdom is like a proud mother, delighted in her beautiful, intelligent, capable children. And like children under our proud mother’s wings, we are enlivened and encouraged and empowered by her belief in us, straining to get out of the nest and make our way in this wonderful world.

Proverbs 8, Where Are You?

So why is there so much misery and poor-mouthing and oppositional theology out there? Why so many theological claims to human depravity, and the wholesale denigration of the human race? Who is so closely guarding this secret gnosis that God might actually be fond of us, and why?

And Psalm 8 as Well.

So too from the Psalm reading for this week. The Psalmist lauds the Lord, but spends as many words praising humankind, as well.  Both of them have various degrees of sovereignty and dominion, and the chiastic structure of the Psalm features the arresting phrase right in the middle:

…you have made [human beings] a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. (Psalm 8:5)

Yet what the Psalmist has established between us and God, much of our theology puts asunder.

So Which is It?

It’s enough to make a preacher bi-polar. Questions loom over our homiletical preparations: Should we be praising people, or challenging them to get over themselves?  Do we stand with Jesus in pointing out our insufficiencies and blindness or with the Proverbs and Psalms in pointing to our pedigree and potential?

The Hardest Question:

Are we really as great as God seems to think we are?

Ed. Note: For more resources on Proverbs including original music inspired by Woman Wisdom check out Peter Mayer and Ron Glusenkamp’s God’s Standard or Gold Standard: Studies in Proverbs.  The video of Peter’s music, paired with Ron’s devotion, from the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly can be found here:  http://vimeo.com/6448443 .

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Mike Stavlund writes from a 5-car pile-up at the intersection of his Christian faith and real life. A husband of over 15 years and a father of 4 children, he lives with his wife and 3 daughters in a small house outside Washington, DC. He’s a part of an innovative emergence Christian community called Common Table, a co-conspirator with the Relational Tithe, and a proud part of the collective called Emergent Village. He blogs at MikeStavlund.com, and his first book, “Force of Will”, was published by Baker in the Spring of 2013.

Gospel Reading: John 16:12-15

For Sunday, May 26, 2013: Year C—Holy Trinity

In this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus seems to be a bit greedy. Or at the very least, territorial.

The doctrine of the Trinity is all about sharing and partnership and ultimate inseparability —and even perichoresis, that lovely metaphorical dance between Father, Son, and Spirit —but this sounds like an internecine debate about who gets to lead, where Jesus claims preeminence and prior ownership over the Father, and makes the Spirit into a puppet. Not to mention the sequentialism that leaves us thinking that the Spirit has been waiting in the dressing room since the beginning of time.

Back to the Beginning

Our (modern) minds can get so wrapped up in this conundrum of divinity that we might miss Jesus’ opening salvo. Aimed not at his fellow members of the Trinity, but rather at his followers. Which might just include you and me:

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. (John 16:12)

What do You Want from Me?

So what was it that Jesus’ followers weren’t ready to hear? Has it been revealed yet, or is it still to come? Are we living in this future Jesus describes, or are we as un-ready as Jesus’ initial listeners were? How much can we bear, and what are ‘the things to come’?

Even unto our day, devotees of the late Dallas Willard are saying that we’re not ready to take the 200-year-old teachings of Jesus seriously, while advocates of the emerging camp of Radical Theology are suggesting that we are not quite ready to face the future.

He’s Talking About Me…

…too!

This is a popular proof-text for whatever our special interest group is promoting. Pentecostals —still soaring from Pentecost a couple of days ago —know it is about spiritual gifts and miracles. Social justice folks think it is the eradication of poverty and economic inequities.  Some folks think it’s about socialism, while others think it is the death of socialism. Process theologians believe Jesus is talking about physics and the unfolding of time. Post-colonialists see it through the lens of injustice and empire. Progressives are all excited because we’re moving forward from Jesus’ dark ages, while contemplatives want to allow that same age to speak to their nowness.

Everyone, it seems, is hitching their train to the enigmatic engine that is John 16:12-15.

What are we Waiting for?

The ministry of Jesus was, by all reports, a rather impressive tour de force. What in the world did he leave out? Has it happened yet? Is it still to come? What good things does God have in store for us yet? Or are we still too blind to perceive them?

The Hardest Question

Did we miss something in the past, or are we missing something that will come yet in the future? Or are we living in it right now, yet longing for something else? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mike Stavlund writes from a 5-car pile-up at the intersection of his Christian faith and real life. A husband of over 15 years and a father of 4 children, he lives with his wife and 3 daughters in a small house outside Washington, DC. He’s a part of an innovative emergence Christian community called Common Table, a co-conspirator with the Relational Tithe, and a proud part of the collective called Emergent Village. He blogs at MikeStavlund.com, and his first book, “Force of Will”, was published by Baker in the Spring of 2013.

Gospel Reading:  John 14:8-17, 25-27

For Sunday, May 19, 2013: Year C—Pentecost

Have you got questions about the Trinity? You’re not alone. The disciples are right there with you.

If you’ve spent any time at all in a religion class discussing the Trinity, you already know the scriptural verses to “back it up” so to speak are few and far between. It’s a mystery, and mysteries aren’t spelled out in chapter and verse. But if you’re looking, this is one of the better examples of a relational Trinity you’ll find. That doesn’t mean it’s not confusing…

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

If we back up to verse 7, Jesus has just told the disciples if they know him they will know the Father. In fact, he says, you do know him, and you have seen him. So Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied,” which seems an easy enough request, since Jesus just told them they know him already. Maybe Philip wonders if he’s already met the Father, and didn’t know it? Or that the Father has been hiding in plain sight?

But Jesus’ reply (“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”) is about as clear as mud. It makes (a little) sense if you’ve spent hours trying to figure out the Trinity, but if you’re Philip, and you’re just trying to understand what Jesus means, what on earth would give you the idea that two persons are in fact one person, the same person but distinct persons? Who on earth would ever naturally think that knowing one person means you know a person you’ve never met?

The Second Stranger

But wait, there’s more. Jesus goes on to tell the disciples that he will ask the Father to send them the Spirit. The world doesn’t know the Spirit, but Jesus assures the disciples that they do, because he abides with them.

I am rather certain at this point Philip (and probably some of the others, too) wanted to ask another round of pesky follow-up questions: Who is this “Advocate?” When have we met him again? He abides with us? Where, exactly?

I can just hear Philip’s unresolved question pinballing around in his head again: just SHOW us the Spirit, Jesus, and we will be satisfied.

Well, at least that one gets answered in a more tangible way, although I don’t think Pentecost was the simple showing Philip was hoping for. Pentecost doesn’t exactly clear things up all nice and tidy, does it?

In This Together

I doubt the disciples ever got the clear answer they wanted. None of us do, really, when it comes to the Trinity.  So what are we left with? Verse 26 sums it up for us: The Holy Spirit will be sent in Jesus’ name by the Father.

Spend all the time you want trying to figure out how that works, or what each relationship means to the other. The only clear thing we can say about it is that God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit are in this thing together.

The Hardest Question

The question is whether that is enough. Can we be satisfied with all the incomplete answers about the Trinity? Is it enough to say that Father, Son and Spirit are in this together?

Danielle Shroyer is the Pastor of Journey Church in Dallas, TX. She is the author of The Boundary-Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise (Jossey-Bass, 2009) and blogs at www.danielleshroyer.com. Danielle lives with her husband, two children, and two wild and crazy dogs in Dallas.

New Testament Reading: Acts 2:1-21

For Sunday, May 19, 2013: Year C—Pentecost

I’ll be straight with you: Pentecost is my favorite Christian day. So please excuse me while I hop up on my Pentecost soapbox for a moment.

[Clearing throat with gravitas.]

Pentecost is a radically important day. It’s the rightful conclusion to the story of resurrection. The dismantling that begins in Holy Week isn’t completed until Pentecost. Yes, we are all rightfully dazzled by the surprising turn of events at Easter. But then Jesus leaves on Ascension, and the Spirit comes at Pentecost. Then and only then is the work of Holy Week finished. So unless you want to have a really slim view of salvation (and really, who wants to skimp out on something as important as salvation?), you’ve got to hold all of these mysteries together to get the fullest picture of this new creation. Otherwise, you are going to MISS OUT.

The Drip Becomes a Firehose

From the moment Jesus entered into Jerusalem riding on a donkey, our expectations have been upended, recalibrated, frustrated and fulfilled far beyond what we could have imagined. The same holds true for Pentecost. Whatever the disciples were expecting when Jesus told them the Spirit was coming, you can bet they were not expecting what they got: divided tongues of fire, rapid onset foreign language fluency, chaos on the streets of Jerusalem that apparently looked something like a drunken party in the middle of the day.

I have no idea what plans they had for the future of the faith up there in that room, if they had any at all, but there was no paper napkin with this mess drawn on it. Because nobody in their right minds would consider anointing a whole house full of prophets in the span of one day. Nobody except the Spirit of God.

Who’s The Greatest? You, and you, and you…

Please consider how world-changing that is for a moment. Up to this point in God’s story, a small select few have been given the Spirit of God, and it’s been a limited time offering. Saul got a turn, David got a turn, the prophets got a turn, and so on. It was all very contained. Now all of a sudden the Spirit comes whooshing through and starts anointing people left and right.

Remember how the disciples argued about who would be the greatest among them? Consider this Jesus’ final answer.

Within a day, there are 3000 new followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. The Spirit has left the building, people.

Don’t Domesticate the Dove

The Spirit of God has been released into the world. Not contained but set free. Not limited but expanding. And what else would we expect, if this Spirit of Life is indeed the One through whom God raised Jesus? This is the Spirit of Life, who God has called not only to raise Jesus to new life but to raise all of creation to new life.

Why is Pentecost important? Why is the resurrection story not completed until Acts 2? Because we are not equipped to be who God wants us to be in this new world moving toward new creation until the Spirit comes whooshing through the room. Pentecost is the day that makes the future of the church possible. Without Pentecost, we’d just be people who tell Jesus’ story. With Pentecost, we’re people who live into Jesus’ story.

So let us not write a sweet little sermon about how we all love the Spirit as if we are talking about the Snuggle teddy bear. Let’s go big and go bold, people. We are talking about the Spirit of LIFE.

And let’s not talk about how the Spirit gives us gifts and then list them and describe how, precisely, they are to be used. Consider the irony. Boxing in what the Spirit does and how the Spirit does it is nothing more than an attempt to clip her wings. Let her fly, preachers. Let her fly.

The Hardest Question

We don’t have any idea what the Spirit will do next, so let’s not pretend that we do, or try to limit our assumptions about what the Spirit might do. The one thing we know for sure is that the Spirit is bringing us toward new creation, so whatever it is, it’s going to be good

This Pentecost, can we let the Spirit fly? Can we take the beauty of Pentecost seriously? Can we preach it like we mean it?

Danielle Shroyer is the Pastor of Journey Church in Dallas, TX. She is the author of The Boundary-Breaking God: An Unfolding Story of Hope and Promise (Jossey-Bass, 2009) and blogs at www.danielleshroyer.com. Danielle lives with her husband, two children, and two wild and crazy dogs in Dallas.

New Testament Reading: Acts 16:16-34

For Sunday, May 12, 2013—Easter 7

Wow. This is a pretty exciting story, like worthy of the Homer. It even takes place in the same region as the Iliad and the Odyssey. Except they were written eight hundred years before the book of Acts and Acts is not written in dactylic hexameter—for which I am grateful. Still this is one of the epic-worthy sections of Luke’s follow up to Luke.

A Little More Lydia?

I will quibble with the Lectionari-eers once again and amend their pericope trimming. This story really needs to start in verse fifteen and end with verse forty. Then this reading would be clearly bookended with the references to Lydia and her home. To leave out the Lydia verses in this reading is to miss a critical juxatposition.

Yes, Lydia is important, just look her up, she has a town in Louisiana named after her, AND, as Mary Ann McKibben Dana recalled in her THQ post for Easter 6, Lydia is celebrated as the first European convert to Christianity. Lydia was a seller of purple cloth (Rich? Royal? Righteous?) and a “worshiper of god.” What “god” the text doesn’t really say, but the argument is made for the most-high God which seems okay, contextually speaking. Paul and Silas talk to her and she converts and they stay at her house—a saint is born. Both the Western and the Eastern Church have canonized the lady.

But What About?

The next day they were walking through the city and they met a slave-girl, “who had a spirit of divination, and brought her owners a lot of money by fortune telling.” This slave-girl immediately begins to follow them through the street proclaiming, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

Amazing, the slave-girl seems to get it without even hearing what Paul and Silas have to say. Is that because of her spiritual connection—her knack for divination? She is bearing witness to their bearing witness to the way of salvation—cool. Well, no.

The text says that Paul finds her annoying; seriously, Paul is very much annoyed and turns to her and casts the spirit of divination out of the slave-girl. Then her owners get mad because she can’t make any money for them telling fortunes anymore, so they make trouble for Paul and Silas for messing with their lively hood and their property and have them beaten and thrown in jail.

Totally Epic, Dude

Now it really gets epic. They are in jail; they pray and sing. This produces an earthquake and the prison bars fly open. The jailer thinks they escaped, but they didn’t and this make the jailer believe in Jesus and so they baptism him and his family. Paul and Silas are free and everyone apologizes to them and they go and stay at Lydia’s house.

What a gnarly demonstration of the power and glory of God, right?

In Luke’s gospel the author uses the same structure, to make a similar point as he has done here in Acts. In the eighth chapter of Luke, the author bookends the story of the healing of the hemorrhaging women with the story of Jairus’ daughter. Jairus is a wealthy leader in the synagogue and the woman with the hemorrhage is ritually unclean and therefore an untouchable and all alone. In this story Jesus steps in to act on her behalf and heals her—a real valuing-of-the-least-of-these kind of story.

While the structure is the same in the Acts story the outcome is different. The story of the least-of-these-slave-girl may be at the center of an inclusio formed by the story of the purple-selling-house-with-a-couple-of-guestrooms-owning woman, but in this case what does Paul do? He baptizes the privileged one and literally casts out the spirit of this poor slave-girl because he is annoyed.

Don’t you think that the bleeding old lady who kept trying to touch Jesus in the middle of a crowd could have been annoying as well?

The Hardest Question

Lydia went on to be a legend and a saint—what happened to the slave girl?

History never heard from her again. Her disappearance makes Paul and Silas’ miraculous story of the power of God, probably recounted over drinks at Lydia’s house, a little less impressive.

Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.

Gospel Reading: John 17:20-26

For Sunday, May 12, 2013—Easter 7

The “heart of the Gospel,” the “culmination of John’s message,” where we find all the major themes coming together in Jesus’ “central teaching for the church,” the “summation”—these are the ways that interpreters describe the seventeenth chapter of the fourth gospel, so it must be really important.

The only problem is that it is really confusing and I am not completely sure I know what it means. I don’t mean that, given what it says, I am not sure how to interpret it. I mean, I do not always understand the sentences that are formed by the words which are strung together.

Three and a Half Chapters

Condemned to use figurative language; this is an attempt to use worldly words to describe other-worldly realities. This sort of how New Testament scholar Bill Countryman puts it, but his words are confusing too.

The six verses set out for this Sunday’s Gospel reading are the conclusion of a chapter long prayer, which comes at the end of a three chapter long farewell address by Jesus—there’s plenty of confusion to be found in all this.  Trying to read this text in light of the three and a half chapters that precede it is what makes these final verses so hard to comprehend. But, maybe, that’s just me.

Mysterious Redundancy

I am so confused, and disengaged as a result, that I am just not paying attention by the time I get there. The three-chapter farewell address is literally (and by that I don’t mean figuratively) the same message repeated three times. There is some evidence that it is actually three different written versions of the same thing stuck together.

Maybe the redactor that was working on the gospel of John put all three chapters in and was going to decide later which the best version to include was. Then maybe that redactor was called out to work on the Prologue and didn’t really bring his replacement up to speed; so all three were just left in there. Or maybe it is all intentional, but the purpose is a mystery.

Why So Incomprehensible?

I want to embrace the mystical. I am trying. But does the mystical have to be incomprehensible?

Mysticism of every variety is filled with coded language and symbols that are only understandable to those inducted into that particular truth or way of knowing. It seems clear that John’s gospel is written for such a community and that approaching it from outside of that community or trying to unlock its deepest meanings with Biblical interpretive methods will never be completely fruitful.

Two broad strokes that I can comprehend are glory and unity. Jesus is praying for his disciples and says not once, but maybe even several times, that it is the unity of his followers will revel Jesus’ glory to the world. “The glory that you have given me, I have given them and I am in them so they are one and because they are one the world will know that you sent me.” That is what Jesus says.

The Hardest Question

If those (us?) who self identify as Christians can be included in as the “them,” and the glory that the Father gave to Jesus and which Jesus gave to us produces in us unity, and that unity reveals the glory of Jesus to the world—then something went wrong.

Where is there any evidence that Christians display a unity to the world that reveals the glory of God through Jesus Christ?

Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.

Gospel Reading:  John 14:23-29

For Sunday, May 5, 2013—Easter 6

I’m reading the seventh Harry Potter book to my daughters these days.

While I love J.K. Rowling’s expansive imagination and loving attention to detail, the book could’ve been 200 pages shorter. But given how much bookshelf real estate the latter books take up, it’s clear that Rowling got so big as an author that no editor could tame her. No editor was willing to stand up to her and say, “No, Jo—you don’t need to show us Xenophilius Lovegood’s castle-shaped house in quite such exquisite detail.”

I feel that way about Jesus in his Farewell Discourse.

“I am going away.” We know.

“I will be sending the Advocate.” I believe you said that five minutes ago.

“I am with you just a little longer.” Well, the marathon sermon makes it seem like an eternity.

The Word Amid all the words

Maybe we should blame the biographer rather than Jesus. John seems reluctant to leave out any parting shot, but the effect of this epic dissertation is lulling rather than astonishing. This section begins to wash over us—there’s so much talk of love with a capital “L,” so much divine coming and going, and so much rumination on Father/Son relations.

Family systems practitioners would have a field day: is Jesus in the Father or merely with the Father? Self-differentiation issues, perhaps? In today’s passage the Father is greater than the Son—what’s that about? John must have misplaced his invitation to the Council of Nicaea.

Like a Taize chorus, Jesus’ words circle back on themselves, a seemingly endless loop. Where exactly is Jesus, and for how long? And who is this Advocate person?

What these sermonic riffs do, however, is highlight those moments when the pattern breaks open. Amid all the ontological posturing, Jesus the speaker of parables comes in for a landing a few times and offers us some startling images. Earlier in this chapter we had “in my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places.” Later we will hear about Jesus as the vine. And here, today, we receive this gem: ^“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”

Not As the World Gives

Jesus’ words lead me to ask: Does the world give? How does the world give? This is a hard question in and of itself.  Maybe the world gives if you’re the right kind of person. If you’re rich, pretty, young, thin, straight, white, male, you’ll do well. To whom much is given… much more is given. But for others, I’d say the world takes; it charges a hefty admission, plus service charges. The world’s fees are time, energy, anxiety, dignity.

Rob Bell has said that if it’s not good news for everyone, it’s not good news. Jesus promises that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will teach us everything—everything—which means that we will not be content with a half-hearted peace. This is not a day at the spa, a nice long vacation, or a day with the smartphone blissfully switched off. This is a peace doled out by a man who had every reason to be fearful himself—the religious authorities are gunning for him even now.

But instead of a tightly edited sermonette, uttered frantically with one foot out the door, Jesus offers an abundance of wisdom and grace to his followers—painstaking, unhurried, redolent (and yes, a bit redundant). That should tell us something about the topsy-turvy reign of Christ. Jesus’ peace shines brightest when things are at their abject worst.

The Hardest Question

Jesus says he will give his peace to us. What makes Jesus’ peace distinctive from other forms of peace? And how do we know it when we see it?

MaryAnn McKibben Dana is pastor of Idylwood Presbyterian Church, a small and growing congregation in Falls Church, VA. She is the author of Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family’s Experiment with Holy Time (Chalice Press) and is a frequent conference and workshop leader on church transformation, faith formation and spirituality. When she’s not training to be the slowest person ever to run a half marathon, or keeping up with her three kids, she likes to blog at The Blue Room.