Postmodern Prophets

We desperately want a call like Jeremiah’s...or do we?

January 27, 2013 By 2 Comments

by Mike Stavlund

Old Testament Reading:  Jeremiah 1:4-10

For Sunday, February 3, 2013: Year B—Epiphany 4

Preachers are a funny breed. We take ourselves, our work, and our words very seriously—as we should—yet we assiduously maintain a veneer of pious humility. We work hard at something difficult in order to make it appear effortless. We imagine that we can change the world, or at least our little corner of it. Every week, we redouble our life’s investment in our spoken words, hoping that we can somehow evoke some of the Divine Word by these earnest efforts.

Yet underneath, we bear deep insecurities. [Read more...]

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Jesus, Undomesticated

Binding, loosing, and withholding the blessings of God.

January 27, 2013 By 2 Comments

by Mike Stavlund

Gospel Reading: Luke 4:21-30

For Sunday, February 3, 2013: Year B—Epiphany 4

There has been some debate recently over the holiday that honors Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and whether such recognition of Dr. King tends to minimize and domesticate his powerful prophetic message. When our President lays his hand on Dr. King’s Bible to take the oath of office, are we in a way imagining that the wide-reaching social and ethical agenda of Dr. King has somehow been completed?

Are we using his (truncated) message to endorse widely-accepted government agendas? Instead, should our truth-tellers—ancient, modern, and in-between—be kept in a distinct category of “prophet”, such that we can always feel the heat and fury of their insights? Instead of venerating their relics, should we burn them so that their fiery message will remain pure? [Read more...]

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Little Women

Bossing around the powerless.

November 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

by Mike Stavlund

Old Testament Reading: Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17

For Sunday, November 11, 2012: Year B—Ordinary 32

As the father of three girls, and the husband of yet another woman, I am perhaps becoming more sensitized to the female characters we see in the Scriptures.

There aren’t very many of them, and even fewer who are very strong characters.  Their locus of control is far outside of themselves: they seem to be in need of male characters (not to exclude God) to direct them through their lives.  They appear to bat their ample eyelashes, asking any male figure within earshot (prayershot?) “Oh, whatever shall I do?” [Read more...]

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Blood from a Turnip

Does God really need every last bit of me? Everything I have to give?

November 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

by Mike Stavlund

Gospel Reading: Mark 12:38-44

For Sunday, November 11, 2012: Year B—Ordinary 32

Hanging out recently with a friend who grew up Baptist, I was asked if I had heard of the “Lottie Moon Offering”.

Apparently an annual part of his Baptist church life, the memory of the famous missionary was invoked.  “Lottie Moon was a missionary to the Chinese.  As a famine caused the population to starve, Lottie Moon was so touched by their suffering that she shared her own food with them until she herself also died from hunger.” [Read more...]

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A Preacher with Unclean Lips

May 27, 2012 By 1 Comment

Redemption for God’s mouthpiece.

by Mike Stavlund

Old Testament Reading: Isaiah 6:1-8

For Sunday, June 3, 2012: Year B—Trinity Sunday

On Trinity Sunday, the Lectionarians are showing us the wider landscape through the eyes of Isaiah: he is transported in some kind of vision to the very presence of God. When the throne room is opened, God’s power and glory are utterly overwhelming.  The experience is so unsettling that the prophet seems to be torn in two.  He cannot be a son of man and see God.  We might imagine that the songs of the assembled hosts of heaven would be comforting (and we often sing them that way), but Isaiah comes unhinged.

Isaiah Unhinged

“Woe is me, I am lost…” he cries as he laments his human condition.  He has unclean lips, and he lives among people of unclean lips. 

We see here an unexplained bifurcation between his eyes and his mouth.  Or more specifically, a contrast between what goes into his eyes and what goes out of his mouth.  In his mind, this imbalance is an impossible impediment to his redemption. 

Now Just Hold Still…

The gulf between Isaiah’s vision of God and his practice of life is bridged when one of God’s attendants gives him the fix:  a hot coal straight from the altar is touched to his lips. 

[Read more...]

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Trinitarian Roulette

May 27, 2012 By 6 Comments

A stand-off with the second person of the Godhead.

by Mike Stavlund

Gospel Reading: John 3:1-17 

For Sunday, June 3, 2012: Year B—Trinity Sunday

This is an ideal scenario for Jesus’ foundering PR program– a bona fide member of the opposition, coming humbly and deferentially to Jesus.

Granted, it is a visit cloaked in darkness, but that is understandable given the extenuating circumstances.  Besides, this highly esteemed Jewish leader gives Jesus high praise. 

Ease up, Jesus!

And what does Jesus do?  Besides being cryptic to the point of obtuseness, he goes into full debate mode, adding in some naked shame for good measure.  When poor Nicodemus finally cries ‘Uncle!’ and admits he’s in over his head, Jesus piles it on all the more:  “Aren’t you a teacher of Israel? How can you not understand these things?” 

Jesus is on such a tear that we’re a little surprised he doesn’t place a dunce cap on Nicodemus and make him sit in the corner.

[Read more...]

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One Size Fits All

March 5, 2012 By 7 Comments

An enigmatic historical account and the blame game.

by Mike Stavlund

Gospel Reading: John 2:13-22

For Sunday, March 11, 2012: Year B—Lent 3

For some reason, Jesus picks this one day out of his whole lifetime of trips to the Temple to come unhinged.

Why is Jesus so Angry?

Presumably, the commerce there was common practice, and this was just another ordinary day. Except that this was the day that the crazy person from Nazareth made a whip and drove all of the people and animals out of the Temple, flipping tables as he went.

Jesus even makes a special point of dressing down the dove retailers, accusing them of making the Temple into a marketplace.

When the din dies down a bit, the Temple authorities ask Jesus, “Why are you doing this?”

Ask a Reasonable Question, Get a Non-Answer

To this very sensible question, Jesus gives an answer that is both non sequitur and highly inflammatory: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Say What, Jesus?

[Read more...]

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The Law of Love

March 5, 2012 By 2 Comments

The Ten Commandments as a Way Station.

by Mike Stavlund

Old Testament Reading: Exodus 20:1-17

For Sunday, March 11, 2012: Year B—Lent 3

If you or I were coming down from Mt Sinai, what would the commandments be today? Would we even have any? It is hard to imagine that God intended for us to be so concerned with these ten laws, thousands of years later, literally and metaphorically chiseling them into stone, again and again, like some totemistic icon.

Are they instead simply arbitrary, meant for another time and place? A friend of mine insightfully suggests that–in our day and age–they are exactly that: proxy measures for righteousness.

Situational Ethics, Reconsidered

To be clear to my wife and everyone else, I’m not planning on contravening commandments number six and seven. But I teach undergraduate ethics, and understand something about moral complexities: I will bear false witness to help someone, I don’t honor fathers who are abusive, I have crucifixes in the house, and I sometimes preach on Sunday. And it might be a good thing for me to covet my neighbor’s new all-electric Nissan Leaf, basking in the blue glow of its charging station, waiting to be pre-warmed via iPhone app just before he silently jets off to work in the morning.

But I digress.

[Read more...]

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Bad Dad?

November 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Is our “fear of the Lord” more philosophical, or more guttural?

by Mike Stavlund

Psalm Reading: Psalm 95:1-7a; Psalm 100

For Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011: Year A—Christ the King Sunday

Like most Psalms, the 95th is a call to worship. God’s people are encouraged to sing for joy and to shout about God’s goodness, to kneel down in worship, because, like sheep, God’s people are cared for and protected in God’s pasture. It is a beautiful, inspiring scene set before us. But then things take a turn.

Fast Forward

What the Lectionarians hurry right past is a bit less comforting. They clip off the end of Psalm 95 and offer, as a semi-continuous option, the similarly pastoral imagery in Psalm 100. But between them we are left wondering if we’re collectively ignoring some uncomfortable family secret.

What gets skipped over in Psalm 95 is God’s seething, 40-year long anger—a lifetime of bitterness, really. God’s bad side. Anger at his people’s hard hearts, divine loathing at human waywardness, and indigence that people ‘tested’ God. The Lord, carrying a grudge over from father to son. It’s a God-sized grievance against an entire generation of people, and it doesn’t seem to subside until every last one of them finally dies.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Old Testament, Psalms, YearA Tagged With: , , , , ,

Drawing Lines Between // “The Other”

November 13, 2011 By 8 Comments

Is our tendency toward selfishness and judgment by nature, or by design?

by Mike Stavlund

Gospel Reading:  Matthew 25:31-46

For Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011: Year A—Christ the King Sunday

This passage brings up all kinds of hard questions:

  •  How “glorious” is this throne, if it is based on exclusion and judgment?
  • Why are “the nations” unkindly compared to animals?
  • On what are we judged? This seems uncomfortably like a meritocracy, inside a book which many of us have been encouraged to read as a treatise on grace.
  • On what basis are the sick, the strangers, and the prisoners judged?
  • Isn’t Jesus, the shepherd, a bit harsh (contra Psalm 100)? Here, Jesus is no meek shepherd—he’s separating, sequestering, punishing. So are we supposed to live in constant cowering and fear of his wrath unleashed?
  • … and why is Jesus so hard on goats? In the Passover passage in Exodus, goats and sheep get equal billing, but here the goats are b..a..a..a..d. If there is a goat lobby, they have probably traced all of their bad press back to Jesus.

But for me, the hardest question lurks at the back of the scene, like a hungry wolf:

Why am I so intent on deciding who’s who? 

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Matthew, New Testament, YearA Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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