Lent 3 (A): Romans 5.1-8

Romans 5.1-8. Epistle for Lent 3 (A)


In recent weeks the developed world has been reminded that the forces of nature are often incomprehensible and beyond human control. As is often the case when our ordinary lives are shaken by the unknown we search for explanations. Some self designated experts assert they understand the mystery of the Divine and are able to proclaim with utter certainty (I am not sure if it is because of hubris or sincere ignorance) that tragedy reflects the judgment of God upon a faithless people. Their word is not the last word.

The apostle asserts “we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. However we are not exempt from pain, sorrow, disappointment, and tragedy. Indeed the apostle, and many since him, have tried to explain how Jesus' suffering and death rescues humanity from nihilism.

Theological interpretations of the suffering and death of Jesus seek to explain the suffering and death experienced by humanity and the creation. We affirm he died for us, but our words are not able to exhaust its meaning.

Professor David Bartlett of Columbia Theological Seminary writes, “We struggle to come up with a doctrine of the atonement, and all the classical solutions seem fall short. Paul was blessed by a richly unsystematic mind. His language about what Jesus does shifts from verb to verb: Christ saves; Christ justifies; Christ reconciles. His description of what Christ does shifts from metaphor to metaphor: an obedient second Adam undoes the disobedience of the first. A sinless man is made to be sin. A godly Messiah dies for ungodly people.

The claim outreaches all our metaphors. The name embraces all our weaknesses: Jesus Christ, access to God's grace; where we stand.”

As we continue to wrestle with the meaning of life and death, we wrestle with the knowledge that we are not alone in this struggle. Dorothy Sayers reminds us that a unique claim of Christianity is that God is with us. In her essay "The Greatest Drama Ever Staged" Ms. Sayers writes, “...for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is – limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death – He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat despair, and death.”

The United Church of Christ's Statement of Faith affirms God's solidarity with these words: “In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Savior, you have come to us and shared our common lot, conquering sin and death and reconciling the world to yourself.”

“God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8). This Word is God's promise and our hope.

Lent 2: Psalm 121

Psalm 121: Lent 2(A) March 9, 2011

Lent is an invitation to a journey. The life of faith is a journey, the way is as important as the destiny. The earliest followers of Jesus were known as people of the way. What is the way? The psalmist's invites us to a communal recitation of our assurance of God's presence during our sojourn. The descendants of Abram and Sarai continues the journey.

Bobby Morris' reflects:
“Journeying was a major reality for ancient life. As a result of the available modes of traveling, the ancients are likely to have had far greater appreciation for what was involved in getting from one place to another that we ever can. Abraham and Sarah took the countless steps necessary to travel from Haran to the land of Canaan and even as far south as Egypt. Elijah made the arduous journey from northern Israel to Mount Sinai and back again. Even Jesus traveled throughout the Galilee and eventually down to Jerusalem.

Not surprisingly then, one of the most common Hebrew verbs in the Old Testament is the one for "going, walking." Likewise, a good deal of the biblical text, as alluded to above, deals with the undertaking and complexities of traveling. One such example is Psalm 121.

Psalm 121 is the second of the Psalms of Ascents (120-134). These texts seem to have been used by pilgrims during their travel to Jerusalem and/or as part of celebratory worship at the temple there. Individual cases have been made for the use of Psalm 121 by a traveler who is approaching and departing from Jerusalem. In either case we can say with some certainty that Psalm 121 deals with journeying.

The stark geographic diversity found in the land of Palestine is such that travel for the ancients was at best difficult and commonly dangerous. The availability of water would have been a constant concern, especially in the hot dry summers when the sun mercilessly beats down. In addition, the danger of bandits could never be ruled out, as the parable of the Good Samaritan later bears witness.

Psalm 121 responds to what must have been unavoidable misgivings about travel with unwavering reassurances that God protects his beloved. In fact, the Hebrew verb translated as "keep," which has the sense of "watch over, protect," occurs six times in only eight verses. In all of these occurrences God is the one doing the action. God protects the traveler from a host of possible dangers, from the most basic slipping of the foot (verse 3) to the light of the moon (verse 6), which in ancient times was viewed with a degree of supernatural apprehension. It is because God is the same one "who made heaven and earth" (verse 2), meaning all that exists, that the sojourner can rest assured in God's ability to offer such far-reaching protection, even of the traveler's very life (verse 7).

It may be enough that Psalm 121 offers such profound reassurance to the traveler moving from place to place. Yet it exceeds this particularity by reaching into the journey of human life itself. The final two verses of the text hint at the broad scope of God's protective activity as it references to the protection of the traveler from "all evil" (verse 7) that lasts "from this time on and forevermore" (verse 8).

The life of faith that begins with baptism is indeed a journey on which God's guidance and protection is needed. Accordingly, Psalm 121 plays a prominent role in the worship life of the Christian community of faith. Verse two contributes to the understanding of God the Father in the Apostle's Creed while other parts of the text have appeared in either the baptismal liturgy or funerary services of various faith traditions. The reassurances of Psalm 121 are thus able to accompany the faithful at the beginning and end of their life's journey, as well as help sustain and uplift them with God's presence and protection along the greatest journey of all. “
http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=10/17/2010

The Beatitudes

The gospel lesson for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany is Matthew 5.1-12. As we reflect on the words and images of the following video (Matthew 5.1-16) may God grant us the grace to live out these words.

Can We Get Along?

The epistle reading for the Third Sunday after Epiphany is 1 Corinthians 1. 10-18. Here is the reading and some thoughts I shared with my Lectionary study group.

10. Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.
11. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters.
12. What I mean is that each of you says, "I belong to Paul," or "I belong to Apollos," or "I belong to Cephas," or "I belong to Christ."
13. Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
14. I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,
15. so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name.
16. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)
17. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.
18, For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (New Revised English Version)


Now that the decorations are safely put away and the monotony of winter settles in, the mystery and wonder of the Incarnation begins to fade from our imagination. The assurance of blessed communion with others who confess Christ remains a hope at best. The reality of the ordinary life seems to overpower the reality of the grace filled life. Committee meetings, budget reviews, phone conversations with the insurance company, working on the furnace, are viewed as signs of heaven when compared to the bickering, jealousy,and mean spirited battles that is common among the baptised. And yet...

“I believe in the Church”.

The earliest baptismal formulas affirm the centrality of Church in the faith.

The divisions that grieve the Spirit is ever present. Can we heed the plea of the Apostle in the first century and stop passing judgment and make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification?

“I believe in the Church”.

The fundamentalists. The progressives. The loving but culturally, intellectually, spiritually, or theologically limited parishioner who is wrong about human sexuality, war and peace, the authority of the bible, gun control legislation, the church's contribution to the denomination's latest church wide appeal, and whether we should ask Mrs. Thompson to consider hiring an assistant editor for the church's newsletter.

“I believe in the Church”.

"Therefore I will put up with this Church until I see a better one," wrote Erasmus; "and it will have to put up with me, until I become better."

Philippians 3.4b-14 for 5th Sunday in Lent (year C)

Lectionary Discussion Group:Philippians 3.4b-14 for 5th Sunday in Lent (Year C): Cecil Charles Prescod

Heidelberg Catechism.
Question 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?
Answer: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my
faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and
delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation,
and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

Within the comfortable and familiar settings of our churches we read the joy filled remarks of a person who has abandoned any signs of privilege and embraced a way of life that led to his abandonment of his community, persecution, and martyrdom. In a culture that honors and celebrates the strong and self confident, we listen to the apostle's words that reminds us that our calling is to follow and embrace the Crucified One. Paul calls us to reject the good life, to turn in the key to security, and walk away.

John Calvin writes: “He says, that those things were gain to him, for ignorance of Christ is the sole reason why we are puffed up with a vain confidence. Hence, where we see a false estimate of one’s own excellence, where we see arrogance, where we see pride, there let us be assured that Christ is not known. On the other hand, so soon as Christ shines forth all those things that formerly dazzled our eyes with a false splendor instantly vanish, or at least are disesteemed. Those things, accordingly, which had been gain to Paul when he was as yet blind, or rather had imposed upon him under an appearance of gain, he acknowledges to have been loss to him, when he has been enlightened. Why loss? Because they were hinderances in the way of his coming to Christ. What is more hurtful than anything that keeps us back from drawing near to Christ? Now he speaks chiefly of his own righteousness, for we are not received by Christ, except as naked and emptied of our own righteousness. Paul, accordingly, acknowledges that nothing was so injurious to him as his own righteousness, inasmuch as he was by means of it shut out from Christ.” ( Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians).

The Pauline call to to place our confidence in Jesus, and Jesus alone, is appropriate during the season of of Lent, because it is a call that requires deep reflection. In a sermon entitled Call to be Odd, the Rev. Belinda Windham proclaims,”The southern wit, Flannery OʼConnor, once quipped, 'You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.' Through our faith in Jesus Christ we know that we are accepted and loved no matter how odd others may think we are. For surely there has never been a God more odd than ours, who out of love for us
chose to become one of us and to abandon divine power and die for us, conquering death, so that we might never die. And thatʼs the truth.”

So how do we who enjoy the prestige and privileges of our society throw away these as “ dung” and embrace a life of rejection, persecution, and death? How do “we become like him in his death, that if possible 'we” may attain the resurrection from the dead”?

Marius Victorinus, a 4th century African Neo-platonic philosopher, whose conversion at an advanced age made an impression on Augustine, offer this suggestion: “here then are two precepts for the one who is going to live the rest of life walking in the Christian way. First, the one who is still living under divine governance, however well and rightly he has acted in the past, should not think about all the actions he has already done as though he deserved to obtain something by them. Rather he should cast them into oblivion, always seeking the new tasks that remain. Second, he should nonetheless keep living under the divine rule, continually pressing on toward these things and observing the rule of Christ, even to death” (Epistle to the Philippians 3.13-14)

What do you think?

Arise My Love: God's love poem

So, I am puzzled that the Agnus Day comic changes on my blog when the writer creates a new strip. So, the strip on each blog changes, making the commentary somewhat unintelligible (the commentary may not match the strip). Ahh! a lesson in humility. Perhaps I will figure out the wrinkle, and discover how to keep the strip that matches the weekly lectionary text.

This week lectionary readings are potentially puzzling. This week, the gospel text moves from John to Mark. The Epistle is from St. James. Both readings force us to examine what does it mean to be religious. The Gospel text reminds us that we fail to live up to the law.




The Hebrew text is from Deuteronomy or the Song of Solomon. The reading from the Pentateuch (Deuteronomy) seems appropriate - an examination of the Law. But how does the Song of Solomon fit with the theme? A spiritual reading seems appropriate, with God as the beloved.

God is the lawgiver and God is the beloved. Perhaps when we focus on God as the lawgiver, we forget that God is our beloved. The beauty of the call is lost when we forget that God calls us out of love, and we know God when we respond to the call of love with loving action towards others.

Eugene Patterson's version (The Message) of James 1:27 reads:

"Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world."

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." Song of Solomon 2.13 (NRSV).

The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven: John 6:56-69

Our friends from Agnus Day have posted their latest cartoon strip. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, August 23, 2009 (Proper 16 / Ordinary 21/ Pentecost +12) is John 6.56-69.

For several weeks the gospel lessons have been from John 6. These readings have caused us to reflect on the significance and meaning of the Eucharist. This is a difficult passage of scripture for Evangelicals who have a high view of scripture, but view the sacraments as 'ordinances". A high view of scripture should lead evangelicals to reflect anew on the apostle's writings in the 6th chapter of his gospel.

Soli deo gloria.

Dormition of the Theotokos

First, AgnusDay's reflection on this Sunday's gospel reading:






"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death."



Certainly few mainline or evangelical Protestants will celebrate this Feast Day, observed in the Roman Catholic tradition as the Assumption of the Virgin and in the Eastern tradition as the Dormition of the Theotokos. While Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption as dogma in 1950, the Dormition has been commemorated in the Orthodox Church as a Great Feast, although it has never been formally declared as doctrine by the Orthodox Church. The belief that God took the Virgin Mary to heaven bodily has been celebrated in the church since the fifth century.

It is a feast that affirms the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and Mary's special role in the redemption. Christians in other traditions who affirm these beliefs should consider joining their sisters and brothers throughout time in celebration this important Feast day.

My recent reflections and meditations about this Feast day has led me to ponder that Mary's devotion to her son, and our Lord's devotion to his mother, serve as models for intimate human relationships. Her Assumption testify that the human body is a divine gift and though tainted by sin(or if you prefer human imperfections), will be glorified.

From the Orthodox tradition:

Kontakion (Second Tone)
"Neither the grave nor death could contain the Theotokos, the unshakable hope, ever vigilant in intercession and protection. As Mother of life, He who dwelt in the ever-virginal womb transposed her to life."

Lectionary Humour

It is the first of August. The last 10 days have been very, very hot (over 90 degrees each day, with three days in a row of 100+ degrees). A compassionate friend gave my mother and me a three night stay at a local air conditioned hotel. Now that the weather is cooler (the high today will be in the low nineties), I return home and to the computer.

Many Christian churches share a common weekly scripture reading in worship on Sundays (known as the common lectionary). There is also a daily lectionary. Many Christian denominations publish the weekly texts on their websites. The United Church of Christ publishes "Weekly Seeds", a reflection on their weekly focus scripture. Vanderbilt Divinity Library provides the lections and texts on their website. Although separated by distance, theology, and heritage, the common lectionary allow the diverse body of Christ to reflect together on the holy texts.

The lectionary texts for Proper 13(18), August 2, 2009 are:
2 Samuel 11:26 - 12:13a or Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 * Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm 78:23-29 * Ephesians 4:1-16 * John 6:24-35

I came across a lectionary base weekly comic from agnusday.org. (God is still speaking and God is still laughing)!

I will post the comic weekly on this blog. This week's comic focus on the Gospel reading: John 6.24-35.

This week's comic: