Rom. 15:4-13 Advent 2

Rom. 15:4-13 Advent 2

Romans is a difficult mountain to scale, but this week's reading could be worth  renting the equipment and moving toward its summit, or if you wish, heading back to base camp.

First I seize on the word welcome. Welcome home will be chanted in home upon home during this time of year. The word could mean in Greek, accept, embrace, take a hand, make a companion). This word alone could make a wedge for a sermon.

Romans extends the welcome: as Christ has welcomed you. I attended an ecumenical thanksgiving service in one of the in dependent churches that as a table of political brochures castigating anyone they consider on the left side of the spectrum, and speaking of being oppressed  anyone who disagrees with them. Now, I do wish to be fair, the romantic left in religious circles does not wish to extend welcome to anything but the latest facet of thought that catches their fancy either.

How do we welcome Christ? What receptivity and festal pomp fits the advent of Christ into our world?

Context: This section is on the dispute about food again, kosher or not. It has the tone of the Thanksgiving dinners where vegans assert moral superiority, or gluten-free food is the price of admission for some. Paul is desperately seeking unity among people determined to split into factions. In god's eyes, he will see both groups as important and equal, even if "strong and weak." Neither side may claim precedence over the other.

Also consider this context as an ethic between the Advents. Notice its univesralizing thrust. Life is too short to waste time dividing into sides. On the other hand, his ethic points us toward living as a messianic community, toward tikkun olam.

The blessing at the end of our passage, v. 13 is wonderful,and could be a sermon from that passage alone.

Is. 35-Advent 3

While an adversary is promised nothing but trouble in ch. 34, here we have a vision of delight. It seems ti take special care to reverse negative images of previous chapters. Faced with a panoply of images, the preacher may wish to select some natural images, or more likely images of new-found strength and courage. The holy highway that becomes a processional way could be a good place to go. Of course, fear, that biblical vice, is displaced, and is always a fruitful topic. Joy, that exuberance  so difficult to discuss closes our section. One could link it to the anticipation of Christmas, the first Advent. In Indiana, we could use ready-made agricultural images to fit the themes rather easily.

One could use v. as an entry point into disability and find some links to Tiny Tim perhaps.

Please try to avoid using these beautiful images and turning them into diatribe about no Christmas spirit or consumerism. If you need to do so, select another passage.

On the other hand, this could induce one to speak on a vision of a new future, in the face of discord and disharmony.

Is. 11 for Advent 2

As I’m working on this,  early Christmas, really early Christmas music, is streaming from the chapel. Of course, we have started Advent in the church year. We have permitted the destructive themes of apocalyptic material dominate discussion, but here the aim of the revelation is to point to a brighter future that is new, that does not replay the past.

Jesse Tree-Jesse, of course, is the father of David. Some use the Jesse Tree as a decoration to teach the antecedents and promises of the Messiah. It is a  large Advent calendar, in its way. Some may combien it as a gift tree for getting the poor some needed resents.

Regeneration- The emergence of a green shoot out of a seemingly lifeless stump is a type of resurrection. Patricia Tull notes in her commentary (229) the messianic power of this passage in  late second temple Judaism. One could perhaps use this image to speak of regeneration in individual and collective life.

Again Hicks and the Peaceable Kingdom, that we touched on in Is. 65 recently certainly comes into play again. Notice how he often had Penn’s treaty with the natives of his colony, a sign of political peace for him. Again, look at the shifts in his repeated composition over the years.

End of Predation-”Nature is red in tooth and claw” with blood. That violent element of creation is pictured as ending, and a new era of natural shalom will emerge one fine day. 

Gift of the spirit-we speak if this passage less than the fruit of the Spirit from the NT. We could spend more time on its emphasis on counsel, on deliberation. I learned 7 gifts, since the LXX added piety to the list, so it acts as the culmination of the set of pairs. Mental acuity is a major feature of this list of illumination. One could use it to discuss loving God and others with the mind.

Advent 1
Is.2:
Advent could be a difficult season, especially its end time is the beginning early weeks and our collision with a culture that started the Christmas season already in early November. One way to forestall complaints about Advent hymns could be to use the peace hope in this reading into a Christmas Song.

First  we have the close use of this one in Micah 4, or its opposite in Joel 3 .Zech. 8 extends  it.
2) The temple will be a lodestar, as well as the portal of the divine presence. All will be drawn like a magnet to it. Advent points the way, like the finger of the Baptist in art, to the Christ. It marks a turn from the trampling of temple and justice in chapter 1.

3) Torah is usually translated as law, but here it has the sense of teaching/instruction. It helps stifle the urge to make Judaism a legalistic faith. This is the antithesis of the troubles in chapter 1.

4) Of course, peace is the hope here. We point toward non-violent ways of dealing with disputes. The resources and the implements of war will be tamed and useful for life, not death. We will have no need of War Colleges.

5) v. 5 knows that hope becomes reality when we act in its light.

6) I may be wrong but here I find temple worship as instruction on how to live in the world around Mt. Zion. Worship prepares us for the work in the world for peace. In a time when worship gets downplayed, except for seeking a novelty, the temple material is a clarion call toward public worship.

I find Christ the King to be a most difficult challenge. I have a difficult time with the very idea of kingship in a democratic society. I dislike its sense of hierarchy. Calling the day of reign of Christ is scarcely an improvement, as reign seems to me to mean reign over, not with. I do not work well with the humble Jesus Christ being transformed into a cosmic czar with the ascension. Further, if that reign is active, it pushes me yet again to ask why then is suffering so rampant? So, I seize on a text that could be fruitful, including a difficult one such as Col. 1:11-20

The Interpreter’s Bible is quite good on our passage for Sunday. For me, the McDonald commentary in Sacra Pagina series on Col and Ephesians is superb. See also New Onmterreter’s-The new Outlook piece is excellent and please consider looking at working preacher for commentaries on all of the readings for this Sunday and going back a few years in the reading cycle as well

V.11-strengthened could be empowered, I would think,as God’s presence/energy infuses us

endurance/perseverance/ keep on keepin on  are good translations for hyponome, and makrothumia has the sense of longsuffering, of enduring suffering-more forcefully-give me your best shot-bearing up under suffering gets at it-both words are often translated as patience and run us into trouble often, both in distinguishing them and having a sense of “patience.”

V.12 Giving thanks is a nice link to the upcoming holiday.It is the last of four participles in the set.

Made fit/qualified to share is an unusual word  I suppose a legitimate sharer could work, especially with the following notion of inheriting a share.

Saints in the light takes us back to All Saints Day and a sense of being in the reign of Christ

V.13 here we are in a change of citizenship or being ruled from the power of darkness-we are liberated from one power to live in freedom and light in another. (see similar thought on light in the Qumran DSS)-the thought continues in the sense of being transferred to a different reime. Note well-that process is current-it is not for heaven alone.

V.14 Deliverance-redemption, as in release, liberated from bondage/imprisonment is the semantic field here

15-20 is thought by many to be a Christ Hymn-For me, the ley is Christ holding things together, and yes, that includes our thoughts and feelings in difficult times, I would think.

v.15-I don;t know if we should refer to Genesis 1 here or not. I am not sure if it helps or hurts the iconoclastic strain in Reformed thought. At any rate, we now overuse the word, icon, but its use may well be helpful in speaking of Christ this Sunday.

First born of all creation-This is a minefield, but I do think it helpful to made a linkage to the view of Wisdom in Prov. 8. It also helps with  later notion of being “before all things.” Still, I think that the emphasis is one of importance, at the top of a hierarchy, perhaps. The one of Bethlehem and Nazareth is above the rulers of Rome.

V.16- the little phrase in him is a deep one-I read it as prehensile, of grasping a reality, of being a participant and agent of it. 

We get invisible again. As Carrie Newcomer says, just because we don;t see something at work doesn't mean that  energy of change is not at work.

V.17 I am not sure if before is temporal or spatial. I stress the hold together (sunistemi) sun is a prefix emphasizing together. It had a sense of the coherence of the cosmos, or perhaps less formally, the connections , the networks of the universe.

head=can mean at the head of the class, but it can mean source as well, headwaters, say. The previous meaning is strengthened by the next phrase first place. Again, the rejected one is transformed here, as in the last shall be first.

V.19 pleroma, fullness could be a sermon in itself. Its emanations are featured in Gnostic speculations of its many leveled divine world. To me it is clear that the incarnation carried with it the gravitas of divinity.

V.20 Reconciliation of course is the theme of the Conf. of ‘67. Here it seems to be relating to the healing of something that has been ruptured, a bridging of a chasm, a bringing together that which has been separated or alienated.

Make peace strikes me as a long way from the criminal law image we use for atonement and reconciliation. If we insist on a legal metaphor, it sounds a lot more like the civil realm than the criminal.With the cross we are in a subversive mode for the images of ruling that we would associate with Christ the king.

Jer. 23:1-6

I always have trouble with Christ the King/Reign of Christ. The readings rarely seem to get me anywhere.

Jeremiah is a case in point-OK- near east leaders were called shepherds, and God is disappointed in the shepherds of Israel, secular and sacred, in Scripture. Then we get a reversal, as God moves to take charge and have particular attention to the flock where the old blessing of fertility will return. This gets heightened with a messianic promise. Note well the leader will act to execute justice and righteousness, that political pairing of the OT. The last verse seems to refer to Zedekiah, the last king of little Judah, so it would have lingering discouragement in its reading. (As we approach Advent, the Hebrew has a different word for branch-I suppose one could work with the image of a tree and a branch, or even go with an organizational chart that uses a branch).
Emotionally, the leader should deal with fear and dismay to comfort the people from poor shepherds, and physically, it comes  with the shalom of safety and security. In other words, good times will be with the good shepherd/leader.

In 2019, does the flock image work in our situation of hyper-individualism? To what degree is the pastoral image of the sheep helpful or indeed harmful? While we bow to Ps. 23, do we want to be regarded as sheep?

With the current occupant of the White House, exceeding even Nixon in perfidy, as the worst president in my lifetime, it is too easy to attack him. Further, it is too easy to go with the plague on the house of politics as doomed to failure. Some then may hope for religious revival as the cure to our political ills. Again, too easy.

We could face squarely that we call Jesus the Good Shepherd, the Messiah, and we have 2000 years of poor shepherds in all facets of society, including religion. That promise remains unfulfilled as we close o another church year. Perhaps one could go with our desire to blame leaders for poor performance and neglect our role in that failure. Perhaps one could go with the virtue of learning to wait, yet work, toward the vision of Jeremiah here. Indeed, even if we have a righteous branch leader, they are enmeshed in a most difficult world.

Nov. 17-Is. 12-I do want to direct attention to Patricia Tull's fine commentary on Isaiah 1. It seems to be a hymn, but I do not have a sense of its placement in the material at this point. Indeed might, zimrat, could also be a song, and the hymn has language used in a number of psalms. It does give us yet another place where Isaiah oscillates between doom and restoration, renewal, and rejoicing.



 In TOT Breuggemann (468) notes with the great psychologist Erik Erikson that we face the crisis of trust and mistrust from the earliest stage of existence. For a religious person, that trust is centered on God. In Hebrew trust/security in relationship is emeth, and its variant is amen, thus a link to Luther's notion of faith being a trusting relationship to divine promise and character.

We just had a baptism at a church where I help out a bit. Water is a redolent symbol, as it is here.

Zion of course is Dame Zion,  focal point for God's relationship with all-recall the temple is a point of contact for heaven and earth.

With Thanksgiving nearing, this could be a template for thanks in 2019.

Npv. 17 end of the cycle

Is. 65:17-25 is the locus for some  of the material in Revelation. In my view apocalyptic thought oscillates between the poles of destruction and the glory of the new. The dispensationalist interpretation that has captured the American field of vision tends toward one pole, obviously. So it makes it difficult to read  and respond to the material with fresh eyes.

The series of painting by Edward Hicks may be helpful in approaching this.

It envisions release from the curse east of Eden. the new creation seems to me to outstrip the accounts of Genesis 1 and 2. It moves once again to a blessing of all creation. It is as different as the world of humans and angels hinted o at in last week's reading from Luke 20.

Fretheim makes a good point in God and creation on our passage that cosmic significance, universal scope is embedded in Isiah's concern for both redemption and new creation-history gives clues about divine intentions. Ecological vision lies at the heart of God's salvific purpose here. Human and natural salvation are intertwined, as befits the adam, the earth creature.

Please note well:the violence that afflicts creation, the cause of the flood story, will be removed; it will have no nexus in which to gain purchase.

Notice the change in memory-the former things-the world of punishment will no long be remembered nor brought to mind-

note the nouns that follow next-joy, delight-adjectives-glad-the verb is rejoice

a lifetime will look more like the primeval history of early Genesis, but without weeping. The heartbreaking promise of infant death without a lived future is banished.

Security is the watchword for these long-lived people not only in the enjoyment of the needs of life, but in the temporal dimension for descendants.

The nearness of God is then placed in deep understanding of answer before a question is posed, no static, no delay.

Finally the peaceable kingdom eliminates predator and prey.

The agent of temptation the sly serpent will at and become dust-threat will be banished.
Why that would be heavenly-exactly.