A: Proper 17 (31 August 2008)

Matthew 16:21-28

While I was on my recent vacation, one of the children of our parish underwent an emergency appendectomy and one of our senior members suffered a health crisis that put him in Intensive Care for several days. Just after my return, another parishioner underwent surgery for a life-threatening condition. Over the past three months, at least three of our members who are “breadwinners” for their families have either lost a job or come very close to doing so. Each of these experiences has involved pain—either physical pain or emotional pain, or both. And the pain has been borne not only by those who were directly involved, but by those who are directly involved with them, spreading out like ripples on a pond.

Of course, there’s nothing unusual or extraordinary about any of this. Suffering and pain are all around us, part of the daily fabric of our lives. We suffer personally, for ourselves, and we suffer vicariously, along with others, both those whom we know and love and those whom we only read about or hear about. We suffer in trivial and minimal ways—a knick from a shaving razor or a traffic signal that turns red just before we get to the intersection, and when we’re late for an appointment. We also suffer in profound and tragic ways—losing a loved one to death, particularly if that death is, as we say euphemistically, “premature.” And we certainly suffer in countless ways that are neither trivial nor tragic, but just ordinary. Relationships go sour for any number of reasons, we don’t make the team, or get into our first choice of college, or get the job we knew was perfect for us. As the years pile up, our minds and bodies slowly work less and less efficiently and effectively. Suffering in all these ways is just part of life.

At times, Christians have believed that suffering is invariably sent by God as a punishment for sin. During my vacation, I read a novel about life in an English cathedral city in the fourteenth century. When the Plague arrived and people started dying in droves, the first conclusion most people jumped to was that the victims—or the town collectively—had displeased God in some really major way, and sickness was a just punishment for their sins. But this has never been a very satisfying explanation. In the first instance, epidemics seem to be no respecter of moral status; both the just and the unjust fall victim. Saints get sick and die in epidemics with the same frequency as sinners.

And when we simply take suffering on its own terms, the outlook seems even gloomier. When we accept suffering as something that just is, as morally neutral, then it is difficult to see in it any meaning or significance. The best we can say to the families of those who were killed when a plane crashed in Spain a couple of weeks ago is, “Well, accidents happen. Get over it.” The most we can say to those who lost loved one when the earth quaked in China earlier this year is, “Tectonic plates shift; move on.” By this account, when cancer cells metastasize or someone gets behind the wheel drunk, or a quarrel with his wife the previous night causes an airplane inspector to miss noticing evidence of metal fatigue, we are nothing more than helpless victims. Our suffering has no meaning, no purpose, no significance. It’s just a fact. And this is a singularly depressing thought. It leads eventually and inevitably to terminal despair, and despair—loss of hope— is a spiritually fatal condition. It separates us from God as surely as the very gates of Hell.

This is how it must have seemed to Peter and the other apostles when Jesus announced to them his impending suffering and death. He had recruited them on a mission that they presumed was going to culminate in Jesus somehow seizing political power, kicking out the Roman occupiers, and re-establishing God’s righteous rule over Israel through a royal descendent of King David—namely, Jesus. So when he starts talking to them about going up to Jerusalem and suffering at the hands of the Jewish religious establishment, and finally getting killed, they thought he must have eaten the wrong sort of wild mushrooms for breakfast. He was departing from the script that they thought came directly from him. Peter in particularly could not abide the thought of everything Jesus had said and done (and everything he had led Peter is saying and doing) simply ending with Jesus’ suffering and death—nothing accomplished, nothing brought to completion, no grand triumph, just senseless suffering and meaningless victimhood. The thought filled him with despair.

But if we pay close attention to what Jesus says, we see the seeds of something different: Jesus will go to Jerusalem, not be taken there. It is something proactive and voluntary on his part. He is no mere helpless victim. And then Jesus counsels his followers to take up the cross: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” He’s not talking about accepting the cross, or having it laid on them. I’ve always been struck how, when we walk the Stations of the Cross during Lent, the traditional name of the Second Station is “Jesus takes up his cross.” There’s nothing passive about it. It’s by an affirmative act that he ends up on the cross.

We know, of course, from hindsight, what the fruit, the long-term effect, of Jesus’ Passion turns out to be: the salvation of our souls and the redemption of the world; the conquest of evil and victory of truth and love. Included in all this, of course, is the cessation of suffering—both minor suffering and major suffering. Part of our incorporation into Christ is to bend our experience to the pattern of his life and death. This doesn’t mean that we seek out suffering unnecessarily. As most of us have learned, suffering will find us soon enough; we don’t have to go looking for it. But conforming ourselves to the redemptive pattern of our Lord’s suffering does mean that we embrace the suffering that comes our way intentionally. We don’t let it tackle us from behind; we turn and face it and embrace it. We turn and face it and say, “Hey! You lookin’ for me? Well I’m right here. Come and get me.” We “take it up,” even as Jesus took up his cross.

Such suffering—suffering that is molded to the pattern of Christ’s suffering—has the capacity to be not only “un-meaningless,” but actually redemptive. Suffering that we take up, and offered up, intentionally in union with the redemptive suffering of Christ—this, by the way, is exactly what we’re doing when we celebrate the Eucharist, particularly when we lay out gifts of bread and wine on the altar; they represent, among other things, our suffering, and we are offering them in union with Christ’s suffering)—when we do this, our suffering becomes a thread in the great tapestry that God is weaving as he brings light out of the darkest places in human experience, wholeness out of the most broken pieces of our lives, truth from the very midst of falsehood and confusion, life from the jaws of death, and hope from the deepest pit of despair. This is a redemption that is signed and sealed with Jesus’ death and resurrection, but it is delivered one day at a time, one life at a time, one hurt at the time. When we take up the cross, we participate in that delivery of redemption. We will probably not, in this life, see how that happens. We will not know the impact that every little decision we make to embrace suffering rather than let ourselves be passive victims has on the lives of others and the fabric of redemption. But it does. In that assurance we can place our faith.

Suffering, as we have seen, “happens.” We can try to evade it, and perhaps succeed at times for a while. But it will catch up with us all eventually. We can accept it passively or fatalistically, along the lines “Que será sera.” But that leaves us as victims and our suffering as meaningless. Nothing is more tragic than meaningless suffering! But as disciples of Jesus, we have the invitation to “read ourselves” into the story of Christ’s redemption of the world through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Praised be Jesus Christ. Amen.

A: Proper 15 (8/17/08)

(I'm a week late posting this. Sorry about that. There's nothing from me for today, as I now have an Assistant, and he will be preaching about every third week.)

None of the artifacts of my childhood and youth are more obviously out of date than the maps with which I studied and learned world geography. Large sections of Europe and Africa and Asia have undergone political transformations. Old boundaries are erased in some places and in other places new boundaries are created. And when there’s a shift in power or a change in boundary, one or more countries gets a new name at the same time.

For instance, when I was young, there was a country called the Soviet Union—most of us called it Russia for short. It had borders, a flag, a capital, a national anthem, a seat at the U.N., and a well-known dictator for a leader. It was communist, of course, and that fact alone seemed to make everything else about the Soviet Union irrelevant. Most of us knew little or nothing about the ethnic and linguistic and religious diversity of the Soviet Union; all we could see were those nasty “Russians.” Then, with the collapse of European communism in the early ‘90s, we started to hear about Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan and Belarus and Moldova and a bunch of other countries that has previously been subsumed into the Soviet Union, countries including—and this is a confusing one to American ears—Georgia. They all have different languages and different cultures and each one has a distinct sense of national pride. “Who’dve thunk it,” back when we were building backyard bomb shelters and practicing hiding under our desks at school in case the “Russians” attacked us.

But now, in the past couple of weeks, we’ve been hearing about a region even the Advanced Placement geography students were probably not aware of—a region within Georgia called South Ossetia. Apparently the majority of the people in South Ossetia are ethnic Russians, so their sympathies lie with Russia, while the President of Georgia is openly pro-western and pro-American. So they want to separate from Georgia and join Russia, and this is what has sparked the armed conflict that is making everyone who pays attention to is just a little be nervous because some think that Russia is out to re-create the old Soviet empire.

Now, I bring up Russia and Georgia and South Ossetia, not to offer my own commentary on world politics, which would be less than meaningless, but because I believe the situation in those places stands as a particularly apt metaphor, a model, a microcosm, an illustration, of the fundamental human condition of alienation and division. In the time and place in which our Lord Jesus walked this earth, it was the divide between Jew and Gentile that dominated the social landscape. It was this element that came into play when Jesus and his disciples made an excursion out of their native region of Galilee, which was predominantly Jewish, northward into what would now be southwestern Lebanon, an area that was predominantly Gentile.

A resident of that territory, a woman, approached Jesus and begged him to have mercy on her and deliver her daughter from the demon which possessed the girl. And when she made that request, Matthew’s gospel tells us, Jesus simply ignored her. He made no answer. Jesus and his disciples and this woman were experiencing the disconnection and brokenness that defined the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. But it was certainly nothing unique. We are estranged and cut off from one another in countless ways: person from person, family from family, region from region, race from race, generation from generation, women from men, nation from nation, and, sad to say, even church from church.

But, to her everlasting credit, this Canaanite woman seemed unwilling to simply accept the status quo of alienation. She persisted in her plea. She made a pest of herself—so much so that Jesus’ disciples seemed to get irritated at him for not acting more forcefully to send her away. But she persisted all the more. Even when Jesus himself made his discouraging remark that his mission was to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and not to Gentiles like her, she refused to take No for an answer. In her steadfast resolve to be in relationship with Jesus, the Canaanite woman stands as an archetype, a shining example, of the kind of faith that moves mountains and changes lives, the kind of faith that sees participation in the life of Christ as the highest good of human existence. Her faith is an emblem to us of the only source of profound and lasting unity among human beings, the only antidote to the generational and ethnic and political and social divisions that characterize and define our lives, and that is common participation in Christ.

Jesus finally grants the woman’s request. For her and for her daughter, his merciful action was an occasion of deliverance and joy. But for the rest of humanity, it has a much larger implication. It strikes the first hammer blow against the dividing wall of hostility that separates us. The early church took this incident as implied permission—indeed, a mandate—to carry the gospel of Christ not only to Jews, but to the whole Gentile world as well. Perhaps they recognized that the seeds of Jesus’ radical action of responding to the cry of a mere Gentile are found several centuries earlier in the writing of the prophet Isaiah:

The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,

to love the name of the Lord and to be his servants . . .

those I will bring to my holy mountain,

and make them joyful in my house of prayer.

It was certainly a concept that St Paul was familiar with, as he writes to the Gentile Christians in Rome about the eventual reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in Christ:

If you [meaning his Gentile readers] have been cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted [that is, through faith and baptism] , contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree [that is, the heritage of God’s own chosen people, Israel], how much more will these natural branches [meaning, the Jews] be grafted back into their own olive tree.

Common participation in Christ, expressed in faith like that of the Canaanite woman, is the only source of profound and lasting unity among human beings. The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of our Creed— a tree on which have been grafted branches from every people, language, tribe, and nation: Russia, Georgia, South Ossetia, Mexico, Nigeria, Sri Lanka … every tribe and nation—the Church is the wrecking ball that assaults the wall of hostility that divides one person from another.

I read an article in a church publication back in the time when the former Yugoslavia—another exaple of what we’re seeing now in the former Soviet Union---when Yugoslavia was torn and bleeding, an article that first warmed my heart, and then disturbed me. It talked about an Episcopal parish on the east coast with a wonderful ministry of hospitality toward refugees from the former constituent parts of Yugoslavia. They supplied housing, food, clothing, and companionship for individuals and families whose lives have been uprooted by armed conflict in their homelands. This is wonderful, and is of the very essence of the Church’s mission.But one of the parishioners was quoted in the article to the effect that their goal is “not to make Christians” out of the refugees. I think I understand the motive behind that comment, and it’s a good one. It expresses a desire to respect the freedom and dignity of the refugees, to honor the faith tradition which may already have formed them, to not be coercive in any way or to attach strings to the help they were providing. But it made me sad, nonetheless, because it reflects an attitude that robbed that parish’s refugee ministry of its potential to be a sacramental sign of the ultimate reconciliation that the gospel brings us. It’s like trying to breathe with one lung, or walk around town with only one shoe. It’s better than nothing, but it’s less than the full deal. A dry roof and a full stomach and a helping hand is a good start—probably even an essential start—in the process of overcoming the radical estrangement that divides us. But it falls way short of accomplishing the mission. Without a common relationship with God in Christ, there is only a superficial basis for unity. It is temporary, and will not stand up under pressure.

Under the communist government of the Soviet dictators, the Soviet Union convinced the world—maybe even convinced themselves—that they were one people, one nation. But when that system and that dictatorship fell, the unity of the Soviet Union proved to be a mirage. It vanished like smoke on a windy day. We hear a lot today about “diversity.” It is commended to us as something to “celebrate.” To the extent that this means there will be an array of different ethnic cuisines available for my palate to appreciate, I’m all about celebrating diversity! But celebrating diversity will not cure what ails us as a human race. It simply attempts to make a virtue out of necessity. It throws in the towel on unity and just accepts division. In the end, it only prolongs our agony.

The great faith of the Canaanite woman is a beacon to us today, a beacon drawing us to “holy communion” with Christ, and thereby with one another, calling us to be grafted on to the one tree that is the Tree of Life. In the words of our Psalm:

“Let your ways be knows upon earth,

your saving health among all nations.

Let the peoples praise you, O God;

let all . . . the peoples praise you.”

Amen.

Showing My Work, Part III

Waiting for me on return from my vacation was the task of taking the simple declarative sentence articulating my message for Year A: Proper 17 (August 31 this year) and flesh it out into a narrative structure that bears the elements of literary plot: Situation, Complication, Crisis, and Resolution. Here's what's cooking presently:

Random examples of the ubiquity of suffering, both minor and major

At times, Christians have believed the suffering is invariably sent by God as a punishment for sin … but we can think of too many examples of this patently not being the case for this explanation to be very satisfying

At best, taken on its own terms, suffering just is … it’s devoid of meaning … we are just helpless victims. This is a singularly depressing thought leading potentially to fatal despair.

This is how it seemed to Peter when Jesus announced his impending Passion (briefly recount gospel narrative). He could not abide the thought of everything Jesus had said and done (and everything he had led Peter is saying and doing) simply ending with Jesus’ suffering and death—nothing accomplished, nothing brought to completion, no grand triumph, just meaningless victimhood.

But if we pay close attention to what Jesus says, we see the seeds of something different: Jesus will go to Jerusalem (not be taken there), and then he counsels his followers to take up the cross (not accept it, or have it laid on them). [N.B. the second of the Stations: “Jesus takes up his cross.”]

We know, of course, from hindsight, the fruit of Jesus’ Passion: the redemption of the world, the salvation of our souls. Part of our incorporation into Christ is to bend our experience to that pattern: Suffering that is intentionally (not proactively, but intentionally) “taken up” has the capacity to be not only “un-meaningless,” but actually redemptive, in union with the redemptive suffering of Christ.

Suffering, as we have seen, “happens.” We can try to evade it, and perhaps succeed at times for a while. But it will catch up with us all eventually. We can accept it passively or fatalistically (“Que será sera”), but that leaves us as victims and our suffering as meaningless. Nothing is more tragic than meaningless suffering! But as disciples of Jesus, we have the invitation to “read ourselves” into the story of Christ’s redemption of the world through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

On Vacation...

... until August 14.

Next sermon posted will be that of August 17.

I shall be "tanned and relaxed."

(Right.)

Showing My Work, Part II

(See here for Part I.)

A week after first reading the propers for a Sunday (in this case, Proper 17, to be used on August 31st), my custom is to consult exegetical commentaries to get an academic take on the readings. I've already decided to focus on the gospel this time (Matthew 16:21-28), so I didn't do any exegetical work on the other readings. That should have happened last week, but other exigencies intervened. That's why I stretch out the process! Here's what I distilled from the commentaries:

Boring

• From a literal historical perspective, Jesus expected the sort of tribulation that any prophet should expect (pace today’s OT reading), and also eventual (speedy?) vindication by God as part of a general resurrection of all the righteous. The post-Easter church then modified these statements by making them specific references to the Passion as they remembered it.
• Peter’s response is an expression of his representative role, and is a theological, not merely a personal objection to what Jesus has just said. He has a wrong idea of what messiahship is.
• “Get behind” does not mean “Go away!” but “Fall in!” (See Gk. formula as “follow me”). “’Behind me’ is not mere location, but the posture of a disciple. Jesus is going to the cross; a disciple is to follow.”
• “Jesus’ mission is to inaugurate an alternative kingdom, a radically way of exercising rulership and authority. Here his opponent is none other than the rock on which he will build the new community. … Despite his revelation from God, Peter continues to think as good human beings are accustomed to think: reasonably, egocentrically, and in terms of human friendship and ‘success.’”
• Re taking up the cross: “These words are not an invitation to discipleship for outsiders, but reflection on the meaning of discipleship for those who have already responded to the call of Christ.”
• “Matthew’s church was aware that some had already been martyred, including by crucifixion. In view of the shortness of time before the parousia, Matthew anticipates that the eschatological tribulation will intensify; so the call for disciples to take up their cross can be understood quite literally in this situation.”

Gundry

• “To [take up one’s cross] in following Jesus signifies open allegiance to Jesus the Crucified One. Such allegiance will expose one to the hostility of the world and entail the risk of losing one’s life as he lost his.”

Morris

• This pericope follows immediately on the heels of Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah. Now it is appropriate for Jesus to explain just what messiahship entails, not only for the Messiah, but for the Messiah’s followers.
• “We are to understand that Jesus’ death was so central to God’s plan that to try to avoid it was to do the work of none less than the evil one himself.”
• “Jesus is not saying that anyone who focuses on his own selfish concerns will be punished by having his life taken from him. He is saying that, by the very fact that he concentrates on his own selfish concerns, that person has lost life in the best and fullest sense.”

Fuller

• “For Matthew, it is the Church that will be judged—a theme that he hammers home again and again, right up to the parable of the sheep and the goats. The Church will be judged according to the fidelity of its discipleship, even at the cost of taking up the cross and following Jesus, in its readiness to lose its life for his sake.”

A: Proper 10 (13 July 2008)

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

For me, yard work is a chore, a necessary evil. So I’m lucky that I’m married to someone for whom gardening is a joy and a privilege. As soon as the weather warmed up, Brenda began to devote herself to the flower beds and other areas of the rectory grounds. And she’s had no shortage of wise counsel, as St Anne’s is blessed with a handful of people who have earned the (undoubtedly coveted) designation ‘Master Gardener.’ When we lived in California, I endured what felt like no end of complaining about the quality of the soil in our yard; it was mostly clay, very hard to work with and hard to make anything grow in. But I’ve heard loads of exuberant praise for much of the soil that Brenda is finding in Indiana. Soil quality isn’t the only factor influencing the success of a garden, but it’s certainly a major one.

On our plate today is a very familiar parable about soil. Indiana is an agricultural state—and many who aren’t farmers are gardeners—so I don’t expect most of us will have too much trouble relating to the image of scattering seeds on the ground. Of course, first-century Middle Eastern agricultural practices were a little more low-tech than they are today. Picture a Jewish Johnny Appleseed with a pouch slung over his shoulder broadcasting handfuls of seeds as he walks methodically through the field. It’s not exactly a precision operation, so some of the seeds inevitably fall on the very path where the sower is walking, which is packed down hard, so they become immediate bird food. Others happen to fall on ground that has not been very well worked over by the plow, and there’s just a thick enough layer of soil that they sprout quickly and show great promise. But they have trouble putting down roots; there’s too much gravel and clay for them to get the nutrition they need. So, after an impressive start, they wither and die. Some of the seeds fall into what looks like decent soil, but it also looks attractive to all kinds of weeds, and since it’s near the edge of the field, the farmer may not be too careful about pulling the weeds, so eventually the sprouted seeds lose out in the competition for water and sunshine and soil nutrition. Some of the seeds, though—most of them, one hopes—fall into ground that is well off the beaten path, well worked by the plow, and weed-free. The result is that they yield an abundant harvest, reproducing themselves many times over.

Like many stories Jesus tells, there are multiple layers of potential meaning here. It depends on what element of the story we choose to identify ourselves with. If we identify with the sower, the one who’s tossing the seeds around, then the “moral” of the story, so to speak, is to sow the seeds of the gospel generously and widely. A lot of them are going to land in not such good places, but a lot of them will, and the gigantic size of the harvest is going to outweigh any concern about “wasting” the seeds that get eaten by birds or choked off by weeds.

Now, you may be thinking, there’s only one person in the parable—the sower—so who else is left for us to choose to identify ourselves with? That’s true enough, but with a little imagination, I do think we can find other ways for us to ‘see ourselves’ in this story. In effect, there are at least four other “characters” in the narrative—namely, the four different kinds of soil that Jesus talks about. Are we hard clay? Are we sand? Soft loam? Pebbles? Some combination of the above? How receptive are we to the seeds of good news that God is scattering around and among us, hoping that they will take root?

I doubt that anybody here is truly the packed-down soil along the path on the margins of the field. You wouldn’t be here if you were! But soil changes and moves over time. Maybe you once were, or are moving that direction. How does soil gets hardened? By being walked on, trampled on, packed down until nothing can penetrate the surface. Could that perhaps describe the experience of someone you know? Life certainly has a way of making people feel walked on and packed down! So we develop a protective shell to keep ourselves from being hurt further. Unfortunately, our firewalls and spam filters sometimes delete a legitimate piece of email, and we miss out on something that would be refreshing and life-giving. The seeds of good news that fall on such soil have nowhere to go, so they are carried away.

What about the rocky soil? Over the course of my life, I’ve known several people who hear and receive the proclamation of the gospel of Christ and are immediately turned on, pumped up, and on fire. They remind me of the sausage connoisseur who waxes eloquent about the joys of sausage until he gets a chance to watch a batch get made—then makes a180 degree turn and never wants to look at, much less eat, sausage again. There are people who embrace the gospel with enthusiasm, and expect the Church to consistently live up to the ideals it espouses. Then they discover that the Church is full of sinners and hypocrites. They discover that Christians don’t always practice what they preach. Somebody is not there for them when they feel like they are most in need of companionship, and as a result, they fade—sometimes suddenly, sometimes gradually—they fade from participation in the regular life of the church community.

What about the weed patch? What about the soil that lets the gospel take root and flourish for a while, sometimes a good while, but then weeds and thorns grow up beside it and choke it off? Some people embrace Christian faith and practice superficially, but they don’t internalize it at the core of who they are. Membership and service in the church is just one more “notch on the belt” or a “trophy in the case.” They feel like they’re doing something good and making a contribution to society. But they keep their faith compartmentalized. It’s just one more priority to be juggled, and when work or family (to say nothing of adversity)—when the stress of life ramps way up and screams loudly, they inevitably start doing triage, the way an Emergency Room nurse decides what patients get treated now and who has to wait. In most cases, religious practice gets put on ice while other seemingly more pressings concerns are taken care of.

And then there’s the good soil, soil that has been well plowed, well-worked with a shovel and a hoe, soil that is easy for the gardener to do what he or she wants to do with it. This is soil that is open to being penetrated, willing to make room. This is soil that has the capacity and resources to nourish that which has been planted in it. This, my brothers and sisters in Christ, is the kind of soil we want to be. We do not want to allow life to harden us to the gifts that God wants to share with us—as it were, biting our nose to spite out face. We want to have a realistic and patient understanding of what lies ahead on the road of discipleship—which always includes the prospect of disillusionment and disappointment. Our brothers and sisters will let us down. We want to put the practice of our faith not only first among our priorities, but at the center of our lives, letting it order everything else so they don’t take over. And we want to bear fruit—fruit for the glory of God, fruit for our own salvation, fruit for a broken and hurting world, fruit for the redemption of the cosmos.

Here’s where the parable breaks down, though: You see, actual soil doesn’t get to choose what it’s going to be. But we do. If we show the slightest bit of receptivity, the real Master Gardener knows what soil additives we need to be made fruitful soil, yielding a rich harvest for the Kingdom of God. Praised be Jesus Christ. Amen.

Showing My Work

My new Assistant is preaching this Sunday, so I have no homily of my own to post. However, for those twisted minds that are interested in the process of sermon preparation, I will here (and in subsequent posts) share the nuts and bolts in the process of preparing to preach on August 31st. (Yeah, that sounds extreme. But I've got four weeks of vacation between now and then, so it's still within my usual six-week sermon incubation cycle.)

My task today was first to pray over the entire process of constructing and delivering this sermon. I actually knelt down and lit a candle. It's important for a preacher to pray. This isn't my sermon; it's the Lord's, and I've got to give the Holy Spirit unencumbered title to the whole thing right off.

Done.

Now I look at the appointed readings for that day (Year A: Proper 17 [RCL]), and just jot down some preliminary thoughts ... mostly questions, actually. Here they are:

Matthew 16:21-28
Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”

• It is so tempting to literalize—and therefore ‘psychologize’—this situation, and wonder whether Jesus actually did tell them about his Passion in the sort of detail mentioned here, or whether Jesus himself can be understood to have been aware of those details in the moment. If we say No, then the question arises, what is the historical antecedent of this account, which occurs multiple times across the synoptic narrative? If we say Yes, then the question arises, How could the 12 have been so clueless when the Passion actually arrived? (The trick, of course, is to surrender to neither question, and take the account on its own terms.)
• Peter’s role here may not be of tremendous significance in and of itself, but it is a tile in the final mosaic that establishes his position within the system.
• The polyvalence of “Get behind me…” is a powerful stimulus to reflection on this passage.
• Again … apropos of the first bullet above … to Matthew’s eventual reader, Jesus using cross-related imagery, while significant and powerful, is not dissonant. It’s a familiar element in the symbolic vocabulary. But if we attempt to put ourselves into that actual moment (inadvisable by scholars, but very Ignatian!), the neon is suddenly turned on. “What’s all this cross business about? Where’s he getting that?”
• Moreover, the call to cross-taking is not extended merely to those who are interested in “extra credit.” Those who decline the invitation appear to not face a happy prospect.

Jeremiah 15:15-21
O LORD, you know; remember me and visit me, and take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In your forbearance take me not away; know that for your sake I bear reproach. Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart; for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. I did not sit in the company of merrymakers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone, because your hand was upon me, for you had filled me with indignation. Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail? Therefore thus says the LORD: “If you return, I will restore you, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth. They shall turn to you, but you shall not turn to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save you and deliver you, says the LORD. I will deliver you out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.”

· Can we call this a literary iteration of the “Passion of the Prophet Jeremiah”? In light of the gospel pericope, we can see Jesus as the one who takes up Jeremiah’s prophetic mantle, and suffers similar consequences.

Romans 12:9-21
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

· This reading is intended to stand on its own, of course, and not necessarily comment on the gospel. Yet, it does, in its exhortation to patience in tribulation, and returning blessing for cursing.

Psalm 26:1-8
1 Give judgment for me, O Lord,
for I have lived with integrity; *
I have trusted in the Lord and have not faltered.
2 Test me, O Lord, and try me; *
examine my heart and my mind.
3 For your love is before my eyes; *
I have walked faithfully with you.
4 I have not sat with the worthless, *
nor do I consort with the deceitful.
5 I have hated the company of evildoers; *
I will not sit down with the wicked.
6 I will wash my hands in innocence, O Lord, *
that I may go in procession round your altar,
7 Singing aloud a song of thanksgiving *
and recounting all your wonderful deeds.
8 Lord, I love the house in which you dwell *
and the place where your glory abides.

· In context, this Psalm passage highlight the “innocent victim” dimension of our Lord’s Passion.

That's it for now. Next week I'll look at some commentaries and do some serious exegesis, probably focusing on the Matthew reading.