Pentecost 19B

The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.
Psalm 19:8

James 5:13-18

¹³ Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any joyful? They should sing songs of praise. ¹⁴ Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵ The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up, and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.

¹⁶ Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. ¹⁷ Elijah was a human like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. ¹⁸ Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth yielded its harvest.

James Intro

• Date still is unknown. One source said it even night predate 1 Thessalonians that's considered the earliest NT book. A friend's study bible said well into the second century, which feels far too late to me.

• Author almost definitely wasn't Jesus' disciple James Zebedee; it well could have been Jesus bio bro James.

• Written to diasporic Jewish Christians who lived either fairly nearby or relatively far away—take your pick.

James definitely is an "insider" document addressed to people established in their faith, encouraging them to greater compliance to the demands of the commands and – by extension – to The Way of Jesus of Nazareth. As doers of the words and not merely hearers (James 1:22), James' intended audience is reaching for a level of maturity that encompasses their economic, political, social, intellectual, and everyday life. In short, every aspect of all of life.

James carries echoes of Deuteronomy and Jeremiah, texts the Jewish Christians would have been familiar with. James knows Matthew's Sermon on the Mount and Luke's Sermon on the Plain; James throughout is about doing the word. Remember the community's Jewish roots!

In style and content, like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job (Psalms sometimes gets included) James also is in the tradition of OT Wisdom literature. Wisdom in scripture is the fruit of spiritual maturity and deep life experience. Biblical wisdom discerns actions with an open heart and an open mind, makes space for mercy and grace. As we've seen in psalms and proverbs along with other OT writings, wisdom makes a place at the table. Wisdom trusts resurrection happens out of death.

James authorship update:

Not quite perfect synchronicity, but about a week after I published this James blog I happened upon Luke Timothy Johnson's opinion on the author of James. He considers James one of the earliest New Testament books; it clearly doesn't draw upon the synoptics.

"James contains no references to events in Jesus [of Nazareth's' life but it bears striking testimony to Jesus' words. Jesus' sayings are embedded in James' exhortations in a form that is clearly not dependent on the written gospels."

James Content

Life never has been about a supposedly autonomous individual; no one live by themselves or for themselves. James writes about being connected to my neighbor whose neighbor I become. We live in communal interdependence under the commandments (law!) and under the prophets (grace!). Just as God's nascent people Israel learned, obedience that regards the neighbor's good as my own good leads to a life of freedom.

This isn't about works-righteousness or about becoming human doings rather than human beings. As Paul of Tarsus, church fathers and mothers, the Reformers and those of us in their lineage knew and still affirm, salvation is God's gift without human cost, yet the gift demands human response. Theologian of grace Martin Luther said he'd love to be called Doctor of Good Works; John Calvin said there is no knowledge of God without obedience.

Reformer Martin Luther famously did not at all care for this letter by James. He called it "an epistle of straw, with nothing of the nature of the gospel about it."

But given all of its life-giving and life-sustaining content, why didn't Luther love and admire James? I wish I'd written down the source, but someone somewhere suggested just maybe Pastor Martin wasn't crazy about the idea of serving some of his more rustic, less civilized nearby neighbors.


Today's Second Reading

This passage is mostly written to church leaders, particularly those in what you might call more active, direct service ministries: pastors, ruling elders, evangelism committees, Stephen Ministers (not that prayer isn't a vital activity).

This short scripture is an excellent description of faithfully doing the word, especially within the community of the local church. It presents is a brief capsule of James ongoing concern for relationships of individual to community, community to individual and their intertwined interdependence.

If you're suffering—pray! If you're happy—sing praises. 5:13

Pray for the sick; anoint them with oil—a practice inherited from Hebrew Bible times. Throughout scripture, oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and therefore of being set part as holy for a purpose. Monarchs and prophets were anointed with oil. Priests were anointed with oil. A person being baptized is anointed to follow Jesus into the threefold ministry of prophet, priest, and sovereign. Although (to my knowledge) there are no recorded instances of Jesus or his disciples using oil in addition to praying or laying on of hands, nothing in scripture forbids it, so oil comes under the category of adiaphora or indifferent things, neither commanded nor forbidden. James most likely assumes oil as a natural gift of creation will supplement the spiritual offering of prayer.

Confess your sins to one another? James doesn't explicitly acknowledge Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ of God (is that one reason for Luther's reservations about the book?), yet this admonition hints at Jesus bestowing the office of the keys on his followers on resurrection Sunday evening, recorded in John 20:21-23.

James offers an example of answered prayer by citing Elijah's plea to heaven for rain. What's your take on that?

The people all answered together,
"All the words the Lord has spoken
we will do!"
Exodus 19:8

Pentecost 18B

They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never fade or dry up,
and they prosper in all they do.
Psalm 1:3

Mark 9:30-37

³⁰ They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it, ³¹ for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." ³² But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

³³ Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" ³⁴ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.
³⁵ He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." ³⁶ Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, ³⁷ "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."

Second Passion Prediction

In Mark's gospel, Jesus' journey to the cross is relentless; Jesus' death definitively reveals his identity first announced in Mark 1:1—The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God. Common to a trend throughout Mark, an outsider rather than one of Jesus' insider buddies is the first to recognize it: "Now when the centurion who stood facing Jesus saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, 'Truly this man was God’s Son!'" Mark 15:39

Last Sunday in ultra-Roman Caesarea Philippi, we heard Jesus' first foretell his suffering, death, and resurrection. This week as they're socializing back in Capernaum after Jesus' transfiguration, again he mentions his upcoming betrayal, death, and resurrection—once again to followers who are both dense and afraid to ask for a further explanation that might enlighten them.


Who is the Greatest?

Amidst deadly serious revelations of suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection they didn't even dare ask about, Jesus' disciples quarreled about social status. There was no middle class then and there (a middle class evolved around the time and activities of the industrial revolution); the world was top-heavy with a few super-rich at the top, a sprawling underclass at the bottom. Similar to here and now, everyone was status-hungry. Just like today, associating with wealthy influential higher-ups was one way people tried to augment their own societal rank. There actually was no class mobility, making the disciples' concerns about greatness all the more ironic. In addition, honor and shame were huge!

9:35, "Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Honor and shame were huge in that society; in order to achieve honor on God's terms, a person must closely associate with people who have no honor?

On top of their empty fantasies of wealth that never could happen, Jesus' followers still expected a conventionally powerful military messiah who would annihilate Israel's enemies and restore the Davidic monarchy. Jesus' heritage was indeed Davidic, but remember, even the concept of a king "like the other nations" was alien to God's intent.


Servant God

Throughout scripture we encounter the surprise of a Servant God who inverts and changes everything most humans imagine about divinity. After the spectacular glory and bling of the transfiguration, yet halfway to Calvary, the end of today's gospel account sums it up:

Jesus sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." 9:35-37

This is far from sentimentalizing children; in that culture, children were the most subservient members of society. A child had zero social status; a child was beneath the lowest servant.

Welcoming a child was tantamount to welcoming Jesus, the incarnation of the servant God; therefore, to welcome a child was to welcome and embrace God. Jesus' explanation really was an icon of the "on earth as it is in heaven" Upside-Down Kingdom Donald Kraybill wrote about, with the book title a model for our own cruciform discipleship.


Where We Live

During this century's aughts, "what's really important" became a common buzz phrase as everyone tried to untangle fallout from 911, internet expansion made the world flatter and flatter, a global financial crisis revealed major cracks, and additional private concerns unsettled most of us. Again and again we got used to calming our anxieties, backtracking, assessing where we were, and asking ourselves "what's really important."

It can be complicated, because we need to connect with other people for social and emotional health; we need others for professional well-being. But with November elections in the USA less than two months away, with too many declared and undeclared wars worldwide, with climate change and global warning, what do we argue about? What are our major concerns?

And what is most important for those of us in the world of the church? The physical property must remain in code-compliant, safe, usable condition. Replacing a tattered or worn out anything usually is a good move. But does preoccupation with those smaller details interfere with our prayerful attention to ways we can affect larger issues? Think about it! Pray about it!

Pentecost 17B

Return, O my soul, to your rest,
for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
The Lord has delivered my soul from death,
my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
I walk before the Lord in the land of the living.
Psalm 116:7-8

Isaiah 50:4-10

4 The Lord God has given me a trained tongue,
that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught.
5 The Lord God has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious;
I did not turn backward.
6 I gave my back to those who struck me
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face
from insult and spitting.

7 The Lord God helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
8 he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me?

Let us stand in court together.
Who are my adversaries?
Let them confront me.
9 It is the Lord God who helps me;
who will declare me guilty?
All of them will wear out like a garment;
the moth will eat them up.

10 Who among you fears the Lord
and obeys the voice of his servant,
who walks in darkness
and has no light,
yet trusts in the name of the Lord
and relies upon his God?

Today's Gospel

• Mark 8:27-38

In Mark's gospel, Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and to the cross is particularly incessant and relentless. Today's gospel reading in heavily Roman-dominated Caesarea Philippi includes Jesus' "But who do you say that I am?" challenge, followed by Petter identifying Jesus as the Christ (27-29); Jesus' first of three passion predictions in Mark's gospel (8:31); Jesus' charge to his followers to take up the cross in order to lose their life and to save it (34-35).


The Suffering Servant

The Church long has identified the four Suffering Servant passages in Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) with Jesus of Nazareth:

• Isaiah 42:1-4
• Isaiah 49:1-6
• Isaiah 50:4-10
• Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12

Isaiah 53:8 records the servant's death in evocatively poetic words the librettist to Handel's Messiah used: "He was cut off out of the land of the living."


Today's First Reading

As we continue in Ordinary Time and Sundays after Pentecost, the first reading for today is the third servant song. It also is one of the scriptures for Sunday of the Passion (the Sixth Sunday in Lent), and for Wednesday in Holy Week during all three lectionary years.

Third Isaiah most likely was recorded toward the end of the exile in Babylon. The iconic Cyrus of Persia had overpowered Babylonian domination and begun to established his own long-lasting empire. Although the church identifies Jesus of Nazareth as this suffering servant, for Second Isaiah, God's servant is God's people Israel—some times a collective servant; at other times an individual.

Scholars have noticed striking consonance of today's scripture with Lamentations, particularly 3:21-24, which well may have influenced Isaiah's poetry.

But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
God's mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
"The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."

This no longer is the endless recycling of the same thing; this is resurrection hope!


Where We Live

The Lord God has given me a trained tongue, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Isaiah 50:4

The ability to provide words of comfort is a gift of God, not something we generate on our own. Whether we speak more formally in a sermon or leading a class, if we write poetry or sit at the kitchen table with a friend, God will give us what we need to say. Different translations say tongue of a disciple, tongue of a teacher, instructed to know, the right words, tongue of the wise, words of wisdom. For myself, I worry a lot more about what to say in a one-on-one situation than if I'm preaching or teaching, but sit back; breathe. Wait! Don't be in a hurry. God will provide for the moment.

The gospel writers saw Jesus of Nazareth in the suffering servant. Jesus calls us to the kind of servant leadership he shows us. But how – or does? – this scripture connect with today's gospel with Jesus' charge to deny ourselves (what does that mean?) take up a cross, and follow him?

Pentecost 16B

Waters shall break forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert
the burning sand shall become a pool
and the thirsty ground
springs of water
Isaiah 35:6-7

Isaiah 35:4-7a

⁴ Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. God will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. God will come and save you."

⁵ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; ⁶ then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;
⁷ the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.

Isaiah

In a formal sense, the long book of Isaiah divides into three main sections:
• chapters 1-39, 1st Isaiah, before the Babylonian exile;
• chapters 40-55, 2nd Isaiah, during the exile;
• chapters 56-66, 3rd Isaiah, after the exile.

But that's not quite the way it really is. First Isaiah essentially is over when chapter 34 ends. After a series of judgments in previous chapters that lead up to the tempered news in Isaiah 36–38 of no more Assyrians, but then bad news of impending exile to Babylon in Isaiah 39, today's chapter 35 brings the spirit of hope, renewal, and resurrection we find in Second Isaiah (40 through 55) that likely was written mostly during the exile, and then edited or redacted after homecoming to Jerusalem. In addition, the fabulous Messianic banquet with its feast of fat things in Isaiah 25:6-9 almost definitely is not from Isaiah of Jerusalem.


Today's First Reading

Vengeance in 35:4 can refer to vindication, benefit, a payment that restores justice, or simply God's response or answer, as in "God`will come and save you" suggests.

When John the Baptist was in prison, John told his followers to go and ask his cousin Jesus if he [Jesus] was the promised one "who is to come," or if they needed to keep looking and searching for someone else. Jesus told John's followers, "Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, dead are raised, good news proclaimed to the poor…" [and blessed are those who take no offense, do not consider me a stumbling block/scandal."] Jesus assured John he was the promised one who'd change the course of history. Matthew 11:4,5,6 Luke 7:22,23

This Isaiah vision is even more dramatic than Jesus' message to John. Springs and streams, maybe actual rivers, glorify the desert wilderness. Water is life! People who used to be-lame walk, and they leap like gazelles. Formerly speechless people talk—and sing!

Isaiah 35 comes shortly before bad news of deportation and exile to Babylon.


Practicing Resurrection

Like all of scripture, First Isaiah, or Isaiah of Jerusalem celebrates the effects of God's presence. Throughout scripture, death isn't only when you stop breathing and your body shuts down. Death is everything that limits a full life. Death is whatever interferes with our common life. Death is there when creation doesn't flourish. Resurrection sometimes restores spiritual life, sometimes physical or emotional or communal health.

In baptism we received God's Spirit of Resurrection from the dead. Like God's promise through whichever Isaiah recorded today's scripture passage, like Jesus' reply to his cousin John the Baptist, God often calls us to be the reversal, the newness, the resurrection to new life God promises and people need. Jesus was the promised one who'd change the course of history; now we are Jesus' presence in the world. As we practice resurrection!

Do you know Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by farmer-poet-theologian Wendell Berry? Among other things he advises us:

Every day do something that won't compute.
Love the Lord.
Love the world.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
…
Practice resurrection.

As the mountains surround Jerusalem,
so the Lord surrounds his people
from this time on and forevermore.
Psalm 125:2