September 3

Psalm 15, James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-23

This week is unusual in that all three of these readings speak to similar themes. The Psalm was probably part of an entrance ritual during some worship event at the Temple. It seems to set forth requirements for entry into the holy space for worship. What is particularly striking about this list is how different it is from the list that evolved to be followed during Jesus' time. Then the requirements for entry to worship at the Temple or a synogogue involved following the "purity code." We're probably most familiar with the kosher food laws as reflections of this code, but it was much more extensive than that. These are the laws that kept eunuchs, lepers, non-Jews, the mentally ill, menstruating women and others away from worship for fear of contaminating others. These restrictions were almost always based on something physical.
This Psalm, however, indicates that the requirements for joining the worshipping community had more to do with the way one lives one's life outside the Temple rather than anything to do with the body's physical nature. To paraphrase MLK, Jr., it's about the content of the character rather than the color (or health) of the skin.
This Psalm reminded me of a practice in John Calvin's Geneva, where "fencing the table" was standard for Holy Communion. What that meant is that before someone could come to church to receive the sacrament, they had to be examined by elders of the church as to how they had been living their lives since the last time Holy Communion had been taken. Approaching the table depended on the faithful quality of their lives. A practice we have since changed, for good reasons.
This Psalm connects, then, with Jesus' long discussion about purity with the Pharisees and scribes and his own disciples. A nice summary of Jesus' interaction with the purity code can be found in Marcus Borg's little book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. The general summary is that Jesus again and again defied the purity code by whom he healed, with whom he ate and spoke and in his teachings. Here he takes on the notion that one can be pure (read faithful, Godly, righteous) by eating the right things. While kosher food laws may make a good deal of nutritional sense (and the washing of hands a good health practice), Jesus says it does not make one a righteous or good or faithful person. It's the same with other ritual observances that were created by human tradition, not commanded by God. It's not what we eat or how we worship that separates us from God, but what comes out of us in word and deed.
The James reading continues this same theme, with the kind of frank directness that is indicative of this treatise (not really a letter, though it seems to begin like one. More a manual for Christian life). Martin Luther hated James because he thought it could lead people to think that you can earn your way to heaven by your actions on earth. That's what he thought the Catholic Church was urging people to do by buying indulgences or masses, etc. One could read James that way, but one could also see James as continuing Jesus' insistence that true faithfulness has to do with how you live in the world, not just with what you say, in worship or elsewhere. His summation in verse 27 that pure religion is not about worship or ritual practice at all, but caring for the "widows and orphans" (shorthand for those with the least power, possessions and respect in his world) and not taking on the values of the world in how one lives one's daily life seems to reflect what both Jesus and the Psalmist had in mind.

More tomorrow. And from you? shelly

August 27

Charles and Cathy both make interesting points here. Charles picks up the sense of Jesus' words in verse 63 that it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. That's what makes this passage so difficult. You have both the flesh eating metaphor (or not a metaphor, as Cathy notes, depending on your theology of holy communion) and then Jesus seeming to contradict himself by noting that flesh is useless. One commentator I read lifted up some ancient commentators' idea that the "flesh" to which Jesus refers here is actually the "Word," (logos in Greek, see the first chapter of John). So another image here is that we eat the Word (verse 63 also, "the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.").
Then there is Peter's wonderful response to his total confusion over what Jesus is trying to get across here. Jesus asks if the difficulty here, or the offensive language about flesh eating, or, per Charles, the idea that Jesus will not lead a political movement, will also send them away. "To whom can we go?" Peter says. A question I have often asked myself.

August 27

Psalm 84, John 6:56-69

This week we are back to John and the "I am the bread of life" passages. The context of this particular set of verses (cut out by the lectionary designers from a larger passage and that drives me crazy when they chop up a passage that is a unit like this) is a dispute with a group of Jewish leaders about Jesus' saying that he would give them his flesh to eat. In Judaism there has always been a strong prohibition of cannibalism, and what Jesus said smacked of just that. So here Jesus is trying to (pardon the pun) flesh out what he is trying to get across to them.

John's gospel in many places seems to contain messages to refute the Gnostic movement of his time. Though this is a vast generalization of a complex movement, one tenet of gnosticism is to deny the human nature of Jesus and lift up only the spiritual, divine part. John wanted it to be absolutely clear that Jesus was flesh, and that we are called as fleshy beings to unite with Jesus. Though John does not include a story of the Last Supper, here he clearly is talking about the sacrament of Holy Communion and a physical ritual to bring us into one being with Jesus. The language Jesus uses here seems to be intentionally offensive and crude, even. But if Jesus is indeed flesh, then we can be one with Jesus in our flesh. In addition, it seems to me, this is a strong case that Jesus (therefore God) does not ignore or denigrate issues that fleshy people get involved in in favor of only the pure, spiritual matters. To be "in the world but not of the world" as the old saying puts it, means truly that Jesus and we as believers are God's disciples in the world.

So I read this and see that religion is not to be divorced from flesh and the things of the world in which we as flesh are enmeshed. Religion is not to be an escape from the hard things, but something we carry with us as we plunge fully into our world. This is a hard saying. Many want to run away from it and say the church should not be involved in worldly things. Jesus was. More later, and from you?

August 20

Ephesians 5:15-20 (paired with Psalm 100)

This week is a little different from usual. I'm focusing on three verses of the Ephesians passage, verses 18-20 where Paul encourages the church folk not to get drunk and have raucous parties fueled by alcohol, but rather to get raucous in the Spirit, singing and praying together. Joyful noises, as it were, are to be encouraged as a way to build up not only the individual but the Christian community as a whole.
As I read this, the old Augustine quote that one who sings prays twice came immediately to mind, with the linking of prayer and singing, something which really moves through almost every world religion and is not unique to Christianity. Actually most Christian churches are probably more spoken word-centered than any other world religion. Traditional Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Shinto, etc. all include much singing/chanting as prayer.
I actually became a Christian not because of convincing theological arguments or sermons, but because someone invited me to sing at her church. I learned how to pray by singing before I ever figured out how to pray in my head or with spoken words. I actually think I prayed by singing before I understood that's what I was doing.
Elsewhere Paul says that the Spirit prays for us with "sighs too deep for words," when we cannot pray. I imagine that as a kind of song.
So this week we will be singing to accompany brief thoughts on the five classic kinds of prayer: confession, intercession (praying for others), supplication (praying for ourselves), thanksgiving and praise. Any thoughts on how prayer and song go together for you?

August 13, 2

Psalm 34 is paired with the Ephesians this week and one verse of that strikes such a chord with me. Verse 18: God is near to the brokenhearted and saves the "crushed in spirit." In our society a broken heart is so often equated with having a love affair go wrong or not achieving some goal or losing out to someone else in a contest of some sort. I don't think that's what this means. I read the reports daily from Lebanon and northern Israel and Iraq and I think of the broken hearted. Mary Mikael of the American University in Beirut said this week that in six days Israeli bombs undid all the work of rebuilding in Beirut over the past 15 years. That's brokenhearted. How can the Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli civilians NOT be crushed in spirit as things spiral down. How about the villagers in Darfur as yet another peace agreement crumbles? How about the single moms at the shelter in New Haven I visited who turn to drugs to try to numb the spirit-crushing poverty and frustration they face daily? How do these folk know God is near?

August 13

The texts for Sunday are Psalm 34 and Ephesians 4:25-5:2. I am especially concentrating on Ephesians, and I am struck by the verses in chapter 4 that precede this reading. There is a contrast between the "hardness of heart" described in verse 18 and the call to be "tenderhearted" in verse 32. I read a quote from Tony Campolo not long ago that says something like faithfulness consists in having your heart break for the same things that break God's heart.
The Jerusalem Bible translates verse 31 this way: "Never hold grudges or lose your temper or raise your voice to anybody or call each other names or allow any sort of spitefulness." Paul's words not to kids on a playground, but to adults in a church. HMMMM.
I'm also thinking this week about atrocities committed by American soldiers in Iraq, by Israeli and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and Israel and Palestine. Hardness of heart.