Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, October 4, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today we read Matthew’s account of Jesus’s Parable of the Wicked Tenants. This is the second of three parables that Jesus used in his encounter with the chief priests and elders in the Temple after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem on what we know as Palm Sunday. Last Sunday, we read the first parable, called the Parable of the Two Sons; next Sunday, we’ll read the third parable, known as the Parable of the King’s Wedding Feast.

As you may recall, on arriving in Jerusalem, Jesus went directly to the Temple. There, he found money changers and sellers of sacrificial doves loudly plying their trades. Infuriated by how that sacred place had been defiled, he angrily drove everyone out, overturned their tables, and began performing healing miracles. Astonished by his interference and fearing for their own authority, the chief priests and elders tried to neutralize him the next morning by questioning his authority and his right to wreak such havoc and perform such miracles. Jesus responded with classic rabbinical questioning, turning the tables on them by sharing these three parables in rapid succession.

Though the Parable of the Wicked Tenants is complicated and difficult, it’s important for us to untangle it because it’s the centerpiece of Jesus’s response to the religious leaders who questioned his authority. And so, before we read this passage in Matthew 21:33-46, which begins with this parable, let us join in this prayer for illumination:

Sing into our ears, O Spirit, the holy word of life. Tell us who we are and to whom we belong so that we may live and act with gratitude for all that you have done and given us. Amen.

All three of these parables, as well as a few others in the latter portion of Matthew’s gospel, are allegorical. An allegory is not an analogy; it is the totality of the story that makes an allegory, while it is the relationship of details that produces a good analogy. To understand and appreciate these parables, we must keep this in mind and also remember that we’re reading them two thousand years after Jesus spoke them. It’s thus important to have a basic understanding of both the parable and the real-life, contemporaneous situation that the parable reflected. If we try to impose our twenty-first century perspectives on the parable, we will lose sight of the original intent of Jesus’s story.

Good storytellers like Jesus knew what understandings, experience, and knowledge were shared by everyone listening to the story. Read verse 33 of today’s parable carefully. Read it a few times. Now go to Isaiah 5:1-7 and read those verses carefully as well. You should be able to hear how Jesus is paraphrasing Isaiah’s song, which everyone in the Temple that morning would have immediately recognized.

Isaiah’s song begins as a love song. It’s about hope and trust, and then bitter disappointment, followed by judgment. The vineyard in Isaiah is a metaphor for the people of Israel, who have failed to keep their covenant with God, allowing wild grapes – immorality and failure to follow God’s law – to contaminate their faith.

Jesus’s parable is the same, but far more intense. It begins with the landowner’s trust and generosity regarding the care of his vineyard, which are betrayed not once, but many times, including the bitterest of betrayals, when his tenants murder his son.

Remember the context here. In overturning the tables the day before, Jesus had been attempting to save the Temple from betrayal and contamination, from the corruption that had grown around it. He was trying to reinstate the covenant between God and the people, the covenant meant to guide and direct the people and preserve their faith and relationship to God. He was trying to restore the integrity of the vineyard. Even on the road to crucifixion, Jesus was offering them one last chance to save themselves and acknowledge his authority.

The crowd that listened intently knew the passage in Isaiah 5 that Jesus was paraphrasing, and they knew exactly where Jesus was going with the story; he was going to God’s judgment. Jesus ended the parable in verse 40 when he asked, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (21:40) While the chief priests and elders may have thought that it was they who owned the vineyard, the crowd knew better: they knew the landowner was God, and it was they, the crowd, who voiced the concept of God’s judgment. “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” (21:41) That divine judgment may seem harsh, but as Frederick Buechner writes in his Wishful Thinking, “The one who judges us most finally will be the one who loves us most fully.”

Jesus may have been hoping to elicit a response from the Temple leadership, but they seemed very passive and quiet, realizing far too late “that he was speaking about them.” (21:45) It was the Temple crowd who replied to his direct question; they were with Jesus every step of the way; they understood. But for the chief priests and elders, the proverbial penny hadn’t dropped. Perhaps it was impossible for it to do so; to acknowledge the place of God and Jesus in the parable would be to acknowledge Jesus’s authority, thereby diminishing their own.

Jesus used a technique in this parable that was often used by the teachers and preachers of his time. They would bracket their story with scriptural allusions at the beginning and the end of the tale, almost as a signal of where the story began and ended, and where any commentary might begin.

Thus, as we saw, Jesus began his parable with an allusion to the prophet Isaiah, and he’s now concluding it with a reference to the psalms: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:22-23) As you re-read verse 42 in the parable, you cannot help but hear the echo of that psalm, just as those listening would have. The builder is understood here to be the chief priests and elders; Jesus is the rejected stone that God has chosen as the cornerstone.

And then, the parable finished, Jesus began his commentary by saying, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” (21:44) In this brief commentary, he alluded to yet another passage in Isaiah, one the priests and crowds would also have known well. I can imagine them whispering the words of Isaiah under their breath as they listened to Jesus speaking: “He will become a sanctuary, a stone one strikes against; for both houses of Israel [the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel at the time of Isaiah] he will become a rock one stumbles over – a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble; they shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.” (Isaiah 8:14-15)

Though the crowd was very much with him, they’ve merely been eavesdroppers. He’s clearly been speaking directly to the chief priests, and once he’s finished the parable, he made that abundantly clear with his words in verse 44. And it’s then that the cumulative lessons of this parable became obvious to the leaders. Realizing that Jesus was referring to them, “they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.” (21:46) The penny has finally dropped, and the events of Holy Week have become inevitable.

We must not lose sight of who these “crowds” were. These were not rabble rousers in the streets; they were not uncontrollable mobs. Some have followed Jesus and listened intently to his words. Some have sought his miracles. Some sought salvation and deliverance. Some hoped to understand the word of God. Some may not have known all the rules of the covenant of their ancient faith, but they sought to honor it. All were in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and they were worshiping in the Temple.

And it was here, in the Temple, where the chief priests and elders labored (as if it were a vineyard) that Jesus was telling them all – crowds, chief priests, disciples, and new followers – that the Temple which the priests and elders had come to think of as their vineyard was not theirs, but God’s.

This part of the reading reminds me of a story from Stacy Swain, a minister in Massachusetts, about her student days in seminary. “A professor interrupted me mid-sentence one day in class. . .I believe we were discussing how we each understood our calls to ministry. It was my turn to speak, and I started out saying ‘I understand that my ministry is to be. . .’ when my professor suddenly jumped in. “Remember,” he said to me and to the rest of the class, “it is not your ministry. It will never be your ministry. The point that it becomes your ministry is the point when it is ministry no longer. It is the ministry that God is doing in and through you.”

These are words that should have been heard by the chief priests and elders, if only they’d had the ears to do so, and should be heard today by pastors in local churches, lay leadership working in the various ministries of a congregation, denominational leaders and teachers, and anyone who seeks to be involved in God’s vineyard here and now. We must acknowledge whose vineyard it is, and for and through whom we work. “The kingdom of God will be…given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” (21:43)

Our labor is in God’s vineyard, and it must grow from trust in God’s abiding love, even in times like these, when dark clouds gather over us. That trust is our “love-song concerning his vineyard,” as Isaiah tells us in chapter 5, and as Jesus reminds us in this parable. God plants his vineyard and leaves it to us, his tenants, to tend the vines so that we may enjoy the fruit of our labor and his love. Knowing that we work in God’s vineyard can ultimately reassure and comfort us in even the worst of times.

Joys and Concerns:

Today is World-Wide Communion Sunday. We pray for congregations of Christians around the world, throughout our nation, and here in Scottsville. Even though we do not break the bread of life together today, nor drink together from the cup of salvation, we still – and always – share a profound ministry with and witness to Jesus Christ. We are in communion with our brothers and sisters in faith, and we share in the sacrament of communion with them in our hearts and homes.

We pray for all who are struggling with Covid-19, including the President and the First Lady. May they find healing and strength, and may our medical and scientific leaders conquer this terrible virus safely.

We lift prayers of thanksgiving for all who care for the sick.

Let us pray together:

You call us, O God, to a place of plenty. You fill our hands with well-wrought tools. Before us you spread rich resources. You offer us the privilege of meaningful work in your name in your vineyard, and you invite us to dedicate the fruits of our labor to the goal of establishing a commonwealth of justice for all people.

You give ultimate purpose to our lives.

Surrounded by your abundance and generosity, we ask for one thing more in order to do the work you call us to. Grant us courage: the courage to turn from our greed, which whispers that the fruit is ours alone; the courage to turn from our self-centeredness, which tempts us to feel unfairly obligated when you remind us of our covenant; the courage to turn away from our pride, which lures us into setting ourselves in your place and thinking we can create a commonwealth of justice for ourselves alone; the courage to be faithful, trusting that you will fulfill your promise to feed both body and spirit.

We live in gratitude for the trust you place in us and the courage you bless us with.

In your name and that of your Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for September 30, 2020

Dear Friends,

When did you first learn about the Ten Commandments? I first read them in my grandmother’s antique shop, where there were a few framed needlepoint samplers with the Ten Commandments delicately spelled out in multi-colored thread. I loved my grandmother and her crowded shop, which was filled with so many fascinating treasures, and I spent a lot of time there after school. For some reason, those samplers grabbed my attention. The frames were worn and the cloth was yellowing, but they captured my imagination as I thought about all the hours that had been put into creating them and the families who had displayed them on their walls.

I certainly heard the Ten Commandments in church and Sunday School, but it wasn’t until I was preparing for confirmation and had to memorize them that I gave them much real thought. I think it would be hard today to find samplers of the Ten Commandments in dusty antique shops, and I’m not aware of confirmation class curricula these days that require kids to memorize them. I’d love to know what your earliest memories are of this story in Exodus and what you heard about the Ten Commandments from a preacher, teacher, or maybe a parent.

Before we read Exodus 20:1-20, I invite you to join one another across the miles that separate us in this prayer for illumination:

God who speaks to us, your law is perfect, reviving our souls; your commandments are clear, enlightening our understanding. May your Spirit illumine the Word we study today, that our eyes may be opened and our souls revived. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.

Before the pandemic required us to halt communal worship at church during Lent last spring, I was in the midst of a sermon series on the Lord’s Prayer. I anticipated doing another series in the fall, this time on the Ten Commandments, and devoting each of ten Sundays to a single commandment. I promise that when we return to corporate worship in church – and that day will certainly come eventually! – I’ll move that plan up from the back burner. I look forward to exploring each commandment in depth with you then. For now, since Exodus 20:1-20 is one of the Lectionary readings for this coming Sunday, I welcome this opportunity to use this note to look at the Ten Commandments as a whole.

This passage has also been called the Decalogue, which I prefer, or the Ten Words, which is the meaning of the word decalogue. When we refer to this passage simply as the Ten Commandments, I’m afraid we restrict its wisdom and potential and read it too narrowly as only a set of limiting rules. I know many people, including too many children like me at my grandmother’s shop, who hear the term and can think only of a small collection of confined, defined laws handed down by a controlling God whose purpose is to take away our independence. Read this way, the Decalogue is reduced to a set of moral principles that can be counted on the fingers of two hands. But they are so very much more!

I am by no means saying that the commandments aren’t important; they are, and they’re necessary for salvation. But if we don’t look beyond their role as moral imperatives, we would be unable to authentically discern how to live in the larger community of faith. John Calvin, who founded our Reformed tradition, did so when he described the “threefold use of the law,” the three uses for the Ten Commandments.

The first use is this: by showing each of us how we are to live before God and neighbor, the Commandments reveal sin we are often unaware of or hide from ourselves. They show us that we’re not the perfect, good people that we may think we are. They keep us from being smug and push us to confront our own shortcomings even when we think we have none.

Second, the words of the Decalogue serve an important civic function because they restrain us from falling into sin. Sin, as Calvin teaches, is never simply individual; it is corporate, social, religious, and institutional. If we understand that, we can see how the Decalogue helps to ensure that we will stay on the path to community and on the path that serves community.

Our ongoing discussions about the sin of racism, for example, are revealing the acute complexities of this sin in America. Systemic racism is profound and silent and often so deep-rooted that it’s hidden in the depths of our consciousness. Indeed, systemic racism is embedded so deeply that we often cannot see it; and even when we can glimpse it, we deny its existence. Only by recognizing both the individual and communal nature of this existential shortcoming can we ever hope to truly confront it and then work to overcome it. The shared nature of the commandments reinforces our obligations to obey them in all their nuanced parameters as they affect our personal, religious, and national identity. And as we share the pain of recognizing our complicity in the sin of systemic racism, the Commandments give us the courage to conquer it.

Finally, and most importantly to Calvin, the Commandments serve an indispensable, positive role in our Christian life. Calvin reminds us that they are, as Psalm 119:105 tells us, a “lamp unto our feet.” They guide us in our life before both God and our neighbors; they give us structure for our behavior and a means of genuine discourse with one another and with God. They enable us to aspire to live in righteousness out of an abundance of gratitude for God’s grace. On their own, the laws contained in the Decalogue or Commandments are fleeting; we must meditate on them continually in order to be open to God’s spirit and God’s inspiration and to live as God would have us live.

God’s divine intent is to guide God’s people. When we isolate God’s guidance on a beautiful sampler or in an assigned memorization task for confirmation, we lose the context, which can diminish the meaning and weight of that guidance. Thus, it behooves us to remember the context of these “Ten Words.” As Samuel Wells has written of the Decalogue, “God has done what Israel could not do for itself – he has given it freedom in the crossing of the Red Sea. He now gives his people a second gift – the means of keeping that freedom.”

Though it may seem counter-intuitive that a list of rules will preserve freedom, the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, do just that. They comprise the essential guidance that preserves, nurtures, and even expands the Israelites’ newly-given freedom. In earlier notes, we saw how the people of Israel and the people in Matthew become a congregation, a community. Newborn communities, much like newborn babies, cannot survive on their own. They need rules and boundaries in order to grow into true congregations. This is why the Decalogue is not so much a list of moral imperatives as it is a way of living in community and living gratefully in the presence of the creator God.

Rather than being a rigid, confining list of rules, the Commandments provide us with the means of living our lives abundantly. They enable us to find new ways to relate to God, family, neighbors, and even ourselves. We do this, as Calvin tells us, thanks to the threefold use of the laws in the Decalogue. First, the laws enable us to recognize our sin; second, they help us to avoid it as we live in genuine community with our neighbors. Finally and most importantly, to free ourselves of sin, we are called to continually ponder the Commandments; to do so deeply is to become aware of and grateful for the fathomless grace of God. Thus it is that within the God-given structure of the Decalogue, we can more fully and reverently live.

“If you notice something evil in yourself,” said Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), “correct it; if something good, take care of it; if something beautiful, cherish it; if something sound, preserve it; if something unhealthy, heal it. Do not weary of reading the commandments of the Lord, and you will be adequately instructed by them so as to know what to avoid and what to go after.”

Let us pray together:

Rescuing God, you brought us out of the land of captivity, out of the house of slavery. Forgive us when we unwittingly fall into the many forms of slavery that have emerged in our modern world. Remind us of your commandments so that we may live with individual and communal integrity. Forgive us through Christ, who redeems us from the brokenness of slavery that we might savor your presence, your creation, and your beloved community.

Holy Protector, you bring us out of slavery. Today, we pray for the release of those persecuted by cruel governments, by oppressive ideologies, by systemic injustice, or by global pandemic. We pray for the release of those held captive by crushing grief and paralyzing memories, piercing loneliness and deadening hopelessness.

With humility and trust, we ask you to make us aware of your divine compassion and care for us and all who suffer. We pray that all may know that you are the Lord our God, who brings us into the land of promise and the house of salvation, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, September 27, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today’s gospel reading marks a significant change for Jesus and his followers. To fully understand this text, we must put it into context by examining what has happened in the preceding days.

Only five weeks ago, we read Peter’s brave declaration in Caesarea Philippi that Jesus was “the Messiah, the living Son of God.” (Matthew 16:16) Jesus then told his disciples what was to come: that he must go to Jerusalem, be arrested and tried; that he would suffer and be crucified; and on the third day, he told them, he would be resurrected. As you may recall, Peter, “the rock,” couldn’t accept this. He declared that such a thing should never happen to his beloved teacher, the one in whom he and so many others had begun to invest their hope for a different kind of deliverance than Jesus was predicting. He was looking for a savior who would vanquish their Roman enemies. He couldn’t begin to understand a savior who would sacrifice himself to vanquish sin itself.

I know it’s still September, but this passage in Matthew brings us into Holy Week. As we say farewell to summer and begin a new season, we remain in pandemic limbo. What better message for this season, which we’ve always thought of as a new beginning of a new program year, than the message of Holy Week, which begins a new reality for us all?

Before we pick up today’s reading of Matthew 21:23-32, let us share together in this prayer for illumination:

Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit, give us the words of life, that we may understand your way and follow your truth, in Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.

And so, here we are, in the midst of the action of Holy Week. The first twenty-two verses of this chapter have been full of action. And now, having been received so triumphantly as he entered Jerusalem on what we’ve come to know as Palm Sunday, Jesus went directly to the Temple. He found it defiled by money changers, there because Roman money was unacceptable in the Temple. Worshipers had to obtain Hebrew money in order to buy the doves for sacrifice at this time of the Passover. “Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.” (21:12)

The chief priests and scribes were furious at this sacrilegious disruption and threat to their authority. After a brief encounter with them, Jesus left the Temple and the city, going on to Bethany to spend the night.

The next morning, “when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him. . .” (21:23). In today’s vernacular, that would read: the chief priests and elders came looking for him and they had an agenda. As I read Matthew, I’m imagining some pretty frantic meetings overnight, ending with a resounding vote to stop Jesus as soon as he entered the Temple the next day. Things were tense enough without this disruptive, rabble-rousing Jesus overturning tables and shouting at people.

The city was filled to overflowing for Passover, and in response to the crowds in the city and growing discontent in the countryside, Rome had significantly increased its military presence. Even Pontius Pilate came to town to keep things locked down. It was a virtual powder-keg, and the priests and elders thought this upstart Jesus was just making a politically and religiously charged situation worse. He had to be stopped.

There’s no doubt that the priests and elders relished the power they thought they had in the midst of occupation, and the appearance of power was important if they were to keep the peace. As they saw it, doing so was their primary role. So long as things stayed calm, they hoped Rome would inflict no additional hardship on the beleaguered people. They therefore sought to show the gathering crowds, the disciples, and Jesus himself that he had no authority and thus no power. Hence their question, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (21:23) Surely, here in sophisticated Jerusalem, this raggedy itinerant preacher would have no satisfactory answer!

There’s a famous story about a student who asked a rabbi, “Why do rabbis always answer a question with a question?” The rabbi pondered a moment and said, “So what’s wrong with a question?” And here, Jesus responds in typically rabbinic fashion, promising to answer their question if they answered his. Had I been one of those chief priests or elders, I think that would have been my first clue that this was no run-of-the-mill rural preacher; this man might be a force to be reckoned with, and all our plans may well be on very shaky ground.

But Jesus gave them no time to fully contemplate his response. Without a moment of hesitation, he launched directly into his question. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (21:25)

John was a beloved man whose deep faith had been known to many, especially after his martyrdom at the hands of Herod. The chief priests were now in a no-win situation. Any answer they gave would offend God and/or the crowds. They may have thought they were laying a trap for Jesus when they questioned his authority, but they must have realized immediately that the tables were turned: it was they who were in a trap. Jesus was turning the tables again!

With their purpose thus defeated, they retreated into ignorance. “So they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’” (21:27) Their counterparts today would just as glibly say, “I can’t recall.” And so, just as he’d told them he would, Jesus refused to respond to their question. “He said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’” (21:27)

Jesus wasn’t engaging in a childish tit-for-tat here. With neither sarcasm nor vengefulness, he immediately launched into a new parable about a father who asked his two sons to work in the family vineyard. One son said no but then changed his mind and quietly went out to do the work. The other agreed to do the work, even addressing his father more respectfully as “sir,” but he never actually went out to work in the vineyard. (21:28-30)

“Which of the two,” Jesus asked them, “did the will of his father?” (21:31) These priests and elders, who, in just a few short days, would oversee the trial and conviction of Jesus on charges of blasphemy and send him on to Pontius Pilate for sentencing, now took no time to deliberate their answer. It seemed obvious: the son who did the work did the father’s will, and so they answered, “‘The first.’ Jesus responded, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.’” (21:31)

Can you imagine the stunned silence that must have greeted Jesus’s response? Can you picture the rapt attention everyone in the crowd must have been paying as they heard Jesus, the so-called itinerant preacher from the boondocks, clearly rebuking the high priests and elders?

Jesus was turning the world upside down. He was lecturing, even reprimanding, these people of great authority and influence. He was standing up to them, scolding them because “John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.” (21:32)

It’s important to understand the significance of the tax collectors and prostitutes. Tax collectors were roundly despised: they essentially worked for the Emperor, making sure everyone paid their taxes so that Rome could pay the armies that controlled their empire, including the Jews themselves. The tax collectors were complicit in the Roman occupation of the holy city. And prostitutes earned their living (likely involuntarily, but that’s a discussion for another time) in the rest and relaxation camps for Roman soldiers in cities like Tiberias on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. They, too, were complicit in the tyranny of Roman rule.

And it’s equally important to understand the very thin line the priests and elders walked. Though they reaped the benefits of status, the priests and elders were also collaborators in profound and basic ways. They may well have been acting in order to preserve a fragile peace and protect the Jewish people, but the priests and elders actually surrendered all real control to Rome.

The high priest, for example, wore special robes on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which was the holiest of days. These robes, reverently passed down from one high priest to the next, were worn only on that single day of the year. Their value was incalculable: embedded in them were all the prayers and memories of Israel as a people. Wearing these precious vestments, the chief priest would enter the inner sanctum of the Temple alone; no one else was permitted to be in that sacred space. Here, in the Holy of Holies, he confessed his sins and the collective sins of the people and sought forgiveness from God. One would think nothing could come between the high priest and these ancient robes, but the high priest had agreed to abide by the Roman governor’s demand that he, the governor, would keep the high priest’s vestments under lock and key. Those important robes, essential to the high priest’s atonement for himself and his people, were thus under the procurator’s control. With that act, though he may have been trying to protect his people with the best of intentions, the high priest actually relinquished his religious control to Rome in the most fundamental of ways.

And here was Jesus telling them that because these outcastes, these tax collectors and prostitutes, believed John, they “are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (21:31) He brought the desert witness of John into the urban, religious, and political center of Jerusalem. And with these words, he not only insulted the priests and elders, but also demonstrated his authority, the very authority they had questioned. He was telling the chief priests that they were more compromised than the tax collectors and prostitutes. Indeed, he was saying that they were not only complicit, but they had failed to heed the word of God spoken through John the Baptist.

With this parable and in this quiet confrontation, Jesus was clearly setting the stage for his trial before the chief priests and elders of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council, and laying the groundwork for his conviction and sentencing by Pilate. He was preparing his followers for his death on the cross and his resurrection. His sacrificial act had already begun. God was moving beyond the status quo, with Jesus as the ultimate witness of this new divine reality.

The power of that reality lives on through and with us to this day. May we experience and recognize God’s ongoing acts of selfless love for all of us. And even when things seem most calamitous, may we find comfort and security as we remember that divine love.

Joys and Concerns:

For our Jewish sisters and brothers as they observe Yom Kippur, their highest holy day, starting this evening at sunset.

For all who have contracted Covid-19, for their caregivers, their families, their friends, and the congregation of all of humanity that is affected directly and indirectly by this virus.

Let us pray together:

Sustaining God, you offer us unceasing invitations to walk in your way and do your will. You offer us parables of still-uncharted depth and wisdom. We thank you for your insistent patience with us as we try to discern your will.

Encourage us to accept your invitation. Lead us to humility and show us that our holiness cannot be found in outward things like forms observed and rituals performed unless it is nurtured by the inward things of contrite hearts and minds bent on justice.

We are grateful for the example of your Son to guide us. Help us to understand his teaching. Give us the strength to be, as your Son was, a faithful witness of your gospel before the people, a faithful advocate even in solitude. Guided by the Holy Spirit, we pray this in the name of your Son. Amen.

Grace and Peace,

Rich

P.S. At sundown tonight, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, will begin. This day of fasting and repentance is the holiest of days for our Jewish brothers and sisters.

Tradition has it that Yom Kippur started with the prophet Moses. After God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai, Moses returned from the mountain only to discover that the people, in yet another show of faithlessness, had begun to worship a false idol, a statue of a golden calf. In a fury, Moses smashed the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments and returned to the top of Mt. Sinai, where he begged for God’s forgiveness for himself and all of his people.

It is said that it’s this act of contrition by Moses that the high priest would replicate every year in the Temple’s Holy of Holies when he asked for forgiveness for his and the peoples’ sins.

Within forty years of Jesus’s death and resurrection, the Temple and Jerusalem were destroyed by Rome. The Holy of Holies and the Temple itself no longer existed, and the people were scattered.

But the practice of faith and worship continued. The people had a model for the practice of their faith that had been developed over four centuries earlier, during the Babylonian exile. In exile, called diaspora, the Israelites had developed the concept of the synagogue (from the Greek word for assembly). In many ways, it was through the development of worship in the synagogue that Judaism as a faith was born. They no longer had access to the Temple, which had been the center of worship, including sacrificial rites (those doves!), but the synagogue replaced those rites with prayer, psalms, Torah reading, and study. Today, Conservative and Orthodox Jews call their houses of worship synagogues or shuls, which means schools; they refer to the Temple only in Jerusalem. Reform Jews call their houses of worship temples in order to recall and affirm the centrality of the Temple in their daily lives.

Yom Kippur marks the end of the Days of Awe, or Days of Repentance, that begin with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. During this ten-day period, the faithful reflect on their shortcomings and atone for them. Though it is a time of introspection and reflection, it’s also a celebration of the creation of the world. Prayer; time with family; special foods including something sweet, most often apples and honey to begin the new year and ensure a sweet one to come; and charitable giving mark these days. Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement, closes the Days of Awe.

This year, Yom Kippur begins this evening at sundown and lasts until sundown tomorrow evening. Work is forbidden, and atonement for the sins of the past year is expressed through such self-sacrifice as fasting. Synagogue attendance, this year most often by Zoom, is a critical part of Yom Kippur, with five prayer services held during the day.

The greetings for Yom Kippur are “Have an easy fast” or “Happy New Year.” May we pray that our Jewish sisters and brothers have an easy fast and a happy new year.

Rev. Knox's Post for September 24, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today we read another story about the Israelites and their forty-year sojourn in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula after their escape from Egyptian enslavement and before their arrival in the Promised Land. This is one of several “murmuring stories” recorded in Exodus and Numbers, so called because the Israelites grumbled and murmured as they wandered. We read a murmuring story last week about the Israelites’ hunger and God’s faithful delivery of manna and quails. This week, the Israelites thirst for water.

Before we read Exodus 17:1-7, let’s join together in this prayer for illumination:

O God, fill us with your Spirit, and humble our hearts so that we can hear and understand your Word. Amen.

Let me begin with a little clarification. Led by Moses under God’s command, the Israelites journeyed through the “wilderness of Sin.” (17:1) It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that they were wandering in the wilderness of sinfulness, and doing so at the command of the Lord, no less. But the wilderness of Sin has nothing to do with sinfulness. The word “Sin” is not a translation; it’s simply a transliteration of the Hebrew, which sounds like the word sin here. Biblical scholars pose at least two theories about this untranslated name in the Bible. It might either refer to the moon-deity Sin of the indigenous people of the Sinai Peninsula, or, since it’s so close to Mt. Sinai, the name might relate to the mountain.

During their forty-year journey, the Israelites were to traverse six different wildernesses before arriving at the Promised Land. Each was a challenge. For those of you who are fans of the movie, The Princess Bride (which I recommend without reservation to anyone who hasn’t seen it), each of these wildernesses posed far greater challenges than the Fire Swamp. And this was but their first wilderness.

These short murmuring stories are often overlooked because we concentrate on the big stories in Exodus and Numbers, like Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai and the solidarity and shared purpose the Israelites find when they enter into a new covenant with God, a covenant (which means agreement) anchored in the Ten Commandments. The Israelites are slowly becoming a new, cohesive entity, a congregation, but as they wander in the desert, they still bear the psychological marks of their slavery. Those traumas make it nearly impossible for them to trust in Moses, God, or anything that is not immediately and concretely in their hands. Yet God remains patient with them.

As we ponder the stories of the Exodus – the punishing plagues that finally convinced Pharaoh to let the people go, the Passover, Pharaoh’s betrayal of his promise when he sent his army after them, their miraculous escape across the divided Red Sea, and the forty long years of wandering in the wilderness – we most often focus on Moses and his relationship with God. That’s completely understandable: Moses is so charismatic; his unyielding faith in the face of setbacks and his surprisingly intimate relationship with God are inspirational in the extreme. Today, however, I’d like to focus on the thirsty people he led out of captivity.

These are a deeply scarred people. Their stories in Exodus tell us how hard it is to leave oppression behind, particularly when it’s been so long and severe that it’s become an integral part of their very identity.

We see the same skittish, deeply untrusting behavior today in children who have been abused; women who have been battered, mistreated, or exploited; refugees who have suffered maltreatment and torture. We see it in children who have survived a perilous trek towards what they think will be sanctuary, only to be separated from their mothers by people who neither speak their language nor offer the least shred of comfort. We see it in homeless people wandering the streets of our cities, living in cars and drifting from place to place across the country, or living in the backwoods. We see it in victims of addiction and trauma who sometimes barely know where they are. They all feel like they’ve been thrown away. It’s hardly surprising that they’ve lost the ability to trust other people, let alone God.

And so the wandering Israelites murmur and complain, defiantly asking Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” (17:3) One could read that as insubordinate, especially after all the miracles they had benefited from; in truth, it shows how hard it was for these people to trust in Moses and in God, despite proof in their own lives of God’s attentive care.

It’s no wonder that they grumbled and murmured. After their miraculous escape from Egypt and Pharaoh’s army, they no doubt thought the promised land was a journey of but a few days, maybe a few weeks at most. And they surely didn’t expect hunger and thirst so severe as to endanger their lives.

As we’ve seen, the Israelite refugees fleeing Egypt saw Moses and God as almost the same being. And now they were questioning God’s authority over them and threatening Moses’s life. It was abundantly clear, even after all the miracles of their escapes, that Moses needed to find a way to solidify his leadership position with the people.

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.’” (17:5) God is telling Moses to be “up front,” to be, in our contemporary speech, transparent. Even though these people have virtually threatened to kill you, God is saying, don’t go behind them, figuratively or literally. Show yourself and take with you those whom the people recognize as their respected elders. And to top it off, take that staff you used for the first plague on Pharaoh’s people, the one that turned the waters of the Nile into blood, the one that made all the water undrinkable. Take that staff, and go.

Trust is fortified by recognizable symbols, and the staff came to symbolize Moses’s leadership and authority from God. To this day, in those denominations with a more pronounced ecclesiastical hierarchy, bishops often carry an episcopal staff. With that visible, tactile symbol, they hope to garner some of the same trust and authority that people gave to the Shepherd Jesus with his crook and to Moses with his staff. The staff becomes a symbol of trust. In much the same way, our Christian cross evokes the assurance of trust for Christians around the world.

“‘I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.” (17:6) Water, so crucial to physical life, becomes a symbol of God-given life. As Christians, we need only to remember our baptism to know that water is not only a necessity of life, but also the symbol of our creator’s gift of abundant life to us all.

When the elders returned to the people, they were sure to be bombarded with questions – Well, what did you see? What happened? They would have answered that they had seen God on the rock (at the left on the fresco above), that they saw Moses strike the rock with the very same staff that had made the Egyptian water undrinkable, that they watched as clean water came gushing forth, and they drank it, and it was sweet and quenched their thirst. No doubt the elders reminded the people that once again, they were being shown that they could trust God.

In these seven verses, we see the endurance and stability of God’s presence with the Israelites. When they question Moses, he knows they are questioning God. “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” (17:2) Moses has little patience with them; he even fears they are so desperate that they might kill him. But he trusts God, and God is endlessly patient. God meets their need by providing the water that is as essential to life as was the manna and quail. And in doing so, God continues to nurture this traumatized people, building their trust and faith.

As Kentina Washington-Leapheart, a United Church of Christ minister in Philadelphia and human rights activist, wrote earlier this month, “Like the Israelites, parents and children have been on a rocky journey over the last several months, wading through the muck of biological threats, shutdowns, and unprecedented strains on the mental and emotional wellbeing of entire family systems. The ‘promised land’ is whatever is on the other side of this coronavirus – hopefully a vaccine, better medical treatments, and the ability to breathe freely and gather openly without fear of infection. The pathway to the other side won’t be an easy one, and getting through it successfully will require sacrifice, patience, flexibility, and trust – trust in human leadership, and, for people of faith, in God.”

We all are traveling this rocky journey. And like the murmuring, thirsty Israelites in the desert, we are all suffering. It’s hard to keep our faith; it’s easy to lose sight of our trust in God. It’s understandable that we murmur and complain. Where’s our miracle-making staff? What and who can we rely on? If you’re among the many who feel lost and unmoored in these pandemic days, or on just a few of these pandemic days, you’re not alone. Others feel the same way. Indeed, that may be one of many reasons we’ve become so polarized.

In truth, we all carry trauma. Even people who seem to have everything in control on the surface may be suffering in silence internally. We see it in our neighbors who have suffered in silence from racial injustice for generations. We see it in ourselves as we deal with loss, anxiety, depression, and loneliness in these pandemic days.

Those wandering Israelites could so easily be us. We feel like we’ve lost our center; we feel like we can’t trust anyone, even ourselves; we feel abandoned by God. Maybe not always, maybe just some of the time. The most important thing to remember from this passage and from what we’re all experiencing in these very difficult times is that God is with us, and God is patiently reminding us of God’s love. When you find yourself murmuring in despair and thirst, remember that God is still with you.

May our trust be restored even when things are most desperate. May we find ways to remember God’s sustaining love. And may that love be with us as we wander in pandemic deserts and our own personal deserts. May that love be beside us as we travel to the promised land of grace.

Let us pray together:

Gracious God, we thank you for being ever-present with us. Even when we’re not aware of your presence, we’re never alone. You are faithful and generous.

Yet we wander in the wilderness, failing to remember your presence, and complaining in the face of your mercy. We have been selfish and oblivious to your sacrifice. We have not done your will.

Teach us humility. Teach us gratitude. Open our hearts and help us re-find our faith and trust when we falter. Pour out your Spirit upon us that we might be reconciled to you and do the work of your will.

In the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, September 20, 2020

Dear Friends,

Back in 2008, a parishioner of mine who worked for an international corporation had the unenviable task of having to tell his managers, who reported to him from offices around the globe, that they each had to fire a number of their employees. This was a caring, sensitive Christian who was ripped apart emotionally and physically by this task. He could have simply sent emails or called the various divisions, or he could have summoned all the managers on his team to his office at the company’s U.S. headquarters. But he found those options cold and heartless; he cared deeply for all the people who were losing their livelihoods and for all the managers who would have to fire them. And so, he chose to fly to company offices in Europe, South America, Asia, and cities throughout the United States to share the bad news directly and help them, in some small way, break the news to their staff. And he had to do this over and over again, week after week, in city after city.

When I saw him on the rare Sundays that he was at home, he would tell me, almost as confession, how many people had lost their jobs in his company that week. His anguish at the despair of all those managers and employees was palpable, made even worse by his acute awareness of the number of families affected.

The Great Recession of 2008 had begun, and I had a front-row seat.

While my parishioner was dealing with the crisis within his company, we were all watching nightly news reports about the rapidly unfolding crisis here and across the globe. Who can forget the images of dazed people carrying all their work memories in a single box as they left their office buildings for the final time? It seemed like everyone who wasn’t affected directly knew someone who was, and we were all keenly aware that the unemployment figures weren’t just numbers; each number was a real person whose life and family had been turned upside down.

As the Great Recession finally started to ease up, we all began to breathe a little easier. We watched the monthly jobs reports on the news, cheering as the employment numbers slowly ticked up. As the healing economy reached genuine health, it remained a high-priority topic on the news and around the dinner table.

Now, with the Covid pandemic affecting health, societies, and economies in every corner of the globe, we listen just as avidly for the jobs report, but now it’s the shocking numbers of unemployment applications that grab our attention. Numbers about job losses that made us gasp in 2008 are nothing compared to today’s. We’re gradually seeing some improvement, but the number of new unemployment applications every week remains staggering. The pandemic has affected our health in tragic ways, and it has also affected our economies and the very foundations of our societies.

Work defines us and enables us. Our work and the recompense for our labor are often how we measure our self-worth. How important work is on the hierarchy of our personal and national identity is reflected in how much we talk about and worry about the economy, and in how the economy is almost always at the top of the list of issues in our elections.

These realities are not unique to us and our times; even in Jesus’s time, work was a measure of individual value, as we see in Matthew 20:1-16, today’s scripture reading. As we read and think about this familiar parable, let us join together, even while we’re apart, in this prayer for illumination:

Gracious God, your Word surprises, challenges, upsets, and overturns our way of seeing and thinking. Come and find us today wherever we are, however we are. By the power of your Holy Spirit, revive that which is withering in us and renew us so that we might blossom. Erase all that limits us and broaden our vision so that we may see some of what you see and thereby glimpse the holy realm you bring to our human endeavors. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

At 6 am, as day broke, a landowner went out to hire laborers. They agreed on the usual daily wage and went off to his vineyard to work. Throughout the day, at 9, noon, and 5, the landowner returned to the marketplace and hired more people to work in his vineyard, promising to pay them “whatever is right.” (20:4) And then, “when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’” (20:8) And everyone – those who were hired last and worked only a few hours, and those who were hired first and worked throughout the day – received the same usual daily wage. Those who worked the full day grumbled and complained bitterly about the unfairness of it all.

I suspect you’re familiar with this parable. Don’t you wonder why the last ones to be hired were paid first? And why everyone received a full day’s wage, even when they didn’t work a full day? Why wasn’t the landowner bound by the rules of normal society? Yes, indeed, he was generous, but wasn’t the envy and jealousy of those who worked throughout the day justified? Did you, perhaps, think it was a mistake?

In the midst of the harsh economic conditions the Jewish people suffered under Roman occupation, Jesus surprised his followers with this parable about a kind-hearted employer who claimed the freedom to be as generous as he wished with his money. Those hearing the parable were a people who, for the most part, eked out the most meager of livings. And the parable’s ending could only have surprised them even more. They, too, must have wondered: is this a mistake?

About 25 years ago, Laurie Beth Jones published a book entitled, Jesus, CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership. I remember my surprise when it was included on some lists of “best business books” of the year. There’s no question that much of what Jesus said and how he dealt with people would be wonderful leadership lessons for managers, but what about this particular parable? Would you want to use it as the foundation of your economic plan? No, I don’t think so.

This parable is not a business model. It’s not about just compensation or parity; it’s not about the necessity for a living wage in a just society; it’s not about equal pay for equal work; it’s not about how best to run a business.

Jesus is not our CEO. Jesus is the Christ, our Lord and Savior, and Jesus is talking about something else here.

Jesus gives us the key to understanding this parable with his first seven words – “For the kingdom of heaven is like. . .” (20:1) This is one of Matthew’s many kingdom parables. These are parables that illustrate the kingdom of God with situations here on earth. In this kingdom parable, the landowner is God, and, as Isaiah, whose prophesies Jesus would have known well, says, “the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting.” (Isaiah 5:7) God, the owner of the vineyard, brings more and more laborers – more and more witnesses, missionaries, spreaders of the faith – to work for God’s holy realm.

But still, I hear you say, what about the injustice of paying those who hardly worked at all the same amount as those who worked all day in the hot sun? How is that the kingdom of God? Once again, is this a mistake? It seems impossible that Jesus made a mistake…Do I hear you trying to figure it out by thinking that maybe it’s one of Rich’s famous translation complexities?

It’s not a mistake, and it’s not a translation problem. This parable is not about justice or equity or fairness; it’s about God’s abundant grace. God, the landowner, is not concerned about who should be paid first or about payroll equity. God, whose only son, the teller of the parable, would suffer and die for our salvation, is concerned instead to generously welcome all into God’s realm.

If there’s a mistake, it’s ours. Our mistake is to make comparisons among the laborers. In Jesus’s day, this parable may have served as a justification for his association with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus is telling us that even though their service to God and the Jesus movement came late in their lives, they, too, are accepted in the kingdom. They, too, receive the grace of God, as do all who labor in God’s vineyard, that is, all people of faith and witness. God welcomes us all, no matter how hard or how long we work in God’s vineyard.

Our mistake is to think that something as common as payment overrules the incomprehensible generosity of God’s grace. Our mistake is to overlook the compassion of the landowner who “saw others standing idle in the marketplace,” (20:3) bereft of the dignity of work.

There is much from our Christian faith that we should and must take into consideration as we address issues of justice in our community, nation, and world. We are justified in our concern for gender pay equity, for racial pay equity, for access to work, and for the necessity of an adequate living wage.

But this parable is not about our human-to-human or even our human-to-creation interactions; this parable is about the kingdom of God, where all are welcome, whether they come to the gospel at the break of day or just before the sun sets. We are required to follow the word and commandments of God, but we don’t earn our way into the kingdom of God.

It’s not a question of justice, but rather of grace – unearned, freely given, available to all who toil in the vineyard, including those who labor for long hours and those who labor for only a few hours.

When I think about the kingdom of God, it inevitably makes me consider the end of my days. I don’t yearn for justice then; I am all too aware of how human and finite I am. I know how often I’ve fallen short. Instead, I pray that God will consider me in the light of God’s divine, abundant grace that this parable promises. With God as the vineyard owner, I am thankful for the magnificent promise of the parable: that God will exercise the divine right “to do what I choose with what belongs to me.” (20:15) Thankfully, what “belongs” to God is generous, abundant, and eternal grace. We are all late in the day workers, and we can rely on our faith that God will choose to treat us with grace rather than our limited human notion of justice. Thank God!

Joys and Concerns:

For those who are suffering from the effects of Hurricane Sally and the wildfires in the west, for all those who risk their lives to respond, and for all those who have lost their lives to these disasters.

Grateful prayers for the life and work of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and prayers for wisdom as our leaders in government decide who will replace her on the Supreme Court.

For our Jewish sisters and brothers as they begin to observe the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

For all who struggle with the Covid pandemic as it affects their health, their families, their security, and the economy.

For all who mourn the loss of friends and loved ones to the virus; may the magnitude of the rising numbers not make us numb to the real people behind those numbers.

For the stateless refugees in Greece now made completely homeless after their meager shelter was destroyed by fire.

For all, here and throughout the world, who struggle with homelessness, hunger, and dislocation.

Continued prayers of encouragement and support for all who are seeking to learn how to heal the injustices growing from the racism and bigotry that continues to stain our nation; may they and we find the energy and commitment to persevere in this challenging work.

Let us pray together:

O God, you call us to labor in fields and in cities, in places of wealth and knowledge and in places of poverty, among the powerful and among the disenfranchised. You call us to labor wherever your children live and move and seek to find meaning in their lives. As we witness to your love, grant us the courage to live without judgment or jealousy; grant us the humility to rejoice in labor; grant us the wisdom to see our weaknesses and errors and correct them; and grant us the insight to identify our strengths and use them to aid our brothers and sisters. Thank you for the opportunity to labor in your vineyard. This we ask in the name of the Great Teacher, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for September 17, 2020

Dear Friends,

Do you remember those times when you were several hours into a long drive on your way to a relaxing summer vacation, when from the back seat, a little voice (or maybe two or more) started whining and pleading miserably? “Are we there yet? I’m hungry! Can we stop now? How much longer?” This kind of impatience and edginess isn’t limited just to kids, and it’s not a unique by-product of America’s fabled love for road trips. It happens everywhere, to all of us (even us adults!), and it’s been happening for a very long time. In today’s scripture reading, it was the Israelites who were complaining and whining in the back seat, though for them, the back seat was the desert.

Before we look at today’s reading, take a moment for this prayer for illumination:

Sustaining God, Let the wisdom of your Word rain down on us like manna and feed us, that we may be strengthened to do the work to which we are called for the glory and honor of your holy name. Amen.

A quick textual note about our reading. As you may recall, the first five books of the Bible, which Christians call the Pentateuch and Jews call the Torah, are a compilation of four different traditions, each with its own separate, complete, and coherent document. Though the documents were similar in many ways, they were not identical. The texts of these four traditions were blended together sometime between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, during or shortly after the Babylonian exile. Our reading for today combines two of these traditions, so it might seem like there’s a lot of repetition in the story. The repetition, however, isn’t word-for-word, and the nuances of each telling make the story more vibrant and real as they echo and resonate with one another.

So…let’s rejoin the Israelites now that they’ve miraculously escaped across the parted waters of the Red Sea and seen their Egyptian pursuers utterly destroyed when the walls of the sea closed around them. They’ve been wandering in the desert for only a month and have already begun to lose heart and started to complain and whine. The miracles of the plagues visited on Egypt, the Passover, and the parting of the waters are behind them and forgotten. Their feet hurt, their children are suffering, they’re hungry, they’re thirsty, and they’re pretty sure they’re lost. Things have taken quite a turn, and there’s a lot of very serious back seat whining and squabbling going on!

In truth, these are a people who suffer from much more than boredom in the back seat, and unlike us on our car trip, they can’t imagine a care-free vacation and have no idea what their future will be. They feel abandoned, fearful, and despairing. “The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” (16:2)

But note that word: congregation. A change has occurred, one so subtle that they are completely unaware of it. No longer are they an assembly of twelve separate tribes, each with its own carefully-preserved traditions and memories, each in its place in the hierarchy of the Israelite people. They have become a congregation, which means a single group of people united in faith and sharing common rules.

The Bible identifies them as a congregation for the first time in chapter 12, but it’s almost lost in all the drama of that part of the story. Here’s a quick recap…None of the plagues that God had visited upon Egypt have succeeded in softening Pharaoh’s heart – not when God turned all the water in Egypt to blood; not the plagues of locusts, flies, frogs, and gnats; not storms of hail and fire; not darkness for three days – nothing convinced Pharaoh to let the captive Israelites go. But when God visited the terrible final plague on Egypt, that all the first-born will die, God instructed Moses and Aaron to “tell the whole congregation” (12:3) to protect their first-born by smearing the blood of a lamb on the lintel of their houses, so that the angel of death would pass over that dwelling. They responded not as twelve separate tribes but as a unified people. Indeed, they became a wholly new people: a congregation created by God’s act of salvation and liberation. The newly created congregation will remember and celebrate the festival of the Passover for all the generations to come.

As they wander now in the wilderness, however, they have a long way to go before they fully recognize their shared communal identity. They have forgotten much more than the miracles that brought them out of Egypt. They’ve also completely forgotten the brutality, terror, and misery of their captivity, so much so that they look back on a past that is pure fantasy, “when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread.” (16:3) They’re so miserable in the desert that they actually yearn for death. “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt.” (16:3) And they blame Aaron and Moses, their leaders and rescuers, for their current plight, complaining that “you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (16:3)

Once again, God steps in to save them, telling Moses that “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you. . .” (16:4) and “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’” (16:12)

And sure enough, in the morning, “When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flakey substance, as fine as frost on the ground.” (16:14) This flakey substance was manna, which could be baked into bread; it would fill their hunger every morning. And “In the evening quails came up and covered the camp.” (16:13) The promise of meat in the evening and bread in the morning was fulfilled. And they would survive on manna and quail for the forty years they were to wander in the desert.

It may surprise you to learn that even today, manna and quails are natural phenomena in the Sinai Peninsula. When the fruit of the tamarisk tree is perforated by plant lice, it emits a whitish substance that thickens into a ball in the cool of the morning. Loaded with sugar and carbohydrates, it can be baked into a bread. Indigenous people in Sinai eat it to this day and call it “manna.” And after a full day of flight, migrating birds occasionally fall to the ground, worn out by battling the strong head winds that blow over the desert. They can easily be captured by hand, providing the meat for an evening meal.

Becoming a congregation, as I pointed out above, involves sharing a faith and also following shared rules. “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instructions or not.’” (16:4)

Asking only for obedience, God is abundantly generous to the hungry struggling Israelites as they wander in the wilderness from one source of water to another. But will they follow his wishes? Will they be obedient to his instructions and gather no more than what is needed? They had followed his instructions when the last plague came, and the angel of death passed over their households; surely that taught them how important it was to follow God’s word. Now God cautions them to gather only enough bread for one day, except on the sixth day, when they are to gather enough for two days in order to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath, the day of rest.

If you read further in this chapter, you’ll read the second tradition of this story, when some, apparently not believing that there would be enough manna, disobey God’s instructions and gather more than they need for a single day. Though they’d been liberated from the Egyptians, they were not liberated from their inevitable human tendency to question authority, and so, not trusting that God would continue to provide the manna, they put some aside. But the leftovers rot and melt, becoming inedible. The only leftovers that remain fresh and sweet are the ones they gather, as instructed, to put aside for the Sabbath. And those people who fail to gather enough for the Sabbath are left hungry, because God, always true to his word, provides no manna on that seventh day. God keeps his promises and rains bread from heaven. God feeds the people and also teaches them the power and value of obedience.

In his book, Bread for the Journey, Henri J. M. Nouwen shares these thoughts to sustain and inspire us on our journey with God:

“God is a generous giver, but we can only see and enjoy God’s generosity when we love God with all of our hearts, minds, and strength. As long as we say: ‘I will love you, God, but first show me your generosity,’ we will remain distant from God and unable to experience what God truly wants to give us, which is life and life in abundance.”

It’s easy to trust in God when all is going well, when the seas miraculously open for us to make our way to safety, or when the angel of death and despair passes over us and we find unexpected strength and healing. It’s much harder to maintain that faith and trust when we’re consumed by anxiety and fear; when hopelessness and despair find their way into our souls; when, like now, the whole earth is subject to a vicious plague.

But we are not alone; we are part of a great congregation of faith. We share our belief; we hold one another up in the face of fear; we lean on the protection of common rules and familiar liturgy; and we remember that we can rely on our generous and loving God.

The Israelites in the desert were just beginning to understand their shared faith and their shared obligation as a people of faith. Their relationship with God was growing, just as our relationship with God continually emerges, develops, and matures over the years. Like the Israelites, we are only human; we are subject to lapses of faith, missteps, and failings that are part of our humanity. Our relationship with God is a dynamic one that involves stops and starts, times of great insight and understanding and times of confusion and separateness. To find our way again, we have only to listen for the word of our patient God, who sustains us as authentically as manna nourished the Israelites.

May we recognize and be thankful for the abundance that God shares with us in our life journey.

Let us pray together:

O God, who knows our every need before we can even ask, you provide all our needs and even some of what we want as well as what we need. You bless us all. Make us truly thankful, and empower us on our journey to understand our obligations to you and to one another. Enable us to bless others with the gifts you have given us, for the glory of your name. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, September 13, 2020

Dear Friends,

A father and son had been estranged for a very long time. Finally, aching for reconciliation but unable to get his son to communicate with him, the father placed an ad in the local paper’s classified section. It read, “Paco, meet me at noon this Wednesday at the Hotel Montaña. All is forgiven. Papa.”

As noon on Wednesday approached, Paco’s father walked to the Hotel Montaña, wondering if his son would be there and praying that he would be. Turning the corner onto the hotel’s street, he encountered a large crowd of young men, all named Paco. Each hoped that it was his father who was offering reconciling forgiveness, and each had responded in that hope to the simple classified ad. How very much we want and need forgiveness, and how deeply we need to offer forgiveness!

As we prepare to explore Jesus’s parable about forgiveness, please share this prayer for illumination with all your sisters and brothers who join you in reading today’s note:

Merciful God, in this moment of stillness, we ask you to wash us clean of presumptions. Receive us as your weary children, and then, by the power of your Spirit, bless us with your reviving word. We ask this in the name of Jesus, your living Word. Amen.

Forgiveness is a central doctrine of Christianity. The prayer we say most often is the Lord’s Prayer, and every time we pray it, we ask for forgiveness. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” The word “debt” here means far more than monetary or social debt. It also includes transgression, insult, trespass, and sin, to name a few. Not only do we rarely consider the full meaning of the words of this familiar prayer and that line in particular, but all too often, the words slip far too routinely from our mouths. When we stop to think about them at all, most of us focus on the confession that’s implicit in our request for forgiveness. Seldom do we consider the words that end the plea: “as we forgive our debtors.”

Just as we must ask for forgiveness, so must we forgive. Peter approached Jesus and asked, “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” (18:21) That last part is such an unexpected question. He’s not asking how to forgive, but how many times to do so. Perhaps he was trying to impress Jesus by exaggerating the depth of his piety and understanding. But in many ways, his question actually betrayed how shallow his understanding was.

Jesus responded, “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (18:22) If Peter was expecting praise for suggesting seven times, Jesus’s answer would certainly have been a surprise; his proud seven times suddenly becomes weak and ineffectual.

And Jesus may have actually been suggesting a much higher number. Our understanding of the Bible is always handicapped by translation (and translations of translations!). Many commentators say that this passage could be more appropriately translated as 7 times 70, which would mean forgiving 490 times. It could also be translated as 7 times 77, which would mean 539 times.

Seven is a number with distinct meaning in the Bible, and 77 would not simply have popped into Jesus’s head, just as the number 7 was far from random for Peter. In Genesis, for example, when Lamech, the great-great-great grandson of Cain, returned from battle, he sang a deeply disturbing victory song to his wives that concluded with, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” (Genesis 4:23-24) What I find so disturbing here is the emphasis on revenge, and that the thirst for revenge had continued from Cain through the generations to Lamech.

No matter how we read the number Jesus gives to Peter – whether we must forgive 77, 490, or 539 times, it’s a number that’s hard to keep track of. It’s not a one-to one or even a two-to-one exchange like a quid pro quo. All that said, the exact number is not what’s important here; what Jesus is saying is that forgiveness is endless: we must continually be willing to forgive, and forgive again, and yet again.

In his response to Peter, Jesus was replacing a deeply-ingrained attitude of revenge with an attitude of forgiveness. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.” Forgiveness is an attitude of life, an attitude of faithful life.

Such an attitude of forgiveness requires maturity of vision and understanding. When my brother and I were just little boys, and my mother caught him in the act of hitting me, she immediately intervened, of course, and told him in no uncertain terms to stop. I’m sure you can guess his defense: “But he hit me first!” And as you’d expect, she replied with the time-worn, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” It’s almost impossible to reason with two little boys when they’re tangled up in a fight, and reason definitely fell by the wayside when, without missing a beat, my brother responded, “But they make it even!” I grant you, he was wickedly clever, though I think he simply said the first thing that came to mind. His response was certainly a reflection of his wit but also of his youth.

To live in a world of getting even – a world of revenge – is to live in a world of the lowest common denominator. And that is not the world of faith, mature faith, that we aspire to. You might think that such a world is governed by the Golden Rule, which is found in some form in nearly every religion and across the centuries. It can be traced as far back as the time of Confucius, five centuries before the time of Jesus.

We know the Golden Rule as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Those, however, weren’t the words from the Bible. The words Jesus would have known come from Leviticus. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:18)

Jesus sought to break the cycle of revenge, radically expanding the rule from Leviticus, when he said in the Gospel of Matthew, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) There is not even a suggestion of vengeance here. Instead, Jesus is telling us not to look to past actions as our guiding principle, but rather, to look toward the future, with actions that we initiate ourselves.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.” Jesus’s parable of the Unforgiving Servant demonstrates this perfectly; forgiveness in the abstract is far different from forgiveness in the face of real debt, sin, or insult.

The parable makes it clear that forgiveness must come unconditionally; it must come from our hearts, not from some pretentious, contrived number in our rational minds. And it suggests that forgiveness should beget forgiveness. The radical forgiveness of this parable changes the dynamic and enhances the forgiver, the forgiven, and the community as a whole.

In her book, Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean tells the story of Lloyd LeBlanc, a Roman Catholic layman, whose son was brutally murdered. He had to go to the field where his son’s body lay in order to identify him. Mr. LeBlanc knelt by his son’s body and prayed the Lord’s Prayer. When he came to the words, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” the depth of the commitment he was making became real to him for the first time. “Whoever did this,” he told Sister Helen later, “I must forgive them.” Mr. LeBlanc described how hard that was in real time and space. He was nearly overwhelmed with bitterness and the urge for revenge many times. We can only begin to imagine how hard and painful it was for him to overcome both his despair at his loss and the urgency towards vengeance that he felt despite his sincere resolve to forgive. Indeed, he said that forgiveness must be prayed for, struggled for, offered, and won every day.

It’s easy for us to say, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” It’s easy for us to say we must forgive, and forgive again and again. Mr. LeBlanc’s reality tells us how hard it is to actually do so. His was a continual effort, one he had to make each and every day, and one to which he remained committed.

This is the kind of disciplined commitment that’s required if we are to truly learn how to forgive and thereby grow in our faith. As you contemplate those acts and people you wish to forgive, and the people you’ve hurt by your own actions, I encourage you to recognize and embrace how difficult it is, and how often you’ll slide back into hurt, bitterness, and even revenge. Forgiveness includes forgiving yourself.

Remember Jesus’s words. He doesn’t say, as Peter may have expected, that forgiveness is a “one and done” commandment. Forgiveness is ongoing. It requires practice. It requires repetition. Forgiveness “from your heart,” as Jesus says at the end of the parable, is not easy, not superficial. It is deep, thoughtful, and intentional every single time it occurs and re-occurs. It is truly a permanent attitude of faith, a skill that requires constant practice and application.

Ultimately, forgiveness is what brings healing. Forgiveness is the embodiment of the message of mercy and love that Jesus preached.

May we, in our own way, join with Mr. LeBlanc in his struggle and prayer; may we join with Peter in seeking to fully understand the depth of commitment our faith requires. Secure in the eternal supportive presence of Christ, may we live into an authentic attitude of loving, faithful forgiveness.

Joys and Concerns:

For those affected by the wildfires in the West, for the terrible losses of life, property, personal history, and forest, and for those who voluntarily and bravely respond to fight the fires.

For those all around the world who have volunteered to be a part of the Covid vaccine trials, and for the dedicated researchers who are working so diligently to find a safe and effective vaccine.

For those seeking an effective treatment for Covid-19 as it continues to ravage our nation and nations across the world.

For all the people of faith and energy, including here at Scottsville Presbyterian Church, who are working so valiantly to understand and confront the issues of racism and social justice that have exploded across our national awareness these past months; may we find common understanding and solutions.

Let us pray together:

Gracious and loving God,

You live for us even when we have not lived for you.

You forgive us even when we have failed to forgive others.

You love us even when we have not loved ourselves and one another.

Take pity on us, and forgive us.

Help us to forgive ourselves and any whom we’ve hurt. Help us to live for you.

Make your love for us bear fruit in our forgiveness of others, that in this life we may know your all-embracing compassion and in the world to come receive the everlasting joy of fellowship with you, your Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, August 30, 2020

Dear Friends,

As promised last Sunday, our reading from chapter 16 of Matthew’s gospel continues today. In last week’s reading, Peter declared Jesus “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (16:16) And Jesus answered “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” (16:18) Jesus’s ministry was growing, the crowds were growing, and more and more people were recognizing his good works and deeds. The future seemed bright.

Before we explore that future, take a moment for this prayer for illumination:

Lord our God, your name and your word are exalted above everything. As we read your word, we are looking for your light. By the power of the Holy Spirit, renew our minds and hearts so that we may discern your will and respond in faith. We pray in the name of your Son, our Savior. Amen.

And now, begging your forgiveness for this moment of frivolity, comes the 180º turn for Peter…

<clip_image001.jpg data-preserve-html-node="true"> “Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (16:21) The cartoon above may be a 180º turn from our prayer, but that’s nothing compared to how Peter and the other disciples must have felt as their world turned upside down with Jesus’s words.

It’s hard to imagine a greater shock, especially after the optimism and hope embedded in last week’s reading. This verse is a turning point for Peter and the disciples, and it’s the turning point of Matthew’s entire gospel. It can be seen as an outline for the remaining twelve chapters, and it contains so many surprises, including the extraordinary one at the end of the verse, when Jesus describes his passion and resurrection for the first time in Matthew.

From our post-resurrection perspective, we might consider those last words in verse 21 – “on the third day [Jesus will] be raised” – not as a surprise ending, but rather, the surprise beginning to the story of Jesus the Christ. But if we are to understand this reading, it’s important to try to look at it from the perspective of Peter and the other disciples, as well as the gospel writer Matthew himself.

Re-read at whose hand Jesus says he must suffer. He makes no mention of the Pharisees, with whom he had debated regularly up to this point in the gospel. Nor does he mention the Romans, who alone could have killed him; only they had the power of capital punishment by crucifixion, execution on a cross. He names the elders, chief priests, and scribes, all of whom are powerful members of the Sadducees, the ruling Jewish group who tried to maintain a quasi-peace between the Jewish population and their overlords, the occupying foreign forces of Rome. The Sadducees saw their role as protecting the people, though they were no doubt also affected, perhaps even corrupted, by whatever notion of power they believed they had. In truth, it was always and only Rome that held power in Jerusalem.

Tragically, in the centuries after Matthew wrote his gospel, verses like 21 were to be catastrophically misinterpreted, becoming the reason for anti-Jewish sentiment that grew into outright anti-Semitism. People of faith began to blame the Jews for the death of Jesus, despite Rome’s pre-eminent power, and others used the Jews as scapegoats for all sorts of perceived and propagandized injustices. Even to this day, after the incredible tragedy of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism persists and continues to destroy the lives and security of Jews here and around the world.

To fully understand this reading, it’s important to be aware of when this gospel was written. These were truly perilous times. With the destruction of the Temple and nearly all of the city in 70 C.E., Rome very nearly succeeded in its plan to utterly eradicate the Jewish people from Jerusalem. Thousands upon thousands, nearly the entirety of the Jewish community, had been killed, and most of the few who survived fled into exile. Only a single wall of the Temple remained standing, the Wailing Wall we know of today in Jerusalem. The Jewish community was gone, and the Sadducees no longer existed. In such a time of continuing danger and instability, it makes sense for Matthew to have Jesus preemptively blaming the Sadducees for his coming arrest, torture, and execution. As scapegoats, they’re safe. They’ve vanished and no longer exist by the time Matthew writes. The Jewish people have lost their city and the vital center of their faith.

Nonetheless, hope is emerging from the rubble of Jerusalem in the form of the emerging Jewish-Christian church. But even as he addresses this new community of faith, Matthew is writing at a time of profound danger and despair. In a way, like the Sadducees before the destruction, Matthew is taking on the challenge of trying maintain a new quasi-peace in times even more dangerous than when Jesus walked the earth.

In last Sunday’s reading, Jesus took Peter aside to tell him about the future. This time, it’s Peter who takes Jesus aside when he says, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” Peter is clearly focusing on Jesus’s description of his suffering and death. Having heard Jesus’s terrible prediction, it’s understandable that he can’t comprehend this new notion that on the third day Jesus will be raised.

Just as Jesus’s words have turned the disciples’ world upside down, his response to the man he had just elevated as the foundation of the church was another shocking about-face. “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me” (16:23) Peter, the rock, the foundation, has become a barrier to the mission and salvific destiny of Jesus, all in the space of a single conversation.

But I feel compelled to defend Peter. He’s a simple fisherman. How can he do anything else than think in human terms? He has just heard the staggering outline of God’s plan for his beloved teacher, but how can he possibly comprehend divine things, especially when they contradict all his expectations and understanding? He has just heard Jesus confirm that he is, indeed, the longed-for Messiah, come to rescue the people of Israel from their brutal captivity at the hands of Rome. Peter, like all the people, was looking for a mighty conqueror who would be victorious over the Romans, and now his hero was telling him that he would suffer and be killed, and rise again on the third day. It was all so confusing for Peter at this point that he didn’t even ask what Jesus means; he simply leapt to his defense. “This must never happen to you.” (16:22).

Clearly, Peter was trying to care for and protect Jesus. He loved Jesus; he had happily given up everything – his livelihood, his family, his home, his previous life – to follow him. All of that took great courage, and yet, as we’ll see, Jesus is about to demand acts of even greater courage.

Immediately after Jesus chastised Peter for his unbelief and hesitation, Jesus uttered the three sayings we know so well. Jesus has been preaching and teaching and performing miracles. But now, he’s demanding more than passive acceptance of his teachings; he’s demanding courageous action. He tells all who would follow him to “take up their cross and follow me,” (16:24) that “those who want to save their life will lose it,” (16:25) and he asks, “what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” (16:26)

Many of us remember and perhaps even cite these words when we talk about our faith. But do we understand how difficult they might be? And do we remember that all three challenges came directly after Jesus broke the news to the disciples of his impending suffering, death, and resurrection? Jesus is moving past his teaching to the demands of faith.

For the disciples, and for Christians in the two thousand years since these words were recorded, these statements can only be fully comprehended through the lens of Christ’s divine resurrection. And that’s what Jesus gives his disciples and us when he so shockingly predicts his passion and resurrection. Without that faith perspective, these challenges make little sense to the human mind; with it, they make all the difference in the world.

I’ll focus today on just one of the three challenges. Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (16:24) We post-Easter Christians can’t help forming an image of Jesus hanging on a Roman cross, tortured and suffocating until he died. But the disciples haven’t yet experienced Easter week. They’re hearing for the first time about what’s to come, and unlike us, they more likely heard these words exactly as Jesus spoke them, without the filter of years of knowledge of the resurrection.

Try to put yourself in their place, and read that verse very carefully, as if, if possible, for the first time. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross…” (16:24) We are not to take up the cross, or Jesus’s cross, but ours. What can this possibly mean for us, especially now, two millennia later?

Even in these terror-ridden times, there are, thankfully, no crosses, no crucifixions. But even so, there are many crosses to bear in these times. Racism and lynching, sexism and glass-ceilings are only some of the many shapes of our contemporary crosses. In Choosing Life, Dorothee Soelle, a German theologian of the late twentieth century, put the matter of “taking up the cross” this way: “Take up your cross and follow me means: join the battle. Give up neutrality.”

Jesus is telling us to have the courage of our faith. Even as he lets the disciples in on the pain and suffering that is to come for him, he’s daring them, and us, to come out of our zones of safety and security and rise to the challenge of his teachings and his life. He’s calling us to faith, a faith that is not easy, a faith that is demanding, that requires bravery, persistence, and insight. He’s calling us to action.

We join the battle – we take up the cross – in big ways and small, and all have value. We take up the cross when we feed the hungry by working at the food pantry or donating to the foodbank; when we not only welcome the stranger, but find ways to invite the stranger into our lives, our church, and our homes; when we reach out to the boys of The Discovery School; when we put aside, even for only a few hours every week, our pursuit of accomplishment and worldly success to study the words of Jesus and try to understand his message for us; when we seek to face up to our failings, our triumphalism, and our conscious and unconscious contributions to injustice; when we reach out to children through the Boys and Girls Club, to the homebound through Meals on Wheels, to hospice, and to other such programs; when we march or advocate for gun safety and for voter accessibility; when we work to conquer the scourges of poverty and illiteracy; when we care for one another with visits and calls, and by trying to walk a mile in each other’s shoes.

All these are easy words to write and read, but behind them is arduous work and careful self-examination, always grounded in the teachings of Jesus. I know this is hard, but I also know that we’re up to it. I’ve seen that here in Scottsville and beyond, in all the ways we walk in the footsteps of Jesus. With God’s help, may we be empowered to see and fully comprehend the crosses that are ours, and may we have the courage to take them up as we follow Jesus.

Joys and Concerns

Unending prayers for us all as the weight of loneliness and depression, anxiety and impatience, anger and frustration at our current situation seems to grow heavier. May we find ways to see beyond the fear engendered by the pandemic, and beyond the growing economic, social, and political fragility of our nation and the world.

Let us pray together:

Abba God, your Son rebuked the disciple who tried to turn him from the path of the cross to the path of self-protection. In our humanity and in our fear, we, like Peter, plead for safety rather than the courage and confidence to face our path. O God of the cross, teach us that stronger than the pain of any cross is the power of your arms opened wide to receive us and your love reaching out to welcome us.

Teach us to put behind us the temptation to cling to the small things and finite hours of our lives.

Teach us to trust that, even as we struggle with disappointment and dashed expectations, your plan for our lives will energize us to action and bring us peace and comfort.

Teach us to move surely and eagerly into the infinite eternity of your plan for creation.

Teach us that whenever we choose to carry the cross, we carry with us as well the breadth and height and depth of your love into this broken, hurting world. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for August 23, 2020

Dear Friends,

This past Wednesday, I mentioned that the site for today’s reading was Caesarea Philippi, a community well north of Jerusalem and Galilee, where Jesus conducted most of his earthly ministry. The location is important. It was first called Panias because it had an altar to the Greek god Pan. When Herod the Great built a temple to Augustus Caesar there, he called it Augusteion. After Herod’s death, Philip, a son of Herod who was Rome’s ruler in this area, expanded it and made the temple complex more elaborate. Philip dedicated it to the god Augustus and himself and pompously renamed it Caesarea Philippi.

It was in this unlikely, unholy place, which had held so many shrines dedicated to so many gods, that Peter made his momentous confession in Matthew 16:13–20 that Jesus is “the Son of the living God.” (16:16) Peter’s confession of faith is included in all four gospels (see also Mark 8:27–33, Luke 9:18–32, and John 6:68–69), but only Matthew and Mark specify the location as Caesarea Philippi. The irony of this pagan location somehow makes Peter’s confession of faith in Jesus all the more powerful.

Before reading Matthew’s account of Peter’s confession, take a moment with God for contemplation and illumination:

God of revelation, mere flesh and blood cannot reveal divine truth; only your Spirit can give that gift. Be with us in these moments of reading so that our eyes, minds, and hearts may give us understanding. Through the words we read today, may we know your Word more deeply. Amen.

Referring to this passage as Peter’s confession can be confusing, especially to us Presbyterians. We seldom use the word confession to describe our faith. We think of confession as our admission of sin and short-coming; it’s part of our weekly worship, or was until the pandemic rendered weekly worship impossible.

But even though we’ve made things a little clearer in recent decades by calling our faith statements affirmations of faith, the term most commonly used over the centuries has been confession of faith. When the reformed Christians were establishing their theological foundation in 1646, they wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith, a very long, complex document that covers everything from creation to the end times, including the revelations of God; the authority of the scriptures; the requirements for salvation, faith, and life; the Trinity; predestination; free will; church governance; and the sacraments, to name but a few(!). It’s the foundational document of our own denomination.

Peter’s confession is far simpler and more to the point than the Westminster Confession as he openly declares, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” That single sentence reverberates through the ages to today.

So how did Peter come to this simple but pivotal statement? In Caesarea Philippi, Jesus “asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’” (16:13) The disciples responded without hesitation with a list of some of the wise and prophetic leaders from the distant past in the Hebrew scriptures. They knew that many among Jesus’s followers were beginning to speculate that he was another such prophet, just as was their own contemporary, John the Baptist, whom the disciples also named.

The disciples, however, were different from the crowds of people who followed Jesus from town to town. They had access to Jesus in ways that others did not, and Jesus pushed them further, asking them directly, “But who do you say that I am?” (16:15) With this question, Jesus was intensifying the commitment he sought from them.

“Simon Peter answered. ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’” (16:16)

These were desperate times for the captive people of Israel, and there was a deep yearning for a Messiah – a new king, anointed by God – to save them from their misery. But even in the face of such Messianic fervor, the disciples didn’t say that the crowds who followed Jesus thought him to be the longed-for Messiah. Maybe for the crowds, the thought that the flesh and blood person in their midst could actually be the Messiah was just beyond their grasp. Moreover, to so name him was surely dangerous, given the complex politics of the times.

But here, Jesus was speaking only to his small band of disciples, and he skillfully steered the conversation to this pivotal point with his deceptively quiet question. He was forcing them to dig deeply into their own unfolding faith. Although it was Peter alone who so explicitly and courageously declared that Jesus was the Messiah, he spoke for the entire group of twelve disciples. And with his answer, Peter not only took on leadership among the twelve, but changed everything.

We post-resurrection Christians cannot help but look at this passage and wonder what took them so long? Why couldn’t the disciples and even the crowds readily recognize that Jesus, the keen teacher, the miraculous miracle worker, the loving and compassionate friend to outcasts and strangers, was indeed the long-awaited Messiah? As we so often should when we read the gospels, we must place ourselves in the times: what seems blatantly obvious to us two millennia later is only beginning to emerge as a new faith reality, even for those closest to Jesus.

With Peter’s momentous statement, the disciples no longer needed to confine themselves to whispered discussions about who this person Jesus was. In addition to all they had seen as they traveled with him, through Peter, they were able to come to and articulate a new awareness, thanks to Jesus’s expert but subtle guidance. It takes Matthew sixteen chapters to get to this point – more than half of his gospel – but at last, they confess. They affirm who Jesus is. He is the Messiah, the Christ.

Matthew’s story of Peter’s confession is more detailed than those of the other three gospels. Only Matthew gives us a glimpse into what almost feels like a private conversation between Jesus and Peter. And that conversation, just three verses long, becomes the foundation for the faith and the church that will grow from its words. I’ve found at least five essential points in the three short verses that comprise this conversation. And there are more that I won’t go into today: all the words in Jesus’s singular conversation with Peter have been dissected, discussed, preached about, and taught with undying interest through the centuries.

First, when Jesus says to Peter, “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven,” (16:17) he is telling Peter that his confession of faith is not the result of his human (“flesh and blood”) reasoning; it’s not something he has deduced from living with Jesus. It is a divine gift.

And so it is for us. Confessing Jesus as the Christ is not a puzzle that we’re able to solve by the power of our intellect, nor is it proof of our moral capacity for believing steadfastly even in the face of what might seem to be compelling evidence to the contrary. The integrity of our affirmation of faith is, like Peter’s, not of our own doing; it is a gift of the Spirit, pure and simple.

Second, in this conversation, we hear the word church for the first time in the gospels. (We’ll hear it again only once more in the gospels, also in Matthew, in chapter 18:17.) Jesus says to Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (16:18)

Presenting the growing congregation of believers as a church is an entirely new concept. Jesus is laying the foundations for the church that is to come, the church that will continue the work that he has begun. The seeds for our own church here in Scottsville have been sown.

The “gates of Hades” is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew Sheol, the place of the dead. Jesus is telling us that not even death will be able to thwart or overcome the work of the church that is now begun. These tremendously encouraging words resonate even today, when we worry so much about the significant decline in church membership in the United States as well as all the threats that seem to loom over us. Surely Peter was heartened by such assurance; I know that I certainly hold onto these words of Jesus as a promise and comforting reassurance in hard times for the church, for our world, and for me personally. Even in the worst of times, even if our numbers diminish, our church built upon the rock will not disappear and will prevail over sin and death.

And that brings us to the third point, about Jesus’s saying, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Does Jesus mean that Peter is the foundation of the church? Our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers certainly think so. Peter’s status is officially conferred on each pope in succession.

Protestants, on the other hand, emphasize that it is not Peter, but Peter’s confession of faith, that is the rock. We are called to be like Peter and all those who have followed him through the generations confessing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Equating Peter, and all persons of faith, with a rock is a repeated theme in the Bible. “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.” (I Peter 2:5) Peter may be the foundational rock, but we are the stones that comprise the structure of the house of God. It is we who give it strength and resilience; it is we who witness to the faith that keeps it standing.

Each time we affirm our faith, each time we share our faith in testimony, mission, and witness, we are offering ourselves to be the living stones that built and continue building Christ’s church. When we help neighbors who are struggling in extraordinary circumstances, we testify to our faith in Jesus. When we share the bounty God has given us with our local foodbanks, we testify to our faith. When we pray for one another, we testify to our faith. When we serve on church committees or participate in Bible studies, we testify to our faith. When we read our Bibles and contemplate God’s revelation, we testify to our faith. When we share our joys and concerns and even when we enjoy simple fellowship with one another, we testify to our faith. All of the many things we think, believe, say, and do are testaments to our faith, which Peter defined so elegantly and simply: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” How fortunate we are to have those words and our belief to guide and sustain us!

Although all the disciples are empowered by Jesus, Peter is given the greatest affirmation and support for his courage, insight, and leadership within the group of disciples, and in this quiet conversation, he is also given new responsibility. As you read through the New Testament, count how often Peter is named first when Jesus’s early followers are listed.

And now we come to the fourth point about this amazing conversation. When Jesus said to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” in verse 19, he was elevating Peter to a place of trust and maturity. Keys are an important symbol in Jesus’s time, just as they are in ours. I vividly remember my parents giving me my first key to our house. It was affirmation that I was mature enough and responsible enough to have a key. Just before the schools were closed last spring due to the pandemic, Nan and I picked up our granddaughter from her school. As we drove her home, Nan started digging through her purse for her key to the house. With quiet pride, our granddaughter showed us her new keychain, with its single, triumphant key to her house. She, like me, knew this was an important step in growing up. For Peter, being given the keys to the kingdom of heaven was even more than a sign of his maturing; it was the means of opening the door to new opportunities, and, more importantly, to heavy new challenges.

And finally, Jesus shows Peter the responsibilities of leadership when he defines the boundaries of Peter’s authority. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (16:19) It is unclear exactly what “binding” and “loosing” mean, but in the traditions of rabbinic Jerusalem, they are judicial terms defining what’s forbidden and what’s allowed for members of the congregation. Jesus’s reference to the keys to the kingdom of heaven in the same sentence might further indicate that Peter was being given the power to excommunicate people from and admit or readmit them to the church. At the very least, we may assume that during his lifetime, Peter remained the supreme guarantor of the tradition of Jesus’s sayings and was thus in a position to make ecclesiastical rulings about matters arising in the early church.

The conversation ends there, and Matthew returns our attention to the rest of the disciples when, in verse 20, Jesus “sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.” Are you as surprised by this as I was many decades ago on first reading this passage? It’s jarring, especially after that intimate, instructive conversation with Peter. You might imagine the twelve wondering why they were to be silent when they had such good news to share.

I’d tell you, but our lectionary planners clearly want us to wait because they’ve divided this gospel unit into two parts. Next Sunday, we’ll learn much more about this puzzling Messianic Secret and why Jesus needed his openly affirmed messiahship to be kept hidden. Considering how rich and instructive today’s reading is, maybe our lectionary planners want us to spend some time this week in contemplation about Peter’s confession of faith and Jesus’s quiet instructions to him.

I hope that in those moments when you’re able to do so, you’ll find some respite from thinking about all that troubles us these days by focusing instead on Peter’s simple, yet profound confession of faith. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

Joys and Concerns:

Prayers of hope and help for all who continue to suffer from Covid 19, including the cascading economic and social effects it brings with it.

Prayers of concern and solidarity with all our sisters and brother along the Gulf Coast as they brace for two nearly simultaneous hurricanes.

Prayers of hope for justice and equity to find their place in our suffering world, and for our eyes and hearts to open to the needs and tragedy that continuing injustice brings to us all.

Prayers for California as terrible wild fires rage there.

Prayers of healing for all in our congregation who suffer from frailty, illness, pain, and loneliness; may they know that there’s a great cloud of witnesses who hold them in their arms.

Prayers of gratitude and appreciation for all the acts of kindness, large and small, that emerge every day during these times of anxiety and fear; they bring sustaining hope.

Let us pray together:

Forgiving God, we confess that we conform to this world more often than to yours. We conform to this world’s frantic pace, which renders us too stressed and hectic to notice all the blessings you provide. We conform to this world’s reckless waste, exploiting what you entrust to our care. We conform to this world’s shallow values, oblivious to the giftedness of people different from us. We conform to this world’s impatient attitudes, preferring the latest instead of the lasting. Forgive our conformity and transform us, O God.

Though you are known by many names and depicted in many ways, gracious God, we know you most fully in Jesus Christ, our Messiah, your Son. We thank you for forming us into the church, the body of Christ in the world. Help us to live as he taught us: loving you, loving neighbor, unified in Christ, using our varied gifts and skills in the service of ministry until all is transformed into what is good and acceptable and perfect.

In Christ’s name, we confess our faith even as we confess our weakness. We rely on the assurance of your forgiveness and your help to enable us to rise above our failings, so that we may more freely do the work you would have us do. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, August 19, 2020

Dear Friends,

The story we’re about to read in Matthew is very troubling. A foreign, marginalized woman implores Jesus to heal her daughter. By the end of the story, Jesus has done so, but in the interval between her begging for help and the healing, Jesus says some terrible things to her. There seems no way around it: his treatment of her is inexplicable; he is arrogant, racist, sexist, and just plain mean.

We may believe that Jesus is truly human, but we don’t want him to be too human. Before reading Matthew 15:21–28 and finding out what the hubbub is all about, take a moment for a prayer for illumination:

Merciful Savior, your suffering has saved our lives, secured our future, and restored us to relationship with God. Remove the shame and fear that cause us to cower in your presence. By the power of your Spirit, open our eyes and hearts to your Word of love, mercy, healing, and blessing. Through Christ Jesus our Lord, we pray. Amen.

It’s important that Matthew begins by recording Jesus’s travels. He “went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.” This is an area well north and west of Jerusalem and Jesus’s hometown of Nazareth, and due west of Caesarea Philippi, which will be the setting of this coming Sunday’s reading from Matthew. Tyre, Sidon, and Caesarea Philippi are all outside the territory inhabited by Israel. A few villages in the area may have included some Jews, but this is predominately a Gentile area. It’s an entirely unfamiliar, likely unwelcoming, place for this itinerant Jewish preacher. So we have to ask, what is the one who was “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24) doing there?

Matthew refers to the woman as a Canaanite in verse 22. Only in Matthew and in two brief references in Acts is Canaan mentioned in the New Testament. Mark’s gospel also includes this story, but Mark describes the woman as being “a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth.” (Mark 7:26). Mark’s depiction of the woman is more precise and accurate. But Matthew’s goal is not accuracy. His saying that the woman was from Canaan is like us saying that Robert DeNiro is from New Amsterdam rather than New York.

By calling her a Canaanite, Matthew is reaching back to the earliest memories of the people of Israel and recalling and affirming the enduring expanse of God’s history with them. He wants his congregation of Jewish-Christians (and us) to recall the entirety of their history, beginning with God’s covenant with Abraham and Moses; continuing with their settlement in the promised land, which had been inhabited by the Canaanites; and persisting even now, in the times in which Matthew is writing.

He is also universalizing the story: it’s not about a single incident in a rural setting north of Israel; it’s about God’s ongoing history with God’s people, a relationship that will soon expand to include even those who were vanquished as enemies, as we’ll see.

And by calling the woman a Canaanite, Matthew is reminding us of how lowly her status is. She is not only foreign and thus pagan, but also stateless. The Canaanites inhabited the promised land before the Israelites settled there, and they’ve now utterly vanished. There are no Canaanite scrolls or writings; there is no longer a land of Canaan; her heritage is virtually non-existent. Whether we imagine her to be from Greece, Syrophoenicia, or the now vanished land of Canaan, it is clear that the woman is neither of the house of Israel nor a likely friend to any who come from there. Understanding that she is an outsider is crucial to this story.

In these eight brief verses, the woman refers to Jesus as Lord three times. The first time, she not only calls him Lord, but invokes his heritage and prophetic legitimacy, addressing him as “Lord, Son of David…” (15:22) We’ll never know how she knows to use that title, but by doing so, she acknowledges that Jesus is not some local magician or run-of-the-mill miracle worker, but the Messiah, the long-expected one of the Jewish faith.

“But he did not answer her at all.” (15:23) Nowhere else in the gospels do we see him treat anyone so harshly and with such arrogance. Jesus is silent, even as she acknowledges his status and Israel’s. Most alarmingly, he’s silent in the face what is certainly a desperate plea. This is the only time in the gospels that Jesus fails to respond to a request for help. She keeps shouting – shouting! an extraordinary thing from such a lowly outsider! – until the disciples, no doubt horrified by her rudeness and unseemly insistence, ask Jesus to send her away.

And now Jesus breaks his silence. “He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’” (15:24) It’s not clear whom he’s addressing when he answers. Matthew seems almost purposefully unclear here. Is Jesus addressing the woman or his disciples? Some commentators, perhaps trying to make his answer a little less arrogant and exclusive, speculate that he’s addressing the woman and thereby at least acknowledging her presence. It seems to me more likely that Jesus is responding to his disciples’ urging him to send her away rather than addressing her. Or maybe he’s thinking aloud, trying to define the scope of his mission and messiahship in the face of the woman’s dramatic entreaty.

Finally, when the woman continues to plead for help, Jesus does respond to her, but his response is uncharacteristically cruel and mean. “He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” (15:26) He’s calling her a dog, an enormously insulting way to address anyone, including one so wretched and lowly as this distraught woman.

And here, my friends, is one of the best retorts in the history of spoken language. “She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’” (15:27)

I warned you that this is a tough read! Over the years, preachers, teachers, and scholars have tried to clean up this story in many ways.

One such attempt has it that Jesus was testing the woman. When she finally passed the test, “Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.” (15:28)

What do we learn from this theory and these words? The child is healed, after all, thanks to her mother’s persistence, which Jesus calls her faith. But what a cruel test of faith this would be! Understanding that last verse as a test of faith causes a multitude of pain. How many people in the midst of grief and fear carry this passage in their hearts and imagine that Jesus is telling them that if they had just had more faith, their loved one would not be ill or would not have died? And if that’s the case, then our faith must be lacking. What an impossible, entirely misguided, burden of responsibility we take upon ourselves. What tragic self-torture, to think that Jesus would test us so cruelly. This goes against everything we know about Jesus.

All of us suffer from failures of faith. I know that my faith barometer waxes and wanes at various points in my life, even at various points during my week. Yet I never worry that Christ will judge me or ignore me for a lapse of faith. I believe in God’s grace, freely given, and unearned. The Canaanite woman had nothing available to her except for her untutored, intuitive faith, and that faith was focused on the one who could heal her daughter. But I hope that none of us will fall into the trap of thinking the depth of our faith controls our destiny.

This reading begs other questions as well. Some try to explain its cruelty by blaming the translation. The Greek word that has been translated “dogs” is in the diminutive and really means little dogs, sweet little puppies. But really, does that explain Jesus’s apparent mercilessness? Does calling the woman a puppy instead of a dog help you to understand his actions any better? I don’t think so either.

Still others speculate that it was because the woman submitted to Jesus and knelt before him that Jesus finally gave in and healed her daughter. But Jesus never asks for her submission. His realm is not one of tyranny even though his initial silence is terrible and outmatched only by his callow name-calling. Nowhere else does Jesus demand submission. What Jesus demands of us is just this: to love one another and witness to God’s love for the world.

We’ll do almost anything to make Jesus be who we want him to be, especially in a story as off-putting as this one. But remember, this is a gospel, written for a purpose: to share the words and witness of Jesus and to inspire newly-emerging Christians to mission in his name.

Matthew’s gospel ends with the compelling Great Commission, the charge to Christ’s followers to take their witness to the greater world. The Great Commission is a radical new vision of Jesus’s and the church’s mission and of Jesus himself. Our reading for today is part of the groundwork that Matthew is laying as he prepares his readers (and us) for the Great Commission.

Matthew shows us Jesus in an alien land responding to a plea from an outsider. And he shows us that Jesus recognizes truth when he hears it, including from this stateless Gentile woman. Jesus sees something radically new in this outsider: someone ready to be part of a flock much bigger than the one he had understood as his mission to the house of Israel. The Canaanite woman’s persistence not only makes her daughter whole; it also shows Jesus the larger world he has come to heal and make whole.

Christians throughout the ages have proclaimed that “Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8) The unspoken understanding in that statement is that Jesus’s divinity is proven by his eternal sameness, his consistency, his constancy. He is beyond the shadow of changeability. But here we see the gospel writer telling us that in fact, Jesus can change. From initially not even deigning to respond to the Canaanite woman’s earnest, desperate pleas for help, he turns on a dime and almost casually performs a healing miracle. Matthew presents us with a Jesus whose understanding of his mission is clearly evolving beyond the people of Israel to the wider world, just as the infant church that is beginning in Matthew’s time is evolving and broadening beyond the boundaries of Israel to the wider world.

Only ten days ago, we heard Jesus call Peter a man of little faith – Peter, who had been chosen by Jesus to be one of his initial followers. Today, we read about a person who is the polar opposite of Peter – a woman, a Gentile, an outsider, a foreigner – who is recognized by Jesus for her great faith. Matthew is showing us an evolving Jesus and also telling us and the emerging Christian church that faith, whether little or great, cannot be limited to any single group of people, or to any class or gender, nationality or ethnicity, or economic status. It is through the grace of God and the love of Christ that we come to faith.

Jesus’s divine nature was only slowly beginning to be understood or articulated in the gospels and was thus only occasionally revealed. What we see in chapter 15 of Matthew is something new: Jesus, fully human and fully divine. And we see that God can change in God’s understanding of and for whom God is God, and hence to whom the mission of Jesus is directed. God’s covenant is now expanding beyond a single people to include even the stateless outcast.

As Jesus changed with new situations, so, too, must we be ready to change. We must be willing to learn how to change as our faith grows and matures and as our understanding of our place in the world and God’s plan is revealed. As we broaden our responses to our faith, we enable God’s love to be expressed and lived out in these exceptionally challenging times. By allowing ourselves to be flexible and by trusting in the power of our faith, we can become vehicles of transformation for ourselves and the world. I pray that, with increasingly deeper experience of God’s love, we, like Jesus, will have the courage to change in response to the radical demands that we’re presented with in these anxious times.

This prayer from the Book of Common Prayer seems particularly apt for this challenging but ultimately inspiring reading:

Almighty God, you sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your church. Open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love, joy, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Note for August 12, 2020

Dear Friends,

The prophetic writings that we call the book of Isaiah were written by a number of authors over a period of more than 200 years. Isaiah is a single book, but I invite you to join Biblical scholars who think of it as having three distinct parts, each of which centers on three periods of crisis for the Israelite nation: the Assyrian crisis (eighth century BCE), the Babylonian crisis (sixth century BCE), and the Persian restoration (ca. fifth century BCE).

The prophet Isaiah, whose prophetic witness is collected in chapters 1–39, which scholars call First Isaiah, lived during the Assyrian domination of the kingdom of Israel (approximately 745 to 640 BCE). Second Isaiah (chapters 40–55) was written not by Isaiah, but by an exiled prophet or prophets of his school of thought during the Babylonian exile (597–539 BCE). Third Isaiah (chapters 56–66) probably comes from multiple authors who also wrote in the style of the prophet Isaiah. It dates from the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE. The Persians allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem in the year following their conquest of Babylon.

Today’s reading from the first chapter of Third Isaiah focuses explicitly on the return to the Jewish homeland and the re-establishment of the nation. Before reading Isaiah 56:1, 6–8, pause, if you will, for a brief prayer for illumination:

Lord, by the power of your Spirit, give us your words of life that our faith may increase and our hearts be made whole. Amen.

Try to imagine the scene as our short reading begins. The long years of exile were over, and thousands upon thousands of Jews were returning to Jerusalem. One would think this reading would be a great celebration of restored freedom and return from exile, but it also reflects the many crises the returnees had to confront.

First, the exile had lasted sixty years, which meant that three generations of those who survived were returning home. After more than half a century, however, this was a home that existed only in the memories, stories, and faith of parents and grandparents. After so many years away with little reason to think they would ever return, essential connections and loyalties were either lost or buried so deep in the people’s memories and hearts that they were all but inaccessible.

Second, the exiles who returned to Jerusalem and the surrounding cities and towns found a far different reality than their distant memories painted. Others were living in their homes, the economy was disastrous, Jerusalem had become an unrecognizable (to them) mix of cultures and religions, and the social order was far different from the order they had developed as a means of survival in exile in Babylon. Even those without first-hand memories of their former homeland would likely have been stunned and deeply disappointed by what they found on their return.

Third, those Jews who had been left behind in heavily occupied Jerusalem were not the people the exiles remembered. They had not been considered important enough, wealthy enough, or powerful enough to have been exiled, and now, they were losing the humble lives they had managed to cobble together. In all likelihood, any welcome the returning exiles may have dreamed of was non-existent.

Fourth, the culture of the nation had changed radically. Many non-Jews and foreigners had settled in Jerusalem over the past sixty years, so the returnees came home to a politically unstable country and an unfamiliar population. The returning Jews were faced with rebuilding their own nation, and their powerlessness complicated that and their own futures as they tried to figure out how to reorganize their nation and society.

This was the layered, complex political/economic/religious situation into which this prophetic writer of Third Isaiah brought the word of God that we read today.

“Thus says the Lord: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come.” (56:1) Here, the writer is clearly saying, Welcome home! You are called, as always, to do justice and live in a way that is right. God’s salvation is coming soon, but God will handle that; you just stay focused on justice.

Surely these words would have been comforting to the returning exiles. They reflected the familiar words of faith that they knew and loved.

However, their sense of reassurance was to be short-lived, as the prophet made clear some very surprising changes to their traditional understanding of what is right and what is just. As we saw in the first verse, the dictates of the faith – maintain justice, do what is right – remain vital, foundational aspects of the faith, but the divine word will change to reflect who may fully participate in the worship life of the community. Verses 2–5 are not included in today’s reading, but they are important to our understanding of verses 6–8.

Verse 2 reinforces the first verse and reminds the people of their familiar part in the covenantal relationship with God. “Happy is the mortal who does this, the one who holds it fast, who keeps the sabbath, not profaning it, and refrains from doing evil.” You can hear the ten commandments echoing behind this verse.

But then, the prophetic writer makes a distinct turn from the Abrahamic covenant with God. In verses 3–5, a new call is made clear, a call that welcomes outsiders, including foreigners and eunuchs “who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant.” (56:4) These are people who, in the past, have been expressly denied access to worship, to God’s house, the Temple, as we see in Deuteronomy 23:1–8. They are now be welcomed, and welcomed fully, so long as they adopt the covenantal rules previously required of and available to the Jews alone.

Not only has the promise of the covenant expanded to become something more than was granted to Abraham and Sarah, but the requirements of the covenant now specify that it is the responsibility of the faithful to ensure that those previously excluded from the community of faith feel welcome. The return from exile has now become a far greater glimpse into the grace of God than the people of faith had ever previously known.

God declares that “these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. . .for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” (56:7) And our passage concludes, “Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, [those Babylonian exiles returning home] I will gather others [those historically barred from worship, the eunuchs and Gentiles] to them besides those already gathered.” (56:8)

Through the voice of the unnamed prophet of Third Isaiah, God now makes it clear that God welcomes foreigners and outcasts; they are as much God’s servants in a shared covenant as the people of Israel are. By so doing, the scope of God’s deliverance and salvation is radically enlarged.

The people of Israel felt dislocated, ironically enough, on returning their homeland and had to adjust to new, unexpected realities. In the midst of all this, they were called to a new way of honoring their ancient covenant with God by welcoming the “foreigners who join themselves to the Lord.” (56:6).

This new covenant is not simply a matter of welcoming those who had been ignored or worse, rejected. God called on the returning Babylonian exiles to change how they looked at themselves as well as the world. They were charged to move from an “us/them” view of the world to one that recognizes all as faithful fellow travelers, including both those who are familiar to us and those who are new to us. Seeing all as part of God’s ingathering of beloved worshipers forces the returning exiles to adjust their vision of the world to more closely match God’s vision.

This is the call still heard in our communities of faith today. In 1964, in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, Martin Luther King, Jr. called this broader communal vision of God “the world house.” King’s lecture is published as the final chapter in his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community. He writes that the world house is the human community that transcends ethnic, national, class, and religious divides. It embodies a wholly integrated world. This, indeed, is the world envisioned by the prophetic writings in these verses of Third Isaiah. That Dr. King had to repeat this prophetic vision so many centuries later reflects how difficult such a vision is to achieve, no matter how respected the prophet or the prophesies might be.

Even today, the struggle to achieve a welcoming, expanding community continues. As I write these words, it is the third anniversary of the August 12, 2017 events in Charlottesville. I am contemplating how little progress we seem to have made in the three years since then, and also how far we have begun to come. As a society, as a nation, today we are once again at a tipping point, seeking concrete, honest ways to address how we can open the benefits and privileges of God’s love and justice to all people. As I have written before, and as we see from these ancient writings, this is not a short-term task. It clearly cannot be achieved within some carefully delineated, precisely prescribed time-frame. It requires hard, sustained, and likely painful work, work which we are only just beginning, yet once again, in our nation.

We are called today to look beyond ourselves. We are called to look even beyond the serious needs that grow from our own sense of dislocation in these times of pandemic and economic loss. We are called to foster and nurture an entirely new society with new characteristics. That is the same hard work we are called to do if we are serious about fighting explicit, implicit, conscious, or unconscious racism. We must look at ourselves if we are truly to accept those who have been strangers to us, and those whom we’ve estranged from ourselves.

It is surely not we who determine who is part of the abundant grace of God’s covenant, but it is our covenantal obligation that requires us to embrace every member of the family of God. May we work faithfully as we struggle to meet God’s vision of a “house of prayer for all peoples.” (56:7) It is the sublime beauty of that notion that compels us to our task.

Let us pray together:

Almighty and Gracious God, whose compassion embraces everyone, gather the outcast and the lost; heal the wounds of fear and distrust; and make us a community of reconciliation that we may embody your merciful love and rejoice in your astounding grace.

Bless us, we pray, and clear our blindness, that we may see your will for our lives and know the power of your salvation.

May we help your presence be known by the outcasts of our society and our world: the refugee in need of food, shelter, and a safe place to live and work and raise a family; those students ridiculed by the “in-crowd” who feel isolated and alone; the victims of crimes who are told verbally and in so many other ways that it was they who caused the injustice they suffered; all who feel alone and apart from the world house that you would have us build.

Awaken us to the subtle and not so subtle ways that people are excluded from community, and empower us by your grace to be Christ’s ambassadors, fully embracing and welcoming the unwelcomed.

In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, August 9, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today we turn to Peter, another follower of God who had bouts of fear much like Elijah, whose story we read this past Wednesday. Our reading for today appears in every gospel except for Luke, but it is only Matthew who shares the story-within-a-story of Peter walking on the water, albeit for only a short while.

Before we read our scripture passage for today, take a centering moment to pray for illumination:

God of our present trouble and promised triumph, open our eyes to see you in the midst of our struggles. Open our ears to hear your words of invitation and assurance. Open our minds to recall your wonderful works and miracles. Open our hearts to glorify your name and seek strength in your Word. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, we pray. Amen.

Fear is a very complicated thing. It can protect us from harm, and it can also be the most paralyzing of emotions. It can blind us to the essential realities of our lives. It certainly blinded the disciples. “But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear.” (14:26) The disciples, who had been living and working with Jesus every day for months, were utterly unable to recognize him on the water. Some might say that was a reflection of how impossible it was for them to believe that he was actually walking across a threatening, stormy sea. But they had already witnessed many miracles, so that’s not entirely convincing. I believe that what blinded them to the identity of the man walking on water was fear.

Fear was not a common emotion among these men, most of whom had earned their living dangerously, fishing in the same unpredictable waters that now had them nearly paralyzed with fear. They had had the courage to leave their homes and livelihoods to follow this itinerant preacher, and surely by now, they knew him as a brother. But they were so unable to see him in the man who calmly walked towards them on the water – indeed, they were so blinded by their fear – that they believed him to be a ghost. Deep in the thickets of fear, they reverted to superstition. They were more than afraid; they were, as Matthew says, terrified.

Matthew’s supplementary story about Peter walking on the water graphically illustrates both what it means to be caught midway between faith and doubt and that fear has no neat, definitive ending. Peter was clearly caught between faith and doubt when, taking an immensely courageous leap, he said, “Lord if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” (14:28)

The turbulent sea is a character in its own right in this story, standing in for all the unspoken fears that plague us. The chaotic sea represents the myriad variables we can’t control or anticipate, inspiring our most primitive, basic fears. And Peter represents all of us who, daring to believe in Jesus, take their first steps into that unknown world of faith, buoyed by the confidence that Jesus will sustain us.

But then Peter’s faith seems to diminish, and again, he represents our fearful selves here as well. “When he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’” (14:30) He began to sink because the storm had so intimidated him that he forgot to center on Jesus instead of the winds and the towering waves. How often do we do the same?

It’s easy to focus on Peter’s “little faith” here. But do not overlook the first words of the next verse; they are fundamental to our faith and reliance on Jesus. “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith why did you doubt?’” (14:31) Jesus doesn’t hesitate to save Peter, even as he witnesses his “little faith.” His response is immediate. Just as he was for the disciples, he is always at the ready to reach out a hand to us, no matter how incapacitating our fear may be.

The Greek word oligopistos (“of little faith”) is always used by Matthew with respect to believers, never for unbelievers. Its purpose is to rebuke those who fail to draw fully on their faith. Likewise in John’s gospel, believing is always a verb, never a noun. Faith is not a limited possession, but an action that must grow and expand. In Matthew, those of little faith, with a dash of doubt tossed in, are warned that they must exercise their faith or it will wither away like an unused muscle. Matthew leaves very little room for fear or for shallow understanding even as he acknowledges them as human realities.

Learning to rely on faith is very much like learning to ride a bike. The day finally comes to leave the training wheels in the garage. Your mom or dad holds the bike as they jog along behind you, just out of your line of vision. You’re doing great until you glance back and see your parent, smiling and proud, 75 feet behind you. Only then do you lose your balance and start to swerve; you doubt your new skills, and soon the bike tips over to hit the ground. But your skill, and your faith in yourself, will ultimately prevail, and you’ll be sailing along with well-earned confidence in your ability to stay upright and on course.

There are many obstacles to faith, but the blindness that comes with fear or with too narrow an understanding seems to underlie almost all of them.

There’s a story from the Zen Buddhist tradition that tells of a disciple who thought he had finally achieved enlightenment after twenty-five years of meditation in a cave. He thought he could demonstrate his new-found awareness by walking on water. He came out from the cave, and without even pausing to test the water temperature, he strode into the surf. Two monks saw him walking across the water. One monk said to the other, “Who is that? Look at him, walking on the water!” “Pity,” said the other monk. “The ferry only costs a quarter.”

Jesus’s walking on water does not establish or confirm his identity as “the Son of God” (14:33) any more than the Zen monk walking on water confirms that he has actually achieved enlightenment. The two monks observing him understand this as he does not, despite his long years of meditation. Had they been early Christians or Christians today, they would have recognized that it is not the fearless act of walking on water that marks Jesus as the Son of God; it is his words and saving actions that do so. Looking for miracles does not reflect our faith; paying attention to the witness of Jesus and all the saints that follow him (including in our own congregation!) builds upon and reflects on our faith.

The portion of the story about Peter, the story-within-the-story, teaches us about the power of fear and doubt. It teaches us that fear can be so great that it can reduce our faith to but a “little faith.” What the gospel shares with us is that Christian faith is not about absolute, unquestioning belief. Nor is it about holding protectively and securely onto that faith from the safety of the boat; doing that means we will never progress. Our faith is about courage and steadfast belief, even in the worst of storms. And it is about the reliability of God’s grace.

Like Peter, we are called by Jesus to leave the security of the boat and step into turbulent waters stirred up by storms. Those storms often arise from the productive tension between doubt and trust. But we must not resist that tension, or glory in it, or fear it if we are to be led into a deeper relationship with God. As people of faith, we are called to trust that God comes to us in our darkest and stormiest times. Indeed, God is often most present to us when we risk our faith and believe that we’re beginning to sink.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose testimony is all the more compelling because of the genuine, ultimately fatal, risks he took for his faith, returned to Hitler’s Germany after being offered safety from Hitler and a secure professorship at Union Theological Seminary. On returning to Germany, he participated in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler, leading to his imprisonment and execution. As he wrote in The Cost of Discipleship, “Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea, in order to learn both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord. If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learned the meaning of faith.” Learning the almighty power of the Lord includes recognizing and fearlessly accepting God’s transcendence in our lives.

For Matthew, and for us, believers are threatened by fear, and what feels safe may well blind us to greater truths. We may think of the boat as sanctuary from the storm, but the boat represents the church, with all its demands and privileges of faith, tossed on the turbulent seas of life. In these relentless days of pandemic, cries for justice, political turmoil, and economic frailty, we can too easily be tempted to stay securely in the boat, even as the storms around us threaten to overwhelm us. May we dare to get our feet wet when, despite fear and doubt, we step from our boat and face the storm in order to serve God’s purposes and God’s people, our sisters and brothers.

Joys and Concerns:

For educators and students who are struggling with how to teach and learn this fall in the midst of the pandemic.

For the amazing kindness of strangers, like the unknown man who paid $100 for a $1.00 bag of cookies at our stand at the Scottsville Farmers Market and refused to accept change. His quiet and remarkable donation will be used for the mission and ministry of our women’s group, and it’s raised the spirits of everyone who has learned about it.

Let us pray together:

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,

We ask you for what we believe we need, knowing that as we dare to do so, we also trust in your wisdom to know what our true needs are.

We pray for those places in the world where children can’t sleep because of bullets flying through the night, or hunger so severe that they are in constant pain, or from the terror and loneliness of separation from their families.

We pray for nations and groups that continue to nurse old wounds and fight old battles rather than seek reconciliation.

We pray for those who have lost everything, including their faith in you, to natural disaster and accident.

We pray for all who have been given the power to lead. May power not corrupt them. May they seek to serve rather than be served.

We pray for those who await their physician’s diagnosis, and for those trying to cope with what they’ve already heard, and for those who are their caregivers.

We pray for those who grieve, whether for the loss of a family member or friend, or a job, a home, a self-image, or a dream.

We pray for our church. Don’t let us become complacent or anxious for our safety. Help us to recognize you in the storms that surround us, so that we may be empowered by our faith to meet all obstacles. May we recognize Jesus and follow him even when he calls us to leave the confines of the boat and venture out onto the water with him.

We pray in the name of the Holy One. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for August 5, 2020

Dear Friends,

Franklin Roosevelt’s first inaugural address in 1933 was anchored by the now-famous line, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” That simple statement served to inspire, motivate, and empower the nation during the depths of the depression, and some of us think of it as America’s unofficial slogan. While this stirring statement has continued to rouse us to action against many threats in the decades since then, we often see fear as an enemy so great that we feel powerless to overcome it. Our sense of fear, sadly, can generate more than helplessness, especially when it is wrapped in our feelings of failure – failure of ourselves and of our faith.

Today and this coming Sunday, our lectionary directs us to explore fear shown by two significant, faithful followers of God – the prophet Elijah and the disciple Peter – and how God interacts with them at their times of fear. I pray that these scriptures will offer guidance and hope to us today, as we try to live in and through these very fearful times.

Before we read from I Kings, I invite you to join with one another across locations and time in this prayer for illumination:

Gracious God, we listen for you in wind, earthquake, and fire. Unexpectedly, you speak in the sound of silence. We pray that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you will silence in us all the storms, doubts, and fears that overwhelm us, so that we may hear what you have to say. Open our ears and hearts to hear your still small voice, your thin and quiet, yet compelling and commanding voice. We ask this in the name of Christ. Amen.

The books of Kings (I and II) are parts of the section of the Bible that were first categorized as the Histories by the fourth-century bishop, Athanasius. These books, from Joshua to Esther, cannot be considered historical in the same way that we read history in our time, but they continue the story of God’s interaction with the Israelites. They end with the Wisdom books, which begin with Job and end with the Song of Solomon.

Unlike many other prophets whose words were too hard for the people to swallow, Elijah has been well received as a prophet by many in Israel. But the people’s faithfulness was clearly beginning to erode. Struggling with their faith in the God of Abraham, many among the people of Israel had actively abandoned their covenant with God and were worshipping Baal instead.

The ruling king at that time was Ahab, the most sinful of Israel’s kings in a long line of corrupt kings. Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord more than all who were before him.” (16:30) He violated religious and civil law by marrying Jezebel, a foreign woman, who presumably introduced the worship of Baal into the court and community. It was Ahab who first led the people to serve Baal. He even built an altar to Baal in Samaria. (16:31-33)

However, even with his extravagant altar, Ahab was clearly no match for Elijah, whose prophesies and deeds came from the true God of Abraham, not from the idols Ahab and the people had turned to. Elijah’s response to the iniquity that had arisen in Israel was to directly encounter the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and kill them all. (I Kings 18)

Chapter 19 begins with the massive fallout from Elijah’s act. “Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying ‘So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them [the now dead prophets of Baal] by this time tomorrow.’ Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life.” (19:1-3)

Elijah had now become a hunted man. He fled to Beer-sheba in the southern kingdom of Judah for protection. But his fear pushed him further. Leaving his servant in the city, and desperate and afraid, he traveled alone into the wilderness and prayed for death. After the boldness of his act in destroying Ahab’s gods and altar, the tables seemed to have turned on him with Jezebel’s threat. He felt his life had lost purpose and meaning; he felt abandoned by the people and by God. He “went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’” (19:4)

Exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, he fell asleep under the broom tree, only to be suddenly awakened by an angel who gave him food and water several times to fortify him before sending him on a journey of forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. We know Horeb by another name, Mt. Sinai, the mountain where God encountered Moses and gave him the Ten Commandments. It is at this point that our reading begins.

“He [the word of the Lord] said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, . . . but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” (19:11-12)

Standing in the same place where Moses had stood when he received the ten commandments, Elijah anticipated the same dramatic presence of God that Moses had received. But it was in silence, sheer silence, that God communicated with Elijah. God encountered Elijah not as Elijah expected but as God knew Elijah needed.

God does that with us as well. We must not limit God with our expectations; we must be open to God as God comes to us, just as Elijah opened himself to hear God’s voice in the silence after the noise and chaos of the wind, earthquake, and fire, and after his moment of despair under the broom tree.

Elijah confessed his fear – twice, with the exact same words. In his eyes, because Israel had failed God, so, too, had he. But God did not become disgusted with Elijah, nor did God deny Elijah’s fears or his need to express them. Instead, as we see in verses 15 through 18, God gave Elijah his instructions. He empowered him to strengthen the remnant of 7,000 faithful believers. He worked with Elijah to overcome his fears in the pursuit of his prophetic vocation and his faith. God kept Elijah on course.

Likewise, God keeps us on course. God does not give up on us, although we might feel, even insist, that it would be easier for God and for us if God did so. God wants us to recognize and acknowledge our fears, even if we confess those fears, those doubts and anxieties, only to God and none other. We are safe in God’s hands and secure under God’s direction and promise; from our confession deep in our souls comes our renewal and strength.

“Fear is not the antithesis of faith and truth; nor does it indicate a lack of trust in God,” suggests Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a pastoral care professor and licensed clinical psychologist. In a recent article, she goes on to say that “indeed, God created us with fear to keep us safe.”

Many of us fear this virus that we cannot see, a virus whose deadly effects have altered our understanding of what is normal. In response to the virus, we are called to isolate ourselves. In such isolation, it is natural to despair and think of ourselves as being alone and abandoned. But we are not. Just as God pointed out to Elijah, who thought that he was alone even when there were still 7,000 faithful Israelites, we are called to remember and recognize that we are not alone.

We are part of a constant, reliable community of faith here in Scottsville, and we are also part of a global community of people who share our struggle against coronavirus and all its complicating realities. As comforting and real as those communities are, we are also part of a much greater community: God is with us. Though we may be isolated, we are far from alone. Even when we fall into despair under our own broom tree, the angel of the Lord gives us sustenance and points us in the direction where we will find our comforting and supportive God.

Harry Emerson Fosdick, the great preacher of the early and middle twentieth century, has written, “It is cynicism and fear that freeze life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.” May we accept God’s free and freeing gift of life even in the midst of very real threat and deep anxiety. May we live in the fullness that God intends for all the children of God.

Pray with me and our community of faith this day:

God of power and love, you are with us in every circumstance of this life. We thank you for your steadfast faithfulness. We thank you for your prophets and for your gift of peace, which comes to us even in times of chaos and fear, trouble and doubt. We thank you for your powerful Word that coaxes us even when we are hiding and afraid. We put our trust in you, because we know that you save us.

We ask for your power and love to guide us in the face of the overwhelming chaos of this global pandemic. Allow us to see and travel the path you lead us to, to renewed physical, mental, and spiritual health.

We ask this, and all things, in the name of Christ Jesus. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, August 2, 2020

Dear Friends,

Our reading for today is the Feeding of the Five Thousand, also called the Loaves and Fishes. It’s a story rich in meaning and beloved by people of faith across the globe. It’s the only miracle story that all four gospels record, suggesting it was of unusual importance. The story was widely shared and known in the life of the early emerging church and likely was read each time the faithful gathered for communion, whether in small house churches of the countryside or in the growing communities of faith in urban areas.

Before we read this miraculous feeding story, let us pray for illumination:

Providing God, by your Holy Spirit feed us with your Word, that we might be filled with the bread of life. Amen.

“Now when he heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.” (14:13) What had Jesus heard that would cause such a reaction?

Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, was the local ruling representative of the Roman emperor in Galilee and Perea. He was the ruling “client king,” which means he was a Roman official rather than a traditional king. He was very powerful. During a lavish celebration of his birthday, the daughter of his wife, Herodias, danced before his guests. He was so pleased with her performance that he promised to grant whatever she wished. She could have asked for jewels or lands, but “prompted by her mother, she said ‘Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.’” (14:8)

It’s important to know that her mother, Herodias, hated John because he had denounced her and Herod for marrying; she had been his brother’s wife, and such a marriage was prohibited by the laws outlined in Leviticus. Herod had already imprisoned John the Baptist because John had so roundly condemned his marriage to his erstwhile sister-in-law, and he didn’t hesitate to comply with his step-daughter’s grim request. He ordered that John be beheaded and even triumphantly presented his severed head on a platter to his step-daughter, wife, and guests at his birthday party.

“His [John’s] disciples came and took the body and buried it; then they went and told Jesus.” (14:12) The news of John’s execution posed a true threat for Jesus. John and Jesus were more than cousins. John presented himself as the prophet of Jesus. They were linked in the minds of the people. And they were linked in Herod Antipas’s mind as well. When he learned of Jesus’s teachings and miracles, Herod’s first thought was that Jesus might be John the Baptist resurrected. Just as John had been, Jesus knew he was a threat to Herod’s power and authority, and Jesus was well aware that he, like John, was a target for Herod’s grisly reckoning. Thus, on hearing the news of John’s death from John’s disciples, Jesus withdrew from the town where he was preaching.

It’s easy for us to misunderstand the word “withdrew” here and dismiss it as typically stilted biblical language. But for Matthew, “withdrew” has a specific meaning. For him, the notion of withdrawing is intentional and strategic; it is not meant to imply anything passive like retiring, retreating, or abandoning. Recall, if you will, that the Magi “withdrew” to their country by another road instead of reporting the location of the infant Jesus to King Herod the Great. (Matthew 2:12) Joseph “withdrew” to Egypt with Mary and their newborn child. (Matthew 2:14) Having heard of Herod the Great’s death, Joseph started the return journey from Egypt back to Bethlehem but “withdrew” to Nazareth in Galilee upon learning in a dream that Archelaus, Herod Antipas’s brother, was in power in Israel. (Matthew 2:22) Similarly, upon hearing of John the Baptist’s initial arrest, Jesus “withdrew” again to the rural, uninhabited areas of Galilee. (Matthew 4:12) Matthew 12:14-16 records that after a Sabbath controversy moved the Pharisees to conspire against Jesus “to destroy him,” Jesus departed or “withdrew.”

So, when Jesus sensed the danger he was in, he withdrew – he made a strategic move – and traveled by boat to “a deserted place,” as translated in many versions of the Bible. In other versions, “deserted” is translated as private, secluded, solitary, remote, desolate, lonely, out-of-the-way, isolated, quiet, desert, or wilderness. This emphasis on a deserted place is more than unwrapping all the layers of translation; it is an intentional reference to the wilderness and deserts that are threads throughout the Hebrew Bible. Its importance will become more obvious as we dig further into the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, so please bear with me.

To Jesus’s surprise, the crowd followed him, not by boat, but on foot, with more and more people joining in as they went along. Somehow the crowd, who had “followed him on foot from the towns,” (14:13) knew where Jesus was going. “When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick.” (14:14) He wasn’t able to fully withdraw after all, any more than he was able to resist his compassion for them.

As evening approached, his disciples came to Jesus and asked him to dismiss the crowd because there wasn’t enough food to eat. “Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’” (14:16) All the disciples had were five loaves of bread and two fish, barely enough to feed themselves and Jesus. Jesus, unperturbed, took the meager meal, “looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.” (14:19).

Matthew 14:20 is an amazing verse. In a single sentence, it tells us, “And all ate.” What a miracle! It goes on to tell us, “and were filled.” Wow! This wasn’t just a little bit to tide them over until they got home; it was a full Galilean peasant meal of bread and fish. And there’s still more; Matthew goes on in that verse to describe actual left-overs. “And they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.” From scarcity to overwhelming abundance!

And then, almost as an aside, Matthew tells us how big these crowds actually were. “And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.” (14:21) The crowd could thus have numbered as many as twenty thousand. This was a stupendous miracle; one that, while it occurred in a deserted place, could not be kept quiet.

By feeding the multitude, Jesus embodied the ancient Jewish concern for welfare of all in the community. This concern was expressed in life-giving bread and fish. How that simple, yet nourishing meal contrasted with Herod Antipas’s luxurious meal, ending with his execution of the prophet John the Baptist, would not have been lost on the struggling people oppressed by the occupying forces of Rome.

This miracle makes us look both back to earlier times and forward to what is to come during Jesus’ earthly ministry and beyond, to his resurrection. You’ve borne with me if you’ve read this far, and now I’ll satisfy your curiosity about the deserted place that we touched on earlier. If you think of a deserted place as wilderness, that will surely make you think of all the wilderness stories in the Hebrew Bible, just as it did for Matthew’s readers. There are nearly 1,000 wilderness references, but the one that truly stands out for most of us is the story of the Exodus – how the Israelites wandered in the wilderness for forty years and survived thanks to God’s provision of manna. (Exodus 16:1-15) They were fed, and fed anew each day, and there were thousands of them, following Moses.

The Feeding of the Five Thousand also provides a dramatic foretaste of the upper room in Jerusalem, where Jesus shared his last earthly meal with his disciples. As the day closed on the crowds who had followed him to the deserted place he had been seeking after he heard about the death of John the Baptist, he looked to heaven and blessed and broke the bread, just as he did at his Last Supper with his disciples. For Matthew, both of these events are messianic meals because Jesus is the host. And even to this day, we recall both when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, a miracle in which we are privileged to take part.

The Good News for us today is that God continues faithfully to provide for the church amid chaos and need. Just as Jesus used the meager resources that the early disciples brought to their situation, so, too, does God use what we bring in our times of trouble for nourishment, healing, and comfort. Even in times like these of pandemic and economic chaos, even when justice seems a distant goal, God is present. I know that we’re all weary and anxious. When you feel despair descending into your soul, remember that Jesus fed thousands. Our faith feeds billions. Be assured that we will continue to find nourishment in our faith and in the boundless grace of God.

This familiar, elegant story confirms yet again that Jesus in his earthly ministry and in his resurrection is the bread of all life. Thanks be to God who reminds us of this truth even when it doesn’t seem possible that our hunger for it can be filled.

Joys and Concerns:

For all those experiencing both earthquake and hurricane amidst the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

For those millions in our country, and billions globally, who live with hunger, threat of homelessness, and all the other forms of financial insecurity that unemployment and under-employment bring, as economies shrink in the face of the pandemic.

For the perseverance of those who struggle for racial justice and serve as our guides as we labor together and as individuals to discern our path at this pivotal moment.

Let us pray together:

Compassionate God, you are good to all. Help us to trust in you and to share what we have with a hungry world. By your graces, our physical and spiritual needs are met. Strengthened by you, we pray that we may offer ourselves in such a way that you will use us to meet the needs of others. Deepen our commitment to follow Jesus in ministries that feed and serve others.

We pray for all the people of the world, for all nations, and for all leaders, that wars will cease, that the hungry will be fed, and that refugees will live in safety and peace.

We pray for all those who suffer from physical and spiritual ills in this time of global pandemic, as we also pray for those who care for them.

We pray for our schools and for the teachers, administrators, and all who work in them; and for the students who are trying to cope with so much uncertainty, even as they prepare for a new academic year.

Gracious and merciful God, abounding in steadfast love, we join our voices with all who speak your praises and bless your name, for with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, we know you are just in all your ways and kind in all your doings. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for July 30, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today, we continue the story of Jacob that we started two weeks ago. Now we find Jacob traveling back to his family’s land after years of service to Laban, his mother’s brother, and Laban’s sons, who covet both the animal stock and family that Jacob has acquired. As he flees from the threat that they pose to his home and security, he brings with him his two wives, Rachel and Leah, who are Laban’s daughters; two maids, with each of whom his wives had asked him to father a child; and his children. It’s been many years since he left his father and mother after tricking his older twin brother, Esau, out of his rightful birthright, but it appears that the years haven’t brought him forgiveness, because Esau is coming to greet him with a small army of 400 men. What is Jacob to do now?

Before we find out, take a moment for this prayer for illumination:

All-knowing God, you satisfy our hunger at sunset and hold us close through nights of wrestling with all the anxious questions that keep us from sleep. Now let the day break with your blessing. Awaken and illumine us by your Word that we may behold your wisdom and guidance and be blessed by them. Amen.

With threats all around him, Jacob tries to keep his family safe by setting up their encampment on one side of a stream while he keeps watch on the other. That night, however, it wasn’t Laban and his sons or Esau’s army that accosted him; rather, “a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” (32:24) This mysterious man did not seem to be able to gain the upper hand; “he did not prevail against Jacob.” (32:25) Even after the man had put Jacob’s hip out of joint, they apparently remained evenly matched, and the struggle continued. When the man asked Jacob to let him go, Jacob continued to resist, responding, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” (32:26)

Are you as surprised by Jacob’s request as I was when I first read this story in Sunday School? Of all the things to trade for letting the man go, why would Jacob ask for a blessing? I can hardly imagine that would have been his first thought, especially in the midst of danger on all sides. After all, he and his family were in flight from the covetous Laban, nearly as much of a trickster as he was, and his sons. His still-angry brother’s army was coming and presumably ready to strike. In the midst of so many threats, why would he seek a blessing from his adversary? Did he know that it was God with whom he was struggling?

Despite his displaced hip, the struggle had continued through the night and remained a draw. With muscles honed from years of hard work for Laban, Jacob was very strong. Could Jacob have been so smug as to think no one but God could have been such a strong adversary? Or was the clue that the man said “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” (32:26) God does not allow anyone to see God’s face; could the threat of the rising sun be what prompted the strange boldness of Jacob’s request?

“Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” (32:28) Not telling Jacob/Israel his name, he blessed him. (32:29)

What is going on here? Jacob (whose name, reflecting his theft of Esau’s birthright, means “one who supplants,” as we learned in our earlier note) has had a change of names imposed on him, just as did Abraham and Sarah, his grandparents. Who but God could make such a change? Jacob’s new name says it all: he is now to be called Israel, which means “one who struggles with God.”

Jacob is clear about who his adversary is. “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” (32:30) Jacob may be renamed, but he is still the trickster he always was, so I’m on the fence about whether he actually saw God face to face. What’s clear from this passage, however, is that he struggled with God, and though the outcome of the struggle itself was apparently a tie, God blessed Jacob and renamed him with the profound name of Israel.

The Scriptures don’t answer any of these questions directly, yet as often as I read this Biblical account of Jacob’s encounter with God, it always rings true for me. The details of the story are not the point; it is the struggle that is the story. It is the struggle that refines and perfects our efforts. Even though it may be painful, it is the struggle that enables us to make decisions and see the right path.

At various times in my life, I have had to struggle with difficult decisions, and the most difficult ones were those that centered on my understanding of my Christian faith. These were the times when it was almost as if I were wrestling with God. My decision to enter the ministry was one such struggle. My father’s dream for me was that I would become a lawyer like him. I was able to tell my parents that I wanted to go to divinity school only after I shared my needs and desires and my struggle with this decision with good friends and mentors. I still believe to this day that they were God’s representatives in my life at that time, letting me find the words for my call and strengthening my resolve to pursue a different path from my father’s dreams.

I trust that many of you have also struggled in various ways with life-changing and life-affirming decisions; these, too, were undoubtedly struggles with God that sharpened and focused your thoughts. Just as Jacob did, we spend long, weary nights in painful struggle with God, who wants nothing so much as the chance to bless us as we labor so hard in our battles with our will and God’s will. And the struggle isn’t always between individuals and God. Sometimes the struggle is between communities, including communities of faith, and God.

What is our struggle as a community, and especially as a community of faith? Shortly after World War II, as suburbs blossomed across our nation, inner-city churches struggled with difficult decisions. Should they remain in the city or pull up their tents and move with their congregations to the suburbs? Today, churches struggle with simply paying their bills and how best to serve their communities in the pews and the wider world. Decisions about everyday matters like what color to paint their walls or whether to install new pew cushions can break the spirit of churches, even those that seem most secure and focused. Families struggle as well, with children no longer interested in church, or marrying outside the faith, or following a different path from the one they dreamed of for them; or with hidden issues like addiction, self-worth, and unshared financial pain.

Some struggles seem too mundane to even imagine that they have much to do with our understanding of the Bible, our faith, and our God, but they can be as painful as a displaced hip. Other struggles are so obviously consequential that we can easily understand them as the very essence of all we have been taught, believed, and lived; those are crossroads struggles.

I believe we are now at such a time, at such a crossroads. My work as a Christian social ethicist focuses on institutional, collective injustices more than on individual transgressions, and as I look at the broader, institutional picture, I see a very obvious crossroad before us. Once again, we are struggling as a nation with the profound and painful issues of racism. Especially in recent months, we’ve heard this called “implicit racism” and, more broadly, “institutional racism.”

Racism is not an affliction – a sin – of individuals only. It can be, has been, and continues to be a sin of institutions, and as part of such institutions, we are both individually and institutionally complicit. Either by choice or circumstance, each of us is inevitably part of sinful institutions.

The struggle seems most apparent now, but it’s been going on for centuries. It didn’t start in these recent months with the deaths of unarmed black men and women at the hands of police officers. Nor did it begin with the development and growth of the Black Lives Matter movement. It didn’t start during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s, ’60’s, and early ’70’s. It didn’t start at any particular point in any of our lifetimes. It didn’t start with Jim Crow, the Civil War, or even in 1619, when enslaved Africans were first brought to the shores of Virginia.

The struggle began earlier than even Biblical times, and it continues today. Every single one of us is a part of it, if only because it is part of our national, cultural, and religious history. Today, we stand at the forward point of those histories. We all have much work to do, and we will have to discern the parameters of that work before we can effectively be about the work itself. We must be rigorous and careful, tenacious and strong, if we are to unearth painful truths and make faithful changes to our lives.

Cathey Reele, our Clerk of Session, has shared a statement that a committee of the Presbytery of the James has developed in response to an earlier statement created by a teaching elder in the Presbytery. Some among us have problems with it for a wide variety of reasons; others do not; and others have suggested that we write our own statement. As we wrestle with our individual responses – including whether we want to endorse the statement as individuals and/or create a different one to offer as the Scottsville Presbyterian Church – we are wrestling with our pasts, our faith, and with God. Throughout this struggle, I pray that, even if we are unable to see the face of God, we will be able to ask for God’s blessing as we take our hesitant but trusting steps on the forward path of our history.

And this brings us back to God and Jacob wrestling with one another in their long night of struggle. Jacob had the insight to perceive God as his adversary and then the utter nerve to ask for God’s blessing. Jacob had proved his strength to God; he had proved his care for his family; he had shown his ability to withstand pain. But those were not what made him worthy of God’s blessing. God blessed Jacob because he showed such perseverance.

I pray that we will show the same perseverance in the face of pain and confusion as we struggle with the many-faceted aspects of racism, and that we will thereby become worthy of God’s blessing. This is not a “one and done” type of problem. Only in our tenacity and endurance, only as we struggle with each other and the wider community, only as we keep our hearts open to perceive God in our midst and in our struggle, will we be able to move in the direction that God would have us go. Thanks be to God who gives us the strength to be alive and to persevere in the midst of these struggles.

Let us pray together:

Life-changing God, you have touched us and transformed us. Inspire and strengthen us so that we can reach out to all who hunger for what only you can give. Keep our feet on your paths, and bless us so that we can multiply those blessings to others.

God who hears us, holds us, and helps us, you are our eternal source of blessing. You are our endless source of provision. In your compassion, you see our need; you heal our sickness, and satisfy our hunger.

For the healing and preservation of your creation, and especially for the insight, wisdom, and strength for us to confront our racism and to find new ways to heal the pain we’ve caused: give ear to our prayer.

For the needs of our nation, and all nations – wisdom for leaders, vindication and relief for the oppressed, guidance and inspiration for those who labor to defeat the corona virus: give ear to our prayer.

For those who are hungry, ill, vulnerable, or seeking refuge from adversaries and injustice: give ear to our prayer.

For all who need you, near and far, give ear to our prayer.

O Compassionate God, give ear to our prayer, through Christ Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, July 26, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today we complete our examination of Jesus’s parables in Matthew’s Third Discourse. Each discourse, you’ll recall, is a collection of Jesus’s sayings; this grouping, which is all of chapter 13, is a collection of Jesus’s parables. In each of the last two weeks, we explored a single parable from the collection. Each was told twice, first for the crowds that had assembled to hear Jesus’s teachings; and then, for the disciples only, a more explicit explanation of the allegorical meanings of the stories.

This week, the pace is much different and much faster. In just twelve verses, Jesus shares five more parables, known as the Parables of the Mustard Seed, the Yeast or Leaven, the Hidden Treasure, the Pearl of Great Value, and the Large Catch of Fish. I could probably write a separate sermon about each parable, but these are meant simply to be occasional notes about our lectionary readings. I hope this note will help to guide your thoughts on these wonderful, succinct little gems.

Before we look further into these five short parables, let’s join in this prayer for illumination:

Spirit of life, we do not know how to pray as we ought. Meet us in words written and in words spoken; intercede for us when our sighs are too deep for words. Be with us until we shine with the hope that is too often hidden in our hearts. We pray this in gratitude that you hear us, and in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Today’s first parable is the story of the mustard seed. As in all his parables in Matthew’s Third Discourse, except for the one about the sower at the beginning of chapter 13, Jesus begins each parable by comparing the kingdom of heaven to something else. Remember that the “kingdom of heaven” here means God. As you may recall, the Jews have so much respect for God that they don’t speak God’s name or even fully write it out. Matthew honors his Jewish heritage and his Jewish-Christian readers by respectfully using the term “kingdom of heaven” rather than “Kingdom of God.” We should therefore understand that these parables are not pointing to a heavenly realm at some specific divine location; God’s kingdom is not confined to a particular locality or even a particular time. God’s commonwealth is here and now, and it is eternal.

In today’s first parable, Jesus tells the crowd that “the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.” (13:31) It’s a strange metaphor. How can a tiny seed possibly be like the magnitude of God’s realm? It’s all about potential: from the tiny mustard seed, no larger than the tip of a pin, grows a plant as large and substantial as a shrub or even a tree. So large is the mustard plant that “the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (13:32)

And here we have another metaphor. “Birds of the air” is a metaphor for the Gentiles, and Jesus is very clear here: God’s realm is for all people. This is a new concept from this young rabbi from Galilee whose audiences were made up almost entirely of his own Jewish people. One wonders how that crowd would have received these words. By the end of his gospel, Matthew makes this even clearer, when Jesus charges his disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (28:19)

This parable assures Jesus’s followers and the early Jewish-Christians to whom Matthew was writing of the certainty of God’s promise. And we, too, can find great assurance in this parable. God is eternal and ever-present, and we can trust in God’s promise, even during these dark days of pandemic and global devastation. For all of God’s people, even the least bit of faith will grow like the tiny mustard seed into a sturdy, living, and vibrant plant that will nurture all who seek rest in its strong branches.

The Parable of the Yeast or Leaven is very similar to the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Something that starts out small and unnoticed – something that is, in fact, virtually invisible – has life-giving effect. To understand this parable, it helps to know that a “measure of flour” is approximately 66 quarts of flour, so if yeast is “mixed in with three measures of flour” (13:33), there would likely be enough bread to feed over 100 people. Just as the tiniest mustard seed can become nurturing support for all the birds of the air – all the people of the world – so, too, can a tiny portion of yeast feed multitudes.

This is not the first time we hear of a woman turning three measures of flour into a feast for the multitudes. The parable is an allusion to the story in Genesis in which three heavenly visitors come to Abraham and Sarah’s tent. Abraham, wishing to be hospitable to the strangers, asks Sarah to make bread using three measures of flour. (Genesis 18:6) From that humble beginning came a heavenly feast. For Matthew, this would be a natural extension of the kingdom he knew of from the Hebrew Bible. God’s reign continues in the person of Jesus the Christ, growing like a mustard plant and like leavened dough from the smallest of beginnings. God is at work on behalf of God’s people, even though human eyes may be unable to perceive what is happening.

Jesus departs from the crowds and shares three more parables privately with his disciples. One tells of a person who finds “treasure hidden in a field” and is so joyful at the find that “he goes and sells all he has and buys that field.” (13:44) Similarly, the next parable is about a merchant “in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (13:45) Both of these parables are about finding God’s treasure – the kingdom of heaven. The response to such an incredible find is to make it one’s own.

Notice how these parables are paired, and that each pair is targeted to a different audience. The first pair, for the crowds, emphasizes God’s action, while the second pair, for the disciples alone, stresses our human response. The second pair also hints that the treasures hidden from normal view are Jesus himself, Jesus the Christ who came to redeem all of humankind. This is information for the disciples only; the crowds are not ready for it. All four of these parables remind us that when we recognize God’s actions, we are called to treasure them and to respond to them with hope in God’s holy realm in our midst.

The fifth parable in this reading recalls the one we read last Sunday. Doesn’t a parable about “a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind” (13:47) remind you of the Parable of the Wheat and Weeds? While one is tailored to a nautical crowd and the other to an agrarian group, the result is the same. Only when the boat is full, when the harvest of fish is complete, can the good fish be separated from the bad, just as was the case when the wheat and weeds had to be harvested together before they could be safely separated into the useful and the poisonous.

The lesson in both is clear: at the harvest, that is, at the end of time, those who have followed God’s rules – those who have loved their neighbors as themselves, in the words of Jesus’s great commandment – will find themselves in the realm of God, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who have squandered their invitation to grace will be separated out and destroyed. As the parables say, for the squanderers, there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (13: 42 & 13:50) For the righteous, on the other hand, the angels will come, and they will bring God’s abundant acceptance and grace.

We started this exploration of Matthew’s collection of Jesus’s parables back on July 12th. You may recall that I raised the question then about whether this collection consists of seven or eight parables. Verse 52 is the variable. If it’s a parable, then this is a collection of eight parables; if it doesn’t qualify, then there are seven. It includes the comparison we’ve seen in all but one of the parables: “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” It sounds like a parable, but is this enough?

First-century scribes, especially Christian scribes like those who wrote for Paul and those who later wrote the gospels, were charged with sharing the essence of the faith in the texts they were creating. “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” (13:52)

Forty years after Jesus’s death and resurrection, there would have been much that could be considered old. We know that Matthew relied heavily on his understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, and he counted on his listeners and readers knowing them as well. This includes the prophesies of the Hebrew Bible, the words of and stories about Jesus and his disciples, and the expectation of his imminent second coming.

However, after the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome, and the growing realization that the second coming was not imminent and would occur in God’s time, not humankind’s, much would have to be considered new. Even Matthew’s audience is new, much broader and perhaps even more wary than the beleaguered people of Jerusalem had been in Jesus’s time.

But (and here’s the essence of our faith) both old and new can exist in harmony. Matthew blends the treasures of his Jewish heritage – the Hebrew scriptures – with the new interpretations by Jesus that have already become the redeeming revelations of Jesus, now directed to the Gentile world, that is, to all the nations, and to us today.

If you’ll recall Alfred Hitchcock’s movies, you’ll remember that at some point in each of his films, the rotund director would make a very brief cameo appearance as a way of putting his signature on his work. Is verse 52 Matthew’s Alfred Hitchcock moment? Now that you’ve come to know these parables better, including their origins, their meanings, and (if I may be so bold) the intentions of both Jesus and Matthew, I leave the decision to you. Do you think verse 52 is a parable or not? Let me know your thoughts!

Joys and Concerns:

For the life of U.S. Representative John R. Lewis as he is laid to rest this week.

Let us pray together:

Holy God, for whom no need is beyond the strength of your call,

We pray for your church all over the world, that we would be seed and yeast where life has grown barren and heavy. May the life we discover in you bind us to each other and to the world you love. Merciful God, give us wisdom and courage beyond our imagining to take on these tasks.

We pray for friends and strangers struggling with the many effects of Covid 19, for those in the grip of addiction, for those who delay health care from fear of our global pandemic, for those who have limited or no access to medical attention. Make us able companions for each other, even at secure distances, and bless us with hope that bears fruit.

We pray for unsettled economies and those whose needs are overlooked in the choices made by the powerful. May we, who know so much privilege, bear our responsibilities with open hearts and open hands. Open our eyes to see the hidden ways we wound and hurt and the oblivious assumptions we make.

We pray, O God of Wisdom, that children, parents, teachers, school administrators, and all the janitors, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and other helpers who are crucial to our children’s education be granted the wisdom and resources to navigate the difficult decisions facing all educators in these days.

Holy One, keep calling us into the world – your world – as seed and yeast and treasure. Equip each of us for the challenges we face as we learn to worship in the most unlikely places. You are the source of our song, even when we sing in silence.

By the power of your Spirit, we offer our prayer with resurrection hope in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for July 23, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today, I invite you to read a small section of Psalm 119, the longest in our collection of 150 psalms. In the original Hebrew, this lovely, jubilant wisdom psalm is a very elaborate acrostic, in which the first letter of each line or section spells out a word or follows a distinct pattern. Here, with great poetic imagination, the psalmist follows a pattern, beginning each of the psalm’s twenty-two stanzas with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in order. Each stanza is made up of eight lines, and each begins with the same letter. In our reading, each of the eight lines begins with the Hebrew letter Pe ( פ ). In an age with precious few scrupulously transcribed copies of Scripture, and with no printed documents at all, one can only imagine how an alphabetic prompt like this would make it easier to memorize this lovely psalm and share it with the community of faith. Sadly, our English translations of the Hebrew lack the sight, sound, and rhythm of the poetic artistry of this psalm. I hope knowing about it will enhance the beauty and intentionality of the psalmist for you, as it does for me.

Before we explore this portion of Psalm 119, let’s join together in this prayer for illumination:

Enlightening God, the unfolding of your Word gives light and provides wisdom to all who seek your truth. Open our minds and hearts by the presence of your Holy Spirit, that the mystery of your heavenly realm might become evident here on earth. Amen.

For the Jewish people from antiquity through today, the notion of Torah encompasses all of the peoples’ history with God, from creation to their covenant with God to follow a way of life grounded in moral and religious obligations in addition to civil law. Torah was fundamental to Jesus’s understanding of the world, and it is fundamental to our Christian faith as well.

Psalm 119 is an exultant devotion to and appreciation of Torah. The Torah is generally recognized as the first five books of the Old Testament, sometimes called the Pentateuch. The word “Torah” is also often used to symbolize the law of the Jewish faith as expressed in the entirety of the Hebrew Bible. That, however, can lead to a misunderstanding of Torah as referring only or primarily to the specific rigid laws that make up the Holiness Code, found in chapters 17-26 of Leviticus. The Holiness Code is indeed part of Torah, but it’s only part of it. Torah is so much more: it is a melding of spirituality and ethics, which is significantly more than law. As James Luther Mays writes in his commentary on the Book of Psalms, Torah “is valued beyond all else because in all its form Torah is the medium of the Lord.”

How deeply Torah is treasured is wonderfully reflected in Psalm 119, which is an ode, a joyful song, to Torah. “Your decrees are wonderful; therefore my soul keeps them.” (119:129) It is through keeping the decrees of God – the Torah – that the psalmist experiences the wonder of being in community with God. Ethical obedience to God and spiritual relationship with God become one in this psalm.

That Torah encompasses more than simply the law is evident from the eight short verses of this stanza of the psalm, which celebrate God’s decrees (119:129), words (119:130), commandments (119:131), promise (119:133), precepts (119:134), statutes (119:135), and law (119:136). Savor those words, read them and the eight brief verses of this part of the psalm aloud, and see if you can feel the underlying joyfulness that the psalmist seeks to share.

These are not words that complain of the demands of obedience; they are words that celebrate our covenant with God. They can too easily be misunderstood by people like us, taught from an early age to be independent, which we equate with freedom. We don’t want to be limited by regulations, rules, and invasive laws. We live in a society that worships the idol of radical independence. The text from the psalm invites us to a more complete kind of freedom: to worship instead in radical dependence with and on God.

When we hear Torah inaccurately equated with rigorous law alone or demanding blind obedience, we might back away, turning to the love of Jesus, as though those were mutually exclusive concepts. Yet it is Jesus who says to his disciples, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17) From our Christian understanding, Jesus is the fulfillment of Torah, and Torah is foundational to our faith in God. Understanding the covenant of love and responsibility that God offers us frees us to live more fully in the vast realm of God.

Thanks be to God for gifts of grace and love, including, as the psalmist shares, Torah.

Let us pray together:

Holy God, you have blessed humanity with understanding and the ability to choose the good; give to all leaders and people a vision of your world made whole, the wisdom to pursue it, and the will to accomplish it.

We know that this task is so much more complex in the midst of this global pandemic. Hundreds of millions of our sisters and brothers are hungry or ill with life threatening diseases; people want, need, and search for viable work that would provide a livelihood; the injustices that have plagued us for centuries continue; the reality of death constantly stares at us from our television and phone screens.

Give us wisdom to seek ways to heal the physical and moral pain we suffer and wittingly or unwittingly inflict upon one another. Give us the courage and understanding to work for a global community that is sustainable. Grant us the strength to join in that work within our local environs.

We pray for the ability to more fully understand and appreciate our covenant with you, O God, and for patience as we find our way to the beloved community that you wish us to be part of.

In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, July 19, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today, we read Jesus’s Parable of the Wheat and Weeds. This is the second parable recorded by Matthew in his Third Discourse of five such collections of Jesus’s sayings in this gospel. This parable is unique to Matthew’s gospel in the Biblical canon; it doesn’t appear in Mark, Luke, or John (though it is included in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas).

The structure of the story is similar to the pattern we saw in last Sunday’s parable of the sower, seeds, and soils. Matthew begins by recounting the parable as Jesus would have shared it with the crowds that had gathered to hear him. (13:24-30) Then after an interruption, in this case of five verses, Matthew returns to the parable, offering more detail and a broader explanation. As in last week’s double telling of the Parable of the Sower, Jesus again leaves the crowds behind and retreats with the disciples into a dwelling. Here, the disciples implore him to “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the fields.” (13:36) Sounds familiar after last week, doesn’t it?

Before we join Jesus, the gathered crowds, his disciples, and Matthew, let us pray together this prayer of illumination:

O Great Storyteller, whose life of loving compassion filled all God's intentions for humanity, help us to see the potential and greatness in Jesus’s parables. Draw us out of our familiar routines so that we might recognize your presence and your call. Keep us from being weeds in your fields of life or from being so intent on pulling weeds that we hurt people along the way. Draw us now into these biblical images so that they will, we pray, touch our souls. Amen.

Perhaps intentionally, parables are always at least a little hard to grasp. They force us to think, but it’s hard to imagine even the basic set-up for this story. How nasty would you have to be to intentionally sow weeds on someone’s freshly tilled and planted soil? And these were likely not common, everyday weeds; they were probably bearded darnel, a noxious weed that, in the early stages of growth, mimics many of the characteristics of wheat. Until they mature, the two plants are almost identical, with the differences not apparent until they are nearly ripe. Darnel is poisonous, and in big enough doses, it could kill a person. So it’s definitely not something a farmer wants mixed into his fields. What a horrible thing to do!

But hard though it is to imagine, this set-up actually reflects ancient history. In the time of Jesus, life was harsh, and competition for scarce resources, including the harvest, was fierce. It wasn’t unheard of for a disgruntled neighbor to sabotage another’s farm and livelihood by sowing weeds into his newly planted fields. And that’s exactly the case in this parable.

Seeds, of course, are invisible until they sprout and grow, and in the parable, the farmer’s slaves don’t discover the sabotage until after the plants had come up and begun to bear grain. Confused, they go to the householder/farmer and ask, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” (13:27) One can only imagine the slaves’ fear that they’d themselves be blamed, but the farmer is quick to realize that someone, an unknown enemy in this telling, had seeded the field with tares, with weeds.

But if, as the householder’s slaves were suggesting, the weeds were pulled before they could be distinguished from the wheat, there would have been no way to avoid damaging the still-fragile wheat, and the entire crop would likely be lost. As the farmer says, “for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” (13:29) He has no choice but to tell his workers to wait for the harvest, when the reapers can identify the weeds so they can be set aside to be destroyed. Only then can the healthy wheat be harvested and stored in the farmer’s barn.

The parable ends rather abruptly here, and Jesus goes on to share two more very short parables in the next five verses. We’ll explore those next week.

When Jesus leaves the crowds with his disciples in verse 36, they ask for a private tutorial about his parable. This is Matthew inserting his explanation into the narrative, just as we saw last week when we read the Parable of the Sower. Matthew is evangelizing here. Through the device of having Jesus explain the story point by point to his disciples, he’s spreading the word to a broader audience. He’s sharing his post-Easter understanding of the story, and we, along with his readers and listeners, reap the benefit of his more detailed allegory.

Remember, Matthew was writing after Rome’s destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, including of the city itself. This new reality forced a recognition that God’s reign was not going to emerge in Jerusalem as anticipated, thus changing the expectation of Christ’s imminent second coming. By the time of Matthew’s gospel forty years after Christ’s death and resurrection and only a few years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the immediacy of Christ’s now unrealized second coming has passed and is being replaced with a new understanding of the “end time” or “the end of the age.” (13:39). It will happen, but in God’s time, not in our human time

With this new understanding came a recognition of the church’s mission: that it was to broaden and spread far beyond Jerusalem, now utterly destroyed; that it was not limited to the Jewish people; and that its charge was to seek justice and love one’s neighbor now and into the unknowable future. In effect, that mission is also to reach both the wheat and the tares sown on the fields of humankind.

In both the Old and New Testaments, the harvest is a biblical symbol for the final judgment, the final days. Some examples of this may be found in Jeremiah 51:33 and Hosea 6:11 in the Hebrew scriptures and Revelation 14:14-15 in the New Testament. The harvest will come, however long it will take and however fruitful the seeds will be; it is an authentic expectation. In this parable, and especially in Matthew’s more explicit retelling, the harvest includes all of humankind, with Matthew adding the involvement of angels and even God the Father.

In Jesus’s earlier recounting of the parable, we see that the harvest is what occurs once the mature crop is saved through the destruction of the tares, now revealed as the noxious weeds they are. In Matthew’s expanded retelling, the “harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.” (13:39) “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (13:41-43)

Many of the allegorical symbols that Matthew outlines and explains – the sower of the good seed as the Son of Man, the field as the world, the good seeds as the children of the kingdom, the weeds as the children of the devil, to name but a few – have become, over the years, the standard interpretation of the broader scriptural meaning of the agrarian elements of Jesus’s times. It is Matthew who answers the question unaddressed in Jesus’s telling of the parable but obvious to many: who is it who sows the weeds? Matthew makes it clear that “the enemy who sowed them is the devil.” (13:39)

The devil, the incarnation of evil, is a very real presence at the time of Jesus and Matthew, just as it often is for us in these times of social unrest, racial reckoning, economic insecurity, and pandemic. As Jesus traveled through Galilee, preaching and teaching, we know that he was not universally accepted by all the people; indeed, the mixed response to Jesus’s words ultimately played a part in his execution by the Romans. This tension was evident to the disciples, and it’s a measure of how disconcerting it was to them that they so often encouraged Jesus to leave the crowds and go to quieter, likely safer, places with them.

The social and political environment of the community of believers for whom Matthew composed his gospel was possibly even more precarious than it was in Jesus’s time just four decades earlier. After destroying Jerusalem, Rome became even more powerful, and the Roman authorities were even more aggressive. The community in which Matthew lived was seething with both hope and despair. It included both Jews, who were threatened even more fiercely by the occupying Roman forces than they had been earlier, and the newly emerging group of Jewish Christians, also at great risk from Rome. Both groups were bound by their hatred of Rome, but each feared that the other would bring the full wrath of the Roman emperor on them all.

In such precarious circumstances, both Jesus and Matthew call for patience above all else. By acting too hastily and without enough information – by pulling weeds that could well be wheat or that could damage the wheat – the field workers would have risked ruining the entire harvest. We, too, are called to patiently assess where we are in a world of historical and current injustice, and how we will respond.

Jesus is also cautioning his followers against making the impossible choice between sustaining wheat and poisonous darnel. Making that decision is the reapers’ task, and only in good time. Jesus says, “Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (13:30) Matthew makes this even more explicit when he says, “the reapers are angels.” (13:39) The reapers are thus the agents of God. In both tellings, the parable makes it clear that the decision is not the workers’ to make, but God’s. The workers’ task – and ours – is simply to nurture growth, to be patient and to listen for God’s guidance.

The combination of the parables that Jesus shares with the crowd and later privately with his disciples underscores the basic similarities of focus in Jesus’s time and in Matthew’s forty years later. And our reality is actually not so very far from theirs. “Let anyone with ears listen!” (13:43)

In order to truly listen, we must be patient. We must banish all preconceptions, all assumptions from our minds. We must, in fact, press the mute button on all the voices and noise that so subtly invade our consciousness. Only then will we find the patience to discern God’s will and the perseverance to hear God’s voice among all the others that clamor for our attention.

Calling Christians to patience is an ongoing challenge. Augustine of Hippo wrote in 425 CE that “patience is the companion of wisdom,” and we are called to be as wise, and then as patient, as we can be. A thousand years later, Thomas à Kempis wrote in his classic, Imitation of Christ, that “all men commend patience, although few be willing to practice it.” Our understanding of this virtue continues to need our attention to this very day.

God’s patience is unending and infinitely greater than ours. If we remain impatient, we will be blind and deaf to God’s process and nurture. In our impatience, we may be unable to perceive the value of the wheat, and perhaps even of the weeds in our fields. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.”

The situations of our lives that cause us frustration, fear, and impatience are real and painful. Yet as Christians, we are called to practice that virtue of patience that Jesus taught in this parable. To be patient is not to resign ourselves to the status quo, but to refrain from decisions and actions that are both premature and not ours to make. Trusting in God, we are to explore all the possibilities that God gives us, including even possibilities we can’t yet imagine.

Thanks be to God who is patient with us and who calls us to be patient with ourselves and our neighbors and strangers, and even with God’s sense of timing.

Joys and Concerns:

For the extraordinary lives of the Rev. C. T. Vivian, life-long civil rights activist and advocate for nonviolence, and Rep. John R. Lewis, the “conscience of Congress” and uncompromising advocate for social justice. Our nation was richer for their presence and will be poorer in their absence.

For ears to hear the wisdom of expert advice about the unrelenting assault we all continue to suffer from the corona virus, and for the patience to heed their words in order to help solve this terrible problem.

Let us pray together:

Lord of the Harvest, be with us now as we pray. May we sow good seed by the goodness of our lives, and may we look forward to your bountiful harvest.

We pray:

For eyes of faith to see both goodness and evil in the world. Lord, open our eyes.

For prayerful discernment in difficult circumstances. Lord, sensitize our minds.

For a focused commitment to your Word. Lord, center our hearts.

For patience and mercy as we trust in a future we cannot see. Lord, we surrender our lives.

With these prayers, O God, we seek your kingdom of heaven, your reign both on earth and eternally. We make them with confidence in Jesus’s name. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for July 15, 2020

Dear Friends,

Journeying to the decidedly non-technological days of Genesis, we’re joining company with Jacob, whose name, quite appropriately, means “one who supplants.” He’s on the run from his twin brother, Esau, older than he is by mere minutes. Jacob has been competing with Esau for years, beginning with their birth, when he tried unsuccessfully to keep him from being the first-born by grabbing his heel. That infant competition grew along with the twins, becoming even fiercer as the boys become men.

Esau is the favorite of Isaac, their father, and Jacob is the favorite of Rebekah, their mother. Jacob, with help from his mother and by telling an outright lie, had convinced his dying, blind father that he is Esau in order to steal his brother’s rightful birthright. This time, Jacob succeeds in his trickery and receives Isaac’s coveted blessing, including all the power and authority that come with it.

With this, Esau has had enough. “Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my bother Jacob.’” (Genesis 27:41) Rebekah, hearing of Esau’s plan for revenge, finds Jacob and helps him to flee. The stage is now set for today’s reading.

But first, let me explain a little about the Bible’s writers. The Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is a compilation and weaving of four different traditions known by the letters JEDP. J, the Jahwist tradition (Yahwist, from the name of God, Yahweh, used by the southern Kingdom of Judah), is the oldest of the four and recounts the story we read today. P, the Priestly tradition, the most recent of the four, is a slightly different telling of the story; here, Jacob is sent by his father Isaac, to his mother’s brother, Laban, to receive the blessing of Abraham, Jacob’s grandfather. This version of the story is found in Genesis 28:1-9. The other two traditions are D, the Deuteronomist (Deuter, meaning second or secondary telling of the story) and E, the Elohimist (people from the northern Kingdom of Israel who called God Elohim).

Our reading today, from J, the Yahwist tradition, tells the familiar story of Jacob and his dream of the stairway or ladder to heaven.

For all you rock fans, this story is different from the one in Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” which has now firmly lodged itself in my head. It’s competing for room there, however, with Bernice Johnson Reagan’s haunting a cappella rendering of the familiar spiritual called Jacob’s Ladder, which Ken Burns included so magnificently in his Civil War series; and with Pete Seeger’s many joyful, inclusive renditions of the same song. It’s not only a familiar story, it’s a beloved spiritual adapted to all times. It’s part of our DNA!

Before we read Genesis 28:10-19a, the actual scripture on which those unforgettable songs are based, let’s join is this prayer for illumination:

Holy One, you who love with a father’s tenderness and a mother’s zeal, move now in our hearts. Breathe through the words we read and the burdens we carry, until we discover our purpose in your liberating love, for we long to join creation’s praise and to shine with the mercy of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Today’s reading begins with Jacob fleeing to Haran from Beer-sheba as he tries to escape the righteous wrath of his brother. In the midst of his journey, Jacob falls asleep after sunset in a deserted place. That night, he has a vivid dream of a ladder, a ramp, a staircase between earth and heaven, and he sees that “the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” (28:12)

“And the Lord stood beside him and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father [biologically, Abraham was his grandfather, but Father Abraham is father to us all] and the God of Isaac [his father]; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. . .” (28:13)

Dreams in the Bible are pivotal; they are seen as a vehicle for God to communicate with God’s people. In the Bible, more often than not, God uses an emissary such as an angel or a dream to pass on God’s divine messages. Not even Mary, Jesus’s mother, hears directly from God. In this intense, almost technicolor dream, God speaks to Jacob directly, though not while he’s conscious. Abraham and Moses hear directly from God, and Jacob’s dream is so intense that it comes close to the same kind of direct communication. Dreaming so lucidly of God speaking to him is an extraordinary, life-changing event for Jacob.

And what does Jacob hear in this dream but the divine promise that was given to his grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, now given to him. His “offspring shall be like the dust of the earth.” (28:14) This isn’t quite as glowing a vision as the stars in the night sky or grains of sand on a sunny beach, but it certainly conveys how immeasurable his legacy will be. It’s an immense promise.

“Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!’” (28:16)

I’m fascinated that Jacob’s first thought is not of his promised legacy. Rather, it’s of God’s presence, and it’s equally important to Jacob that he was unaware of it. How often might God be with us and we don’t know it? Even as we pray, including when we’re in depths of despair, for God’s guidance, comfort, and wisdom, the divine presence might be in our very midst. That we pray at all means that we know this on some profound level, even though we may be unaware of it. When we’re feeling most isolated and lonely, we might not be alone at all, and we “did not know it!” We might search for holy ground, not knowing that where we stand at this moment in time and space is already sacred and already in God’s design.

Like Jacob, once we are finally awake, we are able to recognize the truth of where we are; we’re able to hear and comprehend whose voice we hear. Attending church; engaging in fellowship; serving those in need of food, comfort, and justice; just meditating on the stories of our faith – all of these help us become fully awake. And even when we get only a glimpse of full awareness, we may need to totally reconsider and redescribe our lives, to acknowledge that they are, and always have been, defined by God’s promise.

Such recognition, such acknowledgment likely won’t be as dramatic as knowing we are at the “gate to heaven,” as Jacob describes it in verse 17. Instead, it may be as simple as confidently knowing what our next step forward is in our journey with God.

Don’t despair if you feel you can’t recognize this truth or hear God’s voice, or if those moments of recognition are so fleeting that they slip from your grasp and understanding. Be assured: God’s voice is there, close to you, whether or not you hear it. God is God; God doesn’t need your recognition; you need not feel anxious or guilty for not knowing that God is here. God knows that God is indeed here: by you, in you, and with us all.

In all the complexities of this global pandemic, our lives seem beyond our control. But God’s promise is still ours, as it was for Abraham and Sarah and all their descendants. Surely the Lord is in this place, close by you. God is “with you and will keep you wherever you go.” (28:15) Be assured of God’s eternal love.

Let us pray together:

Gracious Creator, you know the complicated histories that have carried us to this moment and to this place. You know the names of all our generations, for you are there in each story of falling away and turning home, in our long years of wandering, and in the shining moments when we recognize your presence and find the grace to worship you. You are no stranger to the striving or the listlessness of humanity. You accept us as we are.

Help us to trust that you are at work in every mangled heart, every conflicted community. Nourish the life you plant within us, that we might keep seeding the world with your truth and your grace. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Rev. Knox's Post for Sunday, July 12, 2020

Dear Friends,

Today is the first of three Sundays when we’ll look at a collection of Jesus’s parables that are very familiar to us. Over the centuries, they’ve come to be known as “the Parables of the Kingdom” because they address what God’s reign will be like. For the writer of Matthew, God’s kingdom is not only a divine heavenly kingdom but also a commonwealth of God’s people on earth today and into the future. With the exception of today’s reading, these parables begin with words such as “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to. . .”

Scholars differ on the number of parables in this collection. There might be seven or eight, depending on whether verses 52 and 53 of this chapter in Matthew qualify as a short parable. I’d invite you to read those two verses sometime in the next three weeks, if you wish, and decide if you think they qualify as a parable. Parables can be allegories, or they can be metaphors. They’re stories in which the hearer or reader can discern for him or herself the point that Jesus is making. They’re sometimes oblique and sometimes more obvious. They’re stories meant to illustrate a particular moral or spiritual lesson, and they’re open to multiple interpretations.

The Parables of the Kingdom are also called the Third Discourse. As I have mentioned in earlier notes, there are five discourses in the Gospel of Matthew. The first is what we know as the Sermon on the Mount. The Second Discourse, found in Matthew 9 and 10, is comprised of Jesus’s instructions – his commissioning – to his disciples, including warnings of what they might expect as they set out to spread the good news. That commissioning, remember, was not only for the disciples of old, but for you and me as well.

As we prepare to read the beloved Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23, let us pray together this prayer for illumination:

God of life, by the power of your Spirit, we ask that you come to us now. We long to bear fruit in a world that is wasting away. Plow our hearts with your living Word that we might become fertile with your love. We pray this in the name of Jesus, whose charge we bear. Amen.

I suspect you may have a few questions, aside from any about the parable itself, about the way this reading is organized. Why does our lectionary skip over verses 10-17? And why do we hear the same parable twice, first in verses 1-9 and then again in verses 18-23?

Some brief answers to those very valid questions are in order before we dig further into today’s reading. After the crowds who had gathered to hear Jesus have scattered, his disciples ask, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” (13:10) Wouldn’t it be better, they wonder, to simply tell the people directly what he had on his mind and in his heart?

As he patiently answers what we might construe as a slightly impertinent question, Jesus first flatters them a little. And this was surely a balm for them; they had just returned from their mission trips, where they had been charged to spread the good news – to sow the seeds – of God’s care for all humankind with their words and actions. It’s not been an easy task, however; they apparently encountered great resistance, just, of course, as Jesus himself did. A wise and compassionate teacher, Jesus responds to their bold questions by reinforcing their role in the new world he’s inaugurating. “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” (13:11)

As he often does, Matthew refers back to the prophesies of the Hebrew Bible in these intervening verses. The first-century Jews and Jewish Christians to whom he was directing his gospel would have found great comfort and assurance that the predictions of Scripture had come to pass in the person of Jesus. There’s a distinct echo of Isaiah 6:10 when Jesus says to his disciples, “For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn,” before he assures them, “and I would heal them.” (13:15).

Finally, these intervening verses give us a moment to pause and catch our breath after the first telling of the Parable of the Sower. This is almost like the pause between scenes in modern-day theater when the stage is reset, often before our eyes. Imagine it, if you will. We see the crowds clearing the stage. Jesus and the disciples move downstage, to a calmer, quieter area closer to the audience. And now Matthew is ready to have us look at the parable again.

Even though we’re certainly able to understand this parable without the context of those intervening verses, I hope that brief summary helps us envision what’s going on here between Jesus and his listeners, including, most importantly, his disciples. And we must include in the notion of disciples both Jesus’s original band of followers and all of us today.

In general, Jesus used parables to highlight, emphasize, and teach a particular point – and usually just one single point. Though Jesus shares his parable with the people, he is directing it specifically to his disciples, who, you’ll remember, have just returned from spreading the good news. And the emphasis here is on “spread.” Their mission was one of word and action. The emphasis was on spreading the word, sowing the seed, of the good news that Jesus brought. The results of their ministry were not the issue, and they were not guaranteed an accepting audience, as Jesus had warned in the Second Discourse when he said, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (10:16).

This parable flows from the same river as the charge in that Second Discourse. Here, Jesus is affirming a similar message: the task of discipleship is to cast the seed, not to reap the harvest. It is God who brings the harvest in, not us, and God’s harvest yields “some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” (13:8 and 13:23) Those numbers are a little hard to unpack until we learn that a good harvest would have provided a first-century Galilean farmer with ten bushels for every bushel of seed. A more common return would have been a mere seven and a half bushels. A return of one hundred, sixty, or even thirty times the original investment in seed and care would certainly have been considered miraculous, if not the result of divine action.

Just as the disciples’ charge is not to judge the success or failure of their work, neither are we to do so as disciples today. Our goal is a simple but challenging one: to be sowers, to cast the seeds. “Let anyone with ears listen!” Jesus says in verse 9. Our charge, like theirs, is to faithfully do our work to spread the seed of the good news everywhere. That, in and of itself, is a large enough task for each of us. We are like Jesus’s own disciples two millennia ago; we are charged to be active, mission- and ministry-oriented followers of Christ. We cannot be responsible for how our words are heard, or if the seeds we sow will prosper. Indeed, we would likely be paralyzed into inaction if we were to try to take on such responsibility. The harvest is God’s doing, not ours.

The first telling of the parable in verses 1 through 9 is most likely how Jesus would have shared the story. Contemporary Biblical scholarship explains the re-telling, in verses 18-23, in what I found to be an enlightening and at first, almost shocking way. In the second telling, Matthew has the audacity to recast Jesus’s words into his own and with a different emphasis. He tells the story from his own perspective, in a new, post-Easter way.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be shocked, and perhaps Matthew isn’t so audacious. This is, in fact, what all preachers do; we re-tell the story in order to make it more accessible. Indeed, all of us, preachers and seekers alike, inevitably hear and interpret Jesus’s words, including his parables, with our knowledge of the resurrection affecting how we understand them.

Matthew’s second telling of the parable is more recognizably an allegory than Jesus’s telling of it in verses 1-9. And it’s actually likely the version most of us know the best. When I first heard this parable in Sunday School, my teachers must have emphasized verses 18-23, because I remember being taught that Jesus himself was the sower in this parable. The seed was the word of God, and each of us was the soil. Each of us was “the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields.” (13:23)

That Sunday School understanding serves me well to this day, but this interpretation of the allegory offers a far different perspective from the emphasis on the sower, and thus on the call to discipleship. In truth, both perspectives make the parable more vibrant and accessible for us. The call to discipleship, after all, can only be heard by those who have heard the word and understood it, that is, by those for whom the seeds have borne fruit.

I once visited a church in New Bedford, MA that had a large Tiffany mosaic of the Sower mounted to a wall near the pulpit. It was thus always in view, and it was absolutely beautiful, intricately crafted with deep, brightly colored glass. A marvel just as it was, it also had an elegant, astonishing surprise embedded into it, which was visible only when the sun shone brightly through a nearby window. The Tiffany artists had enhanced the seeds with a small bit of gold foil placed under each tiny glass bead, and when the sun’s rays touched on the seeds, they would almost magically sparkle and glow. What a perfect illumination (if you’ll forgive the pun) of this elegant parable!

I wonder how many have been lucky enough to be in that sanctuary at the moment the sun’s reflected rays found the sparkling gold behind each tiny seed? I wonder how many who have seen that mosaic have imagined that they were the soil onto which the sparkling golden seeds were falling? I wonder how many thought they themselves were the sower? And did any of them consider the harvest from those sparkling seeds? Which do you think has more importance – the sower, the seed, the soil, the harvest, or all of them?

As familiar as this parable is, we continue to explore, contemplate, and wonder about it, and we continue to learn. As we do so, we hope, pray, and strive to be faithful sowers as well as fruitful seeds in the good soil that receives the golden word of God.

Joys and Concerns:

For all who are affected by this new surge of the corona virus in our community, in our nation, and across the globe.

For those who, due to poverty, age, or compromised conditions, live in fear of this illness.

For the continuing struggle for justice, visibility, and healing in these days of racial, social, and cultural unrest.

In gratitude for the community that binds us together even in this time of continued isolation and distance.

For children and youth who are experiencing a very strange summer with few ways of knowing what the fall and the new school year will bring; for the teachers and administrators who are working overtime to anticipate and plan for all the unknowns of the upcoming academic year; and for the parents and grandparents who want their children to thrive in health and academically in this time of uncertainty.

Let us pray together:

Holy God, we were yours before we drew breath, and still we will be yours when the pulse of life ceases. In every fragile, reckless moment in between, we belong to you. In these days, we experience intensely the fragility of life, and we are thankful for your abiding presence.

We lift to you now all who have been affected by what is emerging as the new normal in our families, in our schools and workplaces, in our nation, in your church, and in your world.

Even in these trying times, Empowering God, give us the courage to live responsible and faithful lives. Teach us to sow more than we reap, to act with justice and compassion, to tend to the world you love, to heal our suffering and that of others known and unknown to us, to make room for others as you made room for us.

Redeeming God, guide, direct, and beckon us to the paths you would have us travel, that we may sow your Gospel and share your love with all whom we meet. Amen.