Holy Textures

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Short, easy to use, thought provoking background commentary for your sermon, bible study lesson, or scripture reflection.
Listed on The Text This Week, www.textweek.com.

Year B, Season of Pentecost
Proper 17, Ordinary Time 22
Sunday Between August 28 and September 3 Inclusive 
13th Sunday After Pentecost 2009

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The lectionary ends its 5 weeks of dabbling in John and returns to Mark. No murmurs from me about this.

Once again Malina and Rohrbaugh provide helpful background on this passage. (Pages 174-176, see footnote below.)

At one level, the controversy here is between the Judean elite who were 5% of the population, and everyone else. The elites lived in towns and cities and had access, time, and money for the water needed to follow their interpretation of the washing required to follow the Torah.

The "tradition of the elders" is NOT the teaching of Moses as found in the Bible. It is the practice of the Judean elite which they are seeking to impose as THE one and only correct practice. And, as noted, the amount of water, time and money to follow those practices was beyond the reach of most people. And so most people were seen by the elites as unclean.

John 6:56-69

Short, easy to use, thought provoking background commentary for your sermon, bible study lesson, or scripture reflection.
Listed on The Text This Week, www.textweek.com.

Year B, Season of Pentecost
Proper 16, Ordinary Time 21
Sunday Between August 21 and August 27 Inclusive 
12th Sunday After Pentecost 2009

Read the passage: The Message   or   The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

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This is the last of 5 weeks devoted to Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. Beginning with the sign of the feeding of 5,000 men plus an unknown number of women and children, the whole Chapter has used bread as an extended metaphor to describe both: what it is that Jesus is offering; and, what is the relationship Jesus wants us to have with him - and thereby also with the One who abides in him.

This lesson repeats Verses 56-58 from last week. See my notes there about why this teaching is difficult.

John 6:51-58

Short, easy to use, thought provoking background commentary for your sermon, bible study lesson, or scripture reflection.
Listed on The Text This Week, www.textweek.com.

Year B, Season of Pentecost
Proper 15, Ordinary Time 20
Sunday Between August 14 and August 20 Inclusive 
11th Sunday After Pentecost 2009

Read the passage: The Message   or   The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

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You gotta love those Lectionary gals and guys. Here we are at the height of BBQ season (at least those of us in the Northern Hemisphere), and they give us this text about eating Jesus' flesh and blood.

A text that has been at the centre of 2,000 years of controversy and division among the followers of Jesus as they have tried to faithfully understand just what they are chewing and sipping at the Eucharist / Holy Communion / Lord's Supper.

So instead of preparing a sermon appropriate for relaxed summer shorts and sandals we're gonna have to put on our heavy duty work boots and hard hats.

John 6:35, 41-51

Short, easy to use, thought provoking background commentary for your sermon, bible study lesson, or scripture reflection.
Listed on The Text This Week, www.textweek.com.

Year B, Season of Pentecost
Proper 14, Ordinary Time 19
Sunday Between August 7 and August 13 Inclusive 
10th Sunday After Pentecost 2009

Read the passage: The Message   or   The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

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With this lesson, we begin with the first of the seven great "I AM" statements in John:
  I am the bread of life
     Verse 35

And we also begin the first of three weeks of attempting to faithfully decipher, understand, make sense of, and find the Good News in the last 28 verses of this Chapter 6.

As always with John, the key is to NOT get lost in the repetition of words and phrases; but rather to use them like bread crumbs left to mark a clear path through a dark wood. The dark wood is the dull imagination of our earthly flesh and blood that is perishable. The clear path is Jesus who reveals life that is imperishable.

John 6:24-35

Short, easy to use, thought provoking background commentary for your sermon, bible study lesson, or scripture reflection.
Listed on The Text This Week, www.textweek.com.

Year B, Season of Pentecost
Proper 13, Ordinary Time 18
Sunday Between July 31 and August 6 Inclusive 
9th Sunday After Pentecost 2009

Read the passage: The Message   or   The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

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As always with John, it is important to remember that John is not writing a daily diary - "What I did with Jesus today" - nor a historical biography - "Jesus: The Man, His Times, His Achievements."

John is writing at the end of his life, at the end of the first century (nearly 70 years after Jesus' execution and resurrection), at a time when the early Christian communities are under severe persecution from the Romans, and have lost all connections with their original Jewish roots. He is NOT writing to "the general public." He is writing to a threatened, small, inner group, who have no first-hand memory or experience of Jesus or of being Jewish. Their physical - and more importantly - their eternal lives are at stake. They need to "see" Jesus. They need to be embedded in Jesus, abiding in Jesus, so that they can withstand the fear and pain of Roman arrest, torture, and bloody executions.

Matthew 14:22-33

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I love this story.

First, my usual warning NOT to get distracted by the special effects. Too often modern day preachers spend all their time trying to make the "miracle" seem scientifically plausible, and in effect explain away the significance of the story. Believing in God is already scientifically problematic, so instead of being plausible, invite your congregation to wonder.

Matthew 14:13-21

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The real miracle today would be for the feeble scraps of our sermons on the text to truly feed and satisfy the hungry who have gathered.

As I have said before, the key thing with any "miracle" story is to NOT get distracted by the special effects. The text does not explain how these things happen; nor should the sermon. But the text does explain why these things happen and invites us to be open to mystery and wonder, the strange and the impossible possible.

Matthew 16:13-28

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Verses 13-20 are part of the Lectionary reading for Year A, August 21 to 27, but I am using it during Lent this year to give my congregation a clearer sense of the events that led to Jesus' arrest, trial, torture and execution.

Interestingly, this pivotal passage occurs outside of the "home turf" of Jesus and his followers, in the district of Caesarea Philippi north of Galilee.

Jesus has been traveling about doing signs, teaching and healing. This has resulted in crowds being drawn to him. It is now time to do some assessing.

Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28

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The story of the Canaanite woman in verses 21-28 really needs the discussion about what makes a person "clean" / "undefiled" in verses 10-20 in order to help us focus on the significance of what comes out of the mouth of Jesus and this non-Jewish (and therefore "unclean") woman.