A Feast Based on a Promise

 The account of  the first Passover in Exodus 12:1-14 is unusual in that it is a feast based on an historical event that hasn't yet happened.  Immediately prior to this reading is the promise of God's judgment on Egypt:  the Final Plague.  This reading then, appointed as the First Reading for Maundy Thursday, is perfectly matched with a service centered on the Eucharist, since that meal is also a feast based on an event (the Crucifixion) that has not yet happened when the Last Supper took place.  The preacher will do well to announce the word of liberation in this text as akin to the liberation we have in Christ.

(The following questions have been developed to reflect on a central concern of Law and Gospel preachers: the function of the Word in the text.  This is essential since the function of the Word will, in many ways, guide the function of the sermon.  For more on this method or on Law and Gospel preaching in general, see my brief guide, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)

1.  How does the Word function in the text?  From the opening announcement the reader has the sense that something new is happening.  All of life, even down to the remaking of the calendar, will result from what God is about to do.  The tone is one of palatable hope and by the end of the passage, we know why:  God is about to liberate the people! This is a Gospel function.

2.  How is the Word not functioning in the text?  The Word does not function as Law in this text, except in the sense that the power of God is obvious:  "I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments:  I am the Lord."

3.  With whom are you identifying in the text?  We identify with the "whole congregation of Israel", to whom these words are spoken.  Our liberation is at hand.  The commands and promises are coming to us.  This shall be our festival.

4.  What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text?  One could understand this entire text as a call to obedience if all that was here was instruction.  That, however, is clearly not the case.  Promises abound.  Also, the commands here are more rubrics than calls to live in a certain way in response to God's work in the world.  

5.  What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text?  Couplets are not present in the text, but using some of the vocabulary, we can imagine several:  judgment/salvation; destroyed/saved.

6.  Exegetical work:  Scholar Nahum Sarna notes that "the impending Exodus is visualized as the start of a wholly new order of life that is to be dominated by the consciousness of God's active presence in history." (The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus, p. 54).  Terence Fretheim speaks of a a new order of life as well, but one begun in the feast itself.  He says, "The reenactment is as much salvific event as the original enactment. The memory language... is not a 'soft' matter, recalling to mind some story of the past.  It is an entering into the reality of that event in such a way as to be reconstituted as the people of God thereby."  (Interpretation series, Exodus, p. 139).  He goes on:  "The Jewish liturgy of passover (Passover Haggadah) stresses that worshippers in every celebration are actual participants in God's saving deeds:  God brought us out of Egypt."  (Ibid.).  Another important point that Fretheim makes is in regards to the blood which is put on the doorposts and lintel of the house.  He says, "What is important is the word, the promise associated with the sign, not the sign in and of itself, (12:13).  The blood is a sign 'for you' (i.e. for Israel), not for God!  that is, it is a sign of the divine promise:  God commits himself to passover the blood-marked houses.  Israel can rely on God's being faithful to this commitment." (Ibid., p. 138).  Sarna also makes an interesting point in regards to this sign and the meaning of the verb 'passover'.  He says, "Three traditions about the meaning of the stem p-s-h have survived.  The oldest, and apparently the most reliable, is 'to have compassion,' another is 'to protect,' and a third [the least likely] is 'to skip over'." (JPS, Exodus, p. 56).  Knowing this and re-reading verse 13, we can hear God say, "When I see the blood, I will have compassion," or "When I see the blood, I will protect you."  These give some understanding to this text that keep us from having a merely wooden transactional understanding of God's actions in the Exodus.

7.  Consider the insights of the pioneers of the New Homiletic?  Fred Craddock famously exhorted preachers to bring the experience of the text to the listeners, not just the content.  It would be a great sermon that achieved that with this text: the anticipation, the promise, and the hope.  There is a goal.

Blessings on your proclamation!

Every Knee Shall Bow

 

Philippians 2:5-11,the Second Reading for Palm Sunday, is read every year as an announcement of the Lordship of Christ, and what an announcement it is.  At the Name of Jesus, not only will the crowds in Jerusalem praise him, but every knee shall bend and every tongue confess that he is Lord of all.  It will be the preacher's great privilege to make this announcement to the world.

(The following questions are not meant to be exhaustive, but are best used in conjunction with other methods of inquiry with different concerns. The main concern behind these questions is how the Word is functioning in the text, a primary consideration for Law and Gospel preachers.  For more on this method and on Law and Gospel preaching in general, see my brief guide, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)

1.  How does the Word function in the text?  The Word starts off in the same manner of the preceding four verses - concerned with the communal life of the Philippians.  Very quickly, however, the Word turns to one of proclamation and what we have is pure Gospel, the center of which is verse 7:  "he emptied himself."  The whole passage is a celebration of the miracle of grace.

2.  How is the Word not functioning in the text?  The Word functioning as Law, (i.e. exposing our need for a Savior) is hard to find in this text.  Perhaps the announcement that Christ is Lord of all could be seen as the Word reminding us that we are not lord of our life, but that is anything but explicit.

3.  With whom are you identifying in the text?  We are those being exhorted here to have the mind of Christ.  We are those standing before this proclamation, in awe of Christ's sacrifice and glory.

4.  What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text?  As pointed to above, the first line is exactly that, a call to obedience:  "Let the same mind be in you (all)..."  It is the call to live in love, to forego quarreling, to live humbly, as Christ did.

5.  What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text?  Couplets are not present, but using some of the language of the text, we can imagine several.  Some suggestions:  slaves/free; dying/alive; humbled/exalted.

6.  Exegetical work:  Fred Craddock, in his commentary, notes that "Philippians 2:6-11 is a rehearsal of the Christ story in three movements:  pre-existence, existence, post-existence." (Interpretation series, Philippians, p. 40).  This is a helpful observation in that it could give the preacher a plot for a sermon on a text that is thoroughly theological.  The lack of narrative flow in a theological text causes many a sermon to wander into theological ponderings or worse, thereby losing the listener completely.  Perhaps  by following this Christological chronology, one can fashion a narrative sermon from this text.  Gerhard Kittel's work continues to provide treasures of insight around key terms in this text.  In his discussion of arpagmos, translated  "something to be exploited" (NRSV), in verse 6, Kittel explains, "He did not regard equality with God as gain, either in the sense of something not to be let slip, or in the sense of something not to be left unutilized." (Theological Dictionary of the NT, vol. I, p. 472f).  Also, concerning the word kenoo, translated "emptied" (NRSV), in verse 7, Kittel says, "What is meant is that the heavenly Christ did not selfishly exploit his divine form and mode of being, but by his own decision emptied Himself of it or laid it by, taking the form of a servant by becoming man." (Ibid., vol. III, p. 659f).  Another possible translation for this term is "divested", echoed in Rienecker's commentary:  "The word is a graphic expression of the completeness of His self-renunciation and His refusal to use what He had to His own advantage." (Linguistic Key to the Greek NT, p. 550).  

7.  How does the Crossings Community model work with this text?  Steve Kuhl does a nice job of lifting up the competitive nature of human beings, vis-a-vis the Lordship of Christ, in his analysis.  He sees how this text does undercut our penchant to be our own lord.  Well worth exploring, you can see the entire analysis at crossing.org/text-study.

Blessings on your proclamation!

A Whole New Kind of Covenant

 Jeremiah 31:31-34 is a beloved text.  In all of Scripture there are few texts which are as full of promise as this one.  This is the First Reading appointed for the 5th Sunday in Lent in the Year of Mark.  It is paired with the text from John 12:20-33 where Jesus announces to his disciples that "a grain of wheat must die" to bear fruit.  This is also a text full of promise.  It will be the preacher's text to proclaim these promises.

(The following questions have been developed to explore the function of the Word in a text, a central concern of Law and Gospel preaching.  These questions are not meant to be exhaustive, and are best used in conjunction with other fine sets of questions available to exegetes.  For more on this method and on Law and Gospel preaching in general see my brief guide, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)

1.  How does the Word function in the text?  The Word functions as pure Gospel here.  Yahweh is telling the people of God of the new thing that God is doing.  It is a remarkable text in that God is admitting that the marital covenant between them they have broken, and yet God is coming with another covenant.

2.  How is the Word not functioning in the text?  There are all sorts of allusions to the sins and foibles of God's people, but yet the Law is not really functioning as such here. There is no call to repentance, no word which exposes the need for a Savior.

3.  With whom are you identifying in the text?  We are those who have broken the covenant.  We are those whose hearts are in need of God writing upon them.  We are those whose iniquity God remembers no more.

4.  What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text?  There is no explicit call to obedience here, but the promises are so grand that one cannot but help believe that an implicit call is the one to praise God for the mercy shown.

5.  What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text?  There are a number of phrases that one can use in this text to produce couplets.  Some suggestions:  broken covenant/new covenant; without God/embraced by God; no people/God's people; unforgiven/forgiven.

6.  Exegetical work:  Scholars have called Jeremiah 30:1-31:40 The Book of Comfort, or the Book of Consolation. (Lutheran Study Bible).  If one peruses these verses it can be seen that indeed they are full of words of consolation and comfort.  This section departs so starkly from Jeremiah's typical sermons of doom that "many scholars believe that someone other than Jeremiah wrote this section in the prophet's name.." (Ibid., p 1271).  An extensive discussion of the Hebrew term berith (covenant) in Botterweck and Ringgren's Theological Dictionary gives us some insight into this new covenant.  They make it clear that this 'new' covenant is indeed of a different sort than the one God made with Israel at Sinai.  "In the Deuteronomic covenant... it is the oath that validates the covenant, and no mention is made of a sacrifice or a meal."  "In contradistinction to the Mosaic covenants, which are of an obligatory type, the covenants with Abraham and David belong to the promissory type... Although their loyalty to God is presupposed, it does not occur as a condition for keeping the promise.  On the contrary, the Davidic promise... contains a clause in which the unconditional nature of the gift is stated explicitly:...'when he commits iniquity, I will chasten him... but I will not take my steadfast love from him.' (II Sam. 7:13-15)." (Theological Dictionary of the OT, Vol. II, p. 270).  It seems clear that the covenant announced in this text is of this nature.  It does not make demands as a condition, but rather makes unconditional promises of a steadfast love. ('hesed).  This is very much akin to how we understand the baptismal covenant.  God simply makes promises and we respond to those promises.  It is not a Mosaic covenant, based on Law.

7.  How does the Crossings Community model work with this text?  Steve Albertin does a nice job of picking up on the language of forgetting and remembering in this text.  Our penchant is to remember sins; God's is to forget them.  Our penchant is to forget those who offend us; God's is to remember them. See Albertin's entire 2020 analysis archived under its reference at crossings.org/text-study.

Blessings on your proclamation!

Walking Dead or Walking in Life

 

Ephesians 2:1-10, a beloved text for both Lutheran and Reformed folks, is the Second Reading appointed for the 4th Sunday in Lent in the Year of Mark.  This text is a fine example of the Word functioning in all the ways it can:  Law, Gospel, and the Call to Obedience.  It will be the preacher's task to touch on each of these aspects without overextending her/his welcome in the pulpit.  As the old saying goes, "The preacher who attempts to exhaust the subject, most often only succeeds in exhausting the listeners."

(The following questions have been developed to identify the different ways the Word functions in the text, a central concern of Law and Gospel preachers. These questions are not meant to be exhaustive, but are best used in conjunction with other fine sets of questions available to exegetes. For more on this method and on Law and Gospel preaching, see my brief guide, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)

1.  How does the Word function in the text?  There can be little doubt that the primary function of the Word is gospel, particularly in verses 4-9.  God is the subject, and God is doing many things: showing mercy, loving with a great love, making alive with Christ, saving, raising up, seating us with Christ in the heavenly places, and showing all "the immeasurable riches of [God's] grace."

2.  How is the Word not functioning in the text?  The Law is present, clearly, but only in the past tense.  In verses 1-3 we see our desperate condition apart from God's mercy:  dead in trespasses and sins, following the course of this world and the "ruler of the power of the air"; living in the passions of the flesh and senses, "by nature children of wrath."  Since this is in the past tense it is not the Law functioning to call us to repentance, (it's usual function), but reminding us of our need for a Savior.

3.  With whom are you identifying in the text?  We must be very clear to identify with those whom the text identifies as in need of a Savior.  We are those who are dead in our trespasses and sins. Knowing this, we see both our utter inability to save ourselves, and the magnitude of God's grace, since it is obvious that a corpse has little with which to commend itself.

4.  What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text?  The call to obedience is in the final verse. The writer is clear:  we were "created in Christ Jesus for good works" not by good works.  In other words, our deliverance frees us to serve, to be a blessing, to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world. This is an implicit call to obedience.

5.  What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text?  There are many couplets present right in the text.  A few examples:  dead/alive; in bondage to disobedience/free to serve; children of wrath/children of grace.

6.  Exegetical work:  Ralph Martin, in his contemporary commentary, does a nice job of noting some of the unique grammatical characteristics of this text.  He notes that in verses 4-6, the language is "rich in the use of verbs with the prefix 'with' (syn), even to the extent that the author employs verbs like 'he made us alive together with' which are not previously found in Greek literature and not attested again in later Christian writers." (Interpretation series, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philemon, p. 27).  Martin also points out the "exceptional" use of the perfect tense of the verb in verses 5 and 8: "you have been saved."  Since the perfect tense signals a completed fact with an ongoing function, this seems precisely the right fit for describing what grace has accomplished. (Ibid., p. 28). Finally, Martin points out the "inclusio" in the text, where in verse 2 we are walking in trespasses and sins, and in verse 10, we are devoting ourselves to the good works that God has prepared beforehand, that we might walk in them. (Ibid., p. 30).  Many writers have pointed to verses 9-10 as summing up the theological balance one must strike regarding the place of works.  We are not saved "as a result of works", but "for good works."  Both the ancient scholar, Marius Victorinus, and the reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, address this balance.  Victorinus, writing in the 4th century, wrote:  "Our works are one thing, what we deserve another.  Hence he distinguishes the two phrases not from yourselves and not from works."  (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT, Vol. VIII, p. 134).  Bullinger writes:  "Two errors are refuted here.  The first is the error of those who attribute righteousness to our works and the second is the error of those who separate works from faith when they preach one thing and do another.  We must stick to the middle way and not turn to the right or the left."  (Reformation Commentary on Scripture, NT, Vol. X, p. 287).

7.  How does the Crossings Community model work with this text?  Paige Evers does a nice job of picking up on the 'walking' language in verse 2 and verse 10.  We are the walking dead apart from Christ, and we are the ones walking in the way of love and freedom once made alive by Christ.  See the entire analysis archived under its reference at crossings.org/text-study.

Blessings on your proclamation!

Foolishness and Impotence Unveiled

 I Corinthians 1:13-25 is a grand text, one of the great statements of the theology of the Cross to be found in Paul's writing.  It is appointed as the Second Reading for the 3rd Sunday in Lent in the Year of Mark, matched with the Johannine account of Jesus cleansing the temple in Jerusalem.  It is clearly a Law and Gospel text, albeit the Law is more evident. The preacher will need to provide a clear word of both in the proclamation.

(The following questions are meant to get at a fundamental concern for Law and Gospel preachers, i.e. how is the Word functioning in the text?  This is important to establish since the sermon preached must reflect this intent.  These questions are part of a larger method which can be accessed in my brief guide to Law and Gospel preaching, Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted, available from wipfandstock.com or amazon.)

1.  How does the Word function in the text?  From the verses immediately preceding this text we see that disunity is a huge issue in Corinth and Paul is trying to address this.  Apparently there are Jewish believers who are insisting that signs of power are essential to faith, and Gentile believers who are insisting that worldly wisdom is essential.  To both, Paul says, "Stop!  We proclaim Christ Crucified."  The Word functions, then, primarily as Law, announcing the need for repentance.

2.  How is the Word not functioning in the text?  The Word is not functioning as Gospel in a robust way here, although there is a mention of it twice.  In the opening line we hear, "The message about the cross...is the power of God [to us who are being saved]."  Similarly in verse 24 we hear that Christ is "the power of God and the wisdom of God [to those who are called]."  So amidst the overall call to repentance we have this brief announcement of the promise of God through Christ Crucified.

3.  With whom are you identifying in the text?  We do well to identify with those who have been seduced by signs and wisdom.  The 21st century and the first century have much in common here since we are just as likely as the residents of Corinth to continue to believe that finally what matters to God is power and wisdom, not taking up the Cross of Christ.

4.  What, if any, call to obedience is there in this text?  This text is a pure call to faith, a call to reject voices other than that of the Crucified One.  This is not the call to obedience.  Exodus 20:1-17, the First Reading appointed for today, in which we hear the 10 Commandments, is an excellent example of a call to obedience.

5.   What Law/Gospel couplet is suggested by this text?  There are number of couplets which come right out of this text.  They are:  foolishness/wisdom; perishing/being saved; weakness/strength.

6.  Exegetical work:  In Luther's short preface to this letter he makes clear what is creating the disunity in the congregation at Corinth: "The desire to be wise and the pretense of cleverness in the gospel are the very things that really give offense and hinder the knowledge of Christ and God, and create disturbances and contentions.  This clever wisdom and reason can well serve to make for nothing but mad saints and wild Christians.  Yet such people can never know our Lord Christ, unless they first become fools again and humbly let themselves be taught and led by the simple word of God."  (Luther's Works, vol. 35, p. 382).  4th century commentator, Ambrosiaster, gives us a summary of how Christ can function in the life of the believer:  "When Jews believe in Christ, they understand that he is the power of God. When Greeks believe in him, they understand that he is the wisdom of God.  He is God's power because the Father does everything through him.  He is God's wisdom because God is known through him."  (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, vol. VII, p. 15).  Similarly, St. Chrysostom, also writing in the 4th century, said, "The gospel produces the exact opposite of what people want and expect, but it is the very fact which persuades them to accept it in the end." (Ibid.).  An extensive commentary on this passage can be found in Kittel's discussion of 'sophia' in his theological dictionary.  Here is an excerpt:  "Even though the Corinthians laid wordy emphasis on the fact that it was God's wisdom which had made them wise, Paul deflates the catch-word of his opponents by calling it worldly wisdom and he dismisses the spirituality which they claimed as a 'carnal' existence.  For who God is and what He has done, God Himself has revealed only in the event of the cross, which to the Gnostic self-understanding can seem only folly and weakness (1:23)." (Theological Dictionary of the NT, vol. VII, p. 520).  I would recommend Kittel's entire article on Paul's understanding of 'sophia'. (p. 517-522).

7.  How does the Crossings Community model work with this text?  An analysis by James Squire entitled "God's Foolishness Trumps Human Wisdom" hits the nail on the head.  In this succinct analysis Paul's use of the Law is clear in its calling out false wisdom and power.  Similarly the analysis shows how Christ is the power and wisdom of God.  Go to crossings.org/text-study to see the entire analysis archived under its reference.

Blessings on your proclamation!