By Dennis Ormseth

Creation itself participates when the Spirit descends in bodily form as a dove.

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

As with the texts for the Baptism of Our Lord in years A and B of the Lectionary, the baptism of Jesus in year C reverberates with creational and cosmic accents. In the first lesson, we are reminded that the God who speaks from the opened heaven is one who renews the people God created for Godself, gathering them from the four directions of the earth (Isaiah 43:5-7) and leading them through water and fire. Psalm 29, appointed for all three years, evokes the power of God’s voice “over mighty waters” and the “cedars of Lebanon’” the voice that “flashes forth flames of fire” and “shakes the wilderness,”causing “the oaks to whirl and strip[ping] the forest bare” (29:3-9). With the descent of the Spirit  “the first day” of creation” is again brought to mind, when the “wind of God swept over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). (See our comments in this series on the texts for the Baptism of Our Lord in years A and B).

It is the “Holy Spirit descend[ing] in bodily form  like a dove” that most demands our attention here, however. As David Tiede points out, Luke presents Jesus’ baptism as the “acclamation and anointing of the true king of Israel. Luke’s account of Peter’s speech before Cornelius offers the best commentary: ‘beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power’ (Acts 10:37-38). . .The presence of the Holy Spirit is best understood as the authorization of divine kingship.”  As Tiede puts it, “God’s word to Jesus confirms the promise of divine dominion in Israel made to David and his heirs. Jesus is the one of whom God had spoken to David: ‘I will raise up your offspring after you. . . . and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father and he shall be my son’” (2 Sam. 7:12-16) (Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament: Luke. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1988: p. 94, 95). Luke Timothy Johnson  agrees: compared with the other Gospels, he observes, Luke’s baptismal narrative gives “narrative expression to an essentially interior transformation or confirmation.” The event is structurally very similar to that of the annunciation, he notes: “In the annunciation, the Spirit comes down and the child will be called son of God; furthermore, the power will ‘overshadow” Mary’–the word, we saw, recalled the ‘hovering’ in passages such as Ps 90:4 (LXX). In the angelic song, we find the heavens open, and the declaration of people to people ‘of God’s favor’–the same word used here of Jesus” (The Gospel of Luke. Collegeville, Minnesota; The Liturgical Press, 1991: p. 71).

Why then does Luke place “rather heavy emphasis on the physical manifestation of the Spirit,” as Johnson observes he does? Although Luke omits Mark and Matthew’s “he saw” (Mark 1:10 and Matthew 3:16), he nonetheless emphasizes the physical reality of the “bodily form like a dove” or “physical shape of a dove,” as Johnson prefers to translate the verse. In the baptism, Johnson suggests, “the dove is perhaps ‘the “hovering’ symbol that enables the reader’s imagination to pull these elements into a single focus.” Like the wind and tongues of fire later in Luke’s Pentecost story (Acts 2:1-4),” Johnson concludes, the dove provides “physical manifestation of the Spirit”  (Johnson, pp. 69, 71). In any case, as Tiede notes, the “descent of the Holy Spirit in bodily form has thus become a visible sign confirming Jesus’ identity and role as fulfilling and surpassing God’s rule in Davidic kingship.”

Creation itself thus participates as the God of Creation identifies and claims for Godself the beloved one who will serve God in saving all creation. And although Johnson discounts its significancece as scriptural precedent for interpreting the meaning of Jesus’ baptism,  the dove of course also inevitably recalls for us the story of Noah and the ark from Genesis 8. How else might one explain the church’s enduring association of the dove with the Spirit’s redeeming presence on Earth? Warren Carter points out in his commentary on the baptism narrative in Matthew that “since Homer (Odyssey 12.62) the dove has been identified as Zeus’s servant who represents divine presence and love and conveys Zeus’s messages.” Luke’s interest in creating “surpassing” narratives in competition with pagan emperors—an important motif in the birth narrative—might explain his emphasis here on the bodily form of the dove –a real dove, in other words, not just a metaphorical one. But Carter suggests an alternative interpretation: “in contrast to such claims,” he writes, the “dove is linked with the Spirit which empowers Jesus, God’s beloved child, as God’s commissioned agent,” because “God is beginning a whole new world, an alternative way of life, because the present structures of Rome’s empire allied with Israel’s social and religious elite are not what God intends. God will complete God’s salvaton in the yet-future return of Jesus to establish God’s empire in full” (Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000: p. 103). Might not Jesus “surpass” David’s kingship, in Luke’s mind, precisely in  laying hold of the “everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth,” the covenant God established when Noah and the animals came out of the ark (Genesis 8:16)? Indeed, the repitition this Sunday of a portion of the Advent narrative of John’s the Baptist’s preaching serves to remind us that, for Luke, Jesus is “more powerful” than John precisely in baptizing with the Holy Spirit, and that he comes, as we put it, as a farmer with winnowing fork in hand to enlist wind and fire in preparation of grains for both harvest feast and new planting of seed—as the prophet had written, “the holy seed is [the tree’s] stump” (Isaiah 6:13). Water is already at hand, available from “the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3) and the Jordan river for the baptism of repentance; with the wind and fire brought by this farmer, new earth lies ready to be dug from the threshing floor. The primordial elements needed for new creation are thus gathered and all the earth awaits the day when “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (see my Comment on the readings for the Third Sunday of Advent).

A dove out scouting a new shoot is, we think, very much at home in this evangelist’s imagination.

For care for creation reflections on the overall themes of the lectionary lessons for the month by Trisha K Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and columnist for The Working Preacher, visit: http://www.workingpreacher.org/columnist_home.aspx?author_id=288

by Dennis Ormseth

The biblical Year of Jubilee authorizes us to establish laws and practices that bring justice and renewal for humans, other creatures, and the land.

Nehemiah 8;1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

The Gospel reading for this Sunday confirms what we have come to expect from our reading of the narratives of Advent, Christmas and especially Epiphany, namely, that Jesus’  mission includes concern for the healing of the Earth. Luke’s relocation  of Jesus’ appearance at the synagogue in Nazareth to the very beginning of Jesus’ work and his inclusion of the citation from Isaiah in the speech of Jesus,  Luke Timothy Johnson writes, make the account “into a programmatic prophecy which guides the reader’s understanding of the subsequent narrative.” The passage, he argues, shows unequivocally “what kind of Messiah “ Jesus was to be:  “anointed with the Spirit,” the “servant of the Lord” is, in the words of the prophecy from Isaiah, “to bring good news to the poor . . to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke. Collegeville, Minnesota:  The Liturgical Press, 199; pp. 79, 81). The last of these purposes is particulary important relative to care of the Earth.

“The acceptable year of the Lord,” David Tiede observes, may be “the most telling phrase” in the list. The phrase refers to the “year of Jubilee” commanded in Leviticus 25, a “time of restitution and restoration for all Israel” culminating a series of seven seven-year periods, each involving rest for the land of a year. More a statement of hope than actual practice, the “acceptable year of the Lord” would remain “a religious symbol, projected into an uncertain future when God’s dominion would be revealed to the whole word” (David Tiede, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament: Luke. Minneapolis, Augburg Publishing House, 1988; p. 105). Walter Brueggeman  identifies the connection the symbol makes between agricultural practice and faith as follows:

[T]he land itself shall be subject to the sabbatic principle (vv.1-7)—the land shall have periodic rest from cultivation. This may be a wise principle of agriculture, so that the land is not exhausted from overuse. In the total witness of Isarel, however, this practice of Jubilee for the land is to be understood as an acknowledgment of creation, as respect for creation, and as awareness that the land belongs to Yahweh and not to Israel. This remarkable chapter [Leviticus 25] enunciates the practice of the Jubilee year, a celebration of the fiftieth year (after seven sevens), in which there will be a return to one’s property and one’s family—a homecoming—and in which family land that has been forfeited in the normal transactions of business is returned. This is a remarkable provision, for it relativizes all economic transactions for the sake of rootage in the community.

At the core here, Brueggeman notes, is a “repeated claim of the governance of Yahweh.” While there is reason to doubt that Israel ever actually implemented this “visionary law  . .on the horizon of Israel,” it is the “culminating assertion of the God of Sinai (who is the God of the Exodus), who intends a very different regimen of social wealth and social power” than is our practice: “the social fabric has the political economy as its instrument, unlike our practice, where the social fabric receives the leftovers of the political economy” (Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament. Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1997; p. 189-90).

We are in revolutionary territory with these readings. As John McClure notes, “Paul shows that the Spirit subverts the way that we understand our social relationships (1 Corinthins 12)”: starting with “ground-leveling oneness of the Holy Spirit” he “argued for the diversity of the body of Christ” and then “moves on” to argue for “the profound interdependence of the members of the body,” in which “the ‘weaker’ and commonly regarded as ‘less significant parts of the body’ are, in fact, ‘indispensable’ and worthy of honor and respect (vv.  23-24)” (John S. McClure, “Third Sunday after Epiphany” in New Proclamation Year C, 2003-2004. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003; pp. 94). It is a profoundly non hierarchical, relational and, one might argue, ecological, model of community. So also the idea of Jubilee is “nothing short of a revolution in the way that economic relationships are to be conceived.”  It “undermines the ability of a few to accumulate wealth at the expense of others” and “mandates that every fifty years the entire economic system must begin all over again from scratch.” Applied to the world in our time, the “Jubilee plan” would mean that

many of the goals of productivity and capital gain have to be checked at the door.  The Jubilee plan requires that the land be permitted to rest, that we live in support of the environment so that it might support us. The Jubilee plan mandates that the wealthy forgive debts that are owed in order to provide a fresh start for those for whom the burden of debt has become debilitating. It requires that the system of exchange that has become a prison-house of debt, envy, and greed loosen its grip on the lives of each one of us so that we might be freed up to discover relationships that are not defined and motivated primarily by the need for monetary gain or success. The Jubilee plan encourages the limitation of growth, earning, accumulation, and speculation.  At the same time, as Maria Harris points out, Jubilee encourages us to take the limits off of literacy, education, and the provision of basic economic needs such as life, liberty, health care, housing, and food. Finally, the Jubilee plan means justice, that we “sort out what belongs to whom and return it” (McClure, p.98; the quotation is from Harris’s Proclaim Jubilee: A Spirituality for the Twenty-first Century. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996; pp 86-87).

In contemporary parlance, accordingly, this aspect of Jesus’ teaching supports practices  to promote  both ecologically sustainable agriculture and social and economic justice, bridging one of the great divides in the question for justice in our society (See Larry Rasmussen’s discussion, in his Earth Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key. Oxford: Oxford University Press; pp. 207-19).

When is this to be realized? From Jesus’ words, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” we infer that it began already that day with his proclamation in the synagogue and that it continues where he is present in the worshipping community. It is important to note that, in Brueggemann’s view, alongside this “trajectory of command” in Israel’s Mosaic tradition represented by Leviticus 25, which is oriented to “theological needs and sensibilities of the economically disadvantaged,” there is a second trajectory, “also derivative from the exclusive claim of Yahweh,” which “reflects the theological sensibilities and needs of those who experience life as profoundly disordered, and who have no doubt (and so testify) that Yahweh has provided concrete disciplines whereby the life-threatening disorder may be overcome.” Whether the “surging chaos on the grand scale of cosmos, the social experience of disorder” such as “the loss of the Jerusalem temple and king and the profound displacement of exile,” or the more personal “disintegration in which life is deeply marked by behavior that is felt to be contaminating, thereby placing everything in jeopardy,” such “massively threatening” disorder is addressed in “public worship, where life may be experienced in order, symmetry, coherence, and propriety” (Brueggemann, p. 191).

Expressed in terms of rules for ritual purity, this trajectory became the primary responsiblity of the priesthood, who “wisely and rightly order worship space, time, and activity, whereby worship becomes an environment for a God’given order available nowhere else.” But late in the tradition initiated by Ezra’s reading and interpreting the Torah in community, celebrated in our first lesson this Sunday, the literature of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers itself “became a sacramental vehicle for Israel.” Henceforth, it has provided “a rich, dense field of imagination in which Israel is free to receive its life, playfully, as the people of God.” In an increasingly “hostile, inhospitable envirionment, “what Israel could not discern in the world of events was given in the artistic world of Israel’s sacramental texts” (Brueggeman, p. 590).

Jesus, we are told, “went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom” (Luke 4:16). On the one hand, Luke no doubt makes the point to remind his hearers that Jesus is a pious Jew (Johnson, p. 78); for Jesus himself, on the other hand, we can reasonable assume that he and those who wrote his story were beneficiaries of this process. The regularity of his participation should in any case alert us to the likelihood of his having sufficient confidence in God’s good order  to counteract the threat of the “disordered” cosmos, whatever the particular form of disorder he encountered. With respect to his advocacy for the “acceptable year of the Lord, might it not be true, as McClure provocatively suggests, that “[m]ore and more, Jubilee is looking less like an impractical ideal and more like good common sense, a practical pathway toward repairing the fabric of human relationships on local, national, and global scales” (McClure, p. 98). The idea of Jubilee is strikingly similar to the wisdom Larry Rasmussen uncovers in the Earth Charter, as we discussed in our comment on the readings for the Sunday of the Epiphany (see that comment and Rasmussen, pp.344-48).

In this connection, it is important in addition to note that in the Hebrew tradition such threats are also addressed, strikingly, by “’procedures, practices, and agents’ sanctioned by the God of Sinai, by means of which an ordered, reliable, livable life is maintained and guaranteed,” and which do not differ that much in purpose from the rules and regulations of a more scientific age that protect us from such contaminations as are “posed by nuclear waste products that cannot by willed away but must be managed,” or  “toxic waste products such as mercury” that require “careful, legal supervision.” As Brueggeman comments, “It will not do for us to regard this tradition of purity as primitive and therefore obsolete, for the issues are still with us, even when they gather around different sorts of threats” (Brueggemann, p. 192). Global climate chaos now heads the list of concerns.

Rules that regulate our relationship to the environment, along with those governing socio-economic relationships, thus find an anchor here in such  ancient provisions that protect from threats both feared and actual, both spiritual and material. Wouldn’t Jesus be an advocate for these as well? If so, can his church do less? The capacity to fashion such rules is, after all, the practical counterpart of the wisdom which represents, as we put it in our comment on last Sunday’s readings,

the careful, constant, reflective attention to the shapes and interconnections that keep the world generative. Where those shapes and interconnections are honored, there the whole world prospers, and all creatures come to joy and abundance. Where those shapes and interconnections are violated or disregarded, trouble, conflict, and destructiveness are sure. There is wisdom in the very fabric of creation. Human wisdom consists in resonance with the “wisdom of things,” which is already situated in creation before human agents act on it (See our comment on the readings for the Second Dunday after Epiphany; the quotation is from Brueggemann, p. 532).

If such rules need today to be informed by ecological science as well as the accumulated experience of the human community in worship, the psalm which accompanies this reading expresses  high  confidence that the cosmos,  along with Torah, is a reliable source of truth (19:1-6). Jesus, teacher of all wisdom that he is, would surely agree.

For care for creation reflections on the overall themes of the lectionary lessons for the month by Trisha K Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and columnist for The Working Preacher, visit: http://www.workingpreacher.org/columnist_home.aspx?author_id=288

.

By Tom Mundahl

Exodus 34: 29-35

Psalm 99

2 Corinthians 3: 12 – 4:2

Luke 9: 28-36 [37-43]

As we complete the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany complex, once more we dress the altar, lectern, and ministers in bright white to celebrate the Transfiguration of Our Lord, a festival that crystallizes the meaning of the incarnation and anticipates resurrection. This is a Sunday of mystery which needs to be experienced, not explained. As Karl Rahner wrote a generation ago: “The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic,’ one who has ‘experienced’ something, or he [sic] will cease to be anything at all” (quoted in Bernard McGinn, “The Future of Past Spiritual Traditions,” Spiritus, Vol. 15, No. 1, p 1). This week’s texts are rich in just this way.

For example, the appointed psalm, a hymn of enthronement, sets our theme by describing the holiness of the LORD, enthroned upon the cherubim of the ark of the covenant, with power to make the earth quake (Psalm 99:1). The triple refrain, “Holy is he” (vv. 3, 5, 9) suggests the depth of response to the mysterium tremendum of God’s holy presence. Mays compares this psalm to Isaiah’s throne vision. (Isaiah 6) Just as Isaiah of Jerusalem would never be the same after this experience, so those performing and appropriating this psalm are now invited to see God and creation in a new way (James L. Mays, Psalms, Louisville: John Knox, 1994, p. 316).

Much the same can be said of this week’s First Lesson, describing Moses’ second return from the heights of Sinai with new tablets engraved with the commandments. This time there was no golden calf (Exodus 32), but Moses’ “face shone because he had been talking with God” (Exodus 34:29). Moses veiled his face so that those looking would not be blinded—except when he shared the word of God with the people. How can we even begin to comprehend the meaning of this brightness?

Perhaps we could say that it marks Moses apart as the one “ordained” to bring God’s word to the people, much like a liturgical minister dressed in white alb, stole, and chasuble for eucharistic service—or even more so, an Orthodox wearing vestments that  shine with the brightness of gold threads! But because Moses cannot “divest” himself of this brightness, might we not say that “in some sense he embodies that word” (Terence Fretheim, Exodus, Louisville: John Knox, 1991, p. 311). That is, Moses’ shining face is the only vision of the “face of God” safely available to the community.

But if Moses embodies that word, what does “embodiment” mean? Perhaps there is also a sense of “bodying forth” in the midst of creation. As Fretheim suggests, “The human response can never simply be to believe or speak; it must also mean to do, to re-embody the word in the world. Moreover, the word is imaged in a shining, a radiance, a brilliance, an incandescence, a fieriness. As such it evokes freshness, vividness, intensity and splendor . . . . As such, it evokes ardor, zeal, vigor and vitality” (Fretheim, p. 312). That is, the beauty and splendor of holiness points beyond wobbly knees to new imaginative ways of living and being together, a quality we draw on each time we use the Aaronic benediction.

While the interpretive schema used by Paul in this week’s Second Reading are clearly not adequate (e.g. “what once had glory has lost its glory because of greater glory;” 2 Corinthians 3:10), perhaps Paul is closer to the mark as he examines his relationship to Corinthian believers. “You yourselves are our letter, written on our (your?) hearts, to be known and read by all; and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). He could almost be echoing the baptismal exhortation, “Let your light so shine before others that they see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.”

The brightness only increases as Jesus ascends the mountain of transfiguration. Luke begins to differ from the Markan source immediately, writing that Jesus went up the mountain “about eight days after these sayings” (Luke 9: 28). While ecclesiastical tradition has come  to understand “the eighth day” as the beginning of new creation, commentators point out that Luke may be insuring that even though the identity of Jesus as prophet-messiah is clear, he is not simply “a prophet like (equivalent to) Moses” (Deuteronomy 18:15). Moses went up to the mountain “after six days;” Jesus, the greater one, begins his climb “about the eighth day.”

What may be more important for understanding the significance of the transfiguration in Luke is the fact that he brackets the narrative with nearly the same phrase, in those days (v. 28, “it happened after eight days”) that he uses for the Zechariah-Elizabeth (Luke 1:5, 24), Mary’s journey to Elizabeth (Luke 1:39), and the beginning of the birth narrative (Luke 2:1). The same phrase is repeated at the completion of our pericope (v. 36): “And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.” Certainly this “inclusio” highlights the importance of the transfiguration to Luke.

Its significance is found particularly in Luke’s special material. Unique to his account is the content of the conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.” They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure (exodus), which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9: 31). This “exodus” carries at least a two-fold meaning: first, the journey that Jesus would embark on with his followers to Jerusalem with all of its teaching and other events (9:51-19:27), and second, the “exodus” of his physical death—resurrection—ascension which are so central to Luke-Acts, and the substance of “these sayings” as the transfiguration narrative begins. (Frederick Danker, Jesus and the New Age–A Commentary of St. Luke’s Gospel, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988, p. 199)

This is all missed by the disciples accompanying Jesus who had fallen asleep. As they awakened, they not only saw the extraordinary brightness, but determined that Moses and Elijah were beginning to depart. So Peter said, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Luke 9:33). After all, Peter and the others had missed “the fireworks” and perhaps, if they built dwellings called for by the Feast of Booths, they might be able to prolong the experience and “capture” the glory of God. Even more revealing in Peter’s suggestion is the equal accommodation all three “prophets” receive. To correct this, suddenly a terrifying nimbus of divine presence overshadows them. From this murkiness a voice emerges, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him” (Luke 9:35). (Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts –A Literary Interpretation, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986, p. 224). The voice seems both to point back to Jesus’ first passion prediction (Luke 9:18-27) and ahead to things that are to come as the “exodus” unfolds.

While Luke does not contain the Markan command to keep silent about all of this, the evangelist tells us, “And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen” (Luke 9:36). What is the significance of this epiphany? Is it, as Tannehill and other commentators suggest, “an anticipatory vision of Jesus’ glory,” that is, “a vision of Jesus as he will be when, through resurrection and exaltation, he begins the messianic reign”? (Tannehill, p. 223). Or, in fact, is it just the opposite? Because the  disciples sleep through the spectacular events, but do hear the words “listen to him”—another example of Luke’s aversion to apocalyptic demonstrations—is the message to pay close attention to the teacher?

I would suggest that both are the case—Luke surely had a reason to place the conversation concerning the “exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (9:32) within this numinous setting bracketed by time references, “after about eight days” (9:28) and “in those days told no one” (9:36). This certainly suggests a different kind of time, a time that had taught interpreters to see the “eighth day” as symbol of new creation. For the silent inner circle of disciples—despite failures during Jesus’ arrest—were empowered by the Spirit—wind and flame—to proclaim, in essence, new creation on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21). In this view, the transfiguration demonstrates that “there is a depth to the world’s reality out of which comes the light that will connect, around and in Jesus Christ, all the complex pain and hope of creation” (Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light –Praying with Icons of Christ, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004, p.10).

Yet, Luke’s placement of the transfiguration immediately prior to his “travel narrative” is a way of reminding the community that the Risen One is “still the journeying one, still gathering people into the kingdom, still being refused and opposed, but still the one coming to be received by the current assemblies of Christians . . . .” (Gordon Lathrop, The Four Gospels on Sunday, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012, p. 111). That is, the assemblies or worship gatherings are precisely where followers still “listen to him,” baptize, and share in the Eucharist, experiencing the transfiguration necessary to serve all of creation. Following Fretheim’s lead, we might say that just as Moses’ radiance conveyed torah—words to be embodied—so the mostly hidden, but still available, brightness of the Risen One calls forward fresh and vivid approaches to passionate justice for all creatures. It is no accident that the Greek word for beauty (kalos) is also the word for goodness. As the beautiful liturgy of worship is completed with the “sending”—“go in peace, serve all creation,” it now is transfigured into the raw ingredients of justice: making “faith active in love.”

Notice that Lathrop described the Risen One as continuing to journey to the assemblies of Christians. While sometimes these are on cruise ships, or buses stuck in blizzards, most often they are at home. Amy Jill-Levine claims that the horizons of Judaism and Christianity differ markedly: Judaism maintains a goal of “making aliyah,” or, literally going home to Jerusalem, while Christianity moves toward what she calls “the goal of the eschatological end zone” (The Misunderstood Jew, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006, p. 199). But surely she mistaken in this regard. 

Instead of “the eschatological end zone,” we live toward “new creation” by planting trees with leaves, if not for the healing of the nations, at least for the enhancement of beauty and the nourishment of birds and pollinators in our back yards, parks, and boulevards. That is, just as “we listen in our local assemblies,” so we embody the brightness of transfiguration by building and planting at home. Luther is reputed to have advocated just such an action when a student asked, “Doctor Luther, what would you do if you knew the earth was to end tomorrow?” He replied, “I would plant an apple tree today.” This is not to say that we will relinquish travel and investigation of this miraculous planet. As T. S. Eliot wrote in “Little Gidding,”

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

That sounds like truly being at home.

Hymn Suggestions for the Transfiguration of Our Lord

Gathering—“Oh, Wondrous Image, Vision Fair”  ELW 316

Hymn of the Day—“Holy God, Holy and Glorious”  ELW 637

Sending—“Alleluia, Song of Gladness” ELW  318

Petition for Intercessory Prayer

God of all-surpassing glory, in the transfiguration you show us the brightness and energy of your new creation. Reflect that brightness through us as we serve and learn from all that you have made. God, in your mercy, Hear our prayer.

Tom Mundahl, Saint Paul, MN    tmundahl@gmail.com

By Dennis Ormseth

Embodiment is God’s means for the liberation of creation.       

Exodus 34:29-35

Psalm 99

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Luke 9:28-36 [37-43a]

The Feast of the Transfiguration is the climax of the Season of Epiphany. The Season has provided firm and ample grounds for advancing our concern for care of creation. The visit of wise men following the light of a star provides a mandate to explore the mixture of scientific knowledge and practical experience that is ecological wisdom for our time of global environmental crisis, and to advocate for its importance in the face of the despotic powers that seek to secure and extend their powers of domination no matter the cost to creation. The descent of the spirit in the form of a dove encourages us to hope that Jesus’ mission for the kingdom of God represents the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Noah, the beginning of a “whole new world” with an alternative way of life that supports well-being for every living creature. Jesus’ transformation of water into wine is sign of the coming consummation of the marriage of heaven and Earth, in which God promises that Earth will never be forsaken and left desolate: “whatever is amiss in creation will now be restored and make whole, even the most deeply embedded distortions in Yahweh’s world.” The inclusion of the year of Jubilee in the agenda of Jesus’ mission shows that care of creation is intimately joined with social justice and authorizes Jesus’ church to advocate for laws and practices that bring both justice and renewal for humans, other creatures, and the land. What the church can bring to the cause of ecological restoration of the earth beyond the anthropologically centered appeals of most political initiatives is the sustained energy of divine love that “bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things” for the sake of God’s beloved creation (See our comments in this series on the readings for the Sundays of Epiphany for arguments on these several points).

The great theophany of the Transfiguration lends fresh energy to these affirmations as we enter this week into the Season of Lent. The Gospel of Luke shares the basic structure and meanings of the other synoptic accounts, certain aspects of which serve to underscore the significance of the event for the cause of care of creation. Jesus’ glory is manifest in both his shining face and the dazzling white of his clothing. The clouds of divine immanence “overshadow” the mountaintop, and (special to Luke) then envelop all those gathered there. Thus do mountain, light, and clouds unite in a manifestation of divine presence that shares the power and character of Yahweh’s previous self-manifestation to Israel. Here again, as Walter Brueggemann puts it, “Yahweh relates as Yahweh chooses, without condition, reservation, qualification, or explanation” (Theology of the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997; p. 569). To the theophanies of Mt. Sinai and Mt. Carmel represented by the presence of Moses and Elijah is joined an anticipation of the advent of the Son of Man who “comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels,” in “direct and immediate fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction in 9:26-27” (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1991; p. 154). The future of earth is in the hands of the God who created it and who is served by this Jesus, identified here as the Servant of God prophesied by Isaiah, the one who serves God by serving God’s beloved creation (Johnson, p. 156).

The event of the Transfiguration thus sets the course for what follows. The presence of Yahweh previously mediated to the people on Zion, Yahweh’s “holy mountain,” as our Psalmist for this Sunday reminds us (Psalm 99:1, 9), is now fully and forever identified with Jesus. With a subtle but significant modification of his synoptic sources, Luke specifically names the topic of conversation between Jesus, Moses, and Elijah: it concerns his “departure” or exodus, the way that will lead through suffering and death in Jerusalem. The glory that was mediated by the temple on Zion is now to be mediated through him, precisely on the way of the cross. This transfer, we think it is important to note, is assisted by precisely those aspects of creation which have greatest power to manifest divine presence and authority: mountain, light, and clouds. Thus, does creation add its mystery and awe to this refocusing and redirection of divine presence.

It is, on the other hand, also important to note that none of the parties that are witness to the theophany, neither human nor non-human, are to continue to bear significance in the narrative to come. Peter’s suggestion regarding booths to mark the place of this divine intrusion is emphatically rejected; the mountain, previously unnamed, will be left unmarked. In spite of the glory manifest there, no new tabernacle will be created there to contain and mediate the glory to the people. The presence of God will no longer be identified with a singular, particular place or people (For our discussion of the demotion not only of Zion but also of all mountains as sacred precincts in the narrative of Luke, see our comment in this series on the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent). The glory of God is on the move toward the ends of the inhabited world. As the cloud lifts from the mountain top, not only does Jesus stand alone, but his face and clothing no longer shine with divine brilliance. The silence of those who shared in the experience will suffice to keep the event from public knowledge until the resurrection (“And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen” Luke 9:36).  And as the reading from 2 Corinthians suggests, unlike the theophany of God on Sinai, no fading light will bring into question the power and authority of the now sole mediator of God’s presence. Henceforth, that presence will be completely identified with the Spirit; and unveiled faces will bear testimony to new light, “light that shines out of darkness” (3:18), and “in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Death, darkness, and human evil, also all participants in Earth’s community of life, are to be taken up into the narrative of God’s redeeming presence in the creation.

Does this preference for “Spirit” over localized theophany mediated by elements of the creation constitute a denial of material creation’s significance in and for the redeeming work of God? Not so, we think, in view of our confession that the Spirit of God is “the Lord, the giver of life,” as we confess in our statement of faith in the Triune God. The Spirit of God has actually already entered Luke’s narrative, announced early on by the angel Gabriel to Mary as an “overshadowing” “power of the most High,” and, as we have noted above, descending on Jesus in his baptism “in bodily form like a dove” (thus, comments Luke Timothy Johnson, does Luke “by such subtle signals . . connect parts of his story” (Johnson, p. 38). Embodiment in creation is still God’s way to creation’s liberation. Beginning with the narrative of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness on the First Sunday in Lent, the Spirit will be Jesus’ constant companion on his way to the cross. Indeed, the Spirit will come to have decisive significance in the narrative that will now take us through the Seasons of Lent and Easter to the great explosion of Pentecost that will bear God’s redeeming power out into all creation.

by Dennis Ormseth

Must we appeal to “self-interest” in order to love creation as our neighbor?

 Jeremiah 1:4-10

Psalm 71:1-6

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Luke 4:21-30

The Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany completes the narrative of Jesus’ appearance in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, read last Sunday. If the first half of this story contained the “programmatic prophecy which guides the reader’s understanding of the subsequent narrative” of Jesus ministry, as Luke Timothy Johnson suggests, this reading “announces the theme of prophetic rejection that had been adumbrated by the prophecy of Simeon” in Luke 2:34. “Jesus declares that no prophet is acceptable in his own country, and his townspeople’s vivid rage and murderous intentions fulfill his prophecy.” While  the “programmatic prophecy” provided strong encouragement for care of creation as represented by the promise of the Jubilee year, this “prophetic rejection” is also highly instructive as to difficulties a congregation might encounters in advancing the cause of creation care today.

Why do his townspeople turn on Jesus? Johnson asks. Their initial response was enthusiastically approving: “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that come from his mouth” (4: 22). The exchange that follows transforms them into a murderous mob, which drives Jesus from town and attempts to throw him off a cliff (4:28). What happens, we suggest, is that while initially overjoyed by the fact that Jesus is one of their own (“Is not this Joseph’s son?”), the people are deeply offended by his immediate refusal of the implications of that claim on him. “Doctor, heal yourself” is what they are thinking, he suggests: “Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.” Elija and Elisha, he reminds them, both extended the prophetic visitation “to Gentiles—outside the boundaries of the people Israel.” Thus, what the reader of the Gospel has already heard from Simeon is now delivered to Jewish townspeople in the narrative: “the salvation brought by Jesus would extend to all nations” (Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 199; pp. 81-82).

The dynamics that drive this encounter will be familiar to those engaged in promoting care of creation. The standard appeal for support of an environmental policy is almost always couched in terms of self-interest, on the assumption that sin the political arena, self-interest  is what naturally motivates people. Condition or predictions of ecological disaster are presented with the expectation that rational people will make a positive, self-interested response to eliminate or avoid them. When the danger is clear—smoke in the air, pollution in the lake we have enjoyed swimming and fishing in, for example—we do respond. Action with respect to a more ambiguous and less well-defined threat, such as that from non-point source pollution, on the other hand, is more difficult to motivate. The more diffused the source of the problem, the more self-interest has to include an enlighted interest in the well being of other persons with whom one shares one’s community.  But there are natural limits to the power of this extended appeal. When the appeal involves various economic interests of the community, conflicts naturally arise. And a political leader who insists on policies involving costly remediation that will mostly benefit only unknown strangers can quickly alienate her own constituents.

In light of this difficulty, the secular environmental movement has recognized for some time that religious communities have considerable “social capital” which they would like to tap for their work in environmental advocacy. What they have not always understood well is how such social capital is generated within a religious community. So when congregational leaders are recruited to be an advocate of a given environmental policy, they are understandable wary of potential conflict. Self interest is at play here as well. Some steps are easy. An energy audit for a church building, for example, may save money for the congregation over time. The self-interest of the congregation is clear. But resurfacing the great expanse of asphalt on the church’s parking lot so as to permit runoff to drain into the acquifer is another matter entirely, because the payoff is so remote as to be incalcuable. And advocacy on issues that clearly impact local industry will inevitably raise questions on which members of the congregation will be divided, perhaps sharply. Anthropogenic climate chaos  projected to arrive a generation or two in the future is an easily deferred concern, especially as other more immediate economic demands crowd the political agenda. Even the most popular appeal to the “future of our children and grandchildren” gets weighed negatively on the scale of self-interest in comparison with more immediate concerns such as profit from industrial farming using fertilizers and the funding one needs to educate those very children and grandchildren. If such appeals to communities of faith are to succeed, they need to be based on some other principle than self-interest.

Jesus, it would seem, did not make it clear how much he had the interests of the people in his synagogue on his heart. Hadn’t he more or less deliberately shown them that other communities had at least equal claim on his talents? This one who spoke so graciously as to evoke their hopes for a prominent place in the restored kingdom of God cared more about the people in Capernaum than those in Nazareth! The great expectations which he had so quickly aroused were as quickly dashed.  And in a dry run for the later response of the people of Jerusalem, they angrily drove him out of town and threatened his life: “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way” (4:30).

Might Jesus have handled the situation more adroitly? Couldn’t a well-trained community organizer succeed where Jesus failed, simply by carefully eliciting their self-interest so as to enlighten and perhaps even transform it? Perhaps he could have, but that wasn’t his mission. To do so did not coincide with his interests, or better, with the interests of the one who had consecrated and appointed him, as our first reading maintains, “over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9-10). Deconstruction of their understanding of themselves as Jesus’ neighbors must precede the building and planting of the new cummunity of God’s kingdom. As the collected readings from the Season of Epiphany have so clearly shown us, his “way” indeed leads “through the midst of them” out beyond Nazareth, beyond Jerusalem even, to encompass the whole inhabited world.

What the advocate for enlighted policy on environmental issues, whether an outsider or insider in relationship to the community of faith, needs to understand about that community is that there is another principle at work in its life. Call it “other-interest,” as opposed to self-interest. Or call it love, as in our second reading from Corinthians 13, that habit of being that is “patient,” “kind,” “not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude” which “does not insist on its own way, . . is not irritable or resentful; . .  does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.” It does these things because it “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” for the sake of the beloved, in addition to which it also “never ends” (1 Corinthins 13:4-8). Love is all-inclusive with respect to both space and time, some people would say to an impossible extreme, others to an infinity of possibile realizations. It is God’s love, God’s care for all creation, communicated through all creation, to all creation.

In his recent book Earth-Honoring Faith, Larry Rasmussen asserts rightly that the problem with nearly all ethical theories and ethical regimes, both classical and modern, is that they are essentially anthropocentric: values are defined in relationship to the self-interested standard of the human species that is defining the good. Rasmussen calls instead for an ethic that embodies H. Richard Niebuhr’s way of answering the question, “Who is my neighbor I am to love as I love myself?” The neighbor is “the near one and the far one; the one removed from me by distances in time and space, in convictions and loyalties. [The neighbor] is man and he is angel and he is animal and inorganic being, all that participates in being.” (Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth-Honoring Faith;  Religious Ethics in a New Key.  Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2013; p.221; the quotation is from The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry:  Reflections on the Aims of Theological Education, p. 38). To “love your neighbor as yourself” is not simply an extension of self-love, as it might appear to be, but rather love of neighbor for the neighbor’s own sake as one beloved by God, which might lead to care of the neighbor’s neighborhood, whether or not one shares immediately and directly in that neighborhood. The genuinely eco-centric ethic that we need for the future, in Rasmussens’s view, is one that instead measures “all our moral and religious impulses by such questions as

Are they Earth-honoring? Do they contribute to Earth’s preservation and restoration? Is life and what it requires the better because of them? Are the parental elements of life accorded their place? Has the shift from ego to ecosphere as the center of moral work been made?  Does it re-form itself around the human vocation of tilling and keeping in such a way as to move into new first works for the age of the Anthropocene.[the epoch characterized by human transformation of the earth].

“Because we are born into a great web of belonging,” Rasmussen explains, “the health of that web is the initial and basic frame of moral reference. The ethical method of Earth-honoring fatih thus first asks how the health of the primal elements is secured and then, from there, how the well-being of human life and other life is secured in relation to it. It asks questions of our working moral theory such as these: What individual and collective virtues, what consequences of our decisions and actions, and what fundamental obligations does this web of belonging, this communion, require of us?” (Rasmussen, pp. 220-21).

Further readings in year C of the lectionary will surely provide answers to these questions.

For care for creation reflections on the overall themes of the lectionary lessons for the month by Trisha K Tull, Professor Emerita of Old Testament, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and columnist for The Working Preacher, visit: http://www.workingpreacher.org/columnist_home.aspx?author_id=288

By Tom Mundahl

Jeremiah 1: 4-10

Psalm 71: 1-6

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

Luke 4: 21-30

In a talk entitled “Health is Membership,” occasioned by seeing his brother go through open-heart surgery, Wendell Berry said, “Like divine love, earthly love seeks plenitude; it longs for the full membership to be present and to be joined” (“Conference on Spirituality and Healing,” Louisville, KY, Oct. 17, 1994)). This week’s readings provide insight into the meaning of “membership” in a community of life that always seems to be pressing the boundaries that humankind erects.

While, like Moses (Exodus 4:10), Jeremiah seeks to protect himself by setting limits based on his youth and lack of rhetorical skills, the one who calls will not let him sidle away. Not only does the Word of the LORD make it clear that this calling precedes his birth (Jeremiah 1:5), but the caller assures him, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD” (Jeremiah 1:8). To provide assurance to this “outsider” from Anathoth, born to the tribe of Benjamin, that he really is a member of the company of prophets, the LORD touches his mouth saying:

Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant (Jeremiah 1:10).

At first, the terms of this call seem to come directly from an ambassador’s portfolio, but Jeremiah accomplishes his mission in the earthiest of ways. He uses pots and loincloths as symbols. He earns the contempt of the religious elite by bringing a message of repentance directly to the temple (Jeremiah 26: 1-24) and rumbles with Hananiah (Jeremiah 28) over the nature of prophetic calling. But his call to pluck, pull down, destroy and overthrow aims always to affirm membership in the community of life—to build and to plant. The compost is always used to build new soil.

Like Jeremiah, Paul ‘s prophetic apostleship rests partly on the understanding that his “call” preceded his birth, crucial for establishing legitimacy: “But when God, who had set me apart before I was born, and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles . . . .” (Galatians 1: 15-16).

Paul did just that. But now, the Corinthian community which he founded is divided and needs to rediscover the unity that comes from a new understanding of spiritual gifts and a sense of membership in the body of Christ.

Ultimately, claims Paul, it is love that serves as the dynamic antidote to factionalism in the Corinthian community. This is no frothy stream of sentimentality; love (agape)  is “the generic name for specific actions of patient and costly service to others” (Richard B. Hays, 1 Corinthians, Louisville: John Knox, 1997, p. 222). It is at the heart of Paul’s pastoral strategy bolstering the character formation of the Corinthian membership. Rather than serving as a powerful engine sparking competitive spirituality, love is patient and kind; it is not irritable or resentful. “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

With Jesus’ self-offering life as template, it should be no surprise that challenges to community solidarity appeared in Corinth. Yet Wirzba is right when he says, “When Christians truly love each other they will bear each other up because they know that the health of the whole body requires a common service to each other.” (Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 152). It is important to note that the Greek verbs beginning and ending the series in verse 7 both carry rich connotations of “bearing,” “enduring,” “standing one’s ground,” and “holding out.”

Not only does this resonate for those involved in serving creation, this ability to “hold on” reminds anyone who has spent time outdoors of trees growing out of bare rock walls that seem as strong as any in the forest. Recently, the word “resilience” has been used (and overused!) to describe this phenomenon in living communities—memberships of people or other living things. British naturalist Jay Griffiths sees this ability to stand one’s ground in trees, especially the willow. In fact, she notes that the word ‘resilient’ is related to the Latin word for willow, salix (Jay Griffiths, Kith, London: Penguin, 2013, p. 254).

But love does more than hold the community together. Using the example of learning to appreciate the gift of wine which “gladdens the human heart” (Psalm 104:15), Wirzba suggests that those who love extend the character of communal affection to what they know and enjoy. “Those who truly love wine, for instance, are not simply those who become drunk by its consumption. They are rather those who are open to the miracle of sunlight, water, plant, and soil transformed into grapes, open to the gift of fermentation and taste, and open to the conviviality of a shared bottle” (Wirzba, p. 185).

The same love that unifies a community, then, extends affection to the created world, expanding the very notion of membership. This is nothing new to those who live closely connected to the wild. Poet Gary Snyder reminds us that such people rarely seek wilderness thrills. “If they deliberately risk themselves, it is for spiritual rather than economic reasons. Ultimately, all such journeys are done for the sake of the whole, not as some private quest” (The Practice of the Wild, San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990, p. 23). When asked by a young anthropologist, “What can I do for self-respect?” contemporary Haida elder Florence Edenshaw responded “stay home” (Snyder, p. 24). She was not being hostile, but simply expected everyone to pay attention to the “real work” of building their own culture—strengthening the affection among their own memberships—humankind and otherkind.

This sounds much like the proverb “charity begins at home,” often ascribed to William Tyndale. Perhaps this week’s continuation of Jesus “Inaugural Sermon” in Luke can serve as a test case. We recall that after reading from Isaiah 61, Jesus assumes the sitting position of authoritative teaching and begins to say, as all eyes in the synagogue are fixed on him, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4: 21). James Sanders notes that this phrase—used only here in all the scriptures—must have sent a powerful shock wave through the congregation (God Has a Story Too, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979, p. 72).

But the fireworks were only beginning. While some marveled at the gracious words that Jesus spoke, others began to wonder: “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4: 22b). Regardless of the reception, Jesus began his midrash—sermon by explaining his low-key approach in his home town with the proverb, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (Luke 4: 24). Ironically, the one who declares Jubilee—the acceptable year of the Lord, is not accepted in the very place he was nurtured.

Jesus continues his talk by citing examples from the lives of two model prophets—Elijah and Elisha—instances of providing food and healing for those who were clearly foreigners. Suddenly any benefits the local clan might have expected from Jesus are thrown out the window. As Sanders asks, “ . . . what’s the use of being faithful if God does not intend to honor our efforts on his behalf?” (Sanders, p. 74). In their anger at not being able to benefit from the fame of their “hometown hero,” they attempt to throw him off the edge of a nearby hill.

As so many discovered as they encounter Jesus, “God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts” (Isaiah 55: 8). In his midrash, Jesus, in effect, says that God will not embrace holy mother church, or Israel, as the sole possessor of the truth. Does charity begin at home? Yes, of course. But only because “charity,” the English translation of the Latin, caritas (itself the translation of the Greek agape), is most often shaped and learned in one’s community of origin as a basis—with the generativity of the Spirit—for expanding that love beyond the boundaries to new memberships.   

This should be no surprise. because the sabbath tradition—Sabbath day, sabbatical year, and the year of Jubilee—goes far beyond parochial limits set by synagogue worshippers in Nazareth or restrictions proposed by anti-immigration forces in the U.S. Recall that the Sabbath commandment stipulated rest not only for the community of faith, but also for “male and female slaves, livestock, and the alien resident in your towns” (Exodus 20:10). To the list of beneficiaries of Sabbath rest is added the land and economic inequity as we move to sabbatical year and jubilee (Leviticus 25).

The idea that old limits are erased is no surprise to the author of Luke, who, with Simeon, sings of God’s healing salvation for “all peoples” (Luke 2:31-32) and records the Baptist’s word that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Luke 3: 6). To some, this new construction of identity beyond a set of agreed-on boundaries provokes anxiety. Yet the freedom announced by Jesus provides the best basis for building new relationships. It is a freedom that is best captured by Luther’s paradox from The Freedom of a Christian (1520): “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly free servant of all, subject to all” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 31, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957, p. 344). Here radical freedom issues in radical servanthood resulting in new and imaginative communities of caritas.

Hymn Suggestions:

            Gathering — “You Are Holy” — ELW 525

            Hymn of the Day –”Although I Speak with Angel’s Tongue” — ELW, 644

            Sending — “Light Dawns on a Weary World — ELW, 726

Petition for Prayers of Intercession:

Liberating One, you have freed your people so that we may serve one another and all of creation.  Remove the chains of prejudice and the limits of imagination so we may learn from the stunning interdependence of all that you have made. Lord, in your mercy, Hear our prayer.

 Tom Mundahl, Saint Paul, MN                                                 tmundahl@gmail.com

By Tom Mundahl

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Luke 4:14-21

As we continue our Epiphany journey celebrating the manifestation of God in the deep incarnation of Jesus, we marvel at the interconnections between creation and the story of God’s people. That relationship is proclaimed in the very first verse in this week’s psalm: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament declares his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).

The creation, then, does precisely what the congregation does when it gathers to worship: it praises God.  This is based on the notion common in biblical thinking that “every created thing has the capacity of a creature to acknowledge its originator” (James Luther Mays, Psalms, Louisville: John Knox, 1994, p. 97). Time and again in the biblical tradition, that which is visible becomes vocal. “The imagination is in the midst of an unending concert sung by the universe to the glory of God” (Mays).

Just as the universe is patterned to praise God, so the torah gives life and shape to the human community. “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul . . . .” And, “More to be desired are they [the commandments] than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:7, 10).

By connecting the song of creation with the torah, the psalmist honors what Ellen Davis calls “proper world order.” “Divine order is exemplified in the proper functioning of both nature and human society. The well-being of humans and the enduring fruitfulness of earth are inseparable elements of a harmony sometimes imagined as a ‘covenant’ encompassing all creatures” (Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 12). We have witnessed the violation of this covenant far too often and understand that when it is shattered it is nearly impossible for any creature to be “at home.”

To Ezra and Nehemiah (one “book” in the Hebrew Scriptures), nothing was more important than restoring this sense of proper order. Even though exiles began to leave Babylon in 538 BCE, it was nearly a century before the repopulation and rebuilding of Jerusalem would lead to full restoration of religious life. This week’s reading highlights this milestone with a public reading of the torah by Ezra.

But public reading of the torah should not be seen as an attempt by elites to impose a code of conduct on the people. Quite the contrary. The narrator makes it clear that this marathon reading was demanded by the people. “They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had given to Moses” (Nehemiah 8:1). To make sure that they could both hear and see Ezra, the people built a bema, or reading platform. Hearing the newly-codified torah marked a new stage in their life together in a dramatic way ( Mark A. Throntveit, Ezra-Nehemiah, Louisville: John Knox, 1992, p. 96).

Although archaeologists disagree as to where “the square before the Water Gate” (Nehemiah 8:1) was located, the very proximity to a community water source reveals, as the author of Psalm 19 made clear, the close relationship between the gift of creation and torah instruction for harmonious order. Although the first reaction of the people hearing this reading was mournful weeping over past failures, Ezra called for a celebration of their renewed life together. “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD . . . .” (Nehemiah 8:10) It was a festal homecoming and housewarming for the whole city and its inhabitants.

As the Book of Nehemiah ends, we see that the unity described at the communal reading of the torah was not perfect. Nehemiah discovered that both international traders and residents had begun to violate the Sabbath—key to understanding both creation and the torah—by running an active marketplace at the gates of the city. After shutting the city gates, Nehemiah was able to drive out foreign traders, putting an end to sabbath trading. To guarantee this would not continue, he engaged “purified Levites” to guard the entrance to the city (Nehemiah 13:15-22).

Although the factionalism among the early community in Corinth did not reach this citywide scale, Paul, too, struggled to provide an ordering vision. Not only did he emphasize that there were no spiritual “superstars,” only spiritual gifts given for the common good,  but he now asks the community to envision the recipients of this diversity of gifts as “one body.” “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:12).

There was nothing new about the body metaphor. Plato and Aristotle had made good use of it to describe what we would consider “natural hierarchies,” with those who were labeled “head” and “heart” (monarch and counsellors) ruling those less talented, who served as soldiers and slaves. Stoic thinkers had expanded the notion of the body to comprehend the entire cosmos held together by “sympathy.” But Paul’s notion of the body emphasizes the value of all “members,” but especially the inferior and less respectable, totally undermining the “honor” values of Roman culture.

Because this “body” is created by the Spirit in baptism, this depth of connection will provide the resilience to move beyond factionalism. As Wirzba writes, “The Pauline understanding of membership, much like the Johannine depiction of Jesus as the vine onto which his disciples are grafted, is much more organic and vital. If each person is joined to another like a limb is joined to a torso, then there is nothing voluntary or occasional about the relationship. For a limb to flourish, it must draw its life from the whole body . . . . Joined together, all the members of the body share a common life” (Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 151). This body metaphor mirrors the ecological interdependence of the whole creation. We have learned that ocean plankton, the snail darter, and intestinal bacteria are just as crucial to the proper working of the body of creation as the mountain lion or the human brain. Each “member” is indispensable.

We see the same Spirit at work in the life and ministry of Jesus begun at baptism. Initially, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness to demonstrate obedience (Luke 4:1-13). The power of the Spirit propels him home to Galilee where he teaches in area synagogues to excellent reviews (Luke 4: 15). And things seem to begin this way for Jesus in his home synagogue.

On the sabbath day, Jesus follows his usual custom of worshipping in the local synagogue where he is asked to read the scripture portion from the haftaroth, the prophets. We do not know whether the reading from Isaiah 61 was appointed for the day or chosen by the reader. But we do know that this was “the going passage of the time because it spoke of how the eschaton would take place. It speaks of the coming of a herald to proclaim the acceptable year of God for the poor, captives, blind and oppressed” (James A. Sanders, “What Happened in Nazareth,” God Has a Story Too, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979, p. 71).

As Brueggemann suggests, this incident completes the birth narrative. “The birth of a new king, the one Rome did not anticipate and Herod could not stop, begins another history, which carries in it the end of all old royal history. Characteristically, the birth of this new king marks a jubilee from old debts, and amnesty from old crimes, and a beginning again in a movement of freedom (so Luke 4: 18-19)” (The Prophetic Imagination, Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001, p. 103).

Not only does this connect Epiphany with the Christmas Season, it reminds us of the importance of the sabbath complex ( Exodus 20:8-11; Deuteronomy 5: 12-15; Leviticus 25)—surely read to the people by Ezra—as an ordering vision. In declaring Jubilee, Jesus follows the long tradition of prophets who made observance of the sabbath a prerequisite for the restoration of the land and Israel as the people of God. “This view of the sabbath indicates that creation truly becomes itself when it ceases the improper desire of self-gain or self-glorification . . . our use must not turn into abuse. It must be directed to the pleasure and menuha (rest, the final step in creation, Gen. 2: 2-3) of God, which signifies the non-contentious serenity of creatures being who they are meant to be” (Norman Wirzba, The Paradise of God — Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p.39).

To keep the sabbath is the opposite of a desire to be rewarded for holy performance. As Moltmann says, “The peace of the sabbath can be viewed as the Jewish ‘doctrine of justification.’ Anyone who looks at Israel on the sabbath cannot reproach her with a ‘righteousness of works.’ And on the other hand, Christian faith in justification must be understood analogously as ‘the sabbath rest’ of Christians” (God in Creation, The Gifford Lectures, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), p. 286).

Not only is the celebration of Sabbath—weekly, sabbatical year, or jubilee—an elemental experience of God’s creation; it is central to what Jesus proclaims at Nazareth. For the early community understands his preaching as the continuation of the sabbath. “As lord of the sabbath, Jesus takes within himself the aspirations of sabbath life and gives them concrete expression in the ministries of feeding, healing, exorcism, companionship, and service. Jesus’ proclamation of the imminent kingdom makes the whole of life a sabbath feast” (Wirzba, God in Creation, p. 40). The community joins “the heavens” (Psalm 19) in singing praise and doing justice as one interdependent organism among many others.

But can we make any sense of Jesus proclaiming Jubilee aside from being a powerful metaphor crucial in announcing the arrival of the prophetic messiah?  Although there is evidence that the sabbatical year was observed (both Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar made provision in tax laws for Israelite exemption during sabbatical years), there is none for implementation of the Jubilee. Yet, the very existence of this pattern stands as a call to deal justly as we make a home in God’s creation and learn to serve it. “The goal of our life is so to take care of ourselves that the care of creation is maintained at the same time” (Wirzba, God in Creation, p. 39). The long-term nature of jubilee –every fiftieth year –is especially important for this care.

Since October, a leaking underground natural gas storage facility near Los Angeles has released vast amounts of methane, more than one hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. While nearly two million pounds of methane spew into the air every day, residents of the affluent suburb of Porter Ranch report a variety of short-term symptoms—headaches, nausea, bloody noses, and increase in childhood illnesses. Even though this methane leak is not as visible as the Macondo Well Disaster in the Gulf in 2010, California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a State of Emergency. 

Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Engineering at Cornell University, blames this blowout on a failure in infrastructure, the failure of steel pipe, first laid in the 1950’s that has had to withstand 2,700 pounds of pressure per square inch for sixty years. While SoCal Gas has tried to downplay the severity of the situation and promises to have it fixed in a few months, Ingraffea worries about other aging infrastructure that may also cause problems, infrastructure for which there are no replacement plans (NPR, “Living On Earth,” January 8, 2016).

A similar disaster this time featuring public infrastructure recently has been uncovered in Flint, MI, where high levels of lead in the water have been measured.  These dangerous lead readings, especially dangerous to growing children, result from the City of Flint’s refusal to spend $100 per day on an anti-corrosive agent for pipes. Now even water piped in from Detroit is contaminated.  Flint is a  bankrupt “Rust Belt” city with more than 40% of its citizens below the poverty line, another example of the poorest and racial minorities suffering environmental harm. Yet both affluent Porter Ranch, CA, and Flint, MI, demonstrate what will become an increasing problem in the U.S. — crumbling  infrastructure with insufficient resources for replacement. Only long-term concern such as that inspired by jubilee thinking can begin to reorient a culture in love with the novelty of the latest smart phones and driverless cars.

Hymn Suggestions:

            Gathering: “We Are Called”       ELW, 720

            Hymn of the Day: “God of the Sparrow” ELW, 740

            Sending Hymn, “Christ, Be Our Light” ELW, 715

Petition for Prayers of Intercession:

Creator God, you free us to celebrate sabbath in all its forms so that we may be             filled with the beauty and interdependent harmony of all that you have made. Awaken us to the long-term needs of all of your creatures.  God, in your mercy, Hear our prayer.

Tom Mundahl, Saint Paul, MN                                                               tmundahl@gmail.com