29 August 2010

Proverbs 25.6-7
Psalm 112
Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16
Luke 14.1, 7-14

Jesus – dining in the house of a religious leader. Jesus among the hypocrites. But have no fear; Jesus does have an agenda, and no one’s going to go home from this party unscathed. Before we arrive on the scene, Jesus has already bested the Pharisees and canon lawyers by healing (on the Sabbath no less) someone who’s got dropsy, who’s been retaining fluids – but more about that we shall not say. We join the party just as the bar has closed, and Jesus is noticing how various and sundry dinner guests are busy jostling for the best places at the table, so Jesus tells them all a parable, expanding on the verses from Proverbs that we heard in our first reading. “Don’t take one of the better, higher-up seats at table. Go sit down at the lowest place so you’ll be honored when the host sees how humble you are and calls you up to the head of the table.”

22 August 2010

Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

Hear the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke:

Now Jesus was teaching in one of the congregations on the Sabbath.

And just then there appeared a woman

who, for eighteen years, had a weakness of spirit.

She was curved in on herself and was quite unable to raise herself up.

When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said,

“Woman, you are freed from your weakness.”

When he laid his hands on her,

immediately she became right and began praising God.

But the leader of the congregation,

indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath,

was busy rabble-rousing:

“There are six day on which work ought to be done;

come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.”
But the Lord answered him and said, “You who are under judgment yourselves! Do not you on the Sabbath untie your ox or your donkey from the feed trough, and lead it away to give it water?

And ought not this woman,

a daughter of Abraham,

whom Satan did indeed bind for eighteen years,

be freed from this bondage and precisely on the Sabbath day?”

When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame;

and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that Jesus was doing.

This is the Holy Gospel.

(translation by K. Maly)

The Sabbath Day: for us – Sunday, the weekly celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. And the Commandment tells us that we are to remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy – observe it differently than we do all other days. Now, in some traditions this has meant absolutely no work whatsoever is to be done. I remember how, when I was a kid – no stores or malls anywhere were open on the Christian Sabbath; some of you remember like me how nobody did laundry on Sunday (or if they did, they hung it up in the basement, hiding their transgression from the sight of the neighbors); you couldn’t go to the movies; and you certainly couldn’t play cards. And you had to go to church – for some people it was all morning, a little break in the afternoon, and then church again at night. And we had one Lutheran pastor who absolutely forbad parishioners to read the paper before coming to mass and receiving communion – and Holy Communion, he said, should be received on an empty stomach.

15 August 2010

Isaiah 61:7-11
Psalm 45:11-16
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 1:46-55

In the traditional, Swedish congregation where I grew up, a person couldn’t be anywhere in the worship space without being encountered by Mary – a whole section of the north wall there was – and still is – dominated by a huge stained glass window of Mary cradling her child Jesus in her arms. And in the church of the traditionally Swedish congregation I served in Southwestern Minnesota, to the side of the nave there was a small altar presided over by none other than Mary. With all that in my background I was surprised one day when a visitor to my office strenuously objected to the statue of Mary sitting on one of my bookshelves – and that this visitor was even further incensed when, as I was explaining Mary’s presence, I referred to Mary as the Mother of God rather than the Mother of Our Lord. But on another occasion and on the other end of the spectrum there was the Lutheran who was highly offended that I had referred to Mary as a woman of low degree; rather, said this person, I should be referring to Mary as the Mother of God and with highest reverence and honor. No wonder we hear in Luther’s Table Talk that the life of a preacher is one of getting picked to bits from every side while pleasing no one.