Category: Commentary

Today’s passage from Matthew 16:13-20 is a passage the church has fought over for centuries. For the Roman Catholic Church, this text illustrates why Peter (and his spiritual descendants – the Popes) are central to church leadership. Martin Luther disagreed, seeing Peter’s confession (“You are the Messiah”) as the true cornerstone of all church leadership. There is also debate over what the “keys” actually are. Is this passage an invitation for the spiritual leaders of the church to decide who gets forgiveness and who doesn’t? Is this a passage letting us tell other people “I’ll pray for you” as a way to be passive aggressive with other people? Can priests, pastors, and Christians actually claim who are true Christians and who are not? It’s a powerful passage that has inspired debates and schisms for 2000 years. We should remember the history of interpretation because it shows how the interpretation of this passages changes depending on our cultural, historical, and political context. This passage invites us to remember why we need the Holy Spirit to open up God’s word for us because what the Holy Spirit gives us might not match, 100%, with what came before it.

When I look at scripture, I spend time putting it into context. Where does this passage appear in the wider story? What message is the author trying to get across? And what would the original hearers actually hear? A big part of my interpretation process also involves real estate. Location matters and location plays a big role in what Jesus is saying today.

The city of Caesarea Philippi was at the edge of northern Galilee, the tip of Israel’s ancient homeland. In Jesus’ day the city was new but the location wasn’t. For hundreds of years a temple located at the city site was dedicated to the Greek god Pan. The temple sat next to a large spring that provided water for the Jordan River. Over time, the temple complex grew. Images of Pan and other pagan gods were carved on the rocky hill behind the spring. When the city was finally established a few years after Jesus’ birth, the city became very Roman. Even it’s name, Caesarea Philippi honors the Roman Emperor – Caesar. This was a city that treated the Roman Emperors as gods.The rocky hill behind the spring was soon the Mt. Rushmore of the area, including images of Pan and the Roman Emperors as a sign of what was the rock, the foundation, of the wider world.

Today’s passage takes place with Jesus, Peter, and the other disciples overshadowed by images of the Roman emperor and Greek gods. It’s under the watchful eye of these rocks when Jesus calls Peter his rock. We can argue about the details of Jesus’ command to him mean but we shouldn’t ignore the impact such words would have made. Peter’s confession is a direct refutation of the government surrounding him. Jesus tells Peter that he will be a leader of a different kind of kingdom. These words are revolutionary words. They are powerful words. And they are words that remind us that no government on earth can be seen as the end all, be all, of the kingdom of God. Instead, Jesus’ followers are invited to see the world as it is, a place that struggles with sin, injustice, inequality, and power, but live as if Jesus makes the difference that we know he does.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 12th Sunday After Pentecost, 8/27/2017.

It’s strange for Matthew to call the woman in our gospel reading (Matthew 15:21-28) a Canaanite. By the time of Jesus, the Canaanite culture was long gone. The land of Canaan included parts of Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Syria. When the people of Israel fled Egypt, they came into a territory dominated by Canaanite kingdoms. Gradually as the Philistines took over the coast and the kingdom of Israel dominated the interior, the Canaanite culture shrunk. By the time of the Exile, when the people of Jerusalem were taken to live in Babylon, Canaan no longer existed. Wars, invasions, demographic changes, and migrations mixed the Canaanite communities wither others. By Jesus’ time, after years of Greek and Roman rule, Canaanites didn’t exist. But we know, based on modern science, that the Canaanites never left. Recent DNA studies show how modern people living in Lebanon and the surrounding areas still have DNA matching skeletons buried 3500 years ago. By calling this woman a Canaanite, Matthew is making a statement. This woman is related biologically to Jesus and his disciples. But she is defined as someone who is completely different. She is a woman set apart, an outsider living in the old Philistine territories of Sidon and Tyre. She’s unworthy of Jesus’ time. And yet, she’s a mother who persists because her daughter is in trouble.

Jesus is a bit of a jerk in this passage. The Canaanite woman believes Jesus is who everyone says he is. She knows he has cured others and she wants her daughter to be cured too. Jesus hears her shouts but chooses not to answer. Even the disciples are annoyed by her persistent shouting. Since her words are failing, she takes the drastic step to get in Jesus’ way. She physically uses her body to disrupt his path. And once she’s stopped Jesus, she asks for help. Jesus responded harshly but she will not give up. She knows who Jesus is and will not let Jesus ignore her. Her faith is her persistence. She won’t let Jesus be anything but Jesus. Her persistence is also a description of who her God is. Her God cares. Her God heals. Her God will not let her family go and will keep God’s promises. She refuses to let Jesus be anything but Jesus. And if she can be persistent with Jesus, we can be too.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 11th Sunday After Pentecost, 8/20/2017.

Today’s reading from Matthew 14:22-33 takes place immediately after last week’s reading. A crowd numbering over 5000 people came to Jesus. Jesus spends the whole day with them and then, in the evening, tells his disciples to feed the entire crowd. Imagine being a disciple in that moment. They were around a giant crowd, all day. Jesus probably moved through the crowd, coming to people who were sick and hurting. If the day was bright, warm, and dusty, I imagine the disciples would be exhausted by the end of the day. They’re tired and want to rest. But even after a full and busy day, Jesus makes them work. Once the leftovers are picked up, the disciples were worn out. And then one more thing comes up.

Jesus dismisses the crowd and his disciples. Jesus retreats to pray while the disciples board a boat on the Sea of Galilee. As Jesus prays, a storm develops. The disciples spend all night keeping their ship afloat. The disciples are already tired but the wind and waves do not let up. By the early morning hours, they must have been barely keeping themselves together. They look to the shore, now far away, and see Jesus coming towards them. The disciples freak out and Peter makes Jesus prove who he is. Jesus responds by giving Peter one more thing to do.

Life has a habit of giving us one more thing when we are already over our heads. A mourning family experiences another loss. A health crisis gets another unexpected diagnosis. The busyness of everyday life has one more problem thrown into the pot. As the winds and waters of life overwhelm us, one more thing will come. And when it does, Jesus is there.

We can act like the only time we meet Jesus is when we pick a time to meet him. Setting time aside to worship, pray, and study is very important. We are called to make faith a priority and that means giving our time to God. But when life overwhelms us and our time is occupied, that doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t with us. Jesus is there when we feel as if we’re drowning. Jesus is coming towards us even when we are being punished by the wind. And Jesus will grab our hand because there’s nothing in this life that can keep Jesus away from us.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 10th Sunday After Pentecost, 8/13/2017.

I don’t know if I would ever say the word “but” to Jesus.

In our reading from Matthew 14:13-21 today, Jesus is in a deserted place. He left the highways and byways after learning that John the Baptist was beheaded during a feast by King Herod. Instead of responding to this violence inflicted on his cousin, Jesus retreats. Jesus, however, isn’t left alone for long. Word spread that he is in the area so people go out to meet him. Jesus finds an immense crowd looking for him. When he sees them looking for him, he stops retreating. He enters the crowd and heals the ones who are sick. Jesus is compassionate and full of love. As the day turns into evening, people start to get hungry. Instead of waiting for the crowd to become hangry (hungry + angry), the disciples asked Jesus to send everyone home. The disciples saw Jesus heal the sick but their imagination does not see Jesus dealing with their hunger. So the disciples, thinking about the crowds, invite them to take care of themselves.

Jesus, however, will have none of that. Instead, he invites the disciples to be as compassionate as he is and take care of the crowd. This is when the disciples use the word “but.” They claim they have nothing but five loaves and two fish. Five loaves and two fish are not nothing. The disciples do not think they have enough food to share. They are focused on feeding just themselves. They are blessed to have food but they lack the imagination to share it. Jesus then takes what they have and feeds everyone.

One of the unspoken ideas Jesus continually struggles against is the idea that there is only “so much” in the world. There is only so much love, so much kindness, so much food, so much housing, so many rights, so many opportunities, and so many other kinds of blessings in the world. Opportunities and material things are viewed as limited. Once we are receiving this blessing, we struggle to extend it to someone else. We are afraid that if we give it away, we will somehow lose that blessing for ourselves.

But Jesus invites us to see this blessings as opportunities to share the limitless love that God has. The text doesn’t claim that Jesus somehow multiplied the loaves and the fishes. Instead, he blesses what the disciples have and the disciples are empowered to feed everyone. The meal the crowd has is shared by everyone. The disciples, Jesus, and even the women and children eat their fill. Jesus is showing all of us that following him means taking what we have and sharing it abundantly.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 9th Sunday After Pentecost, 8/06/2017.

What was the last question you said “yes” to? And did you really mean it? In today’s reading from Matthew 13:31-33,44-52, we read parable after parable describing the Kingdom of God. All of these parables are short, sweet, and inexact. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, yeast, treasure, a searching merchant, a net, and a scribe. Many of these “likes” are a bit absurd. A person finds treasure and hides it in a field. They then buy the field and keep their treasure buried. A merchant is looking for pearls, finds one, and then stops being a merchant. The fisherman waits until the fish are on the shore before he sorts through his catch but he doesn’t toss the unwanted creatures back into the water. And then, after a chapter full of parables, Jesus asked his disciples, “Have you understood all this?” And the disciples said, “Yes.”

This doesn’t feel like a honest yes. When we step back and look at everything in Matthew 13, this “yes” by the disciples reads like a “yes” trying to get Jesus to stop talking. Over and over and over again, Jesus teaches them with a parable. The disciples are overwhelmed by absurd stories and they are not given the time to process what they’re hearing. So when Jesus finally paused and asked them a question, they respond with just, “yes.” They don’t even try to explain what they understand. Jesus understands what they are doing so he responds with another parable about scribes.

According to Richard Lischer in his book Reading the Parables, scribes in Jesus day were not like a master of a household. Scribes were important. They knew how to read and write. They were employed to take notes, write contracts, and compose letters. Even the apostle Paul used scribes to write his letters down. Scribes are useful but they are not the head of the household. They are hired by the head of the household. Yet Jesus says the disciples “will preserve…all that is eternal in the law and the righteousness of God, and so doing will find the greatest treasure of all.” The absurdity of Jesus’ ministry is that his followers of tax collectors, fishermen, women, and sinners will know, find, and pass God’s holiness and goodness to those around them.

Parables are not simple stories we’re asked to only understand. They are stories we’re supposed to chew on, over and over again. When we struggle with Jesus’ words, we discover who God is and what God expects of us. Jesus’ journey with us isn’t about providing easy answers to the dilemmas we face. Instead, he prepares us to live in the world like he does. And that world can sometimes be absurd.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 8th Sunday After Pentecost, 7/30/2017.

Taking a Sunday off during a sermon series is a little problematic. But like the British band Big Audio Dynamite says, “Life carries on, even when I’m not there.” And that’s true. Life is happening to other people and in other places even as you read these worlds. As human beings, we are the centers of our own little universes. People and situations revolve, interact, and move through and around us. We sometimes act as if the possibilities of life are limited to our own experiences, senses, and imaginations. But other people lives, thoughts, and experiences that are not our own. We are all centers of our own little universes but we are not the center of the entire universe. Yet with God’s Spirit, we can see what a full, thriving, and loving life can possibly be.

This passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans 8:12-25 is amazing because Paul is making a bold claim here. He’s telling this small community of two dozen people that they are who the world is waiting for. These men and women, rich and poor, slaves and free, are everything. Now, there is a dangerous way to read this passage. If the Roman community took these words as an excuse to push others away or to act like they are the only people entitled to being with God, then Paul’s words create an us-vs-them view of the world that is problematic. The Roman community would seem themselves as “winners” and reject, forcefully, anyone who doesn’t fit in. Their relationship with God would be an entitlement that would be for them alone and no one else.

But Paul isn’t, I think, doing that here. We need to remember the context of Paul’s letter. He is writing to a small community located in the capital city of the Empire that killed Jesus. They are a community that celebrates and worships someone who was killed as a criminal in the worst way possible. They worship and celebrate what should be the epitome of weakness and smallness. And as a mixed community, they are filled with slaves who had no control over the violence inflicted on their bodies. This community is insignificant. Yet it’s this community that Paul says is worth everything. They, through the Spirit, will change the world.

And how will they do that? Paul doesn’t go into details here but will later in his letter. The how is rooted in the why because living with the Spirit makes a difference. We can see that in our prayers. When we pray, the Spirit is helping us to believe that our smallness can talk to the everlasting God. In our worship service, that’s why each Sunday has a specific prayer of the day. Before we read God’s story and share with Jesus a holy and special meal, we ask God to make that Spirit live within us. This Spirit doesn’t ask us to create a world of winners and losers. This Spirit asks us to live a life of love that is as complete as God’s love for each of us. Because it’s this kind of love, a love that even sacrifice itself for its enemies, that all our universes need.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 7th Sunday After Pentecost, 7/23/2017.

Parables “are fictional stories.”* They are the bread and butter of Jesus’ teaching ministry and filled with images from everyday life. Most of us are not farmers (but if you would like some eggs, there’s someone at CLC you should talk to) but we know what farmers do. Most of us do not plant seeds on acres of land but we do know the type of soil plants need to grow. This reading from the book of Matthew 13:1-9,18-23 is the first parable we will see in this season after Pentecost but it will not be the last. We read the stories Jesus told because Jesus is a storyteller.

As a storyteller, the stories Jesus tells can sometimes appear simplistic. Since these parables include images we know and understand, we trick ourselves into thinking any interpretation of a parable must be just as simple. If the parable confuses, challenges, or makes us uncomfortable, we seek out a simple answer to make ourselves feel better. We do a disservice to parables when we make them simple. Parables are confusing. They sometimes compare two things in striking and unpredictable ways. Parables sometimes do not make sense on the first (or 12th) reading of them and sometimes Jesus’ own explanation of these stories fails to clear up their meaning. Parables are important because they help expose “two equally deep mysteries: the mystery of God and the mystery of human life.”** The God who uses the phrase “I AM WHO I AM” as a name when Moses meets a burning bush is not a God who is neat, tidy, and containable. Anytime we limit God and Jesus inside a simple and safe definition, we miss experiencing who God really is. The God who created everything and who can never be fully comprehended by human beings is the same God who, through Jesus, entered into the mystery of human life. Parables do not try to explain away the mysteries of God and our lives. Instead, parables reveal these mysteries through stories that are challenging, familiar, odd, and comforting. Parables get the gears in our souls turning because engaging in all of life’s mysteries is one of the ways the Spirit transforms us into Godly people.

In today’s parable, a farmer is terrible at their job. The farmer doesn’t try to plant seed in only the places it will grow. Instead, the farmer throws seed around with abandon. In some places, the seed grows. In other places, it is eaten up. The farmer has a success rate of only 25% and yet the farmer keeps sowing. Where are you in the story today? Are you the farmer sowing seeds of love and life with abandon? Are you the rocky ground, the path, or the soil covered in thorns? Are you a seed waiting to sprout, not knowing what kind of soil you have landed in? Find your spot in the story – and discover what the Spirit wants you to hear today.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 6th Sunday After Pentecost, 7/16/2017.

* Richard Lischer’s Reading the Parables, page 3.
** Richard Lischer’s Reading the Parables, page 13.

I’ve never worn a physical yoke but I have carried intangible ones that were very real. When Jesus talks about yokes in this passage from Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30, he uses an agricultural image people in his crowd knew. A yoke is a heavy piece of wood used to connect two oxen side-by-side at the shoulders. Yokes were used in specific circumstances. One of the oxen would be experienced and well trained. They knew how to pull a plow or a heavy load. The other oxen in the yoke would be inexperienced. They were young and new to plowing. They wouldn’t know what’s expected of them. By teaming up an experienced ox with one who needs help, the farmer could plow their field and train their oxen at the same time. The oxen would do the hard work to prepare the field for planting, together. The old soil and plants from the year before would be plowed over and turned up. The new soil, once fertilized and filled with seeds, would grow a delicious crop. Without a yoke, the inexperienced oxen could never create a crop that would feed others. The yoke made that ox a creature that gives life.

As a baptized Christian, you are yoked. You might not feel it, physically, but you are connected to Jesus right now. As Shelley Best writes, “Through faith, we are partnered with Jesus and taught how to balance and maneuver what is at hand, with the help of one who transforms our deepest desires into passion for God’s just and merciful reign in the world.*” The gift of faith connects us to the One who knows us better than we know ourselves. We are bound to a Jesus who helps us to live in sync with him. This work isn’t easy. This work challenges who we are and what we know. And this work can feel like our trust in God is growing or fading or both, at the same time. There will be times when the heavy load we’re pulling feels like it’s impossible to carry on our own. But we are not alone. We are connected with Jesus. And we need to “trust Jesus to help us carry our load and find rest.”

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 5th Sunday After Pentecost, 7/9/2017.

* Feasting on the Gospels, Matthew Volume 1. Page 299-301.

Do you want to grow closer to God? Today’s passage from Matthew 10:40-42 is an answer to that question.

For the last three weeks, Jesus has been giving instructions to his disciples. Jesus’ work needs workers and the disciples are his hands and feet in the world. What Jesus did during his life on earth will be the disciples’ mission as well. They will bring good news to the poor, which might not be good news to the rich. The disciples will eat meals with the people society says not to. The disciples will advocate for healing and wholeness in a world that fights hard to deny wholeness to everyone. The disciples will preach, teach, and do. The work will be hard but it’s necessary, vital, and life-giving to those who do it.

Jesus’ final words of instruction are these 3 verses from Matthew 10. They are words centered in hospitality. Hospitality is more than inviting someone into your home. Hospitality means we need to be willing to be a guest in someone else’s home too. Hospitality is as simple as offering a cup of cold water to a thirsty child and as complicated as going into the home of an enemy and showing them love and compassion. We want to control how we practice hospitality. We want to decide who we invite into our home and whose home we are invited into. But Jesus breaks control in this passage. When it comes to being God’s people, we don’t get to chose who we show hospitality to. We are called to invite all people into our spaces and to go into the spaces of every other person too. When we do this, we are doing more than just being kind or compassion. We are actively engaged with God. We are actively living with God. We are actively welcoming God. It’s through hospitality that we discover just what it’s like to follow a God who created our world and who lived in it as a guest to show us what God’s love actually looks like.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 4th Sunday After Pentecost, 7/2/2017.