Author: admin

Collect

O God of Isaiah and John the Baptist,
through all such faithful ones
you proclaim the unfolding of future joy
and renewed life.
Strengthen our hearts to believe your advent promise
that one day we will walk in the holy way of Christ,
where sorrow and sighing will be no more
and the journey of God’s people will be joy. Amen.

Readings

Isaiah 35:1-10

Luke 1 46b-55

James 5:7-10

Matthew 11:2-11

John to Jesus

All four gospels begin the story of Jesus with reference to the prophet John the Baptiser; indeed, the gospel of John refers to him almost immediately in the familiar, beautiful opening hymn: “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” The entire opening chapter of Luke is all about the birth of John; the birth of Jesus happens in chapter two. The season of Advent focuses much on John and his mission.

Advent is about readiness to acknowledge, receive, and participate in the revolution that clusters around Jesus. As followers of the way of John and Jesus, our discipleship is to call the prodigal home, to call all God’s children to return from their exile, to call all mankind to turn around, to radically centre their lives in God’s love and to reach out with compassion to their brothers and sisters, that they might all know they are beloved of God.

This introduction of John the Baptist helps us to understand Jesus more clearly. John was an important first century prophet acting in the tradition of OT prophets; indeed, his appearance is compared to Elijah. He echoes the OT in his call for repentance: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his path straight.” He comes offering “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”; in doing so he openly challenges the temple authorities who saw themselves as the only authority to mediate between God and mankind. He pronounces judgment on the rulers of his time, and this opposition lands him in jail and eventually costs him his life. This anti-temple prophet, in the OT tradition, has a tremendous influence on Jesus of Nazareth.

If John and Jesus were indeed cousins, as implied, they may have played together as children, grown up together. In any case, Jesus was obviously attracted to John the Baptist; he must have heard John’s “crying in the wilderness,” and came to join him, to learn from him. We have no idea how long Jesus sat at John’s feet as a disciple, but it is logical to assume it was a good length of time for Jesus to learn from interaction with John. At some point John must have realized that his student surpassed him in wisdom and stature, for John after a time points his own disciples toward Jesus; in the first chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus’ first two disciples are plainly identified as John’s disciples. In Matthew’s gospel Jesus begins his ministry “when he heard that John had been put in prison.” From that moment Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” the very same words the writer of Matthew placed in John’s mouth: “In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus picks up where John leaves off.

The gospels have John announcing clearly that Jesus is the “coming one,” echoing the language of the prophet Malachi, the last book of the Jewish Bible in Jesus’ time. The gospel writers, writing several decades after the events of Easter, portray John as the forerunner of Jesus. However, when John the Baptist is imprisoned by Herod, he sends messengers to Jesus asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John is obviously unsure at that point. Both the gospel of Matthew and Luke have allowed considerable time to pass before this incident, several chapters in fact, during which the reader has seen Jesus in action, preaching, teaching and healing. And Jesus answers John’s question in the language of the OT: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them.” Jesus answers John in the metaphoric language used to describe the kingdom of God, taken primarily from the book of Isaiah, chapter 35, and also echoed in psalm 146. Jesus is not so much giving a literal summary of his ministry, as he is announcing, in his imagery, that the kingdom of God is near. The gospels of Matthew and Luke present Jesus as the fulfilment of OT messianic prophecy, as the new Moses through whom God will save his people. The OT references remind us that the gospels were written to make theological points, to interpret the experience of Jesus in light of OT understandings of God. Jesus’ actions declare the kingdom of God is at hand and he is telling John in code, through the Biblical imagery he recites, that the kingdom of God is here, that he is “the one who was to come.” Jesus reassures his teacher that he has learned his lessons well, that he is a prophet in John’s tradition, that he will build on John’s foundation.

And that foundation, as all the gospel writers make clear, is the OT prophetic voice. “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his path straight” (Luke 3:4): the gospel writers put into John’s mouth the call for repentance used at the start of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. Repentance means to turn around, to alter one’s direction, to align one’s life along the righteous path that God desires. It is a call for the exile to return, for the wandering one to come home. Furthermore, John the Baptist’s words in the fourth gospel apply the imagery of the exodus to Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.” The reference is from the feast of Yom Kippur which ends the ten days of fasting during Rosh Hashana, when the sacrificial lamb was slaughtered and eaten. It also refers to the Lamb of the exodus which was killed and roasted, the blood smeared over the lintel to protect the inhabitants from the angel of death; however, it is important to remember that the rest of the lamb, the cooked lamb, was packed away as food for the coming journey out of exile toward the promised land. The Lamb of God as food for the journey: the emphasis can be placed not so much on the blood of the lamb to avoid death, as on the feast of the lamb to bring life. The Lamb of God travels with us, to nourish us on our way. Emmanuel: God with us. Following Jesus is about following the way—a commitment to a path of personal transformation and of confrontation with social systems which dominate and suppress people: “Make straight the way of the Lord.” Jesus learns this way from John. John the Baptist’s ministry connects Jesus to a rich OT prophetic tradition, and Jesus models himself very much after his mentor. The parallels between them are striking: both men call for repentance, both challenge the temple authorities, both pose a threat to the secular powers, and both are executed. The disciples of Jesus follow this example and they too are all executed.

The background in the introductory material of all four gospels is the mission and fate of John the Baptist. We encounter during Advent the story of the hopes around John’s birth and his proclamation: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” No one in that time had seen anyone quite like this man John with his wild wilderness garb, his diet of locusts and honey, his language, his fierce and unaccommodating judgement and condemnation: “Oh you brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” The gospels show how John dared to challenge the way things worked at every level–religious, personal, economic, political and social; he told all these people how to change the way they lived in light of what God was about to do. His message was so powerful and convincing and inspiring (if also fearsome!) that the people, which here implies not just those who came out to see him, but people in the region generally, started considering the possibility that John might be the Messiah. We cannot understand the way of our Lord revealed in these passages apart from the context of challenge and threat—and good news, too–posed by the message and ministry of John the Baptist. To do so is to distort what Matthew and Luke want us to hear clearly. The birth and ministry of Jesus constitute a social revolution that keeps reverberating through every time and place.

Advent is about readiness to acknowledge, receive, and participate in the revolution that clusters around Jesus. As followers of the way of John and Jesus, our discipleship is to call the prodigal home, to call all God’s children to return from their exile, to call all mankind to turn around, to radically centre their lives in God’s love and to reach out with compassion to their brothers and sisters, that they might all know they are beloved of God.

Collect

Labouring God,
with axe and winnowing fork
you clear a holy space
where hurt and destruction have no place,
and a little child holds sway.
Clear our lives of hatred and despair,
sow seeds of joy and peace,
that shoots of hope may spring forth
and we may live in harmony
with one another. Amen.

Readings

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

ADVENT 2—Today’s Gospel reading is from Luke 3: 1-6

Simply, John the Baptist arrives on the scene—administering a baptism in the Jordan calling people to repent—to turn from their current path to faithfulness to God. John grew up with Jesus and thus had a firm idea of what Jesus’ prophetic ministry was about.

Now water cleansing for the forgiveness of sins had its roots in the OT and a long tradition with the people of Israel—but the word baptism came to us from the Greek in the NT baptizo, to dip and described the physical act not the underlying spirituality.

For Jesus, God was immanent, present, now in our midst. The term that might describe this is ***Godness***, where we find the presence of God.

This was an adult rite, a believer’s baptism, a tradition carried on in many Christian communities. Most of us and our children were baptized as infants (a topic for another day). One thought I had was that there is no evidence in the NT of a repeated act of repentance such as one might find in the church’s practice of weekly and or daily confession of sins (also a topic for another day).

The Gospel is the Good News brought by Jesus and that Good News is that the presence of God is at hand, or in language from the OT the Kingdom of God is at hand.

That is the Good News taught and practised by Jesus that God is with us and that loving neighbour is loving God. We need to take care that we listen to and follow the faith of Jesus; what did Jesus say and do? and what did he teach about God?

Unfortunately Christianity has been and continues to be more focussed on belief in Jesus and interpreting his death as a substitution for the sins of humanity, developing doctrine and liturgy with that sole focus and losing sight of that Gospel. Or presenting the Good News only as Jesus death and resurrection.

The Gospel or Good News is about the presence of God in our everyday lives, this is what Jesus taught and lived.

So where is God? When we think of war, poverty, oppression and injustice, we call on God but it is my firm belief that God will not selectively intervene in the laws of nature or the free will of humanity. Up until Jesus taught that the presence of God is in our midst, scripture described a transcendent God, a God coming from up there or out there and many people still think about God as separate and above.

For Jesus, God was immanent, present, now in our midst. The term that might describe this is Godness, where we find the presence of God.

God, that presence, is in the earth, the sky, and the sea, and in all living things. All things, the earth, the sky, the planets, the cosmos are made of God. They flow from God and this means they are made of God, not our familiar ‘made by God’.

We, humans, are not separate creations but part of the continuum of God creating we are items of Godness just as the earth, sea, sky, and all living things. Thus somewhere in our heart/brain/soul is the creative spark of divine life. All the great religions of the world, Hebrew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist given credence to humanity’s quest to be open to oneness with divine life.

Much of humanity might live in blindness about that divine spark, about who we are and where we are going, how we can find hope, peace, and justice when the powers of evil and death rage about us.

The task or challenge for us during this season of waiting and hoping is to find that spark, nurture it, and share it, in our quest to follow the Way of Jesus.

Collect

Unexpected God,
your advent alarms us.
Wake us from drowsy worship,
from the sleep that neglects love,
and the sedative of misdirected frenzy.
Awaken us now to your coming,
and bend our angers into your peace. Amen.

Readings

Isaiah 2:1-5

Psalm 122

Romans 13:11-14

Matthew 24:36-44

Many of us belonged to Girl Guides/Boy Scouts in our youth. The motto of both these groups is, “Be Prepared.” This mostly refers to being prepared in terms of life-saving resources, and staying one step ahead in case of an emergency, but it can certainly pertain to emotional readiness as well.

The first candle this year represents peace, peace during the difficult times in our lives, the happy and even mundane times, and especially during the difficult period of waiting.

During this time in the Bible, God was speaking through his Prophets, instructing them to tell the whole world that they needed to “be prepared” for God. How can we do that? One way we prepare during Advent is to light four candles on our Advent Wreath, while praying for the arrival of our Messiah. The first candle this year represents peace, peace during the difficult times in our lives, the happy and even mundane times, and especially during the difficult period of waiting. Waiting for our Messiah is hard, but it is also exciting.

Yet there are many periods in our life where we are waiting for something that we long for, cry out for, and aren’t even quite sure whether or not we will receive it. May God reward us for our patience and faithfulness. May we ask him to remind us that his timing is always perfect, and that the reward is always worth the wait. Especially this reward, the birth of a sweet baby, the Saviour of us, and of our world. Amen!

Matthew 3: 1-12

When a Bible story has a lot of detail, the writer is saying: these events really happened, just as they are described. The John the Baptist story, therefore, has much to say to every reader, then and now.

The story of John the Baptist makes clear: God can and does invite everyone into God’s presence and ministries. I think the author of Matthew’s point is: if God can invite and enable such an odd duck as John to practice such an amazing ministry, there is hope for us, too.

John the Baptist began his adult life as a social misfit. His manner of dress; living alone in the desert; manner of speech – which was rather accusatory; all these characteristics describe John as an odd character. His clothing, diet and lifestyle made him more than an object of curiosity – or rejection – by people. His life choices and manner of speaking got people’s attention and derision.

Rather than invite and encourage people to hear his good news about the Messiah, John’s message was confrontational and judgemental. We can only imagine how people who heard him would react! Moreover, the way he addressed the Pharisees and Sadducees – men, who had dedicated their lives to following and serving God – was indefensible. “You brood of vipers” was an inexcusable way to speak to anyone!

John the Baptist’s point in addressing everyone who heard him was: just because we share a common ancestor (Abraham), and all of the pious claims its religious leaders have taught ever since, does not make us any different from anyone else in God’s love. All people are loved, equally, by God. Everyone is judged by God the same way. In other words, no one is better than anyone else just because of ancestral and religious claims.

For all of John’s oddness etc., he did invite people to be baptized by him. Baptism, then, was of repentance – or, turning toward God. All of us sin; it’s part of our nature. We will never stop sinning – again, because it is our nature. But as we turn to God – as a sunflower turns to the sun – we receive God’s love and forgiveness for the mistakes we have made. In Baptism, we deliberately choose to accept God’s promise, that the Holy Spirit will guide and bless us always.

We learn from John’s message, and modern teachings, that baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. It is not a special badge that makes us better than other people. As we learn in subsequent Gospel stories and Acts, people were blessed by the Holy Spirit just as the baptized were/are. What God does is all about God – not us. Our turning (repentance) to God is our deliberate way of asking the Holy Spirit to come into our lives.

So what?

The story of John the Baptist makes clear: God can and does invite everyone into God’s presence and ministries. I think the author of Matthew’s point is: if God can invite and enable such an odd duck as John to practice such an amazing ministry, there is hope for us, too. If John’s verbal attacks on religious leaders brought positive changes in people’s lives, what can Good News, patience and love do?

So, the story of John the Baptist is not just an eyebrow-raising tale about an odd character. It is a proclamation of Good News for everyone.
D. Browning

Collect – Prayers for an Inclusive Church (2009) alt.

God of all people,
from every tribe and language; you called true witnesses
who sang your praise, lived your grace and worked for peace.
May we share their faith and live by their example,
so that we might be a blessing to the hunger of your world;
through Jesus Christ, whose body we are. Amen.

Readings

Wisdom 3:1-9
Psalm 116:1-8
1 Peter 3:1-9
John 6:37-40

Mary the Tower

Gospel reading: John 11: 1-7, 17-27

I have used my prerogative as priestly presider to choose a different gospel reading than the one appointed for today by the revised common lectionary. John 11, the story of the raising of Lazarus, is appointed for Lent 5 in year A, but I simply can’t wait until next March, Lent 5, to share the exciting research that has been done on this passage. Diana Butler Bass, noted church historian, has summarized in a recent sermon the biblical research of her friend, Elizabeth Schrader, and it will blow your mind, for it changes so much of our understanding of Jesus, Mary, the gospel writers, church history—everything changes as a result of this biblical research. Butler- Bass’s sermon lasted 40 minutes, but I’ve got only 13 this morning. Here goes:

…sometime in the fourth century, someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha. She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in [and] at every single place and . . . moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, ‘Mary.’ The editor changed it all… Every pronoun is changed. Every singular “sister” is changed to the plural “sisters”. So that the story becomes a charming story about Lazarus and the resurrection and his two lovely sisters, Mary and Martha.

Elizabeth (Libbie) Schrader is currently a PhD student in New Testament Studies at Duke University, but when she was a Masters student at General Theological Seminary in New York City, she examined the oldest known version of John’s gospel, called Papyrus 66, created around the year 200, and she discovered something that no one else had ever noticed. She found that the text of John 11 and 12 had been edited, altered, changed utterly. To put it simply, in the original Greek version of John 11 and 12, there is no character named Martha. Martha has been added, inserted into the story.

Our text of John 11 begins “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister, Martha.” We all assume we know this family, right? We read about them this past summer in Luke 10 when busy Martha complains to Jesus that Mary isn’t helping serve the guests. Well, our assumption may well be wrong. The original Greek text of the oldest known version of the gospel of John actually says, “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, at the village of Mary and his sister, Mary.” In the original text of John 11, this Lazarus has only one sister, and her name is Mary. We have two stories about two different families.

Someone edited John 11 in Papyrus 66 and removed one reference to Mary and created a Martha, actually changed the spelling of Maria to spell Martha. I studied enough Greek to know that it would be pretty easy to make the Greek iota into a theta, the “i” into a “th.” And where the original text refers to “his sister, Mary,” the scribe altered it to read “her sister, Martha.” Butler- Bass summarizes the moment this way: “Schrader sat in the library with all of this, and it came thundering at her, the realization that sometime in the fourth century, someone had altered the oldest text of the Gospel of John and split the character Mary into two. Mary became Mary and Martha. She went through the whole manuscript of John 11 and John 12, and lo and behold, that editor had gone in [and] at every single place and . . . moment that you read Martha in English, it originally said, ‘Mary.’ The editor changed it all… Every pronoun is changed. Every singular “sister” is changed to the plural “sisters”. So that the story becomes a charming story about Lazarus and the resurrection and his two lovely sisters, Mary and Martha.”

But John 11 is not about them at all, it’s about a different Lazarus and his sister Mary. Lazarus is never actually mentioned in Luke 10; Martha welcomes Jesus “to her home.” Martha and Mary of Luke 10 live “in a certain village”; the two siblings of John 11 live in Bethany—“Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary.” There’s something about Mary. Who is this Mary? She is familiar enough to the early disciples or the gospel writer that they can refer to “the village of Mary,” not the village of Lazarus, but of Mary. It has long been speculated that this Mary is Mary Magdalene; in John 12 a woman named Mary anoints the feet of Jesus with rich perfume and dries his feet with her hair. We have long assumed that Mary was Mary Magdalene. Well, could very well be, and the one woman in John 11 & 12, the sister of Lazarus, indeed could be Mary Magdalene. Why was her identity altered by introducing “her sister Martha” into the narrative, obscuring the passage with an allusion to Luke 10?

The answer is suggested by the final verse of the portion of the gospel passage we heard this morning, verse 27: “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.” Our English versions say that Martha said this; the original Greek text says it was Mary. Why is that change important? First, it is the only Christological confession in the gospel of John, a very significant assertion of Jesus as Messiah, as ‘Son of God.’ Secondly, who says something similar in the other gospels? Right! In all other three gospels, “Peter and Jesus have a conversation. And Jesus turns to Peter and says, “Who am I?” And Peter actually says, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” And Jesus turns around and says to him words that are familiar to all of us, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” That’s St. Peter, first bishop of Rome, the first Pope, from whom we get St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and the Roman Catholic Church. Pretty important guy! And in Roman Catholicism, only men can be Pope, or Bishops, or priests, because Jesus chose only male disciples. Or did he? In our version of John’s gospel the great confession is from the mouth of a minor character, Martha, about whom we hear nothing more. But she wasn’t there in the original John 11. Mary Magdalene was. Mary Magdalene, present at the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, the first witness to the empty tomb and the resurrection, the one who informed Peter and the others, “I have seen the Lord.”

Oh, you’re going to say, it’s not that Mary, she was from the town of Magdala, this Mary is from Bethany. Well, the Mary was from Bethany, because in Jesus’ time, there was no town called Magdala. In Hebrew, the word means ‘Tower.’ The term Magdalene is a title. Mary the Tower—the tower of strength, the tower of faith. Mary the Tower vs Peter the Rock. Rock, paper, scissors. Rock always wins. Or does it? Paper beats rock. This research of a piece of Papyrus leads to speculation about the power struggle happening in the early church and later, about the place of women in leadership roles. The Peter faction vs the Mary faction. Mary Magdalene was there at crucial moments of Jesus’ life and ministry. She was in the garden, at the cross, at the tomb. She’s called the Apostle to the Apostles. So, in whose interest is it that she be removed from John 11 with its powerful Christological confession and be replaced by a relative unknown woman named Martha? Mary was downgraded here. Why?

I leave you to speculate further, but I venture to share that if Mary the Tower had been acknowledged and celebrated equally as much as Peter the Rock, the institution of the church and its history would have been vastly different and our understanding of Christ’s message and ministry would be highly enriched by feminine wisdom and spirituality. Can you imagine? The mind boggles with possibilities. An all-male clergy? A patriarchal institution? Elaine Craig’s comment in the Globe Aug. 10 can easily be applied to the church: “We know that having women involved at the highest levels of organizations can help change leadership and result in better decision-making. Yet the [church’s] governance remains overwhelmingly male-dominated.” There were nearly 100 female bishops at Lambeth this year; twenty years ago there were less than 10. The times they are a changin’. There is much to contemplate, much to study further. We have not heard the last of this research and it will stimulate much discussion which I pray is respectful and fruitful. The Holy Spirit is let loose upon the world. Hear what her Spirit is saying to God’s people.