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Lectionary
Notes - Fourth Sunday in Lent
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Readings for 4th Sunday in Lent, 3/18/07:
Joshua 5:9-12, Psalm 32, 2 Corinthians
5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Joshua 5:9-12:
- "Today I
have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." Wow - just like that
- tabula rasa - a clean slate. What is on your slate that you want
to have wiped clean? On the one hand, I'm a firm believer that it's not healthy
to live life with regrets over the past. Our choices, even bad ones, effect
our lives in ways we can't possibly know - to change one think would be to
change everything, sort of like the Back to the Future movies. But
on the other hand, what can be wiped clean, what can be changed over time
is our feelings about the past, the emotions, those parts that linger with
us. Note that God does not say here that God wipes their experience
of Egypt from them. No, God wipes their disgrace, their emotional damage
from the experience.
- Joshua finds the
people finally coming into the promised land that God had shared in a promise
to Moses. This is, indeed, an awesome homecoming. Not just returning to a
home place, but returning to the very concept of having a home for these people.
I love how their eating of the "produce of the land" and the "crops
of the land" tie them to their home. The land is their home now, they
have eaten of its fruit. If only we all viewed our tie to our land, our planet,
our earth, in such a way, perhaps we would not treat it with such disregard!
Psalm 32:
- Watch for the change of voice
in verse 8-9. It threw me off for a couple minutes. First the psalmist is
talking to God, then God to the psalmist. "I will counsel you with my
eye upon you," says God. What an image! Being a Lord
of the Rings fan, the big eye of Sauron comes to mind first, but
that's not exactly how I like to imagine the eye of God! Think perhaps instead
of those pretty "God's Eye" craft projects you might have completed
in elementary school.
- There's a Hide and Seek
theme going on here. The psalmist talks about hiding and not hiding
our sinfulness from God. But the psalmist also talks about God being our
hiding place. God is the one seeking us. We can hide from
God or hide in God. Which will it be? God will cover our
sin.
- Note the theme again of clean
slates - God is wiping out our sins.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a:
- More clean
slate language. "New creation." "Everything has become
new." Our trespasses are not counted against us.
- Our response?
We, in turn, are ambassadors, sharing the message of reconciliation.
- I like the opening
of this passage. We are not to view anyone from a human point of view.
When first we meet Jesus, we view him from a human point of view, perhaps,
but Paul says "we know him no longer in that way." What does he
mean? Well, perhaps Paul wants us to view people from God's point of view
instead. If we look at people with the eyes of God, how would we see them,
ourselves, Christ differently?
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32:
- One final story
about clean slates, this one perhaps most familiar. As with all very
familiar Bible stories, right down to the resurrection, we are in danger of
missing the whole point because of how well we think we know them. Be careful!
- Jesus tells this story because
the Pharisees and scribes point out that he welcomes sinners and eats with
them. As much as we like to think otherwise, church people are SO OFTEN in
the habit of using their faith as an excuse to separate themselves from perceived
sinners, not as a reason to welcome them! When was the last time you intentionally
sought to spend a great deal of time with people whose behaviors you thought
were really offensive??
- Notice that there is no sin, really,
in the younger son demanding his inheritance and leaving to seek his own life.
We think of that as wrong, but that is not the tone of the text here. Where
he goes wrong is in "dissolute living" once he is gone. Even still,
his journey home is full of struggle, feeling valueless, repentance,
groveling.
Certainly, I feel he has 'paid' by the time he gets home.
- Why is the older brother so hostile?
Last quadrennium, I had heard that there were petitions to the UMC's
General
Conference to shorten the probationary period before ordination. But,
the rules won't apply to people like me who are already mid-process. My reaction
- outrage that those who come after me will have an easier time of it! For
some reason, we want everyone to have it as hard as we have had it. Thank
God that God does not operate on the same system!
- Which character are you? What
if this was mother and daughters instead? Or a mix of genders? Use your imagination!
Pastor’s Note: (I use the Greek-English
Lexicon from Liddell and Scott, the “little Liddell”
and the Metzger et. al Greek New Testament in my translation work.)
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