Doxology and daily bread…

Epiphany 4B
Scripture text:  Psalm 111 and Mark 1:21-18

This is Joe.  Joe is very happy these days.  In fact, you might listen to Joe these days and think he’s gone mad.  This usually even-keeled guy who speaks with measured words is sharing his deep joy with the world.  There is a backstory.  He got engaged.

Psalm 111 begins with the words:  Praise the Lord.  This imperative in the Hebrew is where we get the word Hallelujah.  To hallal the Lord is to offer foolish praise.  Abandoned gratitude for what God has done.

So here we have a call to praise God with abandoned gratitude, foolishly, with our whole heart.

There is a backstory to Psalm 111…

Verse two says, Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them.  We hear that God is gracious and merciful…just and true.  But what are the works of the LORD?  This text provides clues to the works of the LORD.

Verse five speaks to the close connection between bread and covenant.  He provides food for those who fear him; he is mindful of his covenant. But what is the relationship between food and covenant…between bread stories and doxology?

It is sometimes difficult to remember that God is the source of bread.  We live in a world that tells many stories about bread.  Powerful stories that come to us through the media, institutions and ideologies.

We are told that we will get bread if we are smart enough or pretty enough.  If we work hard and are successful we can own the bread factory, or a chain of bread franchises.  It is even possible to pastor churches and write best-selling books that legitimate the bread stories of culture.

Others tell us the system is rigged and the only way we can get bread is by hustling on the streets, or hoping for a government bread program.

Either way, when we buy into these other bread stories, we will likely have diminished time and energy for doxology.  When we are situating our lives in other bread stories, even when we do show up in the congregation, our acts of praise are likely half-hearted.

But we hear the psalmist emphatically abandoned to doxology with God’s people because the psalmist knows the backstory.  So what is the backstory to doxology?

The backstory is that despite what Adam Smith or Karl Marx may teach us, the powers are not the source of bread.  The biblical story tells us that the God we worship is the creator of all things.  God is the source of bread.

The backstory is that we do our own thing and there are consequences—hardship, struggle, death.  But God does not give up on the work of creation.  In fact, God establishes covenant with Abraham to make a people who will share their bread with others and be a blessing to all the nations of the earth.

In the same chapter in which we read about the call of Abram, we also read that Abram has to go down to Egypt to find food because the famine was so severe (Gen 12).  We learn early on in the biblical story that Pharaoh always has food.  There are natural resources—the Nile River—that make it so, but there are other reasons.  Pharaoh controls the military and the infrastructure of production.  And so Pharaoh always has wealth and power.

The wilderness work of God…

Epiphany 1B—Baptism of Christ
Texts:  Gen. 1:1-5; Gen. 29; Mark 1:4-11

It’s New Year’s resolution season—a profitable time for the self-improvement industry.  Some people went back to the gym this week.

According to the projections of one research firm, Americans spent $62 billion last year in the hope of keeping resolutions to lose weight, get fit, quit smoking, fix their finances, organize their life…  And so memberships for health clubs spike each January.  But by March, there is no wait for the treadmill.

Change is not easy.

The gospel of Mark begins not with the birth narrative, but with the voice of a messenger in the wilderness proclaiming a message of change. People from all over Judea and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to see and hear John.  Why?  What were they looking for in the wilderness?  Perhaps, like those who make resolutions, they were looking for change.

To be human is to experience change.

In the book Faithful Change, James Fowler says the need for change in our lives comes from at least three sources:  developmental change, healing, and disruptions in the systems that shape our lives.

We have to deal with change because we are bodies.  From the time we are embryos, through childhood, through adolescence, out bodies are continually growing and changing.  Our genes and social environment influence how our bodies mature into their adult forms.  And then we eventually begin an inevitable process of gradual decline toward death.

And so, James Fowler says, we need courage and faith for this journey of growth and change, of struggle and development.

A border crossing story…

Texts:  Isaiah 60:1-6; Matthew 2:1-12

This morning we remember the story of the Magi.

I was born on El Dia de los Reyes–Three Kings Day (January 6)–which is a big deal in Mexico.  In Latin American culture, the Magi play a more prominent role in cultural celebrations.  It is los Reyes Magos, not Santa Claus, who bring gifts to children (although globalization is blurring these cultural boundaries).

In the church year, January 6 is also Epiphany—a feast day that celebrates the revelation of God the Son as human being in Jesus Christ.  Western Christians remember the visitation of the Magi to the baby Jesus as a story about Jesus’ physical manifestation to the Gentiles.

The story of the Magi is also a story about cultural and religious outsiders finding a place in God’s story.  It is a border crossing story.

We should not be surprised that Matthew weaves the story of the Magi into his account of the birth of Jesus.  From the beginning, Matthew frames the gospel as a story of inclusion.  We see this theme in the genealogy.

The genealogy clearly places Jesus and the Gospel within Israel’s history going back to Abraham.  But the genealogy also points to a significant role played by Gentiles, women (Luke’s genealogy does not include women–3:23-38) and those left behind in Judah during the time when the elite were taken into exile in Babylon.

Later in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus will say that he “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24).  Even so, there will be mercy and a few crumbs from the table for a Canaanite woman whose daughter is not well.  Jesus will heal the son of a Roman centurion (Matt 8:5-13).

So it is important to see the story of the Magi together with the genealogy and the other stories that deal with outsiders as a part of the message in Matthew’s gospel.  For the Jewish-Christian community Matthew is written to in the late 1^st century—the message is that Gentiles are an integral part of the reign of God.

Our reading from the prophet Isaiah envisions Gentiles being drawn to the light…sons coming from far away and daughters being carried on their nurses’ arms.  The story of the Magi embodies this vision.