Sunday, 05 September 2010 15:19
“Finding some balance”
Jude / Deuteronomy 30:15-20 / Psalm 1 / Luke 14:25-33
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
5 September 2010
Hey … Jude!
Other than that famous Beatles song … and the actor with the last name of Law … “Jude” likely isn’t a name that comes up in daily conversation.
And it never gets mentioned here, in worship … even though Jude is the name of one of the Epistles of the New Testament … the last one, right before the Book of Revelation … this short book, one chapter, 24 verses … it is not part of our lectionary, our regular rotation of Scripture readings for Sunday worship. Today was the first time I’ve ever heard it read in worship … most likely, the same is true for you as well.
Though Jude – the epistle, or letter – is not one of the Pastoral Epistles which we’ve explored together this summer … that title belongs to 1st and 2nd Timothy, and Titus … reading from Jude today … combined with our regular lectionary readings for this day, does make some sense – the texts do connect in a way – and I thought it would be an appropriate way to conclude our summer excursion into some different books of the Bible.
So … back to where we started … who exactly is this Jude anyway?
The letter itself says that Jude is James’ brother … and tradition has it that the only James who would, or could be cited in this way, the only one famous or noteworthy enough, was James the brother of Jesus.
So was Jude Jesus’ brother as well?
Of this we’re not sure … in these times, “brother” was a term used in the same way we use “cousin” today … denoting some kind of blood relationship, just not necessarily being a sibling. My Bible notes won’t go that far, to answer that question.
And perhaps it doesn’t matter. Because what is clear is that it is the most Jewish of all the canonical – or generally accepted - New Testament writings.
James led the Jerusalem church, which was a church made up, by and large, of Jewish Christians … that term, odd to our hearing now … especially to us who are heirs of Pauline Christianity … the Gospel, brought by the Apostle Paul, to the Gentile world …
… but, we must not forget that the first followers of Jesus … and indeed, our Lord himself … were all Jews. Though they were removed from the synagogues after the fall of Jerusalem – and the destruction of the Temple – in 70 AD – they likely never stopped seeing themselves as true Jews, people of God following in the tradition of their ancestors; and who, for them, following Jesus as their Messiah was precisely the right thing to do.
We don’t have many Jewish Christians around anymore … one can find the occasional Messianic Jewish faith community (there’s one in Newcastle) … but most Christian faith communities do not observe the Jewish Sabbath, festivals and fasts, or other faith practices. We are overwhelmingly a Gentile religion, and have been since the earliest days … the last traces of Jewish Christianity in Palestine having been wiped out when Islam began its spread across the Mideast in the later part of the first millennium.
And so these words of Jude may have fallen strangely on your ears. There are strong references to Hebrew Scripture … both from the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) and from outside the Scriptures (the story from the tradition about Moses and the archangel Michael … as well as the quote from the Hebrew apocalyptic work named Enoch (which, interestingly enough, John the author of Revelation also draws on … that neighboring book, far better known to most of us, is through and through a book about being a true Jew, which to John also meant being fully Christian as well.)
But … even as strange as it may sound … there is an unmistakable clarity which comes through the whole book … and that is, quite honestly, that the purity of the faith must be upheld in the face of error.
“I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints …”
“They (those who err in their faith) are like waterless clouds carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever.”
The text doesn’t say what the error of these people is … but, if we follow a parallel word from Acts, the book that most clearly lays out the conflict between the Jerusalem church and the Gentile one Paul founded in Asia … it likely had something to do with adherence to the Jewish Law. Jewish Christians were just that … Jewish Christians … they stuck by much, most, of the law given in the Hebrew Scriptures as requirement for faithful living. Circumcision, dietary restrictions, following certain days and festivals … all of those were part of everyday living of the Christians who lived in or near Jerusalem, who would likely have been the ones who heard this letter read to them as warning that they shouldn’t let “the grace of God” be “perverted” by the “licentiousness” of those who claimed that they were made right by God through grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone … which was the message that Paul brought to the Gentiles.
And that’s the link between Jude’s letter and the two Old Testament readings we have today.
Rules and law. Purity of religious dogma and doctrine.
The Deuteronomy text makes it clear … “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses … choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.”
And so does Psalm 1: “Happy are they (who) delight in the law of the Lord … they meditate on God’s teaching day and night” … and, in a strange reversal of Jude’s words, “they are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.”
Make no mistake. The business of following God, of “doing the right thing,” is serious stuff. There are rules, there are expectations, within which, one may call oneself a faithful disciple, outside of which, one is considered “a waterless cloud carried along by the winds.”
Ah. But then … then we get to the Gospel for today. And Jesus ups the ante even further.
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”
Wow.
Can Jesus really mean what he’s saying here?
Maybe … maybe he’s just engaging in some good old fashioned hyperbole … you know … exaggeration … making the point to the crowd that, if you really want to follow me, you have to really toe the line … follow all the rules … be an assiduously moral, upright, upstanding individual. Maybe that’s what he means here.
No, it’s not.
Jesus really, truly means what he says. When he says “hate,” that’s the meaning of the word … cut yourself off from these people, your blood relatives, those closest to you … cut them off, cut them out of your life forever, just walk away. They are a distraction, they get in the way of a pure relationship with God. Family can become an idol, a false god. So they are to be to you, as dead.
So much for all the current talk of getting back to “good moral Biblical Judeo-Christian American values.”
I doubt that anyone in that crowd in DC last weekend would want to go here.
Which one of us could, can hate our families … hate them so much that we would choose to walk away from them forever?
But that’s what Jesus is saying here … what is required on our part, to follow him.
What about “carrying your cross?” Sometimes we hear people talking about their ill health as “the cross they bear.” Or a wayward family member, into drugs or alcohol … “they must be the cross I’m to bear.” Or a hard job … economic distress … tough times … “the crosses we bear.”
Those sound doable. Hard, but doable. Is that what Jesus means?
Nope.
Here’s a quote from a current New Testament commentary which puts “carrying your cross” into its proper perspective:
"The language of cross bearing has been corrupted by overuse. Bearing a cross has nothing to do with chronic illness, painful physical conditions, or trying family relationships. It is instead what we do voluntarily as a consequence of our commitment to Jesus Christ. Cross bearing requires deliberate sacrifice and exposure to risk and ridicule in order to follow Jesus. This commitment is not just a way of life, however. It is a commitment to a person. A disciple follows (Jesus) and learns a new way of life."
Can we do that? Would any of us truly want to do that? All the time, every day? No.
And what about giving up our stuff? Some, perhaps, much of what we own, we could, can do without … but what about the big stuff? My car? My laptop? My new Kindle?
We end up like that rich young man elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, who, after asking Jesus “what must I do to follow you,” hears this call from Jesus: “sell all you have and give to the poor” … and he walks, slumping, away … and the disciples ask Jesus, “then who can be saved?”
Indeed. Who can? With the bar set so impossibly high … who can truly be a disciple of Jesus?
And there in chapter 18 … Jesus gives us the answer.
“What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”
Again … hear the Word here … rules for faith, doctrine, dogma, the Law … all of it serves a purpose … all of it has a place, for life here on earth. For organizing and maintaining religion.
Just … Jesus says here … just don’t use it as a way, the way, to say you’re following me. Because then … I’ll not only point out how wrong you are about morality (which he does all the way through the New Testament … building on the Old Testament … where true morality is far and away about how one treats the poor and powerless and downtrodden, the widow and orphan, the foreigner in one’s midst … that’s Biblical morality … not one’s own private sense of “moral purity”, but instead, how well one lives within community, in serving “the least of these”) ….
… Jesus not only points out how wrong we are about morality … but he so ups the ante on “what we must do” to make it impossible to reach him from our side of the equation.
Which he does for one reason and one reason alone.
Because purity of faith … purity of doctrine … following the Law … can, will, DOES, become an a false god … an idol we can bow down to and point to and say, “hey, there, right there, we who do this or avoid that or live our lives in such and such a manner … we are more righteous … moral … better than you.”
And what does Jesus like to do to idols?
SMASH THEM TO BITS.
Hate your father and mother, sisters and brothers … be willing to leave family behind to follow me.
Ka-BAM!
Follow me unswervingly in the face of ridicule and danger.
Ka-BAM!
Give up all your stuff, and simply, trust me.
Ka-BAM!
“Then who can be saved?”
“What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”
Hey, Jude … and anyone else who is listening … never forget that the only way to being made right with God is through the grace and forgiveness, peace and reconciliation that comes through the gift of Jesus Christ … his life, his death, his resurrection.
Now … it’s not a cheap grace … it cost Jesus the ultimate sacrifice … and it does come and change our lives, too.
There are “marks of discipleship.”
Pastor Mike Foss once came up with a list …. which has found its way into the “seven faith practices” our denomination, the ELCA, lists … as marks of a disciple of Jesus.
Let’s see what kind of moral living is set forth in them.
Pray frequently
Worship regularly
Study scripture diligently
Serve for the sake of others both in and beyond the congregation
Give freely
Invite others often
Pass on the faith
Funny how no one ever has a huge rally for those.
But we have one here, every week.
We gather around God’s Word, to hear it, and learn it, and inwardly digest it.
We eat and drink the promise of Jesus into the very fibre of our bodies.
We greet one another in the peaceful name of our risen Lord.
And then we are sent out … sent to serve … every single one of us, called to be a disciple of Jesus, called into the community of discipleship, called into some kind of serving, in God’s world.
Granted, Jesus’ call to discipleship is not a call to a black-and-white way of looking at the world. Black and white is easy; it’s always easier to have someone tell you what to do, give you the rules to follow, the checklist, the road map … rather than following a Savior who tends to spend a lot of time in the greyness of life.
But that is precisely where our Lord calls us to be. In the grey. Relying not on the hard and fast rules to make us right people … but rather … living with others who first, last and always … follow ... not a rule … but a servant …. The ultimate Servant … our Lord Jesus … the One who calls us to rely on others … living in community … caring and loving in community … not always sure by the “rulebook” that we’ve got it all right … but certain that, in Christ, It Will Be All Right … now, and one day, with him, forever.
Martin Luther’s last words in this life … give us a fitting last word … for today, and for our lives, lived as people who claim his heritage … we Lutherans, our theology guiding us to abide deeply in the greyness and uncertainty of life … his words both disturb and settle us … for faith, for life, for service to one another.
“We are beggars. It is true.”
Indeed, we are. Come seeking, come begging … and be sent to bring others the deep, abiding joy of this beggar’s banquet in which we share. Amen.
Jude / Deuteronomy 30:15-20 / Psalm 1 / Luke 14:25-33
23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
5 September 2010
Hey … Jude!
Other than that famous Beatles song … and the actor with the last name of Law … “Jude” likely isn’t a name that comes up in daily conversation.
And it never gets mentioned here, in worship … even though Jude is the name of one of the Epistles of the New Testament … the last one, right before the Book of Revelation … this short book, one chapter, 24 verses … it is not part of our lectionary, our regular rotation of Scripture readings for Sunday worship. Today was the first time I’ve ever heard it read in worship … most likely, the same is true for you as well.
Though Jude – the epistle, or letter – is not one of the Pastoral Epistles which we’ve explored together this summer … that title belongs to 1st and 2nd Timothy, and Titus … reading from Jude today … combined with our regular lectionary readings for this day, does make some sense – the texts do connect in a way – and I thought it would be an appropriate way to conclude our summer excursion into some different books of the Bible.
So … back to where we started … who exactly is this Jude anyway?
The letter itself says that Jude is James’ brother … and tradition has it that the only James who would, or could be cited in this way, the only one famous or noteworthy enough, was James the brother of Jesus.
So was Jude Jesus’ brother as well?
Of this we’re not sure … in these times, “brother” was a term used in the same way we use “cousin” today … denoting some kind of blood relationship, just not necessarily being a sibling. My Bible notes won’t go that far, to answer that question.
And perhaps it doesn’t matter. Because what is clear is that it is the most Jewish of all the canonical – or generally accepted - New Testament writings.
James led the Jerusalem church, which was a church made up, by and large, of Jewish Christians … that term, odd to our hearing now … especially to us who are heirs of Pauline Christianity … the Gospel, brought by the Apostle Paul, to the Gentile world …
… but, we must not forget that the first followers of Jesus … and indeed, our Lord himself … were all Jews. Though they were removed from the synagogues after the fall of Jerusalem – and the destruction of the Temple – in 70 AD – they likely never stopped seeing themselves as true Jews, people of God following in the tradition of their ancestors; and who, for them, following Jesus as their Messiah was precisely the right thing to do.
We don’t have many Jewish Christians around anymore … one can find the occasional Messianic Jewish faith community (there’s one in Newcastle) … but most Christian faith communities do not observe the Jewish Sabbath, festivals and fasts, or other faith practices. We are overwhelmingly a Gentile religion, and have been since the earliest days … the last traces of Jewish Christianity in Palestine having been wiped out when Islam began its spread across the Mideast in the later part of the first millennium.
And so these words of Jude may have fallen strangely on your ears. There are strong references to Hebrew Scripture … both from the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) and from outside the Scriptures (the story from the tradition about Moses and the archangel Michael … as well as the quote from the Hebrew apocalyptic work named Enoch (which, interestingly enough, John the author of Revelation also draws on … that neighboring book, far better known to most of us, is through and through a book about being a true Jew, which to John also meant being fully Christian as well.)
But … even as strange as it may sound … there is an unmistakable clarity which comes through the whole book … and that is, quite honestly, that the purity of the faith must be upheld in the face of error.
“I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints …”
“They (those who err in their faith) are like waterless clouds carried along by the winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever.”
The text doesn’t say what the error of these people is … but, if we follow a parallel word from Acts, the book that most clearly lays out the conflict between the Jerusalem church and the Gentile one Paul founded in Asia … it likely had something to do with adherence to the Jewish Law. Jewish Christians were just that … Jewish Christians … they stuck by much, most, of the law given in the Hebrew Scriptures as requirement for faithful living. Circumcision, dietary restrictions, following certain days and festivals … all of those were part of everyday living of the Christians who lived in or near Jerusalem, who would likely have been the ones who heard this letter read to them as warning that they shouldn’t let “the grace of God” be “perverted” by the “licentiousness” of those who claimed that they were made right by God through grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone … which was the message that Paul brought to the Gentiles.
And that’s the link between Jude’s letter and the two Old Testament readings we have today.
Rules and law. Purity of religious dogma and doctrine.
The Deuteronomy text makes it clear … “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses … choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days.”
And so does Psalm 1: “Happy are they (who) delight in the law of the Lord … they meditate on God’s teaching day and night” … and, in a strange reversal of Jude’s words, “they are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper.”
Make no mistake. The business of following God, of “doing the right thing,” is serious stuff. There are rules, there are expectations, within which, one may call oneself a faithful disciple, outside of which, one is considered “a waterless cloud carried along by the winds.”
Ah. But then … then we get to the Gospel for today. And Jesus ups the ante even further.
“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”
“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”
Wow.
Can Jesus really mean what he’s saying here?
Maybe … maybe he’s just engaging in some good old fashioned hyperbole … you know … exaggeration … making the point to the crowd that, if you really want to follow me, you have to really toe the line … follow all the rules … be an assiduously moral, upright, upstanding individual. Maybe that’s what he means here.
No, it’s not.
Jesus really, truly means what he says. When he says “hate,” that’s the meaning of the word … cut yourself off from these people, your blood relatives, those closest to you … cut them off, cut them out of your life forever, just walk away. They are a distraction, they get in the way of a pure relationship with God. Family can become an idol, a false god. So they are to be to you, as dead.
So much for all the current talk of getting back to “good moral Biblical Judeo-Christian American values.”
I doubt that anyone in that crowd in DC last weekend would want to go here.
Which one of us could, can hate our families … hate them so much that we would choose to walk away from them forever?
But that’s what Jesus is saying here … what is required on our part, to follow him.
What about “carrying your cross?” Sometimes we hear people talking about their ill health as “the cross they bear.” Or a wayward family member, into drugs or alcohol … “they must be the cross I’m to bear.” Or a hard job … economic distress … tough times … “the crosses we bear.”
Those sound doable. Hard, but doable. Is that what Jesus means?
Nope.
Here’s a quote from a current New Testament commentary which puts “carrying your cross” into its proper perspective:
"The language of cross bearing has been corrupted by overuse. Bearing a cross has nothing to do with chronic illness, painful physical conditions, or trying family relationships. It is instead what we do voluntarily as a consequence of our commitment to Jesus Christ. Cross bearing requires deliberate sacrifice and exposure to risk and ridicule in order to follow Jesus. This commitment is not just a way of life, however. It is a commitment to a person. A disciple follows (Jesus) and learns a new way of life."
Can we do that? Would any of us truly want to do that? All the time, every day? No.
And what about giving up our stuff? Some, perhaps, much of what we own, we could, can do without … but what about the big stuff? My car? My laptop? My new Kindle?
We end up like that rich young man elsewhere in Luke’s gospel, who, after asking Jesus “what must I do to follow you,” hears this call from Jesus: “sell all you have and give to the poor” … and he walks, slumping, away … and the disciples ask Jesus, “then who can be saved?”
Indeed. Who can? With the bar set so impossibly high … who can truly be a disciple of Jesus?
And there in chapter 18 … Jesus gives us the answer.
“What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”
Again … hear the Word here … rules for faith, doctrine, dogma, the Law … all of it serves a purpose … all of it has a place, for life here on earth. For organizing and maintaining religion.
Just … Jesus says here … just don’t use it as a way, the way, to say you’re following me. Because then … I’ll not only point out how wrong you are about morality (which he does all the way through the New Testament … building on the Old Testament … where true morality is far and away about how one treats the poor and powerless and downtrodden, the widow and orphan, the foreigner in one’s midst … that’s Biblical morality … not one’s own private sense of “moral purity”, but instead, how well one lives within community, in serving “the least of these”) ….
… Jesus not only points out how wrong we are about morality … but he so ups the ante on “what we must do” to make it impossible to reach him from our side of the equation.
Which he does for one reason and one reason alone.
Because purity of faith … purity of doctrine … following the Law … can, will, DOES, become an a false god … an idol we can bow down to and point to and say, “hey, there, right there, we who do this or avoid that or live our lives in such and such a manner … we are more righteous … moral … better than you.”
And what does Jesus like to do to idols?
SMASH THEM TO BITS.
Hate your father and mother, sisters and brothers … be willing to leave family behind to follow me.
Ka-BAM!
Follow me unswervingly in the face of ridicule and danger.
Ka-BAM!
Give up all your stuff, and simply, trust me.
Ka-BAM!
“Then who can be saved?”
“What is impossible for mortals is possible for God.”
Hey, Jude … and anyone else who is listening … never forget that the only way to being made right with God is through the grace and forgiveness, peace and reconciliation that comes through the gift of Jesus Christ … his life, his death, his resurrection.
Now … it’s not a cheap grace … it cost Jesus the ultimate sacrifice … and it does come and change our lives, too.
There are “marks of discipleship.”
Pastor Mike Foss once came up with a list …. which has found its way into the “seven faith practices” our denomination, the ELCA, lists … as marks of a disciple of Jesus.
Let’s see what kind of moral living is set forth in them.
Pray frequently
Worship regularly
Study scripture diligently
Serve for the sake of others both in and beyond the congregation
Give freely
Invite others often
Pass on the faith
Funny how no one ever has a huge rally for those.
But we have one here, every week.
We gather around God’s Word, to hear it, and learn it, and inwardly digest it.
We eat and drink the promise of Jesus into the very fibre of our bodies.
We greet one another in the peaceful name of our risen Lord.
And then we are sent out … sent to serve … every single one of us, called to be a disciple of Jesus, called into the community of discipleship, called into some kind of serving, in God’s world.
Granted, Jesus’ call to discipleship is not a call to a black-and-white way of looking at the world. Black and white is easy; it’s always easier to have someone tell you what to do, give you the rules to follow, the checklist, the road map … rather than following a Savior who tends to spend a lot of time in the greyness of life.
But that is precisely where our Lord calls us to be. In the grey. Relying not on the hard and fast rules to make us right people … but rather … living with others who first, last and always … follow ... not a rule … but a servant …. The ultimate Servant … our Lord Jesus … the One who calls us to rely on others … living in community … caring and loving in community … not always sure by the “rulebook” that we’ve got it all right … but certain that, in Christ, It Will Be All Right … now, and one day, with him, forever.
Martin Luther’s last words in this life … give us a fitting last word … for today, and for our lives, lived as people who claim his heritage … we Lutherans, our theology guiding us to abide deeply in the greyness and uncertainty of life … his words both disturb and settle us … for faith, for life, for service to one another.
“We are beggars. It is true.”
Indeed, we are. Come seeking, come begging … and be sent to bring others the deep, abiding joy of this beggar’s banquet in which we share. Amen.
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