A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons

[Each week, I try to present a bit of background on one or all of the appointed Bible lessons for the succeeding Sunday. I hope that you find it helpful.]

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 13, 2009

The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 116:1-9
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38

The Prayer of the Day:
O God, through suffering and rejection you bring forth our salvation, and by the glory of the cross you transform our lives. Grant that for the sake of the gospel we may turn from the lure of evil, take up our cross, and follow your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

[I'll be preaching on the James text and only discussing it here this week.]

General Comments:
1. For some general information on the New Testament book of James, go here.

2. Most scholars agree that James 3:1-12 is a tightly constructed essay.

The book of James is an example of what Biblical scholars call wisdom literature. But unlike most examples of this genre, James weaves the aphorisms and forms of argument associated with this literature into cohesive statements, essays.

The overall theme of James is that Christians should authenticate the faith they believe and confess in the way they live; that living requires wisdom, which can only be acquired through faithful reliance on Jesus Christ through the everyday moments of life.

But more than delivering a series of should statements, James seems to be saying that we can act our way into deep faith. If we take the risk of living the way faithful people live, we'll find Christ at work, creating genuine trust in God within us.

This weekend's lesson is bookended, forming what the scholars call an inclusio (or inclusion), by addressing believers as brothers and sisters at both the beginning and the end of the essay.

3. It would be inappropriate, I think, to believe that this chapter is addressed only to teachers of the faith. Given the general tenor of the book of James and the fact that it was addressed to Jewish Christians dispersed throughout the Mediterranean region, James is here discussing the corrosive effects of gossip and other intemperate speech on the fellowship of the Church and its witness before the world. All Christians are called to put their speech under the authority of Jesus Christ, though James acknowledges "that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness" (3:1, the only place in the book where James uses the first person plural).

4. Concern over the devastating effect of uncontrolled speech was commonly expressed not only in the Old Testament and other Jewish literature, it also was a frequent theme in the writings of ancient philosophy. But there are some very specifically Biblical and Christian elements to James' discussion of this problem that aren't found in other ancient literature. Among these unique elements, which I hope to delve into in the verse-by-verse comments, are:

• Seeing gossip and other unseemly talk as an outbreak of hell.
• A pessimistic view of our capacity for exercising human-directed self-control over our speech.
• An acknowledgement that because none of us is perfect, we cannot control our speech.
• The doublemindedness that James speaks of earlier in the book (1:8) is reflected in the doubletongued ways of those under the influence of hell. Such people dare to praise God and curse the person made in the image of God with the same tongue.
• The passage is filled with allusions to the creation imagery of Genesis and the ideas of being made part of a new creation through Jesus Christ which we've already seen several times in the book of James.
• At the end of this passage, one is led to the inescapable conclusion that the only way to be self-controlled in speech is to rely on the power of God. (Paul says that self-control is a "fruit of the Spirit," the result of faithful reliance on Jesus Christ, in Galatians 5:22-23.)

5. This passage has more than speech in mind, of course. All our communication is included.

Verse-by-Verse Comments:
1Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
(1) Jesus, like James, speaks of the stringent standards to which teachers are held by God in Matthew 5:19. Jesus also upbraids those teachers who love their role for the honor it accords them, rather than doing it to be servants.

(2) But verse 2 will make clear, the speech of all Christians has eternal significance, either reflecting the presence of Christ in our lives or the disruption, discord, hate, greed, and envy of hell.

2For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.
(1) James is not about to commend religious perfectionism. None of us is perfect, he says. In order for our speech to accord with God's will for human beings, we need wisdom. Wisdom is ours when we ask God to give it to us, James has already said. Wisdom, in short, is a gift God grants to those who live in what Martin Luther called "daily repentance and renewal."

(2) The image of the bridle as a check on one's mouth is a commonplace in Hebrew, Greek, religious, and secular discussions of uncontrolled speech. But James will discuss this issue in decidedly Christian terms.

3If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. 4Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. 5So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!
(1) In the world around us, we see how large things can be controlled by small measures. The tongue is a small thing, the strongest muscle in the human body, that controls our body and mind. Yet when our words aren't under God's control, they're under demonic control, as James will soon make plain. The damage thus inflicted by our words--our tongues--is incalculable!

(2) Chris Haslam notes that one of the books of the Apocrypha, Sirach, has some passages that relate to these verses. (The Apocrypha is a set of writings which neither Jews or Protestant Christians accept as being part of the Bible, but is accepted as canonical by the Roman Catholic and Episcopal fellowships.) I found the following passages, beyond even those specifically cited by Haslam, to be of particular interest in connection with our verses from James:

Curse the whisperer and doubletongued: for such have destroyed many that were at peace. A backbiting tongue hath disquieted many, and driven them from nation to nation: strong cities hath it pulled down, and overthrown the houses of great men. A backbiting tongue hath cast out virtuous women, and deprived them of their labours. Whoso hearkeneth unto it shall never find rest, and never dwell quietly. The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue. Well is he that is defended through the venom thereof; who hath not drawn the yoke thereof, nor hath been bound in her bands. For the yoke thereof is a yoke of iron, and the bands thereof are bands of brass. The death thereof is an evil death, the grave were better than it. It shall not have rule over them that fear God, neither shall they be burned with the flame thereof. Such as forsake the Lord shall fall into it; and it shall burn in them, and not be quenched; it shall be sent upon them as a lion, and devour them as a leopard. (Sirach 28:13-23)

While I don't accept the books of the Apocrypha as being part of the Bible, they do give us some insight into the thinking of the early Jewish-Christian community of which James was, according to Acts, a prime leader. Sirach, like James, is an example of wisdom literature, albeit one not as sophisticated as James. Unlike Sirach, James also explicitly links wisdom and right-living to the maintenance of a strong relationship with Christ, a relationship initiated in Baptism, when God's Name is invoked over Christians.

6And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.
(1) The New Interpreter's Bible says that the image of the tongue inflamed by hell means more than that "speech is a problem to be solved." In it, James "points to the cosmic dualism that underlies the two ways of directing human freedom"; it can be directed by God or by the devil. James more fully explores this theme in his discussion of human arrogance and its horrible effects on the Church in 3:13-4:10.

7For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
(1) Obviously, James is engaging in a little hyperbole in v. 7. Not every species of beast and bird has been tamed by human beings. But many species have been so tamed. And, at the least, human beings exercise dominion over the created order. (Sometimes not to good effect.)

James' argument here is derived from a typical Jewish form of argumentation, employed often in the Old Testament as well as by Jesus and by Paul. The formula is: If this little thing, then how much more this big thing.

James' argument will be: If this little thing, how astounding this smaller thing, which it turns out, is really a much bigger thing.

James is saying, "We're able to tame or subdue the animals of the earth, yet we can't tame a smaller thing, our words. But, in fact, our tiny words are much bigger and far deadlier than the greatest physical predator we will ever encounter! They have the ability to destroy others and ourselves."

(2) The tongue is merely a symbol for our human capacity for communication, often used in intemperate, egotistical, boastful, unkind, or hurtful ways.

(3) The description of the tongue as "a restless evil, full of deadly poison" is an apparent allusion to the serpent whose lying words tempted Eve and Adam into rebellion against God. (A mark of the subtlety of the serpent is that he told the truth in a lying way. It was true that Adam and Eve were not immediately killed by eating the forbidden fruit. But decay and death had become part of the human experience through this chasm created between humanity and the Author of life.)

(4) Chris Haslam points out that the order in which "beast...bird...reptile...and sea creature" are listed here is the same in which they appear in Genesis 9:2 (in which God speaks to Noah); Deuteronomy 4:17-18 (in which God's people are told not to make idols); and I Kings 4:33 (which speaks of Solomon).

(5) Haslam also points out that the reference to the "deadly poison" emitted by those who misuse the gift of speech echoes Psalm 140:3, which says of evildoers:

They make their tongue sharp as a snake’s, and under their lips is the venom of vipers.

As you can see, these two verses are rife with allusions to Genesis, the Old Testament book which the ancient rabbis insisted was key to understanding God and the faith.

(6) In the description of the tongue as "a restless evil" is mirrored Biblical descriptions of the devil (or Satan). In Job 1:7, for example, Satan tells God that he has been going "to and fro on the earth...walking up and down on it." And First Peter exhorts Christians to stay connected to God, alert to temptations, by saying, "Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour" (First Peter 5:8).

Jesus, in telling people to remain connected to God and alert to temptations after they've been delivered from evil, says that the demons of hell evidence the same restless energy seen in the devil himself, a desire to indwell people and so rob them of life. He also says that we need to fill the vacancies left by old sins and addictions with Him, His life, and His love, otherwise sinful dependencies may take up residence in us again:

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but it finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So will it be also with this evil generation.” (Matthew 12:43-45)

9With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.
(1) We dare to praise God and then curse, put down, belittle, or marginalize human beings made in God's image. That doesn't work in the Kingdom of God! John writes in the New Testament:

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (First John 4:20-21)

(2) Yet again, this passage alludes to Genesis, reminding us that in one of its creation accounts, Genesis says that we human beings, unlike all the other living things God created, were made "in the image of God."

11Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? 12Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.
(1) In the last few verses of his essay, James explains why this ought not to be so (v. 10).

(2) Fruit was an accessible image to an ancient agricultural society like the one from which the Bible emerged. The idea in much of the Bible's use of fruit imagery is that the way we live will reflect what's going on inside of us.

Are we connected to the God we meet in Jesus Christ, surrendered to Him?

Or, is someone else calling the shots in our lives, such as the devil, the world, or our sinful selves, to paraphrase Martin Luther?

John the Baptist, as he prepared the people of Judea for Jesus' ministry, called the people to repent and is quoted in Luke's Gospel as saying:

“You brood of vipers! [venomous snakes again!] Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:7-9)

Jesus tells His disciples that those who remain faithful to Him will display that faith in their living:

My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. (John 15:8)

Paul says that those who are in relationship with Christ, in whom the Holy Spirit thus lives, will evidence that presence in their living:

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. (Galatians 5:19-23)

Jesus also says that we'll be able to pick out false prophets from those speaking on His behalf "by their fruits." (He also says that He will allow these false prophets to continue to operate because if he were to destroy them, he would also destroy the righteous among whom they live.):

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? (Matthew 7:15-16)

One and Only Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (March 16, 2008)

[In these passes, I hope to help the members of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to prepare for worship. But because the Bible lessons we use are the ones appointed by the Revised Common Lectionary, used in one form or another by Christians everywhere. I also hope others will find them useful.]

The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
2. Matthew 21:1-11

General Comments:
1. We'll be celebrating this coming Sunday as Palm Sunday, rather than as the Sunday of the Passion. We'll remember the Passion in its entirety on Good Friday, when we'll consider John's account of Jesus' Passion (His suffering and death).

2. Still, there is more than a few hints that Jesus will suffer and die in the events of Palm Sunday. The biggest hint is found in the welcome Jesus was given when He entered Jerusalem on the Sunday before His arrest. He was treated like a conquering military hero, something that totally ignored all that He had said about Himself. For people who wanted a political and military messiah who would throw out the Romans and rid them of their tax burdens, Jesus was bound to disappoint. Jesus wanted the people to come to terms with the fact that our biggest problems in life aren't "those people," but them...their sin, their selfishness, their impotence, their rebellion against the God they needed. No wonder they killed Jesus. To this day, we face every day, the same choice confronted by the crowd on the first Palm Sunday...whether to receive Him as the God over our lives or to kill Him.

Comments on Each of the Lessons
1. Isaiah 50:4-9a: A little background on Isaiah, from a pass I presented here in late November:

Isaiah was a prophet who lived in Judah (or Judea) during the eighth century BC. (For background information on Judah, the "southern kingdom," go here.)

The Archaeological Study Bible says:

Isaiah's primary ministry was to the people of Judah, who were failing to live according to the requirements of God's law. But he prophesied judgment not only upon Judah but also upon Israel [the Northern Kingdom, whose worship life centered on the city of Samaria] and the surrounding nations. On the other hand, Isaiah delivered a stirring message of repentance and salvation for any who would turn to God.

The authorship of Isaiah is debated by Biblical scholars. Traditionally, the entire book was attributed to Isaiah.

By contrast, some scholars think that Isaiah had very little to do with it, that the writings were produced by a group of prophets who operated in the original Isaiah's "school of thoughts."

A third group of scholars believe that chapters 1 to 39 were written by Isaiah, son of Amoz. They attribute chapters 40-55 to a second Isaian prophet they refer to as "Deutero-Isaiah" and chapters 56-66 to a third author, who they call "Trito-Isaiah." Whatever the truth about authorship, two things should be kept in mind:

• Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Christians and Jews have always seen in Isaiah the Word of God.
• Those in the ancient Near East didn't share our views regarding authorship. It was considered perfectly legitimate for an author operating within the tradition established by a prophet or a rabbi to write in the name and the voice of that person.

2. Chris Haslam, who, it should be noted, takes the three-author theory of Isaiah as the truth, has some interesting thoughts on this passage:

The part of Isaiah written in exile (Chapters 40-55) contains four servant songs, sections that interrupt the flow of the book but have a unity within themselves. The first (42:1-7) begins “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen ...”; in the second (49:1-7) the servant, abused and humiliated, is commissioned anew; in the third (our passage) he is disciplined and strengthened by suffering; and in the fourth (52:17-53:12) even the Gentiles are in awesome contemplation before the suffering and rejected servant. In late Judaism, he was seen as the perfect Israelite, one of supreme holiness, a messiah. In the gospels, Jesus identifies himself as the servant (or slave), the one who frees all people.

In vv. 4-6, God has “opened my ear”; he has commissioned the servant as one who is taught, i.e. like a disciple. God has made him a “teacher” (a prophet) of the “word” of God, to bring God’s comfort to “the weary”, his fellow Israelites – who reject God. He has accepted this command: he is not “rebellious”. They have tortured him (v. 6), as they did prophets before him, but he has accepted their “insult and spitting”. In vv. 7-9a, in courtroom language, the servant says that, because God helps him, he is not disgraced; he confidently accepts the suffering (“set my face like flint”), and will not be put to shame. God will prove him right (“vindicates”, v. 8). He is willing to face his “adversaries”, his accusers – for the godly to “stand up together” with him against the ungodly. He is confident that, with God’s help, none will declare him guilty.

3. As I've indicated before, one good way to get the gist of a passage is to paraphrase it, put it in our own words. Here's how I've paraphrased our lesson from Isaiah this week:

Every day, God wakes me up. "Get up," God says, "There are things you must have down cold so that you can teach others." I listen, so that with a single word from God, I can encourage those with flagging faith and weak wills.

When God wakes me, I don't bury my head on the pillow or wallow in the everyday concerns of life. And I don't yell at God like rebellious children refusing to get up when their parents call them to the breakfast table.

Instead, I became a real rebel, a rebel against the world's ways of doing things. I didn't strike back when the world struck me; I just turned the other way. When people pulled my beard on one side of my face, I gave them the other side. I didn't cover myself when they insulted me or spat on me.

God helps me and so I can incur such dishonor. God helps me and I am intent on doing God's will! God helps me and relying on Him alone for my honor is never a shameful thing!

One day, God will affirm that the course I've followed--the course that the world has scorned and insulted--is the One God set for me, set for all.

Who will adopt this way of life? Walk with me!

Who will stand against me? Let's have it out right now!

No matter what the world says or does, God is my helper! Who will dare to call, "Guilty!" those the Lord calls, "Guiltless!"?

4. Psalm 31:9-16: One of the things that won me over from atheism to Jesus Christ some three decades ago was the Bible's realism. The Bible's men and women of faith--people like Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Naomi, David, and others--weren't perfect. They had crises of faith and they did wrong. Their stories are told without being sanitized.

I also love the realistic wrestling that people of faith engage in on the pages of the Bible. Job lashes out at God for his string of tragic misfortune. Moses doubts God during the wilderness wanderings. Abraham, not once but twice, palms his wife off as his sister, making her the concubine of kings, fearful that if the kings learned he was Sarah's husband, God would stand idly by as he was executed. Peter sticks his foot in his mouth...repeatedly

In the Psalms, we have songs of worship like the one from which our lesson is drawn. Here, the psalmist cries out for help in fearful circumstances. It isn't easy to follow God. But here, the psalmist declares confidence in God's help even in the face of hard times.

5. Philippians 2:5-11: Philippians is one of the most extraordiary books of the New Testament. It's a letter written by the apostle Paul to the church in the Greek city of Philippi. Paul founded the church, with the help of his traveling companions, during his second missionary journey, recorded in Acts 16:11-40. The letter was written in about 61AD in Rome, where Paul was a prisoner for his faith in Jesus Christ.

In spite of Paul's grim circumstances, the letter is filled with joy. That joy is rooted in Jesus Christ, Paul says.

6. In our lesson, Paul urged the Philippians to interact with one another with humility. Humility is a repudiation of selfishness and conceit, an embrace of mutual encouragement and servanthood. "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit," Paul writes in the verses just before those of our lesson appear, "but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others."

This is subversive stuff. We all recoil at the selfishness we see in others. Yet we tend to rationalize that our selfishness is okay. But if everybody always looks out for number 1, chaos ensues, as we see in an American society that puts a high premium on indivdualism.

The call to follow Jesus is a call to think less of me, to think of God and others.

7. And as our lesson demonstrates, in calling us to love God supremely and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, God isn't calling us to do any more than He Himself has done in Jesus Christ.

8. The words of our lesson probably were the lyrics of a song the early Church sang when it worshiped together.

9. Matthew 21:1-11: It's interesting to note that this lesson begins on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, the very road on which Jesus set His fictional parable of the Good Samaritan. In that story, Jesus told about what happened to a man who was traveling in the opposite direction. The road was filled with rocky crags and hiding places and thieves often used it to terrorize travelers. It was an ominous place and may suggest, in a literary sense, the "ambush" that awaits Jesus in Jerusalem.

10. Each of the accounts of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday differs. For example, only John mentions palms. (Mark does speak of "leafy branches" as well as cloaks. Luke talks only about people's cloaks. Matthew speaks of cloaks and "cut branches.") Irrespective of the Gospels' differences however, Jesus is welcomed like a conquering hero.

11. However, Jesus' mode of transportation should have indicated something of His intentions. If Jesus had martial intentions, He would have entered the city on a steed. Instead, Jesus chose to ride into the holy city on a donkey, a symbol of peace, of the homely pursuits of everyday life untouched by military power plays.

12. The disciples and the crowd hail Jesus as the rightful heir of David. "Hosanna" is a Hebrew word meaning, "Save now." The word was customarily used in the liturgy for the Feast of Tabernacles, the Jewish festival of the harvest. (This is the word found in Psalm 118:25, quoted here by the crowd.)

13. The last verse of the Gospel lesson sets us up for what follows. Despite their acclamations, the crowd still doesn't "get" Jesus. The most they can say of Him as that He is a prophet. They have little notion that He has come to do battle with their sins. They only see Him as the instrument of their selfish, self-centered desires. Their disappointment with Jesus will lead the crowds, in just a few days, to call for His blood.