Blue Cord

By the lack of power vested in him, Chris Brady at Targuman declared January to be International Biblical Studies Writing Month. Bibliobloggers have been announcing what they will be writing about during this month–long burst of writing energy, so I thought I would do the same.

I am a contributor to the new lectionary series put out by Westminster John Knox Press entitled Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary.  For those unfamiliar with this series, it provides commentary on each of the four assigned readings from the Revised Common Lectionary for every Sunday in the three year cycle. The commentary for each reading consists of an exegetical essay, a theological essay, a homiletic essay, and a pastoral essay. I have been asked to contribute the exegetical essays for three readings from Year C:

• Exodus 14:10-31, 15:20-21
• Isaiah 65:17-25
• Acts 5:27-32

Why I have been asked to write the commentary for a passage from Acts is unclear, but I will happily accept the $0.08 per word for writing it.

So, in the spirit of International Biblical Studies Writing Month, I hereby vow to have this assignment finished by the end of the month.

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 21 (series reading)

This reading is the final reading in the six week series on Jeremiah.  The first two verses sets the date of this oracle in 587 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar (here called Nebuchadrezzar) is besieging Jerusalem. This is the second siege of Jerusalem.  When it is over, Jerusalem and its temple will lie in ruins and a good portion of the people of Judah will find themselves carried off to Babylon.

In the reading, Jeremiah is basically under house arrest at the order of the king due to previous prophecies. While he is there, his cousin Hanamel comes to him and offers to sell him a piece of property in their ancestral town of Anathoth.  Hanamel apparently has to sell the property, and according to the Torah it must be sold to someone in the family (Lev. 25:25). Jeremiah purchases the property for sixteen shekels of silver.

From an economic standpoint, this is a bad move.  When a foreign army is besieging your city, it is not a good time to be investing in real estate.  The entire area is about to belong to Babylon, and they are not particularly interested in who owned individual lots prior to their arrival.

But Jeremiah’s purchase of the field in Anathoth is an act of hope.  Jeremiah has prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, but he also knows that this is not the end of Israel.  God will bring the people back to the land again.  Jeremiah may never make use of the field, but his children and grand-children will.  Jeremiah not only believes that God will return the people, but is willing to bet money on it.

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 19 (series reading)

I wanted to start the commentary on this week’s lectionary reading by apologizing for last week’s post on the Revised Common Lectionary. My brain was apparently on vacation, and I posted on the reading for Year A. Currently, we are in Year C, so that post won’t be useful for preachers until September 2008.

This week, I am back in the correct year. The OT reading for this current Sunday is Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28, which is fourth reading in a six week series on Jeremiah. The lectionary reading here is divided, with vv.13-21 left out. I don’t like it when lectionary committees split up the readings like this. It breaks the canonical shape of the passage. Apparently they think the additional nine verses are either unimportant or too long for a congregation to endure.

The larger block of material to which this reading belongs is 4:5-31, an oracle in which Jeremiah prophesies the coming of Babylon and the destruction of Jerusalem. Vv.11-12 announce that the coming destruction is not about cleansing the people from their sins. The time is past for that. The sin of Jerusalem is too severe. The punishment will be more severe as well.

The passage picks up again in v.22, which lays out the indictment against the people of Israel:

They are skilled at doing evil, but do not know how to do good.

The word skilled is a form of the word hokhmah, the word usually translated as wisdom. Wisdom, after all, is skill at living. Here, it is said that the people are skilled at doing evil, but do not even know how to do good.

This is followed by a description of the destruction in vv.23-28. The almost apocalyptic imagery in vv.23-26 pictures the earth a laid waste before the anger of the Lord. Yet even in the midst of the destruction, there is a small note of hope. God promises not to make a full end to the people (v.27b). What is a small glimmer of hope here in Jeremiah’s prophecies prior to 587 BCE will turn into a major theme of his message afterwards.

Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Proper 18 (series reading)

The Revised Common Lectionary appoints Exodus 12:1-14 as its OT series reading for this coming Sunday. It is part of a nine week series from the book of Exodus that began two weeks ago with the description of the Israelite’s slavery in Egypt and the birth of Moses. It continues through the deliverance at the Sea of Reeds, the journey to Sinai, the giving of the law, and the golden calf incident.

This passage, which comes from HS, is set as an interruption to the story of the final plague - the killing of the firstborn. It provides the law for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, placing the instructions for the feast in the middle of the story of Passover. It is immediately followed by the command to leave Egypt.

These instructions show the standard Priestly concern with the calendar. It sets up the month of Passover as the first month of the year. This places the beginning of the year in the Spring around the vernal equinox. This would later be changed in the Jewish calendar, which moved the beginning of the year to Rosh Hashannah in the Fall, near the autumnal equinox. ¹ The theology of connecting the new year with the Passover is clear: just as the final plague and deliverance from Egypt begin Israel’s new life with God, so does the remembrance of that event mark the beginning of the new year.

The Israelites are commanded to slaughter a lamb and place the blood on the lintel of the door. The requirement of the lamb and the command that it be entirely eaten before the morning suggests that the lamb is intended as a peace / fellowship offering offered for giving thanks (Leviticus 7:11-15).² In no way is it viewed as a sin offering. Although this passage does not describe the lamb as a sacrifice, the Priestly layers in the Pentateuch viewed all killing of animals as a sacrifice (a view which the Deuteronomists did not share). Of course, the picturing of the Passover according to the Priestly sacrificial scheme is a later interpretation of an earlier feast.

1. It should be noted that some scholars argue that originally the New Year was in the Fall and see the Priestly author’s concept of it falling in the Spring as an innovation. [back]
2. Please note that this is merely a suggestion and I have not researched it thoroughly. [back]

Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Proper 12 (series reading)

The OT reading from the Revised Common Lectionary for this Sunday is Hosea 1:2-10. This is the theme reading, although the connection between this passage and the NT readings is not immediately clear (assuming there is one).

The Hosea is passage is well-known to most preachers. It would be hard to imagine a seminary class on the OT that didn’t deal with this text when covering Hosea. The danger with such familiar passages, of course, is that we allow our prior understanding of the text to take the place of doing the exegesis again. Because of that, I wanted to point out something that seems to me to be a surprising element in the text that a preacher might not have noticed in previous readings.

The first of these is the fact that Hosea names his first child Jezreel, because God is going to punish the Jehu Dynasty for the coup in Jezreel that brought them to power. This is an interesting statement, because the coup in Jezreel was originally done at the command of God through the prophet Elisha. A common way of dealing with this is by saying that Jehu went overboard when he killed everyone in the Omrid Dynasty, but this is not supported by the texts we have. In 2 Kings 9:7, Jehu is told specifically that he is to destroy the house of Ahab. It is hard to go overboard when you are told to destroy something, as destruction involves wiping something out completely.

It seems to me that the direction of theological reflection on this text seems to me to be the multiple voices that the Bible is presenting concerning Jehu’s coup. Hosea views the coup negatively, at least in the way it was carried out. The DtrH, on the other hand, views it positively. The question for preachers is how to hear both voices and allow each to have its say without privileging one text over the other. The canon does not set the texts at odds with each other, but neither does it resolve the tension. Preachers can draw on that tension to provide energy to their sermons.