GOD'S FAITHFULNESS is measured in generational time. An emphasis on God’s faithfulness across generations is, by necessity, also an emphasis on community. God speaks and acts for the benefit of those present and those to come. Even when singular figures are mentioned—a prophet, a monarch—the message affects and is passed to and through the people.
The law and prophets represent God’s investment over time and bind together these readings. The law and prophets speak at moments in time but their messages are timeless. The gospel presents these truths embodied in the person of Jesus—and the epistles preach them passionately.
These lessons are read in the great expanse of liturgical time known as “ordinary” or as the season after Pentecost. This is a green season in the church (no matter what your grass looks like); that green symbolizes growth. This is a time for remembering the explosive growth of the early church and tending to our own growth as individuals and in community. Growth takes time. Our sacred stories make abundantly clear that the people of God—individual exemplars and the community, nation, and church—grew into fidelity over time.
The shaping of character and growth of faith is a process. These texts are signposts along the way.
[ July 2 ]
Faith Listening
Jeremiah 28:5-9; Psalm 89: 1-4, 15-18; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
In an unlikely pairing, Jeremiah’s proclamation about prophets who proclaim peace frames the slave language in the epistle. Jeremiah was responding to Hananiah’s promise that the devastation the Babylonians wrought on Judah would be undone in two years—understandably compelling, and consistent with God’s words of restoration through other prophets. Jeremiah’s reminder that God also sent words of devastation presented the ancient hearer with a quandary. How to know which prophet spoke for God? We face the same difficulty with competing, often shouting, voices claiming divine authority today. Jeremiah’s validation technique of waiting for the prophetic word to come true requires more time than we or his audience may want to commit.
His unsatisfying response is a reminder that it’s not always possible to know who speaks for God in the moment, particularly in a crisis. Jeremiah’s audience did not always accept his words as God’s words. However, scripture is clear that God’s faithfulness to us is not dependent on our ability to discern correctly who is speaking for God.
The epistle to the community in Rome speaks on God’s behalf, but does so presuming slavery is normative, leaving it unchallenged. At the same time the epistle is consumed with the depth of human failings. It took time for the church to comprehend that it could not offer the welcome in the gospel and remain silent about or even participate in slavery. Its normative presence in our scriptures should alarm us or, at the very least, make us uncomfortable.
[ July 9 ]
Mother, Monarch, Messiah?
Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145:8-14; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
With whom should the reader identify in these lessons? The messianic monarch of Zechariah? The people in the psalm who respond to God’s merciful and compassionate deeds with praise? The person tormented by the disjuncture between his actions and desires in Romans? The gospel (“But to what will I compare this generation?”) offers several possibilities: sulky children, enlightened infants, mutterers and grumblers, and those weighed down by heavy burdens. Then there is Jesus, calling the mutterers and grumblers sulky children while acknowledging God’s revelation to mere babies and offering rest to the weary. The rest Jesus offers, when read with the description of God in Psalm 145, suggests the deep rest of small children in a lap or on a shoulder, especially when it is that of their mother.
The psalm speaks of a God who is gracious and loving to all these identities. Rahum, often translated “merciful” (verse 8) or “compassionate” (verse 9), is the deep love that springs from the womb; no more separable than the heart is from heartache. This core description of God—gracious, loving, slow to anger, faithful—is foundational in Judaism and is repeated throughout the scriptures (see Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, and Nehemiah 9:17 for examples). This God offers freedom and hope to those in literal and metaphorical prisons as described in Zechariah. Mother loves all she has made and catches us when we fall or even tip over (see Psalm 145:14)! Paul may have lost sight of this God in his seeming obsession with his failings.
[ July 16 ]
Creation’s Scope
Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65:1-13; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
God restores. This is the hopeful promise of the poet in Isaiah 55. God secures God’s promise to God’s people with a divine word. This word is also one of comfort, specific to Judah’s context after the sacking of Jerusalem. Contemporary readers bring many kinds of fracture to the text, seeking restoration from a multiplicity of devastations. The God of the psalmist who answers prayer—including prayers for restoration—is worthy of praise. This is the God who saves and delivers with the power of creation in hand.
These passages address the scope of creation—domesticated and wild and free. The earth is abundant, sufficient to feed her people (Psalm 65). Romans 8 examines the creation and re-creation of the inner person who “sets her mind on the things of the spirit” (see verse 5). And Jesus uses an agricultural parable where good seed falls on disparate grounds, in which untamed and cultivated creation compete for the same space.
In all these readings, the passage of time makes clear God’s works. In Isaiah, the regular turning of the seasons illustrates the reliability of God’s word. In the psalm, the natural cycles of fertility in God-tilled lands recur faithfully, on schedule: God waters and thereby provides grain (verse 9). In the gospel, the time it takes to plant, and for crops to grow, fail, or thrive and be harvested, passes quickly. But the actual work of planting—agricultural seeds or the word of God—takes time to accomplish and for the fruit to be revealed.
[ July 23 ]
Reading Slave Culture
Isaiah 44:6-8; Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The reign of God is on full display in Isaiah 44, where God as sovereign contemptuously denies the existence of other gods. (This is somewhat at odds with other texts in which worship of other gods provokes divine jealousy, and Israel must choose whom it will worship.) What may look like two divine persons, “the Lord, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts” (verse 6), is an example of parallelism that characterizes biblical poetry. Both descriptions refer to God.
The language of sovereignty throughout the scriptures is hierarchal and dependent on androcentric and patriarchal social constructs, including slavery. In Psalm 86, the “serving girl” or “handmaid” (verse 16) can just as easily be translated as a “slavegirl.” (The regular use of enslaved women and girls for non-consensual reproduction mitigates against calling them “servants.”) Here, that language is a way for the psalmist to self-abase and indicate humility.
The psalm also offers nonhierarchal language for God, “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (verse 15). Reading “merciful” through its etymological root, the womb, these attributes open with maternal love and close with unbreakable faithful love.
Slave language undergirds both testaments as a primary metaphor rooted in the lived experience of its intended audience. In the gospels, Jesus does not speak against the institution of slavery but rather uses its categories in his teaching. The farmer whose seed sprouts with weeds owns slaves who appear in the parable. As noted earlier, the use of language concerning slavery, and the practice of slavery in the scriptures, should always give us pause, particularly those of us in the Americas.
[ July 30 ]
Many Voices
1 Kings 3:5-12; Psalm 119:129-136; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52
Solomon’s prayer in 1 Kings 3 reveals his “one-wish” theology: With the wide range of things he could have asked for, he chose wisdom in order to serve God’s people. In so doing Solomon forgoes asking anything for his own benefit. There is something else beyond this traditional reading. This text paints a romantic, unrealistic portrait of David, who can only be said to have walked in “faithfulness” and “righteousness” before God (verse 6) if one ignores or normalizes his unprovoked slaughter of women and men (1 Samuel 27:8-12), his rape of Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11:2-4), and his murder of Uriah (2 Samuel 11:14-24). This is a good place to be reminded that the Bible speaks with many voices, sometimes even about the same character or event.
If wisdom is the thread that binds these lessons, then each text offers a different perspective on wisdom. In Psalm 119, God’s instructions represent wisdom. In Romans 8, God’s Spirit, the fount of all wisdom, prays for us when we lack the wisdom to know how to do so ourselves. And in Matthew, Jesus displays pedagogical wisdom, demonstrating that there is no single image, language, or paradigm that can faithfully represent the realm of God. Jesus describes God’s realm as transformation—seed to bush, yeast to bread—and discovering and sifting treasure.
In these texts is found a treasure (Matthew 13:52) that is both old and new.
"Preaching the Word," Sojourners' online resource for sermon preparation and Bible study, is available at sojo.net/ptw.
Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney is associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School and an Episcopal priest.
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