Dylan's lectionary blog

First Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

The Baptism of Our Lord
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22 - link to NRSV text

Once more, I'm preaching this coming Sunday, so I'd like to offer a slightly different angle on the readings than I'll be taking in my sermon, and I invite you to take a look at my sermons page next Monday to see how I dealt with the readings from the pulpit.

For now, I'd like to say a word about John the Baptizer and his relationship with Jesus.  I'm very much in debt on my thinking about this to Robert L. Webb, who was one of my professors at divinity school in the University of St. Andrews during my studies for my master's degree.

Now I don't want you to panic, but there's a mistranslated word in Luke 3:17.  Instead of saying that John proclaimed that the mighty one he expected to come had a "winnowing fork" in his hand, it should be a "winnowing shovel."

Believe it or not, that's important.  It gets at what was the primary source of tension between Jesus and John, a tension that we see come to a head in Luke 7:18-23.  John expected that God was going to send someone not with a winnowing fork, but with a shovel.  A winnowing fork was used to separate the wheat (i.e., the good stuff) from the chaff (i.e., the useless stuff).  Once the harvesters had separated the wheat from the chaff, they would take their winnowing shovels and literally save the grain, which was good, and shovel the chaff, which was useless, into the fire to be destroyed.  John was waiting for someone to come as an instrument of salvation for the righteous and destruction for the unrighteous.

Jesus only delivered half of what John expected.  Jesus came for salvation, and if passages like Matthew 5:43-47 are any indication, Jesus didn't seem to discriminate between wheat and chaff, but he treated everyone — the righteous and the unrighteous — as precious.  Furthermore, Jesus claimed that it was in this very indiscriminate behavior that he was living out his instruction to "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect."

That kind of behavior wouldn't win a teacher much applause in Jesus' culture.  I'm a person who enjoys applause, and I can hardly begin to imagine the kind of inner strength it would take to be as wholly and relentlessly loving as Jesus is in the face of the kind of approbation and persecution Jesus got in return.  But what I see in Jesus' deeds as well as in his words is that he was someone who was so deeply in touch with his own status as God's beloved child that he was completely freed to love others as he knew his father loved them.  There was no hint of sibling rivalry from Jesus our brother; knowing the Father as he did, Jesus knew that God's infinite love for him was in no way diminished or overshadowed by infinite love for another.

I've never seen real persecution in my life, though I know there are many others around the world who have experienced it firsthand.  I sometimes get pretty whiny about the challenges I do find in my life, though, about the occasions on which I feel "dissed" as I try to follow Jesus' example.  But when I'm really, deeply in touch with how much God loves me, there's a deep compassion for others, even or especially those doing the dissing, that arises alongside of the sense of God's love for me.  When I'm registering what someone is saying to me as disrespectful, I take a look at whether I'm experiencing that kind of compassion for the person speaking. That compassion, or its absence, works for me as a kind of barometer to measure whether my sense that I'm not getting the respect I deserve is springing from a prideful sense of entitlement or out of a real, healthy, and humbling sense of the worthiness God whispered to me in baptism.  My impression is that a sense of worthiness that comes from God is accompanied by compassion.

And it's important to me to do what it takes to keep in touch with those whom, in my whiniest moments, I'd like to see some coming Mighty One treat as chaff.  Whatever instinct in me wants to make distinctions between us, I have a feeling we're all going to be hanging out together at the harvest, flopping on the threshing floor to make grain/chaff angels in the undifferentiated abundance around us.  Let us play!

First Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

The Baptism of Our Lord
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22 - link to NRSV text

Once more, I'm preaching this coming Sunday, so I'd like to offer a slightly different angle on the readings than I'll be taking in my sermon, and I invite you to take a look at my sermons page next Monday to see how I dealt with the readings from the pulpit.

For now, I'd like to say a word about John the Baptizer and his relationship with Jesus.  I'm very much in debt on my thinking about this to Robert L. Webb, who was one of my professors at divinity school in the University of St. Andrews during my studies for my master's degree.

Now I don't want you to panic, but there's a mistranslated word in Luke 3:17.  Instead of saying that John proclaimed that the mighty one he expected to come had a "winnowing fork" in his hand, it should be a "winnowing shovel."

Believe it or not, that's important.  It gets at what was the primary source of tension between Jesus and John, a tension that we see come to a head in Luke 7:18-23.  John expected that God was going to send someone not with a winnowing fork, but with a shovel.  A winnowing fork was used to separate the wheat (i.e., the good stuff) from the chaff (i.e., the useless stuff).  Once the harvesters had separated the wheat from the chaff, they would take their winnowing shovels and literally save the grain, which was good, and shovel the chaff, which was useless, into the fire to be destroyed.  John was waiting for someone to come as an instrument of salvation for the righteous and destruction for the unrighteous.

Jesus only delivered half of what John expected.  Jesus came for salvation, and if passages like Matthew 5:43-47 are any indication, Jesus didn't seem to discriminate between wheat and chaff, but he treated everyone — the righteous and the unrighteous — as precious.  Furthermore, Jesus claimed that it was in this very indiscriminate behavior that he was living out his instruction to "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect."

That kind of behavior wouldn't win a teacher much applause in Jesus' culture.  I'm a person who enjoys applause, and I can hardly begin to imagine the kind of inner strength it would take to be as wholly and relentlessly loving as Jesus is in the face of the kind of approbation and persecution Jesus got in return.  But what I see in Jesus' deeds as well as in his words is that he was someone who was so deeply in touch with his own status as God's beloved child that he was completely freed to love others as he knew his father loved them.  There was no hint of sibling rivalry from Jesus our brother; knowing the Father as he did, Jesus knew that God's infinite love for him was in no way diminished or overshadowed by infinite love for another.

I've never seen real persecution in my life, though I know there are many others around the world who have experienced it firsthand.  I sometimes get pretty whiny about the challenges I do find in my life, though, about the occasions on which I feel "dissed" as I try to follow Jesus' example.  But when I'm really, deeply in touch with how much God loves me, there's a deep compassion for others, even or especially those doing the dissing, that arises alongside of the sense of God's love for me.  When I'm registering what someone is saying to me as disrespectful, I take a look at whether I'm experiencing that kind of compassion for the person speaking. That compassion, or its absence, works for me as a kind of barometer to measure whether my sense that I'm not getting the respect I deserve is springing from a prideful sense of entitlement or out of a real, healthy, and humbling sense of the worthiness God whispered to me in baptism.  My impression is that a sense of worthiness that comes from God is accompanied by compassion.

And it's important to me to do what it takes to keep in touch with those whom, in my whiniest moments, I'd like to see some coming Mighty One treat as chaff.  Whatever instinct in me wants to make distinctions between us, I have a feeling we're all going to be hanging out together at the harvest, flopping on the threshing floor to make grain/chaff angels in the undifferentiated abundance around us.  Let us play!

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First Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

The Baptism of Our Lord
Luke 3:15-16, 21-22 - link to NRSV text

Once more, I'm preaching this coming Sunday, so I'd like to offer a slightly different angle on the readings than I'll be taking in my sermon, and I invite you to take a look at my sermons page next Monday to see how I dealt with the readings from the pulpit.

For now, I'd like to say a word about John the Baptizer and his relationship with Jesus.  I'm very much in debt on my thinking about this to Robert L. Webb, who was one of my professors at divinity school in the University of St. Andrews during my studies for my master's degree.

Now I don't want you to panic, but there's a mistranslated word in Luke 3:17.  Instead of saying that John proclaimed that the mighty one he expected to come had a "winnowing fork" in his hand, it should be a "winnowing shovel."

Believe it or not, that's important.  It gets at what was the primary source of tension between Jesus and John, a tension that we see come to a head in Luke 7:18-23.  John expected that God was going to send someone not with a winnowing fork, but with a shovel.  A winnowing fork was used to separate the wheat (i.e., the good stuff) from the chaff (i.e., the useless stuff).  Once the harvesters had separated the wheat from the chaff, they would take their winnowing shovels and literally save the grain, which was good, and shovel the chaff, which was useless, into the fire to be destroyed.  John was waiting for someone to come as an instrument of salvation for the righteous and destruction for the unrighteous.

Jesus only delivered half of what John expected.  Jesus came for salvation, and if passages like Matthew 5:43-47 are any indication, Jesus didn't seem to discriminate between wheat and chaff, but he treated everyone — the righteous and the unrighteous — as precious.  Furthermore, Jesus claimed that it was in this very indiscriminate behavior that he was living out his instruction to "be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect."

That kind of behavior wouldn't win a teacher much applause in Jesus' culture.  I'm a person who enjoys applause, and I can hardly begin to imagine the kind of inner strength it would take to be as wholly and relentlessly loving as Jesus is in the face of the kind of approbation and persecution Jesus got in return.  But what I see in Jesus' deeds as well as in his words is that he was someone who was so deeply in touch with his own status as God's beloved child that he was completely freed to love others as he knew his father loved them.  There was no hint of sibling rivalry from Jesus our brother; knowing the Father as he did, Jesus knew that God's infinite love for him was in no way diminished or overshadowed by infinite love for another.

I've never seen real persecution in my life, though I know there are many others around the world who have experienced it firsthand.  I sometimes get pretty whiny about the challenges I do find in my life, though, about the occasions on which I feel "dissed" as I try to follow Jesus' example.  But when I'm really, deeply in touch with how much God loves me, there's a deep compassion for others, even or especially those doing the dissing, that arises alongside of the sense of God's love for me.  When I'm registering what someone is saying to me as disrespectful, I take a look at whether I'm experiencing that kind of compassion for the person speaking. That compassion, or its absence, works for me as a kind of barometer to measure whether my sense that I'm not getting the respect I deserve is springing from a prideful sense of entitlement or out of a real, healthy, and humbling sense of the worthiness God whispered to me in baptism.  My impression is that a sense of worthiness that comes from God is accompanied by compassion.

And it's important to me to do what it takes to keep in touch with those whom, in my whiniest moments, I'd like to see some coming Mighty One treat as chaff.  Whatever instinct in me wants to make distinctions between us, I have a feeling we're all going to be hanging out together at the harvest, flopping on the threshing floor to make grain/chaff angels in the undifferentiated abundance around us.  Let us play!

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