Hey there, everyone! A LOT has changed since the last time I posted, for me, for the world at large.
2020 has been a real dumpster fire of a year, though it hasn't been without some bright spots. The biggest bright spot for me right now is that my family has recently purchased a house, making us homeowners for the very first time, which is very, VERY exciting!
The bad news is the reason why we NEEDED to buy a house... for the last couple months, I have not been the pastor of a church. My call at First Presbyterian Church of Weyauwega ended a while back, not too long after my last post, due to a number of reasons. This has worn on me over the last couple months, and while I was given a fairly generous severance package, it has been hard, over the last little bit, to think of myself as a PASTOR in the midst of all of this.
One of the things I miss most about the Pastor life was the regular routine of working Lectionary Texts while doing other things during the week. The other things will be different now, more raising my daughter, fewer committee meetings, but I think, on recommendation from friends and my therapist, that I am going to try to reactivate Ask Pastor Dan as a home for such musings until such a time as I am doing it professionally for a church again.
Now, I've stumbled on this kind of thing before... there are probably at least six or seven Pastor Dan "reboot" posts over the course of my timeline, but hey... let's give it a shot, and see what we can come up with, yeah?
So let's get started. These are my gut-reactions to the lectionary texts for October 2020. If you'd like to read the texts I am reading, you can always find them here.
Exodus 20: 1-4, 7-9, 12-20
The Text:
The Ten Commandments! You've probably heard of these before, either in Sunday School or on a stylized image of stone tablets on a sign in a yard to show someone just how serious about Biblical Law somebody is.
The Take:
Not a whole lot to be said about the Big 10 that hasn't been said before, though I do feel that these days they are almost more interesting in what they omit than in what they forbid. "Thou Shalt Not Be Gay" isn't on here, you'll notice. "Thou Shalt Not Have Abortions" is also absent, though of course so-called Pro-Life Advocates would try (VERY erroneously) to group that under the murder bit. So often, the Ten Commandments are used as this shorthand for classical Christian Morality, but when you look at them, and then at the "sins" the Evangelical church concentrates on, you see the two have very little in common.
Psalm 19
The Text:
A Psalm of praise that focuses a full third of its length to the praise of the Law of the LORD. It gets quite effusive, and while Ancient Hebrew did not have punctuation, if they did, you would expect this to be full of exclamation points.
The Take:
As a younger Biblical Exegete, texts like this always got me nervous, but these days I find I take a great deal of comfort in them. So often, I find people bending over backwards to show how hateful actions are, in fact, loving actions, and this text reminds me that the law of the LORD is actually very straightforward. It says what it says, it doesn't say what it doesn't say, and if you're gonna spend all your time beating around it, do you really love the Law as much as you claim to?
Phillipians 3:4b-14
The Text:
Paul being Paul! This is a solid brag from the Apostle, but a brag with a point, pointing out that as a Pharisee and a Zealot, if ANYone could claim to have achieved greatness through the law, it would have been him.
The Take:
This is the great debunking of works based righteousness, with Paul coming out and saying, straight out, that no one reading the text could have a greater claim to works based righteousness than he himself, and so we should take his full meaning when he says that works based righteousness, that is, the claim that we have achieved something by being better practiced in the law than others, is in fact wasted time compared to the Love of Jesus Christ, the act of attempting to pay your way when your ticket has already been punched. He clarifies that this is not an excuse to be mediocre in your faith, instead,
Matthew 21:33-46
The Text:
The parable of the Wicked Tenants! This is a meaty one. A landowner buys a field, plants, builds a wall, then hires tenants to tend to the land. They go on to earn their title, killing the slaves, servants, and even ultimately the Son of the landowner when he sends them to collect his due.
The Take:
The lesson, of course, is that those who are put in a position of
stewardship, and abuse their power to hurt the servants of the Master
and deny him his due, are of course due for punishment. This is one of
the parables that, in the broader context, gets the Temple Authorities
to start plotting against Jesus.
The Takeaway:
So at first glance, in picking texts, the Gospel Passage here would seem to be the odd duck out, right? Three texts examining the roll of the Law, and then a condemnation of temple officials. Because the Parable includes the death of the Son of the Landowner, we often think of it as a prediction of Christ's Crucifixion and leave it at that, but looking at all the texts together, I think a strong theme very quickly presents itself.Temple Authorities, here representing clergy, church officals, and other such positions, have long been the arbiters of God's law to the people they serve. Yes, we worship the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it is Christ, ultimately, who holds the power to condemn, but in practical terms, it is these interpreters, amongst whom I number still, as a Presbytery Moderator, who often serve as the day to day arbiters.
And yet? We often screw that up royally. Just look, for instance, at the take on the Ten Commandments themselves. How out of sync with the stated goals of most Evangelical churches are they? And yet, in the name of upholding a twisted version of "the Law," so many people cause so much harm, wounding and even killing the servants of God who remind us of the laws simplicity, and yet again for those who remind us that it is not, ultimately, adherence to the Law that determines our righteousness.
So what do those who stand on images of the law, but abuse it, and twist it away from the Lawgiver's Son to serve their own needs deserve?
Of that, there is very little need to interpret.
