Lent 5, Cycle C (2016)
THEME OF THE DAY
With God, you get a new way up ahead. The themes of these texts get us looking ahead to God’s loving agenda, despite how we have failed. Major themes are Justification by Grace, Sin, and Realized Eschatology.
Psalm 126
This psalm is a prayer of deliverance from national misfortune. It is a Song of Ascents, Psalms so named either as a reference to their ascending style of poetic form, or they may be so named as a reference to the ascent pilgrims made on the way to the Jerusalem Temple, so that this and similar Psalms would be Pilgrim Psalms. This one begins with a reminiscence of the joy inspired by God’s favor toward his people in the past, of how Yahweh had restored (or would restore) the fortunes of Israel (vv. 1-3). Prayer for favor again is offered. Reference is made to the Negeb, an arid region, where finding water is good fortune (vv. 4-6). Those in mourning and the oppressed are said to experience joy [rinnah, singing] (v. 6). A kind of preferential option for the poor is then here posited.
Application: Sermons on this psalm can celebrate God’s love for his people in the past with confidence that his faithfulness will be manifest for us and for the oppressed in the present. Justification by Grace, Providence, and Social Ethics are relevant themes.
OR
Psalm 119:9-16
This is a Wisdom Psalm, a meditation on the Law of God but in the mode of a lament. This psalm is in the style of an acrostic poem (each line beginning with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet). The verses speak of the psalmist’s desire to learn and delight [shaashuim] in the Law [torah] of God. It is a way for youth to keep pure. It is worth all the riches and its word should never be forgotten. It is good to be reminded that Torah for the ancient Hebrews (and Jews today) is not a set of legalistic demands, but instruction in how to live (Leo Trepp, Judaism: Development and Life, pp. 2, 210).
Application: This Alternative Psalm affords opportunity to reflect on the original intention of God’s commandments which could lead to sermons on the way God would have us live through grace (Sanctification). Or we could use these insights to condemn sin and our need for a new way up ahead (Justification by Grace).
Isaiah 43:16-21
This lesson is derived from Second Isaiah, the second of three distinct literary traditions that comprise the book and were edited into one after the Hebrew people had returned from exile in Babylon in the second half of the sixth century BC. This lesson does not seem to have been written by the historical prophet to Judah for whom the book is named. Rather, it was likely generated soon after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587-586 BC.
Having promised to break down the bars holding the Judeans, Yahweh is reported to say that he makes a way [derek] in the sea and will not remember [zakar] former things (vv. 16, 18). This may be an allusion to the Hebrews’ passage through the Red Sea (Exodus 14-15). Yahweh promises to do a new thing [chadash], making a way out of the wilderness — presumably an exodus from Babylon (v. 19). This is clearly a prophecy of Israel’s return home. Also reminiscent of the Exodus wanderings, the Lord promises to water the wilderness, giving drink to his chosen people that they would declare his praise (vv. 20-21; cf. Exodus 17:1-7).
Application: This lesson invites sermons proclaiming how God wipes away all the Sin and error of the past, forgiving and freeing us for the future (Sin, Justification by Grace, Sanctification, and Realized Eschatology).
Philippians 3:4b-14
We note again that this Epistle is a letter written by Paul while a prisoner to Christians in a province of Macedonia. There is some debate about whether the book in its present form might be a combination of three separate letters (as early theologian Polycarp, Philippians, 2.3, spoke of Paul’s letters to this church). Its immediate occasion was to thank the Philippians for their gifts, by way of the return of Epaphroditus to Philippi (2:25-30) who had brought these gifts to Paul. Paul’s main purpose is to urge persistence in face of opposition, using himself as an example. In this lesson he offers a warning to break with the past.
Paul first claims that if anyone had reason to be confident in the things of the flesh [sarx], he did. He proceeds to enumerate his Jewish pedigree and zeal as a persecutor of the Church (vv. 4b-6). Yet whatever gains he had in these ways, Paul claims to have come to regard them as loss [zemia] because of Christ (vv. 7-8a). For Christ sake, he claims to have suffered the loss of all things and regard them as rubbish [skubala] in order to gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness [dikaiosune] of his own that comes from the Law [nomos], but one that comes through faith in Christ (vv. 8b-9).
Justification and righteousness [dikaiosune] are here woven together. They have a similar Greek root, for Justification [dikaioma] resembles the Greek equivalent for the term righteousness. You cannot be declared right without “rightness” or “justice.” We note again that there is much controversy in New Testament scholarship about what Paul means with such references. There is a tendency to critique the idea that it entails that the faithful are declared us righteous. This argument is made on grounds that there are no Old Testament precedents for such an idea. But the concept of righteousness as not having to do with distributive justice but with relationships (with God’s relationship with the faithful and so salvation) is an Old Testament concept (Nehemiah 9:8; Isaiah 57:1; Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, Vol. 1, p. 371). And New Testament scholarship tends to understand the concept this way — in terms of a restored relationship (Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, Vol. 1, p. 271). Consequently it seems appropriate in this text (and elsewhere in Paul’s writings) to interpret the Pauline concept of righteousness in terms of faithfulness to one’s relationship with God, a relationship restored by the work of Christ and received in faith (Psalm 71:2; von Rad, p. 373).
The apostle proceeds to comment on his desire to know Christ and the power of his Resurrection by becoming like him in his death, attaining the resurrection [anastasis] (vv. 10-11). Paul notes that he has not attained such death and resurrection but is pressing on to make it his own since Christ had made him his own (vv. 12-14).
Application: The lesson should stimulate proclamation of the renunciation of our sinful past as rubbish, overcome by our Union with Christ which puts us in right relationship with him and the Father (Sin Justification by Grace, and Sanctification).
John 12:1-8
We have previously noted that this book is the last of the four gospels to be written, probably not composed until the last two decades of the first century. It is very different in style in comparison to the other three (so-called Synoptic) Gospels. In fact it is probably based on these earlier gospels. The book has been identified with John the Son of Zebedee, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and this claim was made as long ago as late in the first century by the famed theologian of the early Church Irenaeus (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, p. 144). It is likely that it was written by a disciple of John. Hints of that possibility are offered by the first post-biblical church historian Eusebius of Caesarea who claimed that the book was written on the basis of the external facts made plain in the gospel and so John is a “spiritual gospel” (presumably one not based on eyewitness accounts of the author) (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 1, p. 261). Its main agenda was probably to encourage Jewish Christians in conflict with the synagogue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God (20:31). Recently some scholars have suggested an alternative account of the origins of John’s gospel. Appealing to the writings of a late-first/early-second century Bishop Papias, who may have implied that John’s gospel was the result of eyewitness origins, such scholars have argued that the book is in fact an authentic historical testimony to Jesus (Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, especially pp. 423ff; cf. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, pp. 154-155). This lesson is an account of the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary. Though Jesus is reportedly anointed in the home of Simon the leper in Matthew 26:6-12 and Mark 14:3-9 (also see Luke 7:37-39), this account seems unique to John’s gospel.
Six days before the Passover (just prior to Palm Sunday [v. 12]), Jesus comes to Bethany and the home of Lazarus whom he had earlier raised from the dead (v. 1; cf. 11:1-44). Jesus receives dinner with Lazarus at table with his sister Martha serving (v. 2). Lazarus’ other sister Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume, wiping them with her hair, filling the whole house with good fragrance (v. 3). Judas Iscariot (identified as the one who would betray Jesus) objects that the expense for the perfume (a year’s wage in that economy) was not used to help the poor [ptochos] (vv. 4-5). Parenthetically, Judas’ apparently good motives are undermined and he is accused by the writer of the gospel as a thief of the common purse of the disciples of which he was the caretaker (v. 6). Jesus defends Mary, claiming she had bought the perfume for use on the forthcoming day of his burial (v. 7). (The Greek text does not credit Mary with buying the oil.) He adds that the poor will always be with his followers, but they will not always have him (v. 8).
Application: Sermons on this story will proclaim God’s Providence, Justification by Grace in the midst of poverty and meaninglessness in life (Sin), and the impact of grace on our lives (Sanctification). Realized Eschatology might also be invoked as a way of understanding the Christian life.
