In today’s gospel Jesus is pronouncing blessings on unlikely people and situations. They don’t really sound like blessings at all, do they? What is Jesus trying to teach us here? Sometimes language gets in the way. Here’s today passage from The Message by Eugene Peterson.
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Every Wednesday morning we have a Bible study here at St. Mary’s that Deacon Nancy Crawford started […] This past Wednesday we were studying today’s Gospel reading, and one of the comments absolutely struck me, it charmed me. I have had it in my pocket all week, so it looks all beaten up now. The prompt was what delights you, and the answer was: “it delighted me that Jesus gave a straightforward answer to the question, which commandment is the greatest.” How Jesus gave a straightforward answer. It is so true.
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Together we celebrate these young people that are such a wonderful part of our St. Mary’s community. This is an important milestone in young peoples’ lives. These years are a time of SO much change and growth, of learning, struggling, and testing. We celebrate all the possibilities that mark this journey to adulthood and this step of becoming a teenager. We acknowledge that it can be tough, very tough. Tough for teens, and tough for those who parent them. Tough when young people want to push back and try to make their own way to figure out who they are. And tough for those who parent, who want to set limits and keep them safe AND give them space and help them discover who they are. This can be a time of loss AND new life, AND a battle of wills! And so, we acknowledge all of the mess and beauty and potential, and we remind ourselves that others have been here before and made it through, that we don’t do it alone, that God is with us every step of the way.
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Paul is suffering because he can't do what he wants. He's imprisoned, his freedom has been curtailed. He is suffering because he's thinking about his mortality and what might be coming. Paul has immense suffering, and yet in the midst of that suffering, he is finding all kinds of ways to rejoice, not just in the suffering, but also because of the suffering.
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In our readings for today we have a thread running through them, or perhaps we should say a vine is running through them. We have three readings that talk about a vine and a vineyard. The Psalm talks about a vine that has been laid to waste, and the Psalmist is asking why did this happen? The vine shows up in Isaiah, and Isaiah gives us the answer. What has happened is that the vine has not been well tended, it has not been well taken care of, and as a result it has been producing the wrong kind of fruit. It has been producing the wild grapes of injustice, of violence, and bloodshed, instead of the good grapes of love and mercy and justice. As a result, it has been laid to waste. It has been allowed to be overrun.
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Our second reading today comes from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, written while he was in prison. We don't know if this is one of the early times Paul was in prison, or if this the final time […] Paul also wants to address a couple of issues. We don't know how big of a deal they are. This letter is not like some Paul sent to the other Christian communities where there was a great conflict or existential crisis of some kind. But apparently things kept popping up here and there, and he wants to help them with a few reminders to help them grow in their faith.
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Today’s first reading comes from the end of the Book of Jonah. Many of you already know that Jonal is one of my absolute favorite stories in all of Scripture. Although, I confess to you that has not always been the case. I didn’t care about this story when I was a kid. Jonah is a story like that of Noah, because there are animals in it and there are lots of kids books about that, even if they are not kid’s stories. But as a little kid, Jonah did not resonate with me, and when I got older I thought of it as a kid’s story and I didn’t care for it. But when I was in Seminary, I took a class on short stories in the Hebrew Bible. Jonah was one of those stories, and by the end of the semester I was in love with the story of Jonah.
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