The Church is one body
Commentary
The obvious connection between the first and the third lessons for today is that both concern the public reading of scripture. Indeed, taken together, they may provide a reliable guide to proclamation of Law and Gospel. In the first lesson, the Law is read in a way that brings people initially to despair. In Luke 4, Jesus reads words of pure gospel (though also from the Old Testament), a promise of the "good news" of God's salvation. On both occasions, the scripture reading is accompanied by proclamation (Nehemiah 8:8; Luke 4:21). Jesus' sermon, admittedly, is concise and to the point.
The second lesson relates to the Gospel though its emphasis is on the role of the Spirit. In Paul's letter, we hear that the Spirit creates unity in the church, a unity that recognizes the special needs of the lowly. In Luke, Jesus maintains that the Spirit has empowered him specifically to attend to the needs of those whom the world mistreats or neglects. If, as Paul says, the church is the "body of Christ," then the Spirit-empowered ministry of that church will continue to fulfill the words from Isaiah that Jesus chose as his own mission statement.
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
The Jewish people have always prided themselves on being "the people of the Book," but this lesson recalls a time when, for more than a generation, they were deprived of their Book. Now, those who have returned from exile gather for a liturgical service of covenant renewal. The highlight of this event is a public reading of the Torah.
According to the first verse, the people themselves took the initiative on this occasion. The text says they "gathered," not "they were gathered." It says, "They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book." The Law is not imposed on the people. They are eager to hear it.
Other verses offer a glimpse of liturgical worship in biblical times: standing, calling out "Amen, Amen," lifting hands, bowing heads, and prostrating to the ground. The specificity of these actions makes them seem more formal than spontaneous. In any case, the worship is very physical, involving a good deal of movement. (Johnny Carson was once asked on the Tonight Show what religion he was. He responded, "Lutheran, but I don't go." Why not? "They get up and down too much.")
Verse 9 comes as a surprise. Why does the Law produce weeping? Because, the people realize, they have not been keeping it. The weeping is a sign of contrition or repentance. As such, it is appropriate, but Ezra wisely directs them to focus on the present and the future instead of mourning over the past. Then he delivers the key words, "The joy of the Lord is your strength."
This verse can almost stand alone, as indeed it has on church banners, on religious plaques, even on bumper stickers. It captures a lot of theology in a few precious words. The point is that strength to obey the Law comes from recognizing that the Law is not a burden but a guide to life as God intends. Jewish people have often understood this better than Christians. When we view the Law as things we must do to please God, we may have trouble staying motivated. Or, as Martin Luther discovered, it is possible to attain a high level of obedience while coming to "hate God" as a harsh taskmaster. But when we see that God (who is wiser than us) has told us how we can experience life at its best, the Law becomes a treasure. We live according to the Law not just to please God but also to experience the joy of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Paul sets his discussion of spiritual gifts (see last week's lesson) within the broader context of the unity of the church. The image of the church as the body of Christ is one that stresses diversity while maintaining essential unity.
Unity does not mean uniformity. We do not all have to be alike. In fact, Paul insists, we must not all be alike. Eyes are good, but if the body were made up of nothing but eyes, how would it hear? This is the main point of his discussion. It is basic and obvious, but we have not fully grasped it yet. We still tend to think that unity in the church is promoted by encouraging similarity.
The immediate reference in Paul's letter is to diversity of spiritual gifts, or even of what we would call "ministries." The church needs a variety of ministries and must take care not to despise those that do not conform to our own expectations. Beyond this, Paul alludes to ethnic and social diversity in verse 13: Jews and Greeks, slave and free -- all have drunk of the same Spirit. In Galatians 3:28, he offers a similar comment, adding gender diversity also to the list.
Paul also recognizes that unity is not necessarily maintained by giving equal treatment to all. Some parts of the body need special attention (vv. 22-25). Paul does not endorse favoritism, recognizing the rich biblical tradition of God lifting up the lowly.
What is perhaps most important to recognize in Paul's employment of this image is that it describes a reality, not a goal. Paul does not say that the church should be one body in Christ; he says that it is one body in Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together addresses this theme well, indicating that the unity of the church is "a fact to be recognized, not a goal to be realized." When scandals befall Pentecostal television evangelists in America, Roman Catholic Christians in Poland are affected. When Christians are persecuted in Namibia or tortured in Nicaragua or El Salvador, the white Southern Baptists in Georgia are affected. Paul says that when one part of the body suffers, all suffer together (v. 26). All suffer, whether they know it or not.
Such unity is due to the Spirit. There is only one Holy Spirit. God does not give one Holy Spirit to Lutherans and another Holy Spirit to Methodists. God does not give one Holy Spirit to liberals and another Holy Spirit to conservatives. God does not give one Holy Spirit to Anglos and another Holy Spirit to Hispanics. God does not give one Holy Spirit to heterosexuals and another Holy Spirit to homosexuals. Any who have received God's Holy Spirit are inextricably united with all others who have received God's Spirit, regardless of their age, gender, race, status, ideology, or sexual orientation.
This is profound enough, but Paul actually goes a step further. All that has been said so far could be illustrated simply by saying "the church is one body." But Paul says the church is the body of Christ. Not just one body, not just any body, but the one body of Christ. The church, united by the Spirit whether its members know it or not, represents Christ's presence here on earth.
Luke 4:14-21
This text resumes a theme introduced two weeks ago at the story of Jesus' baptism. In Luke's Gospel the stories of Jesus' baptism, temptation, and address at Nazareth are closely united. One unifying factor is the role of the Spirit, so prominent in our second lesson for today. The Spirit comes upon Jesus at his baptism (3:22), leads him in the wilderness for his temptation (4:1), and finally returns to Galilee filled with the Spirit (4:14) to announce why the Spirit has come upon him (4:18).
It is too bad that the lectionary breaks up this marvelous cycle of stories. The passage that Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1 represents his own resolution of the struggles in the wilderness. Here is a synopsis of the story as Luke tells it: When Jesus is baptized the Spirit comes upon him and he is declared to be the Son of God. Why has this happened and what does it mean? In the wilderness, Satan suggests reasons ("If you are the Son of God ..."), all of them reflecting some notion of self-service. Jesus rejects these interpretations of his status and finally discovers in scripture God's reason for what happened at his baptism. The Spirit came upon him to anoint him for service to others.
In Luke's theology, the fundamental temptation of the Devil for Christians is to interpret their status as Spirit-empowered children of God in ways that serve their own interests rather than the needs of others. We are empowered by the Spirit to be witnesses for Jesus (Acts 1:8), which in Luke means much more than telling people about him. Fundamentally, it means doing what he did: helping the poor and liberating the captives.
These verses (4:18-19) are a preferred "proof text" for Liberation Theology movements today. Such movements are often criticized for ignoring other biblical promises, such as those regarding eternal life or salvation of souls from hell. Be that as it may, the lectionary places the sandal on the other foot today, and all Christians who hear this text are directed not to ignore these words. Jesus clearly says that the reason he has come, the very essence of his mission on earth, is to liberate oppressed people and to establish justice for those who are victims of injustice. In Luke, this must not be spiritualized but left for what it is: a bald, political statement about reversing the balance of power in contemporary society (cf. Luke 1:52-53).
This is not something that God will do at the end of time. This is to happen, Jesus says, today.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
We live in a society in which right and wrong have become largely a matter of personal opinion. Every individual is seen as a law unto himself or herself, and what is right for one person is not necessarily right for anyone else. Indeed, if any person tries to impose his or her ethical standards on another, the response is usually defensive anger. "Don't try to impose your middle-class morality on me," goes the complaint. "I know what is right for me, and you have no business trying to meddle in my life!"
The result is that there is no common standard of conduct that governs our lives. The country is split into a multiplicity of little groups, all pursuing their own values and setting their own ethical agendas. Frequently there is conflict, each little group trying to gain power for its point of view and scorning the standards and lifestyles of other groups. Vainly, government and media and schools try to return to a basic set of "American values" or "family values," but relativity reigns, and everyone does his or her own thing. A sardonic statement at the end of the Book of Judges could apply to our society: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).
In some sense, we might see that as the situation of the Israelites when they returned to Jerusalem in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. after the Babylonian exile. Their religious traditions and knowledge of God's directions for their lives had been forgotten, and they were left with nothing but their own desires and wisdom to reconstruct their shattered community. A community that has forgotten its founding story and common ethic cannot be a community, however. It can only be a conglomeration of competing groups and interests, as our society often is, and apparently the people in post-exilic Jerusalem in the fifth century B.C. were wise enough to realize that.
According to our text in Nehemiah, the people of Jerusalem all gathered in a square of Jerusalem, and "they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel" (v. 1). They demanded to hear the Torah.
We would not want that, would we? If someone wanted to read us a story that contained commandments for our lives, we might quickly leave the scene. Our pious excuse, of course, would be that we are Christians who are saved by faith and not by some law. But the Jews in Ezra's time had a different understanding of the Torah than we have, and they wanted desperately to hear it.
What follows in our text is therefore a worship service in a square in Jerusalem. Ezra mounted a pulpit and when he opened the book of the Torah, all of the people stood and listened attentively. As Ezra read portions of the first five books of the Old Testament, Levitical priests standing beside Ezra translated the Hebrew words into Aramaic, the language of the day, and explained the meaning of the words to the people, so that they understood them. When the people heard laws that they had forgotten, statutes that they had not observed, explanations of the Word of God, they wept -- not for sorrow at their sin, but for joy at hearing once again -- and some of them for the first time -- the directions of God for their community and individual lives.
They not only heard commandments, however. From the Torah they heard the old, old traditions of how God had delivered them from slavery and entered into covenant with them. They were prompted to remember how God had led their forebears through the wilderness and given them the promised land. And through it all, they heard the voice of the Lord, guiding them, forgiving them, accompanying them in his law, and pointing out the way they were to walk as his people. To it all, they said "Amen," and they wept for joy.
Now why? Why should a reading of commandments give us joy? We can understand how it would be good to review once again God's saving acts on our behalf, as they are told in the Pentateuch and the rest of the scriptures. But why should we rejoice over laws and commandments? Isn't that legalism?
No, it is not. The commandments that are given us in the Bible, such as the Ten Commandments, and all of the instructions that Jesus and Paul and the other writers set down for us in the New Testament are expressions of God's love. You see, God has delivered us from slavery to sin and death, as he delivered Israel from Egypt. And in Jesus Christ, God has given us a new life. As Paul writes, "The old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17) -- all those sins and guilts of the past, all of our inabilities to do the good, all of our despairs and anxieties that we have gone through. Those are now done. God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ and lent us his Spirit, that we may walk in newness of life and in the goodness that God intends.
Having redeemed us in Jesus Christ, however, God does not just let us stumble around in the dark, wondering what to do in this new life we have been granted and making up the rules as we go along. God does not desert us any more than he deserted post-
exilic Israel. No. God continues to go with us and to guide us, and he does that by giving us commandments. God points the way, which is the basic meaning of "Torah." He says, "Here is the way to walk. Here is the way to abundant life. Walk in it, and so choose life."
God points the way to abundant life by means of his commandments, because he loves us and wants only good for us. Both Old Testament and New tell us that. In Deuteronomy 5:29, God yearns for his people's good: "Oh that they had such a mind as this always," he says, "to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children for ever!" God wants it to go well with us! God wants us to have good. Similarly, in the Gospel according to John, Jesus tells his disciples that if they keep his commandments, they will abide in his love (John 15:10), and then he adds, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (v. 11). The Lord wants us to have joy! And so he instructs us in the way to abide in fellowship with him and to have a joyful life.
That is what Israel knew when she heard Ezra read the Torah to her in that square in Jerusalem and wept tears of happiness -- that following the Word of God was the way of joy and life. So her Psalmist could write that the Torah was more to be desired than gold and sweeter than the drippings of the honeycomb (Psalm 19:10). And every faithful Christian who has walked in the way of Christ's commandments has known that sweetness and that treasure that come from walking in God's way and not in our own.
The second lesson relates to the Gospel though its emphasis is on the role of the Spirit. In Paul's letter, we hear that the Spirit creates unity in the church, a unity that recognizes the special needs of the lowly. In Luke, Jesus maintains that the Spirit has empowered him specifically to attend to the needs of those whom the world mistreats or neglects. If, as Paul says, the church is the "body of Christ," then the Spirit-empowered ministry of that church will continue to fulfill the words from Isaiah that Jesus chose as his own mission statement.
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
The Jewish people have always prided themselves on being "the people of the Book," but this lesson recalls a time when, for more than a generation, they were deprived of their Book. Now, those who have returned from exile gather for a liturgical service of covenant renewal. The highlight of this event is a public reading of the Torah.
According to the first verse, the people themselves took the initiative on this occasion. The text says they "gathered," not "they were gathered." It says, "They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book." The Law is not imposed on the people. They are eager to hear it.
Other verses offer a glimpse of liturgical worship in biblical times: standing, calling out "Amen, Amen," lifting hands, bowing heads, and prostrating to the ground. The specificity of these actions makes them seem more formal than spontaneous. In any case, the worship is very physical, involving a good deal of movement. (Johnny Carson was once asked on the Tonight Show what religion he was. He responded, "Lutheran, but I don't go." Why not? "They get up and down too much.")
Verse 9 comes as a surprise. Why does the Law produce weeping? Because, the people realize, they have not been keeping it. The weeping is a sign of contrition or repentance. As such, it is appropriate, but Ezra wisely directs them to focus on the present and the future instead of mourning over the past. Then he delivers the key words, "The joy of the Lord is your strength."
This verse can almost stand alone, as indeed it has on church banners, on religious plaques, even on bumper stickers. It captures a lot of theology in a few precious words. The point is that strength to obey the Law comes from recognizing that the Law is not a burden but a guide to life as God intends. Jewish people have often understood this better than Christians. When we view the Law as things we must do to please God, we may have trouble staying motivated. Or, as Martin Luther discovered, it is possible to attain a high level of obedience while coming to "hate God" as a harsh taskmaster. But when we see that God (who is wiser than us) has told us how we can experience life at its best, the Law becomes a treasure. We live according to the Law not just to please God but also to experience the joy of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Paul sets his discussion of spiritual gifts (see last week's lesson) within the broader context of the unity of the church. The image of the church as the body of Christ is one that stresses diversity while maintaining essential unity.
Unity does not mean uniformity. We do not all have to be alike. In fact, Paul insists, we must not all be alike. Eyes are good, but if the body were made up of nothing but eyes, how would it hear? This is the main point of his discussion. It is basic and obvious, but we have not fully grasped it yet. We still tend to think that unity in the church is promoted by encouraging similarity.
The immediate reference in Paul's letter is to diversity of spiritual gifts, or even of what we would call "ministries." The church needs a variety of ministries and must take care not to despise those that do not conform to our own expectations. Beyond this, Paul alludes to ethnic and social diversity in verse 13: Jews and Greeks, slave and free -- all have drunk of the same Spirit. In Galatians 3:28, he offers a similar comment, adding gender diversity also to the list.
Paul also recognizes that unity is not necessarily maintained by giving equal treatment to all. Some parts of the body need special attention (vv. 22-25). Paul does not endorse favoritism, recognizing the rich biblical tradition of God lifting up the lowly.
What is perhaps most important to recognize in Paul's employment of this image is that it describes a reality, not a goal. Paul does not say that the church should be one body in Christ; he says that it is one body in Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together addresses this theme well, indicating that the unity of the church is "a fact to be recognized, not a goal to be realized." When scandals befall Pentecostal television evangelists in America, Roman Catholic Christians in Poland are affected. When Christians are persecuted in Namibia or tortured in Nicaragua or El Salvador, the white Southern Baptists in Georgia are affected. Paul says that when one part of the body suffers, all suffer together (v. 26). All suffer, whether they know it or not.
Such unity is due to the Spirit. There is only one Holy Spirit. God does not give one Holy Spirit to Lutherans and another Holy Spirit to Methodists. God does not give one Holy Spirit to liberals and another Holy Spirit to conservatives. God does not give one Holy Spirit to Anglos and another Holy Spirit to Hispanics. God does not give one Holy Spirit to heterosexuals and another Holy Spirit to homosexuals. Any who have received God's Holy Spirit are inextricably united with all others who have received God's Spirit, regardless of their age, gender, race, status, ideology, or sexual orientation.
This is profound enough, but Paul actually goes a step further. All that has been said so far could be illustrated simply by saying "the church is one body." But Paul says the church is the body of Christ. Not just one body, not just any body, but the one body of Christ. The church, united by the Spirit whether its members know it or not, represents Christ's presence here on earth.
Luke 4:14-21
This text resumes a theme introduced two weeks ago at the story of Jesus' baptism. In Luke's Gospel the stories of Jesus' baptism, temptation, and address at Nazareth are closely united. One unifying factor is the role of the Spirit, so prominent in our second lesson for today. The Spirit comes upon Jesus at his baptism (3:22), leads him in the wilderness for his temptation (4:1), and finally returns to Galilee filled with the Spirit (4:14) to announce why the Spirit has come upon him (4:18).
It is too bad that the lectionary breaks up this marvelous cycle of stories. The passage that Jesus reads from Isaiah 61:1 represents his own resolution of the struggles in the wilderness. Here is a synopsis of the story as Luke tells it: When Jesus is baptized the Spirit comes upon him and he is declared to be the Son of God. Why has this happened and what does it mean? In the wilderness, Satan suggests reasons ("If you are the Son of God ..."), all of them reflecting some notion of self-service. Jesus rejects these interpretations of his status and finally discovers in scripture God's reason for what happened at his baptism. The Spirit came upon him to anoint him for service to others.
In Luke's theology, the fundamental temptation of the Devil for Christians is to interpret their status as Spirit-empowered children of God in ways that serve their own interests rather than the needs of others. We are empowered by the Spirit to be witnesses for Jesus (Acts 1:8), which in Luke means much more than telling people about him. Fundamentally, it means doing what he did: helping the poor and liberating the captives.
These verses (4:18-19) are a preferred "proof text" for Liberation Theology movements today. Such movements are often criticized for ignoring other biblical promises, such as those regarding eternal life or salvation of souls from hell. Be that as it may, the lectionary places the sandal on the other foot today, and all Christians who hear this text are directed not to ignore these words. Jesus clearly says that the reason he has come, the very essence of his mission on earth, is to liberate oppressed people and to establish justice for those who are victims of injustice. In Luke, this must not be spiritualized but left for what it is: a bald, political statement about reversing the balance of power in contemporary society (cf. Luke 1:52-53).
This is not something that God will do at the end of time. This is to happen, Jesus says, today.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
We live in a society in which right and wrong have become largely a matter of personal opinion. Every individual is seen as a law unto himself or herself, and what is right for one person is not necessarily right for anyone else. Indeed, if any person tries to impose his or her ethical standards on another, the response is usually defensive anger. "Don't try to impose your middle-class morality on me," goes the complaint. "I know what is right for me, and you have no business trying to meddle in my life!"
The result is that there is no common standard of conduct that governs our lives. The country is split into a multiplicity of little groups, all pursuing their own values and setting their own ethical agendas. Frequently there is conflict, each little group trying to gain power for its point of view and scorning the standards and lifestyles of other groups. Vainly, government and media and schools try to return to a basic set of "American values" or "family values," but relativity reigns, and everyone does his or her own thing. A sardonic statement at the end of the Book of Judges could apply to our society: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).
In some sense, we might see that as the situation of the Israelites when they returned to Jerusalem in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. after the Babylonian exile. Their religious traditions and knowledge of God's directions for their lives had been forgotten, and they were left with nothing but their own desires and wisdom to reconstruct their shattered community. A community that has forgotten its founding story and common ethic cannot be a community, however. It can only be a conglomeration of competing groups and interests, as our society often is, and apparently the people in post-exilic Jerusalem in the fifth century B.C. were wise enough to realize that.
According to our text in Nehemiah, the people of Jerusalem all gathered in a square of Jerusalem, and "they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel" (v. 1). They demanded to hear the Torah.
We would not want that, would we? If someone wanted to read us a story that contained commandments for our lives, we might quickly leave the scene. Our pious excuse, of course, would be that we are Christians who are saved by faith and not by some law. But the Jews in Ezra's time had a different understanding of the Torah than we have, and they wanted desperately to hear it.
What follows in our text is therefore a worship service in a square in Jerusalem. Ezra mounted a pulpit and when he opened the book of the Torah, all of the people stood and listened attentively. As Ezra read portions of the first five books of the Old Testament, Levitical priests standing beside Ezra translated the Hebrew words into Aramaic, the language of the day, and explained the meaning of the words to the people, so that they understood them. When the people heard laws that they had forgotten, statutes that they had not observed, explanations of the Word of God, they wept -- not for sorrow at their sin, but for joy at hearing once again -- and some of them for the first time -- the directions of God for their community and individual lives.
They not only heard commandments, however. From the Torah they heard the old, old traditions of how God had delivered them from slavery and entered into covenant with them. They were prompted to remember how God had led their forebears through the wilderness and given them the promised land. And through it all, they heard the voice of the Lord, guiding them, forgiving them, accompanying them in his law, and pointing out the way they were to walk as his people. To it all, they said "Amen," and they wept for joy.
Now why? Why should a reading of commandments give us joy? We can understand how it would be good to review once again God's saving acts on our behalf, as they are told in the Pentateuch and the rest of the scriptures. But why should we rejoice over laws and commandments? Isn't that legalism?
No, it is not. The commandments that are given us in the Bible, such as the Ten Commandments, and all of the instructions that Jesus and Paul and the other writers set down for us in the New Testament are expressions of God's love. You see, God has delivered us from slavery to sin and death, as he delivered Israel from Egypt. And in Jesus Christ, God has given us a new life. As Paul writes, "The old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17) -- all those sins and guilts of the past, all of our inabilities to do the good, all of our despairs and anxieties that we have gone through. Those are now done. God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ and lent us his Spirit, that we may walk in newness of life and in the goodness that God intends.
Having redeemed us in Jesus Christ, however, God does not just let us stumble around in the dark, wondering what to do in this new life we have been granted and making up the rules as we go along. God does not desert us any more than he deserted post-
exilic Israel. No. God continues to go with us and to guide us, and he does that by giving us commandments. God points the way, which is the basic meaning of "Torah." He says, "Here is the way to walk. Here is the way to abundant life. Walk in it, and so choose life."
God points the way to abundant life by means of his commandments, because he loves us and wants only good for us. Both Old Testament and New tell us that. In Deuteronomy 5:29, God yearns for his people's good: "Oh that they had such a mind as this always," he says, "to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children for ever!" God wants it to go well with us! God wants us to have good. Similarly, in the Gospel according to John, Jesus tells his disciples that if they keep his commandments, they will abide in his love (John 15:10), and then he adds, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (v. 11). The Lord wants us to have joy! And so he instructs us in the way to abide in fellowship with him and to have a joyful life.
That is what Israel knew when she heard Ezra read the Torah to her in that square in Jerusalem and wept tears of happiness -- that following the Word of God was the way of joy and life. So her Psalmist could write that the Torah was more to be desired than gold and sweeter than the drippings of the honeycomb (Psalm 19:10). And every faithful Christian who has walked in the way of Christ's commandments has known that sweetness and that treasure that come from walking in God's way and not in our own.
