Our television cable presents us with more than 300 channels–all of which have talking heads. News anchors yield to correspondents; celebrities and wanna-be’s host talk shows; retired athletes sit at a curved desk speculating on which records are about to be broken… How many hundred experts ARE there? And which ones should we attend to? Or none at all? This weekend’s scriptures claim some aural allegiance for a Holy Revelation to those who can clear the daily cacophany from their souls…
Jeremiah, often an unwilling prophet, introduces us to his Call in chapter 1:4-10. The story is told not only to express Jeremiah’s felt vulnerability (and our own!), but also to present a God who sustains and mentors those who are drafted. Here is a “driving passion of God to be engaged with God’s people….and the essential God-given role of human beings…to bear God’s passionate word into the world.” (Sally A. Brown, in FEASTING on the WORD, C 3:367)
We’re still reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, that anonymous treatise which reminds those steeped in Hebrew holy-history that Jesus, “the mediator of a new covenant” is the legitimate fulfillment of all that has gone before. In 12:25, we read, “See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking”, seen here as a voice of warning: just as your Mother told you that you’d drown if you didn’t wait an hour after a meal to go swimming. The core message here seems to offer Mt. Zion as a stable alternative to the capricious shaking of Mt. Sinai, with all the imagery in attendance.
On the surface, Luke 13:10-17 looks like another healing story demonstrating Jesus’ deep sympathy for the mishaps and brokenness around him. And it is. A “daughter of Abraham” who’d been in bondage to evil for a LONG time was set free! At a deeper level, it also contrasts the Old Law (no healing or other work on the Sabbath) with the New Understanding of meeting need with compassion. The dialogue between the Old and New is super-important: it opens “religion” to a sense of God’s interaction in daily affairs. Again, it was what Jesus SAID that shamed his opponents and set the entire crowd rejoicing!
Sadly, much mischief has been done when popular Talking Heads announce that “God has said this”. Who can refute that when God is invoked, serious ears must be receptive? Jeremiah could scarcely believe his ears, and those encountering Jesus as the Christ were called first to discernment of authority. These readings answer few solutions, but pose wonderful questions!
God Bless Us, Every One Horace Brown King
My thoughts upon the lectionary readings for the upcoming weekend can be found each Tuesday at this spot on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com
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