Episode 74: P. +8A (Aug. 3) or Jake the Snake Old Testament Style
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For Sunday, August 3, 2014
Episode 74
Welcome to the Pulpit Fiction Podcast, where two local pastors discuss the lectionary reading for the week.
This is episode 74 for Sunday August 3, Proper 13A/Ordinary 18A/8 Sundays after Pentecost.
Matthew 14:13-21 - Food Glorious Food
Genesis 32:22-31 - Jacob Wrestles with ?
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- The Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans
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- Hobby Lobby Supreme Court Decision
- Israel in Gaza
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- “Israel’s Unwinnable War” by Philip Wilcox
- “Hamas, the IDF, & Peace in the Middle East” by Brandan Robertson
- Nadia Bolz-Weber @Sarcasticluther tweet:
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- Israelis killed by Hamas rockets in the last 13 years: 28
Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military in the last 3 weeks: 155
- Israelis killed by Hamas rockets in the last 13 years: 28
- “Israel’s Unwinnable War” by Philip Wilcox
- Immigrant Children in the US
Featured Musician - Bryan Sirchio, “Mark this Place” from his album, Something Beautiful for God.
Primary Scripture - Matthew 14:13-21 - Food Glorious Food
- Initial Thoughts
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- Fishes? Why not fish? Fishes is correct when referring to f more than one species of fish. - Yeah fun fact!
- Biblical scholars have suggested that this was part of the early Church’s Eucharistic liturgy (see The Eucharist in the New Testament and the Early Church By Eugene LaVerdiere)
- Fishes? Why not fish? Fishes is correct when referring to f more than one species of fish. - Yeah fun fact!
- Bible Study
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- Context:
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- Compassion
- Funeral banquet- this occurs right after they received news of John the Baptist’s death
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- They want to leave and isolate themselves in grief
- Contrasts Herod’s banquet
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- Herod: out of seeming abundance there was death and scarcity
- Jesus: out of seeming scarcity there is abundance
- Herod: out of seeming abundance there was death and scarcity
- They want to leave and isolate themselves in grief
- Compassion
- Deserted Place/Wilderness
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- Place of temptation
- Exodus
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- similar to the blessing of Manna
- similar to the blessing of Manna
- Place of searching for God and who we are in response
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- Hard place but important to journey in the wilderness and not to leave or be sent away
- Being sent home = going back to Egypt - might be easier but neither leads to the promised land
- Are we willing to walk through the wilderness? To go hungry trusting in God’s provision?
- Think of conflict in church- better to address it than avoid it and return to “niceness”
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- Perhaps the church is now in the wilderness- we are getting hungrier and hungrier as are those around us- how will we “feed them” and ourselves with God’s abundance?
- Perhaps the church is now in the wilderness- we are getting hungrier and hungrier as are those around us- how will we “feed them” and ourselves with God’s abundance?
- Hard place but important to journey in the wilderness and not to leave or be sent away
- Place of temptation
- The Miracle
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- How? This is a questions that we are concerned with, but Matthew and the early church was not
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- No details about how the miracle happened only that it DID happen and there was a great abundance
- We want to explain
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- It was a miracle where Jesus made lots of bread and fish out of nothing
- It was a miracle of generosity where everyone was moved to share what they had
- It is a mystery
- It was a miracle where Jesus made lots of bread and fish out of nothing
- No details about how the miracle happened only that it DID happen and there was a great abundance
- Not “How?” but “What has happened?”
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- Jesus’ actions - not only 4 actions
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- saw - the importance of being seen can never be underestimated - who goes unseen in our congregations/communities?
- Had compassion
- ordered
- took - uses what is at hand
- looked - honoring the work of God, not his own devices.
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- “The first temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness was to declare independence from God, to assert his autonomy. In the Scriptures this is the central sin, the primary act of rebellion, and Jesus refuses to participate in it. He insists that we are utterly dependent on God: "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4; Deut. 8:3). Human existence rests on the word of God.” - Iwan Russell Jones, Feasting on the Word.
- “The first temptation that Jesus faced in the wilderness was to declare independence from God, to assert his autonomy. In the Scriptures this is the central sin, the primary act of rebellion, and Jesus refuses to participate in it. He insists that we are utterly dependent on God: "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4; Deut. 8:3). Human existence rests on the word of God.” - Iwan Russell Jones, Feasting on the Word.
- blessed - A prayer for the hungry
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- “give us this day our daily bread”
- Blessing the bread acknowledges that while we cannot “live on bread alone” we still need to eat and the material is NOT profane
- “give us this day our daily bread”
- broke
- gave - Huge social implications
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- Patrons gave food to clients in exchange for service and fealty.
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- Caesar’s benevolence was seen in his distribution of food to the masses - “bread and circuses”
- The giving and receiving of food set the social structures - Jesus asks food to be given and received as equals regardless of social structure.
- Caesar’s benevolence was seen in his distribution of food to the masses - “bread and circuses”
- People are fed because they are hungry and Jesus “had compassion”, they are fed unconditionally
- Should the Lord’s table/Communion/Eucharist be conditional on baptism/fealty to God/Church or Confession or is it the outward and visible sign of God’s unconditional love and grace?
- Patrons gave food to clients in exchange for service and fealty.
- saw - the importance of being seen can never be underestimated - who goes unseen in our congregations/communities?
- God chooses to work with and through us
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- “You give them something to eat”
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- Jesus did not feed 5000- the disciples did
- Jesus did not feed 5000- the disciples did
- Uses the resources we have- ABUNDANCE
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- not what we don’t have - SCARCITY
- not what we don’t have - SCARCITY
- Only 5 loaves and 2 fish - SCARCITY
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- Leftovers - ABUNDANCE
- Leftovers - ABUNDANCE
- Send them away - SCARCITY
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- Remaining as a community follow Jesus - ABUNDANCE
- Remaining as a community follow Jesus - ABUNDANCE
- “You give them something to eat”
- Jesus’ actions - not only 4 actions
- How? This is a questions that we are concerned with, but Matthew and the early church was not
- Context:
- Preaching Thoughts
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- Should the Lord’s table/Communion/Eucharist be conditional on baptism/fealty to God/Church or Confession or is it the outward and visible sign of God’s unconditional love and grace?
- Discipleship means taking on the impossible task of declaring the good news to the poor, unbinding the captive, liberating the oppressed, reconciling the enemies and feeding the hungry- Not saying this is too much and sending “them away”
- Are we willing to walk through the wilderness? To go hungry trusting in God’s provision?
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- Think of conflict in church- better to address it than avoid it and return to “niceness”
- Perhaps the church is now in the wilderness- we are getting hungrier and hungrier as are those around us- how will we “feed them” and ourselves with God’s abundance?
- Think of conflict in church- better to address it than avoid it and return to “niceness”
- Should the Lord’s table/Communion/Eucharist be conditional on baptism/fealty to God/Church or Confession or is it the outward and visible sign of God’s unconditional love and grace?
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Secondary scripture - Genesis 32:22-31 - Jacob Wrestles with ?
- Initial Thoughts
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- Exegesis by Eric below
- Found a book today called Jacob and the Divine Trickster. Too late to read it for this lectionary cycle, but it looks compelling.
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- From the summary: “The book of Genesis portrays the character Jacob as a brazen trickster who deceives members of his own family: his father Isaac, brother Esau, and uncle Laban. At the same time, Genesis depicts Jacob as YHWH s chosen, from whom the entire people Israel derive and for whom they are named. These two notices produce a latent tension in the text: Jacob is concurrently an unabashed trickster and YHWH s preference. How is one to address this tension?”
- From the summary: “The book of Genesis portrays the character Jacob as a brazen trickster who deceives members of his own family: his father Isaac, brother Esau, and uncle Laban. At the same time, Genesis depicts Jacob as YHWH s chosen, from whom the entire people Israel derive and for whom they are named. These two notices produce a latent tension in the text: Jacob is concurrently an unabashed trickster and YHWH s preference. How is one to address this tension?”
- Bible Study
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- Context of the Jacob story
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- He’s leaving Laban’s house, and coming home
- Fearful of upcoming meeting with Esau, whom he screwed 14 years ago.
- He hears at the beginning of Gen 32 that Esau is coming to greet him with 400 men. “Jacob was terrified, and felt trapped.” (Genesis 32:7).
- He had already sent Esau gifts, and prayed to God ‘O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, “Return to your country and to your kindred, and I will do you good”, I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies. Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him; he may come and kill us all, the mothers with the children. Yet you have said, “I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted because of their number.” ’ (Genesis 32:9-12)
- He’s leaving Laban’s house, and coming home
- Jacob wrestles with a man - It is never directly stated that this man is anything other than a man.
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- Walt Brueggemann: “Perhaps it is important that the narrative is not explicitly. In its opaque portrayal of the figure, the narrative does not want us to know too much. It is part of the power of wrestling that we do not know the name or see the face of the antagonist. To be too certain would be to reduce the dread intended in the telling. It is most plausible that in the present form, the hidden one is Yahweh.” (Interpretation: Genesis, p. 267)
- Terence Fretheim, in The Suffering of God refers to this passage in his chapter called “God in Human Form.”
- “God appears in the world without disruption. They reveal that the finite is capable of the infinite. God can come and be present in the pillar of fire/cloud. God can appear in human form of the messenger. The world can serve the task of clothing God; in these theophanies God assumes chosen aspects of the created order and ‘wears’ them in order to be as concretely and persuasively and intensely present with the people as possible. Theophanies demonstrate that God is not identical with the world, but they also reveal that God takes on creaturely forms so that humankind may discover God embodied within the world itself” (Fretheim, p. 92)
- Walt Brueggemann: “Perhaps it is important that the narrative is not explicitly. In its opaque portrayal of the figure, the narrative does not want us to know too much. It is part of the power of wrestling that we do not know the name or see the face of the antagonist. To be too certain would be to reduce the dread intended in the telling. It is most plausible that in the present form, the hidden one is Yahweh.” (Interpretation: Genesis, p. 267)
- The match
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- Physically comes to a draw
- God strikes (not touches, as NIV states) Jacob’s leg.
- Jacob refuses to let go
- God asks Jacob his name. Presumably, God knew his name. Why did he ask this? Is there an aspect of confession, since Jacob’s name means “trickster/heel/surplanter,”
- Jacob asks God’s name - no answer given (unlike Moses who is given a response).
- God blesses Jacob
- God names Jacob Israel
- Physically comes to a draw
- What is the victory Jacob wins?
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- A limp
- A blessing
- Name changed from “Trickster” to “Struggled with God and prevailed”
- “Israel is the one who has face God… and prevailed, gained a blessing, and been renamed. There is something new underway here about the weakness of God and the strength of Israel. The encounter will not permit a neat summary of roles, as though God is strong and Jacob is weak, or as though things are reversed with Jacob strong and God weak. All of that remains unsettled. But new possibilities are open to Israel that have not been available before. In the giving of the blessing, something of the power of God has been entrusted to Israel. Unlike every other relationship in which God rules and humankind obeys, Israel is a newness which has prevailed with God” (Brueggemann, p. 269)
- A limp
- Context of the Jacob story
- Preaching Thoughts
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- Reconciliation can be difficult.
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- “Wouldn’t it be easier to just walk away?” - interesting reflection on The Hardest Question, by Lia Scholl
- Facing someone you have wronged is a terrible burden to face.
- Reconciliation takes hard work. Truth telling. Sometimes people get hurt.
- "Reconciliation means working together to correct the legacy of past injustice.” (Nelson Mandela)
- Avoiding conflict is not the way to solve problems.
- “Wouldn’t it be easier to just walk away?” - interesting reflection on The Hardest Question, by Lia Scholl
- Where is the Peniel of your life?
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- Where are the times and places you have wrestled, struggled, come out limping, but been able to declare “I have seen God.”
- What do you learn from these times?
- Cliche “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” has a part of truth.
- Where are the times and places you have wrestled, struggled, come out limping, but been able to declare “I have seen God.”
- In midst of a new war between Israel and Palestine, what can we learn from Jacob, who is now known as Israel?
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- Reminder that current national state of Israel is not analogous to the Biblical Davidic monarchy. Israel was created as a secular state that would serve as a safe-haven, not as a theocracy.
- With whom does Israel wrestle? Is the sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau still brewing? The lectionary does not include the story of Esau and Jacob’s reunion. Maybe it needs to. Now more than ever that story needs to be told.
- Yet the reconciliation did not come without Israel limping.
- Reminder that current national state of Israel is not analogous to the Biblical Davidic monarchy. Israel was created as a secular state that would serve as a safe-haven, not as a theocracy.
- Reconciliation can be difficult.
CLOSING
TY listeners
Shout outs:
William Painter - I listen to your broadcast nearly every week. I am a new pastor and your dialogue continues to be an inspiration to me and, ultimately, to my congregation. Thank you thank you thank you.
Judith Tobias - I stumbled upon this podcast and agree with the other comments made, you are a breathe of fresh air as we neophytes struggle to present God's Word to His people that it be useful for this day and time!
Dina - Right after your podcast asking why God would play favorites, and choose Jacob over Esau, even though by the world's standards Esau seems more worthy...I was listening to Brene' Brown's "The Power of Vulnerability" (on Audible...yeah!) and she said something that I thought spoke to this...that worthiness is our birthright. At heart, at the core, Jacob, with all his flaws is as worthy as his brother, in God's eyes. Plus, God only has flawed human beings to choose from!!! Thank you for your work and inspiration.
Chris Strickland @chrisstrickla - Late addition to Sunday's sermon. If we can't pull the weeds, then we have to care for them.
David - That really stuck with me. Yes, I agree with you that "everything happens for a reason" is not a particularly satisfying response. But there are people for whom that is the only comfort they have left. It's important, I think, not to deny people this comfort if it IS something that helps them.
Featured Musician -
Bryan Sirchio, “Mark this Place” from his album, Something Beautiful for God. You can find more of Bryan’s great music at sirchio.com. Follow him on Twitter @BryanJSirchio. Also check out Bryans book:The 6 Marks of Progressive Christian Worship Music.
Our theme music is Misirlou by Dick Dale and the Del Tones and our closing music is “Oh No” by Paul & Storm.
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