John Shearman's
 Liberal Lectionary Analysis

Rev. John Shearman

 INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

[A more complete analysis follows this brief summary for church bulletins.]

NOTE: During the Season of Pentecost, some traditions follow a different set of readings from the Old Testament and Psalms. These alternate readings will be included in both the brief introductions and the more complete analyses.

AMOS 7:7-17 Amos, one of the twelve "Minor Prophets," was no small man. His sense of divine justice speaks across the millennia as loudly as ever. With fear or favor for no prince or priest, this farmer from the sticks, spoke for God in symbolic actions as clearly as in dynamic words. In this passage he predicts that God's displeasure with Israel will result in a national disaster, an event which occurred in 721 BC with conquest by Assyria.

PSALM 82 Many of the psalms show the influence of the outspoken utterances of the prophets. One hears echoes of Amos in this psalm which may have served as a liturgical hymn in the temple at the New Year to celebrate the absolute sovereignty of God.

DEUTERONOMY 30:9-14 (Alternate) This excerpt comes from what the editors of Deuteronomy presented the final message of Moses to the Israelites (chs. 29-30). It promised absolute prosperity for those who obeyed the covenant law.

This assumption has been much abused by those who used it as if it was the last word received directly from God. Such an attitude fails to take into account that the ethic of righteous behaviour by individuals inherent in the Mosaic code is also balanced by a profound sense of social justice.

PSALM 25:1-10 (Alternate) In its Hebrew original, this psalm has an unusual acrostic structure. Each of its 22 verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The author may have done this to create a form of prayer not only for himself, but for the use of anyone else at a time of great distress.

COLOSSIANS 1:1-14 In these opening words of greeting and thanksgiving, Paul applauds the Colossians' faithfulness to the gospel as his colleague, Epaphras, had instructed them.

The dominant feature of their faithfulness is love. Paul's prayer that they continue "bearing fruit" and "be made strong" in the face of a severe challenge from "the power of darkness" from which they have been rescued. These words point to a time of conflict scholars believe to have been caused by a serious heresy.

LUKE 10:25-37 One of the most familiar parables answers two universal questions: who is our neighbour and how we are to relate to others with whom we have little in common, or even a deep sense of mistrust and hostility.

Jews and Samaritans were as hostile to one another in Jesus' time as are Israelis and Palestinians today. Yet, like their modern counterparts, they shared the same territory. They also spoke the same language and held many common beliefs in the same God. But the Samaritans had intermarried with foreign tribes imported by the Assyrians after the conquest of which Amos spoke.

AMOS 7:7-17 It is a pity that the RCL only uses two passages from Amos and these only from the narrative segment of the book (ch.7-9). Amos deserves more than the sharing of his vision of doom with the chief priest of the royal sanctuary at Bethel.

This passage, one of series of five visions (7:1-9:8), tells us something about this earliest of the great prophets (despite his canonical characterization as one of the twelve "Minor Prophets"). In his own words, he was not a professional prophet or priest, but a farmer (vs.14). What is more, he was a Judean from Tekoa, a village about 5 mi. south of Bethlehem, in the Southern Kingdom of Judah. By raising his voice against the moral and social corruption of Israel (i.e. the Northern Kingdom), he encountered the opposition of the royal priesthood of that nation.

Like most rural people, he was something of a jack-of-all-trades, for in addition to having flocks and a fig orchard, he also knew something about building and the tools of that trade. His metaphor of the plumb-line vividly expressed his total condemnation of the moral and spiritual leadership of the nation (vss.7-9). In ancient times, the plumb-line was essential to constructing a small house or a city wall. Builders depended on this simple tool, a weight suspended from a string, to make walls perfectly vertical. It presented an obvious symbol of righteous behavior.

The sanctuary of Bethel had been an ancient Canaanite holy place set on a high hill. In Israelite religious traditions it had been associated with the patriarch Jacob. It had been fought over many times during the period of the Judges (12^th to 11^th centuries BCE) and during the reigns of both David and Solomon (10^th century). When the kingdoms were divided by Solomon's heirs, Jeroboam I (ca. 922-901 BCE) made Bethel the chief sanctuary of the Northern Kingdom (Israel). It became the centre of the cult based on the traditions of the ten northern tribes. After the exile of the northern tribes by the Assyrians in 721 BCE, it became an accursed site of restored Canaanite worship by the addition of a cult object of Asherah to the cultus of Yahweh. A century later, Josiah, king of Judah, razed the sanctuary as part of his centralizing of worship in the temple in Jerusalem, but spared the city of Bethel itself.

Amos delivered his prophetic oracles in the decades immediately preceding the fall of Samaria, Israel's capital, to the Assyrians. Due to his impressive sense of Yahweh's justice and righteousness, Amos foresaw the moral decline of the nation and the destruction which awaited Israel (vss.8-9, 17). The king during this period was Jereboam II (788-747 BCE). Assyria had reduced Damascus to poverty and powerlessness, but under a series of weak kings did not threaten the Palestinian states. This allowed the Northern Kingdom of Israel to prosper and a rich merchant class to develop, but not to the benefit of the common people like Amos. This explains the vehement outrage of the prophet's message. It also makes him a very contemporary voice for our own time of global capitalism and corruption in government and commerce alike have amok in immoral, money-mad enterprises.

PSALM 82 This particular psalm contains a whole set of interesting puzzles for the interpreter. The crucial question to be determined is: Who are the gods vss. 1 and 6? Several proposals have been offered. These are (1) heavenly beings or angels meeting in heavenly council over which Yahweh presides as in Job 1:6-12 and 2:1-6 and Daniel 7:9-10; (2) the national gods of the non-Israelites; (3) kings and others vested with political power who have been deified as was common in ancient times; (4) the judges of Israel. The idea that monarchs or judges were intended is reinforced by the reference to vs.6 in John 10:34 and in the Targums.

The issue emphasized in vss.2-4 is a justiciable occasion: the overwhelming of the poor by being turned over to unscrupulous judges or slave masters. An assembly of gods had many parallels in ancient Near Eastern mythology. The indictment of this judicial council is clear nonetheless. Yahweh requires that justice be done for all without regard to political, economic or social status.

The psalm became a hymn which according to the Mishnah was sung in the temple by the Levites on the third day of the week. It may also have been sung at the New Year's festival to celebrate Yahweh's moral supremacy. Vs. 8 may be a liturgical addition pointing to either God's periodic judgments of history or the eschatological judgment at the end of the age in which divine sovereignty will be universally acknowledged.

The message of justice conveyed in the psalm may be a little heavy for a summertime sermon, but it does lend substantial credibility to such a prophetic attitude in our contemporary environment. Those who take such a stance cannot expect to be heard with approbation in many congregations. The usual complaint is that preaching and politics should not be mixed. On the other hand, the biblical mandate of social justice for all is clear as this psalm attests, despite the often brutal attempts which have been made to suppress prophetic voices by the rich and powerful.

DEUTERONOMY 30:9-14 (Alternate) This excerpt comes from what the editors of Deuteronomy presented as the final message of Moses to the Israelites (chs. 29-30). It has had a remarkably wide influence in subsequent religious and secular history.

The Deuteronomists promised absolute prosperity for those who obeyed the covenant law. This assumption has been much abused by those who used it as if it was the last word received directly from God. Such an attitude fails to take into account that the ethic of righteous behaviour by individuals inherent in the Mosaic code was also balanced by a profound sense of social justice.

Writing no earlier than the 6^th century BCE, it should not surprise us the authors of Deuteronomy show the influence of the great prophets of justice from the 8^th and 7^th century BCE. The whole passage, and especially vs. 14, sound very much like Jeremiah's oracle of the new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34). It also recalls the Shema and summative commandment in Deut. 6:4-9. For Jews, the essence of obedience to the law was a single-minded love for God and God alone.

As we know, this also became the heart of Jesus' message. Our Gospel lesson reveals how much he understood wherein right living and communal justice had their roots. The influence of this passage spread even farther through the apostolic mission of Paul evidenced by his quoting from Deut. 30:13-14 in his letter to the Romans as he appealed to his fellow Jews to trust in the righteousness of faith in Jesus Christ rather than that of the law (Rom. 10:5-8).

A narrow approach to prosperity based on the absolutist interpretation of vss. 9-10 found wide acceptance in the early stages of capitalism driven by a harsh interpretation of Calvinism. It fostered the rise of great commercial and political empires which advanced science, technology and the global economy to a remarkable extent through the 17^th to 19^th centuries CE, but also resulted in brutally destructive imperial conflicts that lasted throughout the 20^th century. How to adapt economic, political and technological development at a time when globalization is bringing about confrontation between vastly different religious and political cultures has become the challenge of this first decade of the 21^st century.

PSALM 25:1-10 (Alternate) In its Hebrew original, this psalm has an unusual acrostic structure. Each of its 22 verse begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In this excerpt, we have only half of its full text.

Because of this form and the inclusion of several characteristics of wisdom literature, scholars attribute it to a late post-exilic period and not to David as the superscript indicates. One commentator suspected that the author was creating a form of prayer not only for himself, but for the use of anyone else at a time of great distress.

The psalm begins with a statement of trust and petition for divine help as enemies attempt to shame him without justification (vss. 1-3). He then pleads to know the ways of the Lord and to be taught to walk in Yahweh's way (vss. 4-5). This exhibits a common theme of wisdom poetry. His next plea is for mercy dependent on Yahweh's steadfast love (vss. 6-8). The excerpt ends in a praiseworthy acknowledgment of Yahweh's goodness, righteousness, love and faithfulness (vss. 9-10). Many humble but faithful people have found the words of this poem not only comforting but encouraging when life serves up its inevitable trials.

COLOSSIANS 1:1-14 The debate about the authorship of this letter as one of Paul's remains inconclusive after 150 years. William Barclay expresses the view which most cogently supports Pauline authorship. But he wonders why this letter which contains the highest reach of his thought should have been addressed to so unimportant a town as Colossae then was. But in doing so Paul checked a tendency which could have wrecked Asian Christianity, and which might have done irreparable damage to the faith of the whole Church. (Edinburgh: Church of Scotland, "Daily Bible Study: Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon,")

Paul did not evangelize the Colossian community or those others in the Lycus valley east of Ephesus, Laodicea and Hierapolis. That had been the work of Epaphras, who had probably become a Christian as a result of meeting Paul in Ephesus. The new Christians may have been mainly Gentiles, but also appear to have been exposed to, if not actual followers of, some Jewish cult with a background similar to the asceticism and mystical piety of the Qumran community. Writing in the 1950s, Barclay believed these esoteric elements were characteristic of the heresy later given the general title of Gnosticism. This is reinforced by Paul's reference to the Colossians' need to "be filled with the knowledge of God's will and spiritual wisdom and understanding" (vs.9). This might not be Barclay's view today in the light of much greater acquaintance with the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1990s.

In these opening words of greeting and thanksgiving Paul applauds the Colossians' faithfulness to the gospel as Epaphras had instructed them. The dominant feature of their faithfulness is love (vss. 4, 8). Paul's prayer that they continue "bearing fruit" (vss.6, 10) and "be made strong" in the face of a severe challenge from "the power of darkness" (v.13) from which they have been rescued points to a time of stress, if not persecution. In the words "love, joy, patience," we may find allusion to the "fruits of the Spirit" Paul had elucidated in Galatians 5:22-23. Such words also lend emphasis to the Christian ethic of loving one's enemies which Paul so eloquently expressed in Romans 12. This would further undergird the conviction that this letter is one of several Paul dictated from Rome during his imprisonment in 60-61 CE perhaps a decade or more after the conversion of the Colossians.

Eduard Schweizer's study of Colossians (The Letter to the Colossians. Augsburg Press, 1982) showed how closely the structure of Colossians resembles Romans. There is a dogmatic section and a section dealing with practical ethical issues in the local community. This introductory segment (1:1-8) and the personal notes at the end (4:7-18) form opening and closing brackets around the main message of the letter. Schweizer believed that the remaining vss. 9-14 of this passage may come from a baptismal liturgy and are followed by a hymn (vss. 15-20). The emphasis of these verses is spiritual knowledge, but a knowledge entirely different from that of Gnostic thought. Paul was writing of a knowledge of the will of God which had ethical implications rather than mystical secrets. The strength to live this way and "to share the inheritance of the saints in light" (vs. 12) comes from God who has given the believer a new beginning and new meaning to life through the forgiveness of sins. Such a message has deep significance for Christians in any age.