October 18 – Twentieth after Pentecost
Lectionary
Lectionary readings from Vanderbilt Divinity Library online
(http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/BPentecost/bProper24.htm)
God’s
rebuttal to Job’s complaint.
Psalm 104:1–9, 24, 35c
(VU pgs. 826–827 parts 1 and 2)
With
Wisdom, God created the earth and all its creatures.
Christ
learned obedience and was made perfect.
James
and John request to sit on Jesus’ right and left.
Spark
On
a flipchart, in dark felt pen, draw a colouring-book style outline of a
Pharisee and the tax collector. Pharisees were known for their “obedience to
the law.” In bright colours, colour in the picture being careful to colour outside the lines. Draw pictures or
symbols of justice, mercy, compassion—elements involved when we break the rules
in the name of love. (The picture can
either be prepared and placed in the chancel before the service, or coloured in
during the sermon as an illustration of the different things you feel God is
passionate about.)
With Children
Can
you think of a time when one of your parents or grandparents, teacher or
caregiver asked you to behave? Obedience is important because it keeps us safe.
We learn not to touch a hot stove so we don’t get burned. We learn to hold
hands with an adult when we cross the street so we don’t run in front of traffic.
Later, as we learn to cross the street on our own, we learn to wait for cars to
stop and still to look both ways. God also asks obedience of us. He asked it of
Jesus, and Jesus asked it of his disciples.
While
it might feel like there are a million rules in life, in the Bible we learn
that the most important way that we can behave is to remember God! When we
pray, when we tell God our fears and our sadness, when we offer thanks to God
for things that are good in our lives, or for people that we love, this is the
best way to be obedient to God.
Sermon Starter
This
week the texts are about obedience. In Job, God demands recognition of the
power of God to create life, the eternal nature of the God who has created all
of creation in love, and calls us to obedience in gratitude and praise. The
psalm responds to the text from Job with praises and honour to the God who is
all-powerful. While the voice of the Holy in the text from Job demands fidelity
and respect, the New Testament lessons through the epistles and the Gospel of
Mark are much more troubling.
The
Hebrews text, which glorifies the suffering Christ on the cross, has long been
used by forces in church and society that seek to dominate and oppress, whether
intentionally or unintentionally. Feminist theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and
Rebecca Ann Parker, in Proverbs of Ashes:
Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Beacon
Press), address the question of the oppression of women who face abuse and are
told that good Christians must “carry their cross” in obedience as did Jesus.
Likewise, much of the triumphalism in Christ’s suffering through obedience,
even to the cross, is present in the colonial mindset, which viewed Christendom as “superior,” thereby granting
permission to beat into submission or “obedience” anyone who was
different. We see this most graphically depicted in the Canadian experience of
the Indian Residential Schools, a shameful legacy we all share.
If
the focus of these texts is obedience, even to the extreme of the Passion of
Christ, then we must ask: what is God’s passion for life today? How do you speak of the passion of God or of
holy desire? To what does it refer? What does God desire?
Hymns
VU
509 “I, the Lord of sea and
sky”
MV 138 “My
love colours outside the lines”
MV 135 “Called
by earth and sky”
VU 348 “O
love, how deep”
VU 601 “The
church of Christ”