I. Exhibiting knowledge, understanding, and continuing study of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.

II. Maturing in effective proclamation and preaching.

When I am preparing to write a sermon or a Bible study lesson plan, I practice scriptural study in what I might call phases. In the first phase, I engage with the text itself using the lectio divina method. Although it is most often used in groups, I find it to be a good individual spiritual practice-both on its own and as preparation for exegesis. I write down my responses and reactions if I am using this ritual as sermon preparation. The ritual also serves as a time of prayer for me, of preparing myself to listen for the Holy Spirit's voice.

Below is a graphic that explains lectio divina as I practice it:

Once I've completed these steps, I move to the second phase by finding commentaries and books that address this particular pericope and its context, visiting websites like Vanderbilt Divinity's Lectionary page, the UCC Sermon Seeds page, and my seminary's online library. Reading commentary and interpretations from diverse sources, I take notes and highlight passages (if they are in my own books, of course). Usually, I take some time with those thoughts and ideas. After they have percolated, I begin my third phase: looking for connections between my lectio divina responses and my scholarly source notes. If there are parallels or points of intersection, I follow those themes and start writing, revisiting my sources throughout the process.

When it's possible, I like to have conversations around my scripture and emerging themes with my pastor or seminary colleagues- people who have studied Biblical hermeneutics. Speaking my thoughts aloud seems to help clarify them for me; hearing their thoughts sometimes gives me fresh insight into the scripture. A recent sermon (or meditation, as we call them at Church of the Savior) illustrates an end product of my scriptural study phases; it was a particularly thorny text that kept me going back through my process several times. My title ended up being "The Problematic, Perplexing Parable of the Talents."

I'm including the manuscript here because I think it exemplifies struggling with a scripture and coming out the other side with fresh insights and a "word for God's people" to share. In other words, it illustrates my "Maturing in Effective Proclamation and Preaching."

The Problematic Perplexing Parable of the Talents

I want to start out with a story: there was a CEO of a corporation who was leaving for vacation at an exclusive island resort where he planned to “disconnect” from the outside world and immerse himself in luxurious pampering. However, he didn’t want to “disconnect” enough to lose any profit-so he called a meeting with 3 of his employees. The first man, Chip, had been on fire for the past several months, pulling off a slick deal that was going to net big bucks. He had managed to buy a city block for only the back taxes owed before it even got to public auction, get around some fair housing regulations to evict tenants, and get a kickback from the contractor who would make a huge profit by “going around” OSHA regulation…plus he was the son of a friend whose family belonged to the same country club, so the CEO challenged him to use 5 million dollars to make money for the company during the boss’s absence. The second man, Eric, was a recent graduate of the boss’s alma mater and was showing promise as the “trainee” during the real estate deal, so the CEO challenged him to use 2 million dollars to show what he could do. The third man, Tyrone, was different: the boss had hired him as a way to get connected to "his part of town" and had been training him in the art of doublespeak and false promises. This guy wasn’t performing to the boss’s liking; he seemed to be constrained by loyalty to his community and was balking at the company’s practices, so the boss gave him only 1 million dollars to use.

When our CEO came back from his trip, pampered but not peaceful, he called in Chip, Eric, and Tyrone, opened his laptop, and pulled up Chip’s accounts. WOW! Chip had doubled the $5 million and made some fat commissions for himself. Next up was Eric: the boss saw that he too had doubled his $2 million. “Great job!” he said. “You two are men after my own heart! Go have dinner and drinks-on the company, of course.” Then came Tyrone. The boss opened his accounts and saw that he had only made a few deals with very low profit margins…and where was his million dollars? Tyrone had been struggling with his conscience even before the boss’s trip and the past couple of months had given him a chance to see what was really happening. The boss wanted him to take advantage of his own people, his friends and neighbors, and he just couldn’t do it anymore. So, he deposited the million dollars back into the company account and showed the evidence to the boss. “Here’s your money back, every penny. I can’t do what you’re asking anymore. I won’t profit off the backs of my community, like you do.” So the CEO, who grew angrier and redder in the face as Tyrone spoke finally exploded: “you are worthless! You had nothing and I taught you everything, you lazy slacker! I should have known better than to even give you a chance to pull yourself up! Get out! And leave your laptop and accounts...I’ll give them to Chip!”

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So…that was the parable of the talents, told in today’s terminology from within our culture. Now, I’m going to paraphrase it from today’s reading: a rich man goes away, leaving 3 of his slaves in charge of his money (a lot of money-a talent would have been 2 years income for most peasants). When he returns, he rewards the 2 slaves who have doubled his money, almost certainly by exploiting their neighbors using unfair lending tactics. The third slave has buried the talent he was given instead of using it to make profit, saying that he knew the master was a harsh man who “reaped where he did not sew.” The master calls him lazy and wicked and punishes him.

Almost always, this has been read as a metaphor for using our “talents” and time and God-given gifts in preparation for the master’s (read: Jesus’s) return. It has been interpreted as a reminder to be generous, to take risks, during stewardship season. Charles Cousar has suggested that the parable urges us to have the courage to take risks by living the gospel, which gets a little closer to the interpretation that I want us to consider. You see, when we read this parable through the lens of our culture, for most of us, that means we read it as a “have” rather than as a “have not” from the top rather than from below.

And I think that reading this parable from the top is what has made it so problematic, so perplexing. It teaches a strangely amoral lesson or warns about end time judgement when we think that the master symbolizes Jesus, the first two slaves as the “blessed” guys, and the third slave as the loser. In fact, when I saw the lectionary readings for today, I immediately thought “uggghhh” I hate this one. It is the WORST parable. It goes against the other teachings about Jesus; it goes against what we know about the kingdom of God. I mean, the “Jesus figure” casts someone into the outer darkness with wailing and gnashing of teeth…FOR SAVING HIS MONEY! Actually, this is what sent me on a search for other interpretations. I thought “this is not a picture of the kingdom of God” that stands in contrast to the kingdoms of empire like the other parables. There has to be more to it!” Then, I remembered John Gill telling me about a seminar called “Preaching from the Margins” where you preach from “Below”. That got me started and helped me locate my sources. Thank you Google, Marcus Borg’s bibliography, and Ed Sullivan!

So, the story of the CEO that I told at the beginning not only allows us to hear the parable in our context. It also allows for an interpretation I’m advocating for: from “below” or “from the margins” as Warren Carter names it.

To do this, we must hear the story through 1^st century Jewish ears, rather than 21^st century American ears. You see, Jesus’s audience in 30 CE would have understood this parable very differently than we do. They lived in a subsistence agrarian economy; we live in a culture of consumption. They lived in an honor/shame society; we live in a profit/loss society. For them, with the Torah ever in their minds, it mattered how one obtained material wealth. For us, with stocks and bonds in our minds, it matters how much wealth we get…not so much how we get it.

In a book entitled “Parables as Subversive Speech,” Bill Herzog begins by searching for the original (or as close as we can get) parable in its original context -which would of course be Jesus’s context. ====Remember-Matthew’s context was different from Jesus’s context, a couple of generations later in a Jewish community in the city of Antioch, more on that later.====According to Herzog and other sociohistorical scholars, “peasant hearers of this parable would have immediately understood the actions of the master and the first 2 slaves and identified it easily as the sort of exploitation they had grown accustomed to.” As I read through these commentaries, I thought of how this might sound in a reading from the margins today…

*a young black man is pulled over by police-he immediately expects the possibility of physical harm or at least derision. He doesn’t think he has broken any traffic laws but he is “driving while black in an expensive car”…

*a young androgynous looking person who identifies as non-binary is walking alone and is approached by 3 young men who, as expected, begin to shove and call out dyke…queer…weirdo. They think to themselves “I shouldn’t have walked home alone. This is what happens”…

*a woman wearing a hijab is called in for a job interview based on her excellent resume. After one look at the interviewer’s facial expression, she knows she will not get the job because of her religion…

*a man who uses a wheelchair arrives at an apartment building where he hopes to live. He sighs as he thinks to himself “of course there’s no ramp” and turns away.

But back to the parable…Let’s read it as what John Dominic Crossan calls a challenge parable or as what Marcus Borg calls a “prophetic indictment”:

The master and the first two slaves fit right in with the world around them-greedy and haughty; the third slave refuses to take part in that world, even calling out the master as a merciless man who gathers where he did not scatter. He resists being caught up and blows the whistle, giving back the dirty money. The harsh master calls him unworthy and lazy and casts him out.

Friends, is this a picture of the kingdom of God that Jesus teaches about in many other parables? Isn’t it more an indictment of empire and greed? An example of what the world is like rather than God’s dream for the world? Surely the master is not a God figure but rather a figure of the small gods of acquisition and inequity.

In The Power of Parable, John Dominic Crossan makes the claim that this parable represents “two divergent visions of the world”…that Jesus’ teaching was always about “whether or not we are living as if ‘the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it’ as psalm 24 claims. It was about, he says, “how the earth was to be fairly distributed as a world for all God’s people.”

Now, to the last two verses. I mentioned earlier that Matthew’s audience would have been different from the original parable’s audience. The gospel of Matthew comes from a later interpretation of what Jesus was teaching AND Matthew focuses heavily on judgement and the second coming of Jesus. Most redaction scholars agree that the “wailing and gnashing of teeth” was added by “Matthew” and that the original parable did not include this verse. ***Now there’s something I heard often and loudly in my youth-the wailing and gnashing of teeth-what a horrifying picture!*** And to find out all these years later that it was probably added due to an interpretation or misinterpretation of the parable by Matthew!

I guess all of this is to say that, as Christians, we must keep picking up scriptures and turning them over, studying their many facets like a prism in sunlight. We have to resist getting “stuck” on a single interpretation, but we also have to use the light of love and justice to illuminate them. In other words, instead of using scripture to understand how to love, we need to use love to understand scripture!

And, when we do that, we find that Jesus stands not with the gods of this world, but ALWAYS with the needy, the outcast, the least of these. Jesus and calls us to stand against inequity and oppression and live into God’s dream for the world. Amen.

IV. Bringing life to sacred stories and traditions in worship, proclamation, and witness.

When I read this mark, I immediately thought of a sermon that I delivered from the imagined perspective of the "bent over" woman - dressed as a 1st century Jewish woman called Yael. The scripture was from the Gospel of Luke:

Luke 13:10-17 (NRSV)

10 Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

And here is the sermon:

Yael’s Story

Hello. My name is Yael. You may have heard about me--I know the word has spread-- but I want to tell my own story as it happened to me. You see, I am the woman who was bent over for 18 years until the rabbi Jesus healed me when I went to synagogue last month. I know that, being a woman, I should not speak in public, but you are my people. Please hear my story!

My journey began almost 33 years ago when I was born to devout followers of the one Adonai. In my family, I am the third child of seven--the oldest of three daughters. My family has a shop on the Street of Bread Bakers where my father worked with his father when I was born and until he grew old and my brothers took over. My mother cared for the household and us children; she was always so busy but she made sure we girls learned the Torah rules about preparing clean food and teaching our own children about family purity... these would one day be our duties as Jewish wives.

She and my grandmother taught us, boys and girls alike, about purity and marriage but what I remember most is how my mother passed on to us her love of Adonai and her gratitude for the Torah and for her blessing of many children. When my older brother reached the right age, he went to learn the family craft of bread baking from our father, uncle, and grandfather. My younger sisters and I learned to care for the sheep and goats, gather, clean, and dye wool to be woven and cut for our family's garments. I was a happy enough child, busy learning, working, and playing with my friends.... imagining what my future husband would be like and where we would live, giggling with my friends about how many babies we would have.

As I approached womanhood, though, things began to change with me. When I was 12 years old, I began having "dark days" as I thought of them. I felt so very tired and SO SAD. I could not feel the comfort from the presence of Adonai that I remembered almost from birth. I prayed and prayed but it felt like I was praying to no-one, at least to no one who could hear me. These days were terrifying but the darkness would lift after some time and I would feel like myself again.

Then, as girls do, I became a woman. I went to my mother when the day came; she hugged me and cried with happiness! Then she told me that my special first visit as a woman to the mikvah pool in the center of our neighborhood would happen in twelve days. She told me how blessed we are to be the people of Yahweh and to have the gift of ritual cleansing for purity. She reminded me that I could marry and bear children now…it was time for celebration! However, I did not feel like celebrating! My dark days began to blur into one long darkness that I couldn't climb out of. I wanted to stay on my sleeping bench and keep my eyes closed...to sleep. I prayed that submerging myself in the mikvah cleansing pool would heal me and that I could again feel joy at the prospect of meeting my chosen husband and hope for Adonai's blessing of children upon me.

After 12 days, I went with all the women in our household to the mikvah. Only my mother and grandmother went inside with me to the purifying underground pool that my ancestors had built. I removed my tunic, my hair covering, my undergarments and stepped into the collected rainwater. As I sank below the surface three separate times, I prayed the ancient words that my grandmother had taught to me.... but I did not feel pure and light when I climbed out.

Instead, my spirit only grew heavier. The dark days were almost every day; I felt as though I could only see the hopeless, evil things that people did to each other. I felt as though some terrible doom was approaching and the weight of it bore down on my mind. Soon, my body began to feel the weight as well. My very bones ached; I was too tired even to cry.

Mother tried to understand and to help me. Grandmother took me to the healer who said I was inflicted with a spirit of infirmity. He gave her oils and aromatic herbs for my daily treatment but no amount of prayer or treatment broke through the heaviness and pain that I carried in my body and my soul. Months upon months passed. I could only see my chance at marriage and my own children slipping further away from me. Who would want to marry me?

My mother, aunts, and grandmother did not give up easily. They pestered my grandfather to offer a better dowry for me so that the good man they had chosen would be enticed to marry me. By the time grandfather agreed to send 2 valuable servants as my dowry, my body was already beginning to twist. It seemed that my very bones were bending under the weight of my sadness and pain.

Slowly, the women in my household began to turn their match-making energies to my younger sisters. I didn't blame them. It was obvious that I would live under a burden and be a burden. My mother loved me...I know my grandmother and aunts did too... but they had my sisters and brothers and cousins to think of too.

Months became years. My body bent lower and lower until I was doubled over. I had to sleep on a mat on the floor. I hardly showed myself to anyone outside the house. I didn't go to the well with the other young women or to synagogue. It was too painful and slow...besides, I didn't want people to see me and know that I was broken, not whole. I knew they would stare and whisper…and feel pity for me because I was so strange looking. I began to believe that the healer was right about me...that a spirit had possessed me with a great weight of sadness. I often wondered why this happened to me, why Adonai had allowed this dark spirit to cause me such suffering.

As time passed, I realized something... the dark days were not to be constant. Sometimes, I would wake up with some interest in the life going on around me. I didn't know if the dark spirit left me on those days only to return when I began to feel hope. I couldn't predict when it would happen, but I learned to cherish the mornings when I awoke to light that I could see and FEEL!

My mother also learned to cherish those times and to help me make the most of them. If my body was to be bent, why not take on the job of wool sorting and cleaning? I could be useful and productive, a real part of my household. I became an expert at making dyes from the plants that my sisters gathered and made beautifully colored fabric for our household. My aunts even sold some at the market!

My dark days came less often, but they still came. And, even though I felt valued in my house, I did not venture often out into the streets of Capernaum. When I did make my way along the stone streets, using my 2 walking sticks to help bear the weight of my bent upper body, I could feel people fall silent as I crept by. These people thought I was so different from them because my body did not work or look like theirs. Even my sisters and brothers saw me as different, less than, them because the spirit of darkness stole so many of my days. Father's second wife, Magda, thought I was a useless burden, ugly and strange... and told me so when no one was listening.

Even so, I was still part of the household and privy to news and gossip that my sisters and cousins heard at the well. There was some talk of a young rabbi who had sailed across the Sea of Galilee on a fishing boat and was teaching at synagogues in different towns...they said he was performing miracles, curing blindness and casting out evil spirits. On the 4th day of the week, my brother came home from baking early to tell us what he had heard: this rabbi, called Jesus, was at our synagogue yesterday and today...interpreting the Torah scrolls and blessing people. He had a troupe of followers with him and they all slept and ate at the home of my brother’s friend Eleazar. Eleazar told my brother that there is something different about this man Jesus…he must be a prophet!

On the sixth day, news came back from the well with my sisters...Jesus and his friends were seen talking to untouchables...Jesus even embraced one of them! And....some of his friends were women who sat around and learned from him. I decided then and there to go to synagogue the next day. I wanted to see him and hear him teach! In my heart of hearts, I felt a glimmer of hope...what if this rabbi was truly a healer?

The next morning, I arose, covered my hair carefully, gathered my sticks, and began making my way to see this Jesus. It takes me longer than most to navigate the stone streets and when I drew close, I could hear the murmur of people talking. I made my way through the courtyard and over to the stone benches along the wall. I wanted to try to see so I knelt in front of a bench...I had learned that I could look upward and outward that way but only for brief glances because it hurt terribly.

I settled myself just in time to catch a glimpse of a man, perhaps a little younger than me, walking into the center and preparing to read from a scroll. He didn’t look imposing or particularly handsome but…there was a kindness about his features. He began to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

⁷ Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

⁸ Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly;

I was resting, listening to his strong voice read the words of our forefathers, waiting to hear what he would say next when I heard…Woman! Come to me! He was talking to me…somehow I knew he was talking to me! He wanted me to move away from the wall and go to him in front of all those people.

With my heart pounding in my chest, I began to move toward him…it seemed to take forever…people moved to let me through. Finally, I got to an opening where only a few pairs of feet stood. I heard his voice say “Woman, you are set free from your ailment” then he laid one hand gently on my shoulder and one on my head and I stood up straight…just as you see me now! I looked into his face and began to thank him and to praise Adonai!

All the people were astounded and began to gather around me and touch me, crying and hugging me. Pulling me toward them and away from the rabbi Jesus, they enfolded me.

The leader of the synagogue began to loudly admonish the people: don’t come here on Shabbat to be healed…there are six other days…. this is the day of Yahweh! I wasn’t sure what was happening but I know that the leaders and rabbis often have heated discussions about interpreting the scrolls. I was too excited to stay and hear…I couldn’t get close to the teacher who healed me so I hurried home to show my family what had happened to me.

That was almost 4 weeks ago. I have had time to think and pray and try to understand what it all means…many things have changed…but some things haven’t. I now look like most people around me because I can stand up straight. I’m able to move from place to place more quickly and without so much pain. I’ve begun to help teach the children in my household about Adonai’s steadfast love and blessings and about our precious Torah. I’ve walked through the streets back to synagogue many times in these weeks and with the other women to draw water for the household.

But I feel something deep down inside: standing up straight has not made me perfect or even whole. I still feel sad because my time for children has passed. I look into the faces of my family and see that they are burdened in their own ways. My father’s second wife, Magda, is bent under the weight of her jealousy. The widow Nahara worries who will care for her in her old age. Father is forgetting who we are and fading away from us. Even the synagogue leader carries pain in his eyes. We all have burdens that weigh us down but we also have each other and we have the steadfast love of Yahweh. When the rabbi Jesus called me into the center of the synagogue… when I went to him among all those people…when he helped them to SEE ME…that was when I began to heal.

You see, when the rabbi read the words of Isaiah to us, I think this is what he was trying to teach us: when we come together and care for each other, THAT is when we are healed! When we feed the hungry and help carry each other’s burdens, THAT is when the weight is lifted!

When we begin to understand that we NEED each other, that no one among us can be “whole” if they are alone, when we love and accept each other and teach others to do the same, THAT is when our light shall break forth from the dawn and our healing shall spring up quickly!

Shalom.

Benediction: Go forth from this place to loosen the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

But do not hide your own brokenness from your kin,

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up quickly!

Another example: whenever I have the honor of leading worship along with our youth group (usually twice a year), I encourage the young people to make the scriptures their "own" by approaching them in different ways. They have created skits based on the scripture and act them out as they are read; they have suggested hymns and secular songs for sharing in the service; they have shared their own reactions upon engaging with the texts. Here is a leaders' version of the worship bulletin from two such services:

Youth Led Worship 8_4_19 11 AM LEADERS .docx

Youth Led Worship May 20 for Nancy.docx

VI. Holding the Holy with integrity especially as represented in the Sacraments.

The Sacrament of Baptism

I participated in the baptism of one of our young people in the fall of 2019. Rev. John Gill performed the sacrament; I was honored to be part of the process from the beginning, to present her to the congregation, and lead us in a litany of commitment to supporting her Christian journey.

Preceding this day by several months, Violet had been present at her infant sister's baptism and began asking questions of her parents. She wanted to know if she been baptized as a baby; she had not, as her family was not involved with a church community at the time. Around the same time, she was learning about the meaning(s) of baptism in Sunday school classes. After the lesson on John the Baptist, Violet announced to her teacher that she wanted to know more about what being baptized means. Her mother contacted me to ask for a meeting because she also talked about being a Christian and being baptized with her family; she began volunteering to say the blessing before meals and to talk about wanting to follow Jesus.

I had interacted with Violet in various church settings and knew she was mature and thoughtful but, because she was not quite 9 years old, I wanted to hear from her why she wanted to be baptized. After speaking with her, I was touched by her simple desire to "live like Jesus taught us" and her grasp of the symbolism of being baptized. The family then met with Rev. John Gill, who also affirmed her desire to be baptized. The worship service was planned and scheduled; John and I designed it together, choosing hymns, prayers, and responses with baptismal symbolism and language in mind. On the day of the service, I felt the movement of the Holy Spirit through the gathering as we prayed for this young girl, witnessed her baptism, and accepted her into the community of Christ.

Several people who were present told me afterwards that they had felt renewed in their faith journey during the worship service, particularly Violet's baptism. I even received a card from one person later that week, expressing gratitude for all our worship services, but especially this one in which the Holy Spirit was so palpably present.