Preaching Benkhuysen and Hoch - The Presbyterian...

Preaching to Rupture the Routine: Presented by Amanda Benckhuysen and Robert Hoch

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Preparing for Lent: Exegetical Insights and Preaching Ideas for 2013


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Lent as a season of   fasting  prayer  penitence  almsgiving

Petition by R.O. Hodgell, Black and White Linocut.

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  What it isn’t: “The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering. Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them.”

  What it might be: “. . . It is the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.” Thomas Merton


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Ancient baptismal font, circa 4th century. Panagia Ekatontapyliani Cathedral in Paroikia on the island of Paros, Greece

Lent as an opportunity to remember/reclaim our baptismal identity

 Ash Wednesday:  marks the beginning of the season of Lent   introduces the themes of morality, confession,

repentance, and Christian disciplines

 Lent Sundays 1-5

 Holy Week:   the week leading up to Easter, including Palm Sunday   focuses on the passion of Christ.


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Part II: Narra)ve Landscape of Lent (Year C)

1st Sunday 2nd Sunday 3rd Sunday 4th Sunday 5th Sunday

Old Testament Readings

Deut. 26:1-‐11 First Fruits and Tithes

Gen. 15:1-‐12, 17-‐18 God’s Promise to Abraham

Isaiah 55 InvitaBon to Abundant Life

Joshua 5:9-‐12 Passover at Gilgal

Isaiah 43:16-‐21 RestoraBon

New Testament Readings

Lk. 4:1-‐13 TemptaBon NarraBve

Lk.13:31-‐35 Lament Over Jerusalem

Lk. 13:1-‐9 Repent or Perish, Parable of the Fig Tree

Lk. 15:1-‐3, 11b-‐32 Prodigal

John 12:1-‐8 AnoinBng with Expensive Perfume

Cumulative Strategy following Gospel lections:   Lent 1-4: Lukan texts

Strengths:   Draws from a common literary and theological context   Maintains a Christological focus throughout the season   Leads into Holy Week (Lukan Passion narrative)

Weaknesses:   Tends to understate OT texts   Narrative break between NT Lent 1 and Lent 2, 3, and 4   Another “jump” from Luke to John in Lent 5 (John 12)


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Salvation history schema following OT lections   Lent 1 – Origins   Lent 2 – Abraham   Lent 3 – Exodus   Lent 4 – Nation   Lent 5 – Eschatological hope

Strengths:   Rehearses the story of redemption, preparing us for Holy

week.   Makes use of Old Testament texts

Weaknesses:   Lacks Christological focus

A Peculiar Inauguration

 First Sunday of Lent  Deut. 26:1-11   Psa. 91:1-2, 9-16  Rom. 10:8b-13   Lk. 4:1-13


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  Luke 4:1-13  Years A, B, and C begin Lent with the temptation

narrative.

 Origins Theme: Temptation shows what NOT to expect from Jesus:  Not self-care but self-giving;  Not raw assertion of power but unapologetic embrace

of God’s love;  Not spectacle but radical humility.

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 Year C begins with Luke’s particular spin on the temptation narrative:

  Temptation nested between baptism and genealogy, preceding Jesus’ inaugural sermon.

  Just 2 vss. in Mark; 11 vss. in Matthew; 13 vss. in Luke.


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  Luke appears to follow Matthew, mostly.

  Order of temptations differ: 1st. Stones to Bread; 2nd. Kingdoms of the Earth; 3rd. Pinnacle of the Temple (Luke reverses Matthew’s order for the last two)

  Luke leaves us with ... “Until an opportune time” -- a sense of foreboding casts a shadow over the rest of the text.

  The saying, “We cast a shadow not our own” comes to mind, but it would be the world that walks in a shadow not its own, namely the reconciling shadow of the Christ.

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  Notice the pattern of “if” clauses ...

  If you are the son of God ...

  If you will worship me ...

  If you are the son of God ...

  Jesus refused to be a stunt man. He did not come to walk on hot coals, swallow fire, or put his hand in the lion’s mouth to demonstrate that he had something worthwhile to say.   Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus, 55.


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Three Temptations as Theological Renunciations:

  (1) You are my son: Deny God as providential and agent of the story (turn this stone into bread);

  (2) You are my beloved: Give glory to another in exchange for worldly power;

  (3) With you I am well-pleased: If you’re God’s elect, prove it ... Jesus will not “prove” God’s faithfulness but show it.

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Some Christian writings are so Christocentric that in reading them one tends to forget what Luke does not forget: the story of salvation is God’s story. God led Israel; God inspired the prophets; God sent John the Baptist; God sent Jesus; God raised up Jesus; and God sends the Holy Spirit. . . . Luke neither longs for nor calls the church back to a golden age, of Jesus or of the early church, but shows that each time and place has its own appropriateness in the plan of God.

- Fred Craddock, “Luke” in Harper’s Bible Commentary (1988), 1013.


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  Jesus full of the Holy Spirit undergoes famine;

  Jesus who shares a “bodily” relationship with the Holy Spirit (“the Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove”) endures a forty day famine, his “body” emaciated and undergoing the trials of temptation.

  Suffering famine, Christ is not reduced to the destitution/desperation of famine. In the far country, he know whose he is and for what reason he has come.

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 The land that the Lord your God gave to you ...

  Lord God gives the land: repeated 5 times; Land/ground repeated 5 times; fruit/bounty 4 times cf. with the destitution produced by slavery (5b-7)

  Closes the narration of the law just as it began in chapter twelve: in the context of worship.

  The story moves from the “God of my ancestors” to the “God of my heart and my lips” (Romans 10:9); moves from the faith that we have inherited to the faith that we are called to share in as community.


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  Usually, “inaugurations” are great celebrations and hopeful. The temptation narrative inaugurates the particular kind of testing Jesus will undergo:

  After his sermon, “Is not this the son of Joseph?”   At his trial: “If you are the messiah, tell us.” Jesus replied, “If

I tell you, you will not believe. . . .”   He will take the way of the cross rather than the way of ease.   He will show his love through countless metaphors of the lost

being found.

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 Maybe we are witnessing the report of the death of the old creation in Jesus Christ, a baptism into the famine of the creaturely imagination; the beginnings of a New Thing:

The chief biblical analogy for baptism is not the water that washes but the flood that drowns. Discipleship is more than turning over a new leaf. It is more fitful and disorderly than gradual moral formation. Nothing less than daily, often painful, lifelong death will do. - William Willimon


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  Christ is the vine that clings to the cross of the far country, producing the grape of our salvation, the first fruits of doxology.

  We dwell in the shadow of the Almighty: to the world “exposed” but in God’s salvific economy, clothed with Christ’s unapologetic love (Ps. 91:1)

  Christ married himself to the far country, changing its name from the Forsaken and the Desolate (Is. 62), to “My Son/Daughter, My Beloved, The one in whom I am well pleased”

 Third Sunday of Lent   Isa. 55:1-9   Psa. 63:1-8   1 Cor. 10:1-13   Lk. 13:1-9


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 Textual Notes and Observations - Isa. 55:1-9:

  Concludes the collection commonly known as Second Isaiah (Is 40-55) addressed to God’s people in exile

  What precedes this text are words of comfort, the promise of redemption, and the announcement of the end of judgment and exile

  Isa 55:1-9 as the climax – the call to God’s people to return to the Lord

Scribbles on the margins

Three times “Come”

 Invitation is insistent

 Invitation is without criteria – extended to all

 Invitation in vv. 1-2 forms a bookend with a comment about God’s character – God is not like human beings (vv. 8-9)

Scribbles on the margins . . .


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  Invitation is to participate in a lavish feast

  image is one of abundance: “eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food” (v. 2b)

  Table as place to be nourished, to experience community, to know place, identity, acceptance, an expression of divine hospitality

Hospitality is the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. — Henri J. M. Nouwen


 In Scripture, feast is a symbol of

  restoration of God’s blessing (“land of milk and honey”)

  life lived in God’s presence (Ps. 63:5)

  the joyful feast of the Lord (Lk 24:28-35)

  the kingdom of God (Lk 14:15-24)



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 Imperatives dominate

  come, buy, eat, listen carefully to me, delight, incline your ear, seek the Lord, call upon him

  Plurals – the text envisions the community gathered

  maintains tension between what God does - setting the table – and our response - returning to the Lord, opening ourselves up again to God’s grace.


 Textual Notes and Observations - Lk 13:1-9:

  Is suffering and death punishment for sin? (Jn 9:2)?

  Jesus skirts the question

  Jesus’ concern: not on a general relationship between sin and suffering but on the fact that the sin of his listeners will lead to their death.

  Parable of fig tree functions as a call to repentance


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 Parable of Fig Tree

  Sin characterized as barrenness – not bearing fruit

  For all their religiosity, the people still do not get what God is about.

  Evidence borne out in the following story – people exhibit concern for cultic regulations but lack fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control

  God is patient . . . (God’s character here is juxtaposed with that of the people of God) and expectant

  Together, Isa 55 and Lk 13 issue an invitation, an urgent call to return to the Lord, to leave Babylon, to step out in faith, to open ourselves up to the feast of God’s blessings, love, and mercy.

Repentance is the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of Him; and it consists in the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the Spirit. - John Calvin


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 Lenten themes week 3 – Redemption

  Typically centered on narratives of the Exodus – God rescues Israelites from their oppression

  Here, redemption is imagined as a banquet, a lavish feast that is contrasted with the vacuous and paltry offerings for nourishment, hospitality, community, and acceptance we experience in our earthly reality.

 Image of the Feast:

  Suggests something of the gracious hospitality of God, a giving of oneself for the sake of God’s people (most clearly demonstrated in the person of Jesus – in his life, suffering, and death)

  The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. - Frederick Buechner


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 Image of the Feast:

  What would it take to leave Babylon? What would repentance look like? What aspects of our current reality impede our experience of God’s grace and presence in our lives?

  Table is a place that reflects not only our reconciliation with God but also with others. Who will be at the banquet? What do we imagine it will look like?

  Revised Common Lectionary: A website of resources – texts, art, prayers – for lectionary texts. Provided by Vanderbilt Divinity Library (http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu)

  Working Preacher: A website giving short commentary on lectionary texts. (www.workingpreacher.org)

  Long, Kimberly B. Feasting on the Word Worship Companion: Liturgies for Year C, Volume 1, Advent through Pentecost. WJKP, 2012.

Recommended Resources


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  Focus on Christian Disciplines (children’s message or moment of discipleship)

  Lent 1 – Prayer

  Lent 2 – Confession

  Lent 3 – Hospitality

  Lent 4 – Meditating on Scripture

  Lent 5 – Fasting (from technology)

  Lent 6 – Service

Lent for Children

 Teach Worship during Lent

  Lent 1 – Call to Worship (origins/election)

  Lent 2 – Confession, Assurance of Pardon, Expression of

Gratitude (Abraham/covenant)

  Lent 3 – Scripture and Sermon (exodus/redemption)

  Lent 4 – Offering (nation/thanksgiving)

  Lent 5 – Benediction (eschatological hope/joy)

Lent for Children

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