Lectionary Discussion Group

Week of Sunday, September 16, 2007, Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Exodus 32:1,7-14

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."

The LORD said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, `These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'" The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation."

But Moses implored the LORD his God, and said, "O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, `It was with evil intent that he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth'? Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, `I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'" And the LORD changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.

1 Timothy 1:12-17

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-- of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Luke 15:1-10

All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

Historical Tidbit:

Why were tax collectors ranked among the “sinners?” In Roman times, tax collectors were uniformly hated. This was not because the Romans didn’t do good things for the people with the tax money—hard to argue with good roads, relative equality before the law, and military protection—but because tax collectors were in business for themselves. The Romans had a passion for privatization of government functions, including tax collection. So they would auction off the right to tax a district to a private individual, usually of the social class of curiales. In return, the curialis was granted the right to tax as he pleased within a district. If he raised more money than he had bid, he kept the difference; if he raised less, then he had to make up the difference out of his own pocket. The burden fell especially hard on the poor, because the rich were powerful enough to avoid paying taxes at all. This gave him an obvious incentive to squeeze the people as hard as he could, especially the poor; he was a lot more likely to be a jerk about it than your local IRS agent, working on a civil service salary, and we know they can be fairly harsh. Centuries later, privatization of tax collection and military forces played a large role in the fall of the Roman Empire.

Theological Tidbits:

- The First Commandment says: "I am The Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me." (Exodus 20:2-3). Moses had brought the tablets with the Ten Commandments down from the mountain only shortly before the Israelites made the bull. This was really, really bad. The worst possible sin in Jewish law was (and still is) idolatry.

- Paul was formerly a Pharisee and an idolater, and persecuted Christians before he was convicted of the truth of the Gospel and converted. (Acts 9:1 ff.)

- The two Epistles to Timothy were probably not originally written in their current form, but cobbled together by a later follower of Paul from fragments actually written by Paul.

- Tradition holds that the Book of Exodus was written by Moses. More modern scholarship suggests that it was written by the scribes during the Jews’ exile in Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar based upon oral traditions.

- The Gospel of Luke was probably written by Luke, a Roman doctor who never met Jesus. He was a careful historian in the tradition of the great Greek and Roman historians, and took excellent care to get his facts straight. He also wrote the Book of Acts.

- Aaron was Moses’ brother, and Moses had left him in charge of the Israelites while he was up on the mountain talking to God. God had not wanted Aaron to be a leader, but Moses had insisted, because Moses was not a good speaker and Aaron was (Exodus 6:28-7:7)

- Moses was not the first or last to stand up to God. Virtually all of the Old Testament prophets were quite skeptical of God at times and felt free to ask him questions. Doubts and questions to our religious leaders and even God are OK.

- Note that Jesus did not ask the tax collectors to give up being tax collectors. As is made clear by the examples of “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s,” (Matthew 22:21) and his encounter with the faithful centurion (Luke 7:1-10), Jesus did not necessarily demand that we give up our day jobs. (see also Acts 16:11-15)

- The study of how the Church works and should work is called “Ecclesiology.”

Questions:

1. What light does the passage from Exodus throw on the relationship of group dynamics to the individual? Do we set up idols to give us group identity? How can we subvert this logic of idolatry and group identity by bearing Christian witness?

A. God wants to destroy the Israelites when he sees their idolatry, but Moses stands up to Him and begs Him for mercy. Would we have the courage to stand up to authority and ask for mercy under similar circumstances?

B. What light does Aaron’s role in this passage throw on Pilate’s role in the crucifixion? What are the similarities and differences? What are the contrasts between Aaron and Moses?

2. In the passage from Luke, Jesus implicitly points out to the Pharisees that they have forgotten the mercy that God showed to their ancestors who made the golden calf.

A. Jesus transforms the grumbling of the Pharisees by implicitly pointing out that they are likewise idolaters. What types of idolatry are they guilty of in this passage?

B. How are we idolaters?

3. Would we have the courage to accept a former persecutor and idolater of the group and the Law like Paul into our midst? How about someone of weak will, like Aaron? Would we accept a known sinner?

4. What has God done in your life to bring you back when you were lost?

5. Ecclesiology: Do these passages shed light on the current crisis in the Anglican Communion? What should we do? Is the idea of a supreme Primates’ Council just a fearful reaction like the Israelites, and the erection of a golden calf? Why or why not? Would we welcome back those who have strayed?

Suggestions for Further Reading:

Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, Scribner, 1932. This book is both a classic of 20^th-century American theology and political thought.