Lectionary Discussion Group
Week of Sunday, November 11, 2007 , Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Job 19:23-27a
Job said,
"O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another."
2 Thessalonians 2:13-3:5
We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us, so that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified everywhere, just as it is among you, and that we may be rescued from wicked and evil people; for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, that you are doing and will go on doing the things that we command. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.
Luke 20:27 (28-33)34-38
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus [and asked him a question, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her."]
Jesus said to them, "Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”
How to Read The Bible, The Literal Method:
The first method of reading the Bible is the literal. This means, in part, just reading the passage and getting the plot. Who did what to whom? But it’s also important to start to understand how and why, and what they’re getting at. Sometimes it’s baldly on the face of the passage, as we see, for instance, in our passage from Luke this week. This passage doesn’t take much interpretation to understand the basic plot of what’s going on. It can help to understand what Sadducees were all about—check out the theological tidbits for further information—but the basic plot and ideas are staring right at you.
Additionally, sometimes the literal method requires knowledge of context from other books of the Bible. For instance, the parable of Zacchaeas the tax-collector, from last week’s Gospel reading, in order to be fully understood, required that the Old Testament laws regarding when and how much a person had to make restitution for his wrongs. Likewise, in order to fully understand the context and importance of Paul’s letters, they cannot be read in isolation, but must be read in the context of the Acts of the Apostles and also with each other. For instance, in order to understand 2 Thessalonians, you have to understand the context of the founding of the church in Thessalonica, what the community was like, and that Paul was with Timothy and Silvanus when he wrote the letter (thus the use of ‘we.’) The literal interpretation is always the starting-point of any overall interpretation of a biblical text.
Theological Tidbits:
- This passage from Job is a fascinating foreshadowing of the coming of Christ. As
- Note the passage that reads “now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.” This is one of the keys to understanding the resolution of the tension between
- As an historical matter, Roman Catholics tended to put great emphasis on works, and thus relied on the Epistle of St. James. (See James 2:14-26.) Martin Luther, on the other hand, actually doubted the canonical status of James’s letter, because he believed it to be directly contradictory to Paul’s doctrine of justification. Modern theological scholarship (both among Protestants and Catholics) tends to see this as a false dichotomy that can be resolved through a subtle understanding.
- This passage ties together justification, sanctification, and grace into one knot.
o Justification is the process of making us justified before God. This is about asking and receiving forgiveness for our sins, but is ultimately about faith: those with faith will be saved.
o Santification is the process of being made holy. This is a process that takes a lifetime, and is the product of a strong prayer life and a lifetime of love and good works.
o Grace is how God justifies and sanctifies us. It is an internal force (although sometimes triggered by external events), given by God, that helps us grow as Christians into the human beings we are meant to be. Grace brings us the faith necessary for justification, and gives us the internal strength to be sanctified.
- Sadducees, along with Pharisees, dominated intra-Jewish politics around the time of Jesus (note that the Romans controlled national and international politics). The Sadducees were, if anything, more legalistic than the Pharisees. They took the stance that there was no such thing as a “spiritual” world. Therefore, there was no soul; if the body died, the person was irrevocably lost. It also logically follows that there is no resurrection. Following similar logic, there must have been no angels, which are purely spiritual beings.
- The Sadducees were closely tied to the
- The Old Testament law required a man to marry his brother’s widow and have a child with her that would inherit his brother’s estate. (Deuteronomy 25:6-10.) This is why the woman would marry each of the 7 brothers successively if she had not borne a son.
- Note how the conception of Heaven that Jesus has is quite different from the Mormon or Muslim concept.
- Variants of the Greek word anastasiV (=anastasis) are used multiple times in this passage. This word means “lift up,” “resurrect,” or “lay down like a stone.” Thus, Jesus is punning again—we will be lifted up, resurrected, and made solid in the afterlife in ways that we cannot imagine now.
- God’s freedom is found through the grace that gives us life. As Jesus says in our Gospel reading, God is the God of the living; this is reiterated by the reading from Job, who talks about how he will be made truly living when his Redeemer walks the earth. Similarly, we are made whole—given full life, and made the human beings we ought to be—through the power of grace.
Questions:
1. What is your conception of what Heaven is like?
2. Can you tell any stories of how justification has happened in your life?
3. Can you tell any stories of how sanctification has occurred for you?
4. What does grace act like? Do you know it when it acts?
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