Lectionary Commentaries for September 1, 2024
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

This isn’t quite what we want to hear at the church council meeting or leadership retreat.

But perhaps the weeks after Pentecost, when the lights-camera-action of high holy seasons are dimmed, is an appropriate time to call us to reflection and introspection.  

Both Mark 6 and 8 record miracle feedings, at least 5,000 satisfied appetites, followed by another 4,000. Between these two narratives, Mark records another eating dilemma, this time not about the availability of food, but about strict group boundaries related to eating. At first glance the passage immediately raises questions about exclusivity: who may eat and who may not eat; who is rightly prepared for the meal and who is not. The implicit question is not how to feed those who are gathered, but rather, why are the disciples not appropriately prepared to eat? More specifically, why has Jesus not required adherence to the “traditions of the elders”? 

An ongoing trope for those who sought to undermine Jesus was to situate him as a lawbreaker. Not only does Jesus allow the disciples to eat without the ceremonial washing of hands, but he also touches those who are sick, interacts with a woman with a hemorrhage, and drives out unclean spirits. He challenges readers to rethink the contexts of laws and traditions, with people in mind. Real people. 

In Mark’s telling, those who are presumed to be among the most religious attend to their customs and traditions with little regard for those who are hungry. Notice, Jesus does not condemn the Jewish washing practice, one of many rituals common to their faith identity. Jewish food practices helped build community and reminded Jewish people of their commitment to live according to God’s values. The issue is not with traditions—it is the privileging of human traditions over the commands of God. 

The missing section of the lectionary reading is Jesus’ commentary on selective following of the oral traditions and circumventing them when it is convenient. In other words, Jesus critiques the leaders for inconsistency in their religious practices, while they hold others to the letter of the law.

Faith communities are grounded in doctrines and creeds and interpretations and traditions. There are traditions for when to stand and when to sit in worship. There are traditions for what to wear: for some the covering of one’s head, and for others the donning of certain garments. In African American churches there are traditional special services, such as Church Anniversary or Women’s Day. While these services have deep history in community-building and fundraising, they may also endure as traditions and marks of African American church life. 

When traditions become theological dictates rather than theology shaping and reshaping our traditions, we are at risk of the errancy of the religious leaders. During this season we might reflect on our church practices and long-held traditions. Have we kept kind regard for others at the center of the traditions to which we are beholden? Have we subjected others to traditions or customs without regard for their needs?  

In the other feeding narratives, the hungry crowds are fed; in this one, the hungry disciples are critiqued. We live in a society that criminalizes the poor, who are often the same persons who lack sufficient food. One of the outcomes of the Covid-19 pandemic was the demand for more food banks and like services—meaning, people are hungry. Not only people who are poor, but people from all stations of life are experiencing the need for help with sustenance. No, every church need not have a food bank. But to neglect the moral good of helping those in need, while honoring religious practices (regardless of faith tradition), is what one writer calls social hypocrisy.

Jesus wades through the waters of traditionalism to get to his more significant point. It is not the external that matters—nothing on the outside defiles. The behaviors and actions that flow from within are what matter. This is a good time for readers to say “ouch” if we are hesitant to say “amen.”  

Jesus’ words disrupt the clean/unclean, pure/impure, defiled/undefiled dichotomies that characterized Jewish-Gentile interactions during this time. Jesus calls the leaders and the crowd to consider the internal communing of the heart and the actions and behaviors that flow from an evil heart.

It is a sobering call to contemplation. Sadly, the news is filled with church leaders who are guilty of sexual crimes, fiscal irresponsibility, theological abuse, and ministerial negligence—yet they purport to uphold the moral, ethical, and ritualistic traditions of their faith. Or they partially comply with the traditions while using the traditions as weapons against others. Without proper safeguards and intentional boundaries, leaders may be particularly susceptible to misdeeds that go unnoticed for a time. We empower leaders and we trust them. Jesus calls church leaders, then the crowd, and us, to search ourselves.

A sermon on this text might fittingly draw listeners to reflection and introspection, repentance and forgiveness, rather than celebration. The good news of the text is that our loving God calls us to examine ourselves, revealing our hidden shortcomings, and drawing us into closer relationship with Godself and humankind.

References

Allen, Ronald J., Dale P. Andrews, and Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, eds. Preaching God’s Transforming Justice: A Lectionary Commentary, Year B. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.

Myers, Ched. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. 20th Anniversary Ed. Biblical Studies. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008.

Deuteronomy (“second law”) is the last book in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). It recounts the previous leg of Israel’s journey to the Promised Land. On the eastern bank of the Jordan River, the Israelites can peer across into the land of which they have dreamed. Before they cross over, though, Moses addresses the people one last time, practically on his deathbed. 

Given the length of Deuteronomy (34 chapters), what we have here is a collection of different “sermons” gathered into one work. Since Moses is about to die and will not get to enter the Promised Land, he spends his last words recapping for the Israelites where they’ve been, reiterating the covenant they made with God, and exhorting them to remain faithful in the land the Lord their God had promised to their ancestors and is now giving to them.

Moses reminds the Israelites of the great responsibility that comes with being the chosen people and with the land the Lord is giving them. The Lord will judge them and their descendants according to very high standards, but they are not unknown expectations. The Lord, through Moses, has already told the Israelites what will be expected of them. 

Across the Jordan lies the potential for abundant life, but only if the people live according to the covenant they made with the Lord, which includes the commandments and lessons of the Torah, given to them through Moses. If they fail at this obligation, their time in the Promised Land will be short, and grave consequences will come their way. The choice is simple: life with God, or death; a future, or an end.

This passage joins the narrative of Israel’s journey to become a covenant community at a crucial moment. Having completed their difficult trek through the wilderness, the Israelites now stand at the edge of the Promised Land, which lies just across the Jordan River. Moses instructs them that they must keep the commandments he has taught them up to this point in preparation for entering the Promised Land. 

He also commands that they not add to or detract from what the Holy asks of them. While this might be seen as literalism, within the metanarrative of the Torah this indicates that people do not need any other statutes in order to live into the covenant that the Holy has made with them. We are certain there were amendments to these commandments as circumstances changed. A prime example of this is found in Numbers 27, where the inheritance laws were amended to address the possibility of a man dying without any sons, yet having daughters. However, at this point in the story, Moses says they have all they need. 

In the next set of verses (6–9), the people hear different motivations for why they should keep the commandments. While the most obvious is to be in right relationship with the Divine, neighbor, and self, we learn that their behavior is also a testament to other people about the God they worship. Adherence to the teachings will demonstrate their “wisdom and discernment” and make others admire their way of living. 

The breadth of the commandments reminds the Israelites that everything they do reflects the kind of deity they worship, a God who is “so near” that almost before the people call, the Holy is there to answer them. The Holy was both beyond human comprehension and intimate enough to know human thoughts. For Israel, it was a both/and—not an either/or—way of imagining the Holy. 

The commandments may seem daunting, yet this is how the people were invited to respond to the saving acts of the Holy. As they prepare to inhabit the Promised Land, the people are encouraged never to forget them or become lax in how they embody the covenantal promises. They must also teach these commandments to future generations. By word and deed, children should be taught how to live in ways that show their love for the Holy and their obligations to their neighbor (broadly defined).

Within this selection from Deuteronomy 4, there are several possible lessons for the faithful living in the 21st century. The Holy provided Israel with all they would need to live out their covenant with the Divine. Are their basic teachings from the biblical materials or our traditions that enable us to live out our call to be followers of Jesus? What might those be? 

An even bigger issue to consider is our motivation for following these teachings. Why do we seek to do the “right thing”? Is it to receive some heavenly award? Is it to feel pious? How do our words and actions demonstrate to others the kind of deity we worship? Do we consider this last question before we speak or take action? Would what we do and say cause observers to describe us as “wise and discerning”? How do we teach these expectations of covenantal behavior to future generations? 

In a world that sees a growing number of “nones” in response to questions about religious affiliation, one wonders what message we are presenting about the Divine and what the Holy expects. Bickering within and among faith communities certainly could be a deterrent to those who are considering what it means to be a person of faith. The use of violence in the name of religion paints a picture of the Holy that many find off-putting or even frightening. As we consider the “promised land” of the future, it seems that a reminder of what the Holy expects is needed. 

For the proclaimer willing to take on a homiletical challenge, the Song of Songs (or Solomon) and the subsequent three-week foray into the book of Proverbs offer rich material on love, God, and how one might live in the created world. These texts are a seedbed for feminist interpretation, didactic instruction for faithful living, and theological connection. While the theological elements of these books—particularly the Song—have sometimes been overlooked or minimized, much fruit can spring forth if only the soil is watered.

Scholars who argue for a strictly secular meaning of the Song miss the many intertextual allusions within the poetry. It contains allusions to Genesis, Deuteronomy, and even prophetic material. At the same time, the Song is love poetry proper, meaning the sensual and erotic imagery is intentional—the poetry does depict the physical and emotional love between two people. What we have in the Song is a piece of literature that is undeniably human, and yet it speaks beyond (or perhaps above) the earthiness of human love into a vertical space of holy wisdom about love.¹

In general, wisdom literature is known for offering practical advice to the reader, but practical should not be conflated with secular. The biblical wisdom material promotes free choice and emphasizes human will, and it enfolds those choices within the larger created order in which God’s sovereignty prevails. Within this description, the Song’s love poetry strives to teach us something about the choices we might make in life (and love), and how we might live faithfully in the world God created.

The Song is also decidedly feminocentric, meaning that women’s voices (the woman lover and the chorus of women) dominate in the text and that their perspectives are kept in focus. Not only is this a key literary feature; it is also a powerful nod toward female empowerment—female voices can and do offer wisdom and theological value. We will see this carry through in the material about Woman Wisdom in Proverbs as well.²

Now that we’ve covered some of the necessary groundwork for reading the Song as a wisdom text, let’s take a look at this specific section of chapter 2.

Following the refrain in 2:7, in which the woman implores the chorus of city women not to arouse love until it desires (in other words, not until the right kind of love is present), we hear the woman conjure her lover into her mind’s eye as she imagines his beckoning invitation to her.

There is an urgency in this text, couched in the repeated use of the Hebrew term hinneh, an attention-grabbing word that defies strict translation. It calls for the reader or listener to pay attention, to spot the change in the scene, to listen carefully. The combination of hinneh-zeh in verses 8–9 and of ki-hinneh in verse 11 adds even more deictic force. More than words can describe, our ears and eyes are drawn to the man even as he is drawn to the woman in the text.

Many feminist-critical readers have interpreted the actions of the man in verses 8–9 as voyeuristic, likening him to a Peeping Tom objectifying the woman who is settled in the privacy of her home. This would be true in other contexts, but we must remember that it is the woman who has conjured him. She has imagined him to be in such a state of desire that he appears almost superhuman, leaping and bounding over mountains and hills.

The windows and lattices in verse 9 would have been small and located high on the wall of a house; they were most likely cut into the wall to provide air. His ability to reach up to them is another feat of strength and desire. The poetry uses complementary parallelisms, plural forms, and active participles in these verses to convey the excitement and intensity of the man’s desire.

His speech, too, is conjured by the woman. Verses 10–14 (the lectionary pericope stops at verse 13) encapsulate his invitation to her. The imagery evokes springtime in the Syria-Palestine region. The rainy season of winter has ended (verse 11), and blossoms and blooms have appeared (verses 12a, 13a). The song of the turtledove or pigeon (verse 12b; Hebrew tor) heralds spring in the region still today. The Hebrew poetry revels in these seasonal images; the smells, sights, and sounds of spring dance playfully around the Hebrew terms et hazamir in verse 12, which can alternatively mean the “time of pruning” or “of singing.” In any case, the “time” is right for the two lovers.

What does this conjuring scene, ripe with desire and urgency, tell us more generally or even theologically about love? On one level, perhaps we can read this description of nature as a metaphor—the woman has reached sexual maturity and is “ready” (see verse 7) for marriage/love. A feminist reading would see her conjuring him as an expression of her consent, her equal partnership in love. These two lovers revel in one another, and the woman in particular is freely imagining what love might look and feel like for her.

On another level, when we consider the Song in its entirety as a wisdom text, we see that these verses eloquently and playfully describe the results of heeding the advice offered in 2:7—wise love is one that readies itself for the right time and delights in the connections to God’s created order. That this advice comes from the woman indirectly evokes yet another image from wisdom literature: namely, Woman Wisdom (see Proverbs, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch). To be sure, the woman in the Song should not be read as Woman Wisdom; what these two figures have in common are their forthright spirits, their connectivity to God’s creation and created order, and their calls to seek out and search after wisdom and love.

Notes

1. See J. L. Andruska, Wise and Foolish Love in the Song of Songs, OS 75 (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Andruska argues that the refrain, “Do not arouse or awaken love until it desires” (2:7; 3:5; 8:4), is a key element in understanding the search for “wise love” in the Song.
2. See Working Preacher commentaries by this author for Proverbs 1:20–33 and 31:10–31.

Psalm 15 presents a picture of holiness, a way of life that is in keeping with God’s own nature. The psalm comprises a two-part question (verse 1) followed by an extended answer (verses 2–5a) and a concluding blessing (verse 5b). It suggests that the righteous person is driven by an overriding concern for the well-being of the neighbor. Personal holiness requires a commitment to the wholeness of the community. God responds to this commitment with an unshakable promise (verse 5b).

A question of access to God (verse 1)

Psalm 15 exhibits antiphony. It presents the interaction of two or more voices through a formula of call and response. Such antiphony is found at several points throughout the book of Psalms (for example, Psalms 24, 91) and is a clear indicator that a psalm originated in a liturgical context.

Even today, liturgies are full of antiphony. Antiphonal words and music can be found in the services of many Christian traditions. Antiphony abounds in calls to worship, prayers of confession, prayers of thanksgiving, the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving. In fact, we have antiphony every time “all God’s people say … Amen!”

“Altar calls” are yet another form of antiphony. The preacher summons the community to “get right with God,” and individuals respond, both with the act of coming down the aisle and with words—a profession, a commitment to a new way of life. Psalm 15 is roughly analogous to an “altar call.” It was part of an ancient entrance liturgy, an antiphonal question-and-answer that accompanied the approach to a holy place. The psalm describes what it takes to get right with God, to come to the altar—a place of sacrifice and devotion where the divine presence can be experienced in a profound way.

The psalm begins with a question about who can approach the holy place: “O LORD, who can abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?” (verse 1; see also Psalm 24:3). In the psalm’s earliest liturgical context, God’s “tent” and “holy hill” refer to the temple in Jerusalem, the place where God’s presence was palpable.

The Old Testament reflects many, sometimes contradictory ways of understanding what was required to be in God’s presence. Just like today, there were differing ways of answering fundamental questions of access, inclusion, and belonging. What did it mean to “get right with God”? Who could be in God’s holy places? How long could one be there? How exactly can a human be in contact with the holiness of God? How close can one get? There are many answers to these questions throughout the Old Testament, not just one.¹ For its part, Psalm 15 focuses its answer on what we today would call ethics. Its answer is clear. Getting right with God means getting right with the community.

The characteristics of a holy life (verses 2–5a)

The description of the righteous in verses 2–5a was once part of a liturgy for entrance into the temple. Yet this ancient altar call has an enduring rhetorical effect. A remarkable feature of its poetic form is its alternating list of “dos” (verses 2, 4) and “don’ts” (verses 3, 5), as well as its balance of three positive statements (verse 2) followed by three negative statements (verse 3) characterizing the righteous.

Despite its complex structure, the answer (verses 2–5a) to the opening query (verse 1) is simple. Those who can come to God’s altars are those whose words and actions are pure; they “walk blamelessly” (hôlēk tāmim, verse 2). The very common Hebrew verb “walk” (hālak) has an idiomatic sense in this context, meaning all of one’s actions or behaviors, one’s way of life.  When the psalmist refers to the way one walks, it is not so much a description of how one gets from one place to another, but the totality of how one lives.

There are those who walk in the right ways (see, for example, Psalm 1:1–3; 26:1, 3, 11; 37:14; 84:11), and others whose “walk” reflects their unrighteousness (see, for example, Psalm 68:21; 82:5; 89:30). This Hebrew idiom is so pervasive that the entire legal tradition within rabbinic Judaism is known as Halakhah, literally “the way one walks,” or, as Lawrence H. Shiffman describes it, “the life of Torah, encompassing all areas of human life, including civil, criminal, political, religious, moral, ritual, and familial issues.”²

Psalm 15:2 describes those who walk “blamelessly” (tāmim). The Hebrew tāmim here suggests wholeness, completeness, being fully integrated. This is a picture of people who live with integrity, those who “do what is right and speak truth from their heart” (verse 2). Their internal orientation matches what one sees on the outside and hears in their words.

These people are known for what they avoid doing as much as for what they do. They avoid “slander” (verse 3), speaking falsehoods that are meant to bring harm to others. In fact, they never do anything that would hurt or disgrace those who are near them: they “do no evil to their friends [rēʿā], nor take up reproach against their neighbors [qārōb].” The Hebrew words in verse 3 for “friends” and “neighbors” are general terms that simply describe those who share the same proximity. The one who can come close to God is the one who does no harm to those who are close by.

The characterization of the righteous ones continues with a description of their disposition and perceptions. They can tell the difference between good and bad (verse 5), and they align their loyalties with those who recognize God’s authority. The righteous ones acknowledge God’s law and are wary of those who are a law unto themselves, those who acknowledge no authority over their own desires. Because the righteous know that their words matter, they keep their promises. They do so even when it is difficult or costly.

The last characteristic of the righteous has to do with economics. To “take a bribe against the innocent” (verse 5) meant profiting from a lie to the detriment of someone wrongly accused. Likewise, in the context of ancient Israel, “to lend money at interest” meant that one was making a profit off the poverty of others (see Leviticus 25:35–38). In short, those who enter God’s presence do not exploit the difficulties of their neighbors for their own advantage.

God’s unshakable commitment to the righteous (verse 5b)

At the end of Psalm 15, we have heard an answer to the opening questions “Who may abide …? Who may dwell?” The answer resounds clearly: the people whose words, actions, and dispositions are oriented toward building up the community, not tearing it down. The people who dedicate themselves to the stability of the neighbors will be stable themselves. They “shall never be moved [yimmôṭ]” (verse 5b).

Since the psalm begins with the idea of abiding and dwelling, one might interpret the final benediction to mean that the righteous ones will never depart the abode of God. God’s home becomes their home. They will never move. While this reading is possible, it is more probable that “not being moved” here (mwṭ in the niphal stem) has a different sense, meaning one has stability and certainty of divine protection. This security keeps one upright amidst difficult circumstances, a scenario that is described in many psalms (for example, Psalms 16:8; 21:7; 30:6; 62:2; 112:6).

By contrast, when someone or something is “moved” (mwṭ) in the Psalms, it is a sign of trouble, chaos, even social and moral disarray (for example, Psalms 13:4; 46:2, 6; 60:2). Yet Psalm 15 claims that the righteous ones can approach God’s presence and stand firm.

Connections for the church

For communities reading Psalm 15 today, it can be difficult to discuss drawing distinctions about who can have access to God. It is important to remember that the Old Testament presents different views about access to divine presence and blessing.

The challenge of a text like Psalm 15 is that many of us will quickly associate ourselves with the righteous, the holy ones, before attending to the terms of the holiness the text describes. We can use this text to reinforce group identities in unhelpful and unreflective ways. It can be all too easy for us to identify who is in and who is out, who is good and who is bad, who are the righteous and who are the wicked. We often mischaracterize difference as wickedness and similarity as righteousness. Readers must be aware of this dynamic when approaching the clear moral terms expressed in Psalm 15.

Yet for careful readers, there is a great benefit to meditating on this text, with its extreme clarity and specificity about what holiness looks like. This ancient altar call invites us to get right with God, to examine ourselves, to reconsider our actions, our motivations, our essential orientation to those around us. It forces us to acknowledge that there is no division between right beliefs and right actions. God upholds us as we uphold others. We support those around us even when it is costly—especially when it is costly. Whatever the cost, we shall not be moved.

Notes

1. Many studies trace these issues across the Hebrew Bible. See, for example, Eyal Regev, “Priestly Dynamic Holiness and Deuteronomic Static Holiness,” VT 51 (2001): 243–261; Paul Jensen, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World, JSOTSup 106 (Sheffield: 1992); Christian Frevel and Christophe Nihan, eds., Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Judaism (Leiden: 2013).
2. Lawrence H. Shiffman, “Halakhah: Second Temple and Hellenistic Judaism,” EBR 11:2.

Lectionary editors do not always make the most helpful choices.¹ James 1:17–27 exemplifies this. Rather than a single argument, the passage contains at least three arguments, one of which begins far earlier than verse 17. Each of these arguments in James 1 introduces later portions of the letter. James 1 serves both as a precursor to the rest of the letter, and as a succinct exposition of what James calls “religion that is pure and undefiled” (verse 27).

James begins by contrasting children of desire with children of God (verses 12–18), an argument that ends with the first two verses of today’s lection. This theme will recur at the end of James 3 and through most of James 4. Following this, he contrasts human sharp-tongued hot-headedness with God’s justice (1:19–21, 26), the focus of most of James 3. Finally, he differentiates between those who hear and those who do God’s word (1:22–25), the primary subject of James 2.

Each section of today’s lectionary passage could become its own sermon. The first portion, when taken within its literary context (1:12–18), highlights the contrast between the gifts and acts of giving that come from God and the desires that lead to sin and death (1:14–17). Here, the author contrasts two birth narratives.

In the first, desire or craving (epithumia), gendered as a feminine noun in Greek, conceives and gives birth to sin (hamartia), who in turn conceives and gives birth to death (thanatos). By contrast, the gifts of God are good and complete (teleios), coming down from above (verse 17). These come to us from the God who is at once figured as the “Father of lights” and as the one who has given birth to the community of faith through the word of truth, a remarkably feminine description (verse 18).

The community of faith represents the first fruits of God’s creatures, an allusion perhaps to the expected coming of Christ. The first portion of this lection suggests meditations on what it means to be children of God rather than children of desire.

The second portion of this lection focuses on communication, a topic of some currency in the contemporary climate. James, here, counsels the value of listening and of keeping a cool head (verse 19), not only as ends in themselves but because their obverse does not produce God’s dikaiosune (verse 20)—God’s “justice” or “righteousness,” depending on one’s understanding of that word.

Note, here, that James does not warn against all speech or anger, but rather against a temperament that speaks too quickly and is easily angered. Instead of these attributes, James’ audience must turn from filthy and evil behavior to welcome God’s implanted word (verse 21). This part of the lection invites an exploration of the connection between one’s communication, verbal or virtual, and one’s faithfulness to God.

The third part of the lection picks up a theme that will be repeated in next week’s reading also: the importance of faith-informed action. Faithful action, for James, means paying specific attention to “the law of liberty,” possibly a shorthand for Torah, especially the Ten Commandments (James 2:11) and Leviticus 19:18 (James 1:25). Believers should enact the law of liberty, rather than just listen to it, so that they not become like those who look into a mirror and then immediately forget their own reflection (verse 24).

Here, a contrast arises between those who look into the mirror and those who look into the law, a contrast perhaps between seeing things as one wishes and seeing things as God wishes.

James 1:26–27 encapsulates the spirit of the entire chapter, by pointing out the primary characteristics of “true religion.” Here, all three themes merge. Pure religion, according to James, guards its speech (verse 26; compare with verses 19–21). It acts out its faith by caring for society’s marginalized persons, here represented by “widows and orphans” (verse 27; compare with verses 22–25). And it keeps itself unstained by the world.

This last corresponds to verses 17–18 obliquely, but begins a theme that James will continue throughout the letter: the contrast between God and the world that culminates in the pronouncement that “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (4:3).

Throughout these verses, James invites the question: “What does it mean to live as a Christian?” James 1 suggests preliminary answers, answers that deepen as the our epistle lections continue for the next few weeks.

Notes

1. This commentary was previously published on this site for September 2, 2018.