Today in the Spirit: Lent 5C (Passion Sunday)
Passion Sunday at Lent 5 marks the beginning of the traditional Passiontide period, which extends through the Saturday before Palm Sunday. This deep in Lent, we walk with Jesus in our worship into the last week of his life, either just before or after his triumphal entry.
In Year C, the assigned Gospel reading is the Parable of the Wicked Tenants out of Luke 20:9-19. (We hear Matthew’s version of this parable in our Sunday worship at Pentecost, Proper 22A). In this passage, Jesus tells the story of a vineyard owner who is seeking to collect his share of profits from renters working the land. The wicked tenants turn away three servants who approach the renters on the owner’s behalf. Finally, the owner sends his son, whom the tenants shamefully kill and cast out. Jesus concludes the owner “will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others” (16). The people hearing the people are aghast, and the religious leaders, who conclude (no doubt rightly) that Jesus is identifying them as the wicked tenants, are determined to arrest Jesus as soon as they can.
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In the context of our worship, the appointed OT reading from Isaiah 43:16-21 serves as an announcement that Jesus of Nazareth is himself the newest and greatest work of God in the world to bring about the deliverance of his chosen people. Much in the same way our Lord’s parable challenges the people listening to surrender to him, to be broken but not crushed, the LORD’s words through Isaiah are, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (19).
The assigned Psalm 126 is most likely a post-exilic song registering the hopes of the people of Israel for restoration in their land. It is essentially a prayer psalm with the plea to God, “Restore our fortunes, O LORD” (4, ESV), at the center. Recited or sung after the Isaiah reading, it looks to the realization of the “new thing” God has promised. The Parable of the Wicked Tenants, heard after this psalm, comes across in our worship as a warning against the tragic waste of God’s favor due to stubborn disobedience.
Out of the assigned reading from Philippians 3:7-16, we will benefit from the apostle Paul’s famous words describing his own faith journey: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (8). His willingness to surrender all for Christ is based, much like the psalmist, on certainties pertaining to the past and future: “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead” (10-11).
As always, the assigned Collect for this Sunday will serve to place our hopes for being attentive to God’s “new thing” (OT reading), or for realizing the God’s “fortunes” (the psalm), or for avoiding judgement by God (Gospel) wholly on the grace of God through Christ: “Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that…our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The Collect
Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Do You Not Perceive It? (Isaiah 43:16-21)
16 Thus says the Lord,
Isaiah 43:16-21
who makes a way in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
17 who brings forth chariot and horse,
army and warrior;
they lie down, they cannot rise,
they are extinguished, quenched like a wick:
18 “Remember not the former things,
nor consider the things of old.
19 Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
20 The wild beasts will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
21 the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.
Our passage is among the earlier oracles in the second part of Isaiah (chs. 40-55) directed to a future generation of Israelites located in Babylon after the exile. It is clear from the language that YHWH seeks to frame the upcoming deliverance of his people from Babylon as an event like the liberation of the former generation from slavery in Egypt. The exhortation “Remember not the former things…Behold, I am doing a new thing” (18-19) is to encourage them to expect something as great as the past thing, but “new” for their own day. It is as if to say, “I was their God, and I am yours too. I will save you mightily as I did them.” We, of course, count the coming of Jesus to be yet another “new thing” for the people of God– and this time the greatest deliverance of all, not from human empires but from the spiritual strongholds of sin and Satan.
Devotionally, we are challenged like the Israelites of old not to trip up on the question, “now [Jesus] springs forth, do you not perceive it?” Unless we have eyes trained to “behold,” it is just as easy for us to miss the works of God today as it was for the exiles in Babylon. Just as they were stuck in the ruts of what appeared to be their unchanging existence, so often are we. It is not merely that we don’t see the forest for the trees, which is a shortcoming of human perception, we fail to “perceive” spiritually the “water in the wilderness” and the “rivers in the desert.”
Thank God for the provision of the Holy Spirit who, Jesus teaches, is himself the “waters” in our desert:
“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive.”
John 7:38-39
Today, Holy Spirit, flow within me and out through me with such force that I will readily recognize and live by “the new thing” you are doing where I am, and in my time.
Restore our Fortunes O LORD (Psalm 126)
1 When the Lord overturned the captivity of Zion, *
Psalm 126, New Coverdale Psalter (BCP 2019)
then were we like those who dream.
2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter *
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
3 Then they said among the nations, *
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
4 Indeed, the Lord has done great things for us already, *
whereof we rejoice.
5 Overturn our captivity, O Lord, *
as when streams refresh the deserts of the south.
6 Those who sow in tears *
shall reap with songs of joy.
7 He who goes on his way weeping and bears good seed *
shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him.
This psalm is a prayer of the people of God in the interim between the partial and full realizations of God’s blessings. Spoken, perhaps, from the lips of pilgrim on route to the newly constructed second temple in Jerusalem, the petition, “Overturn our captivity, O LORD” (5, New Coverdale), or more commonly, “Restore our fortunes, O LORD” (4, ESV), is made after recalling the joy of having returned from exile to “Zion” and before the dream of the full restoration of the nation. He has returned to the land, but the land is dry like the Negev desert. What is hoped for is a quick and dramatic delivery of new life and prosperity from YHWH, like the flood waters that suddenly come to the wadis of the Palestinian desert in the rainy season.
Is that not our prayer as Christians in the interim period between the first and second appearances of our Lord Jesus? We rejoice in our salvation by the ministry of his incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension in the past, but the ground on which we toil now in his name is so hard! Our existence as Christians seeking to do the Lord’s will seems to be mainly sowing with “weeping” and so little harvesting “with joy.” As in the psalm, it is the past and the future, “the memorial of our redemption” and the coming “joy of your heavenly kingdom” (phrases from the eucharistic prayer) that sustain us as we push forward.
I find the lyrics of Jason Upton’s song “I Will Wait for You” captures the spirit of this psalm (and, if you listen to it, you will hear the melody is reminiscent of a pilgrim’s procession): “I will wait for you, Jesus/You’re the sun on my horizon/All my hope’s in you, Jesus/I can see you now arising.”
Today, in the Spirit, inspired by the psalmist, I will not fail to look both back and forward to you, Jesus, as I make my way down the road in between the times.
Press On…Hold True (Philippians 3:7-16)
7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
Philippians 3:7-16
Or, “Nevertheless, let us live up to the standard that we have already attained” (16, NET). The adverb “nevertheless” begs the reader to make a contrast with what has come before. And what is the contrast? It is between moving and staying, between “pressing on” (12,14) or “straining forward” (13) on one hand and “holding true” and guarding “what we have already attained” on the other. Paul would have us, like Tolkien’s dragon Smaug in “The Hobbit,” simultaneously go out to grab more treasure during the day and sleep at night on top of the hoard so no one would dare try to steal it.
Devotionally, the point is to be careful not to overlook the application of one revelation Christ has given us, even as we prayerfully open our hearts to receive what comes next. We might well ask: How can we possibly be expected to do all this? How do we keep eyes up and down, in and out, at the same time? The short answer is that we cannot. Even Paul, who is mature in the Lord, admits he is not “already perfect” (12). We need the help of God’s Spirit.
Paul does not discuss the Holy Spirit much in Philippians, but elsewhere he does. Here are two passages especially relevant to this discussion: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Eph. 1:17). And: “Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us” (2 Tim. 1:14, see also Rom. 7:6, 2 Th. 2:13f).
Today, by the Spirit who has been given to us both to help us move forward and guard what we have in Christ, we hear these words of Paul and humbly take up the hard project of knowing Jesus more.
That Stone (Luke 20:9-19)
9 And he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. 10 When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. 12 And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. 13 Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ 14 But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ 15 And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” When they heard this, they said, “Surely not!” 17 But he looked directly at them and said, “What then is this that is written:
Luke 20:9-19
“‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone’?
18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” 19 The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.
Or, “‘Whoever falls on that stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls it will grind him to powder” (18 KJV). “That stone” refers back to “the cornerstone” from the citation of Psalm 118, which itself has been shortened in Luke so that the last word “cornerstone” receives the emphasis. Jesus teaches one of two things will happen to people in relation to “the stone” (that is, him): some will trip over it and be “broken to pieces” (and perish, maybe); others will be crushed by it (and perish, certainly). Many commentators see this as two ways of falling under the judgment of God for refusing to follow Jesus. However, in keeping with an emphasis in Luke on radical discipleship (see 9:23ff,14:25ff), and considering Jesus is addressing both “the people” (9) and the religious leaders listening, we need to consider (cautiously) the possibility that the teaching points to one outcome for believers and another for unbelievers: those who choose to follow Jesus will be seriously injured (think of Jacob’s limp) but live; those who refuse to believe in Jesus will be obliterated.
Lord, my experience of following you has not always been easy. Most of the time, mercifully, you have permitted that my stumbling over you end in a soft landing; other times, you have judged that I should be “broken to pieces.” I know there is still so much in me that needs to be separated, and that it will take more than my lifetime to finish the work. But I trust in your wisdom to know at any given time whether, while walking with you, I should just stub my toe or fall to unconsciousness. Thank you for choosing me to be among those who should only fall over you and not be “crushed” underneath you.
Today, in the Spirit, hearing in our worship this parable on the judgment of God over unbelieving Israel and any who will always “kill” the Son, we take heed, pray humbly, and ask the Lord to root out all unbelief from us.
Today in the Spirit
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