🐮 Advent 1

Readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; Luke 21:25-36. 

From the TRNG Room;

• What was Jesus’ real name?

Transcript

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Jeremiah chapter 33 verses 14 through 16. The days are surely Cummings says the Lord, when I'll find, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah in those days. And at that time, I'll cause a righteous branch to spring up for David and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days, Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called the Lord is our righteousness. Psalm 25 verses one through 10 to you. Oh Lord, I lift up my soul. Oh my God, in you I trust. Do not let me be put to shame. Do not let my enemies exalt over me. Do not let those who wait for you to be put to shame. Let them be sha ashamed to our wantonly Tre. Make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. For you I wait all day long. Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember me for the sake of your right goodness, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, He instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble His way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep His covenant and His decrees. the Gospel of Luke Chapter 21, verses 25 through 36. There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations, confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now, when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. Then he told them a parable. Look at the fig tree and all the trees. As soon as they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life and that day catch you unexpectedly like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man. Good morning and welcome to the first week, the first Sunday of Advent in year C, which is the year for Luke. This is Brother Logan Isaac broadcasting from Albany, Oregon. This morning's readings for the first day of the Christian liturgical calendar come to us from Jeremiah 33, Psalm 25, and Luke 21. And this is the rebooting of First Formation in which I will be focusing on the Sundays. If you've been listening for long at all, you know that for many years, starting in probably 2018, I think, I did the dailies. I did all three lectionary years, a full cycle of daily readings, which you can find right here on your feed. And now, for the next three seasons, three years, I'm going to be focusing on The Sundays the crowning kind of day of the liturgical week. The liturgical week begins on Thursday, goes through Friday, Saturday, peaks on Sunday, and then the readings reflect back on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So if you are following very closely on the website pphq. com slash first dash formation. Or if you have found the listing of the podcast episodes there, or on Buzz Buzzsprout, or anywhere you listen to podcasts, you'll notice that I have a very unique numbering system. And I'm, that's a little bit of, I don't know, my little OCD something. But it's also my attempt at understanding the ordering of the ancient church kind of method of doing things and bringing it into And the military loves acronyms, loves like encoding things very plainly and simply, and so that's what I'm doing. And I want to take the opportunity to begin with Luke near C. Because Luke and Acts is by one author, and Luke has a very particular kind of perspective. Most scholars agree that he probably was not born into Jewish culture, was not a Jew himself, but followed Jesus or Paul, or both. And so he's very much like us He wasn't born into this thing. He was grafted onto the vine, to use Saul's language, or Paul. And so I, it's important, it's something I've been waiting to do for a while, and I want to recommit for the next three years to do the lectionary Sundays, now that I've done the dailies. And so looking at this morning's readings the section from Jeremiah does not appear in the Septuagint, the earliest. Manuscripts that we have of the Hebrew Scripture. But I did notice that one of the, one of the things that I'm rolling over in my mind is what Jesus name was, not just in Aramaic but also what should his name be in English? And the answer to that is Joshua. And I say that because in the last line in the Jeremiah reading The name by which it would be called the Lord is our righteousness. Righteousness, aka, or sak comes up a lot in the first century. The Sadducees the, or the du Kim, which is the kind of hellenization of sah, which means righteousness. The Sadducees, were trying to say we were the righteous ones. It's also the same name of the, one of the most important high priests Zadok who served with. Solomon and built the first temple, if memory serves. I may have to remember that. Tzedakah and righteousness are important pieces of the Hebraic imagination, particularly around the priesthood. But, the earliest manuscripts we have of the Hebrew Bible doesn't contain the Septuagint. It doesn't contain Jeremiah 33. It does, however, of course, The Christian scripture, the New Testament does have it. We, when we read from Luke, one of the things that I've noticed was at the beginning it's almost like a minute, miniature Genesis talks about the sun, moon, the stars, the earth, and then finally the peoples, the ethnos, the nations, that is the same order that Genesis recounts. And the sea, the roaring of the sea, which is a symbol for chaos and disorder and fear, is right there in the middle of it. And if you've read Genesis and you're following Jesus and you're reading Luke, you might notice that these, this theme is being brought up. Luke 21 is bringing us back to creation. And if we were there, if we had seen the roaring sea and the chaos that it represented, we would have fainted from fear and foreboding. And the powers of the heavens will be shaken because Yahweh, the creator, the ultimate creator is about to order creation. And ordering stuff often takes force, right? Usually we think of it that way. And yet Yahweh, all Yahweh has to do is say a word. And rather flippantly you know what? And it happens. And so we may be surprised when we expect violence and we expect coercion to find that this God, the God of the universe through who we, who has chosen to self disclose to the people Israel doesn't adhere to our expectations. And yet, this title, the Son of Man, is the It's supposed to indicate a normal, everybody, whoever, an everyman. Now, it wasn't so long ago where man, with a capital M, was a stand in for humanity. And man, however, is a gendered term, and we can be misled into thinking that man, with a penis, is the central, feature of humanity, or the central kind of role or character. And God, and Saul, and Joshua, are all in the business of reconciling the world to the God that created it, that is almost constantly violating our expectations and setting things right. Man, A man is not the original human. Adam was a shortened version of Adamah, which means the ground, which is a feminine noun. It's like saying Mother Earth. Out of Mother Earth, humanity was created. And so if you want to bring Adam into it from a gendered, a feminine gendered noun, it's more likely, or at least it's more fair to suggest that the first human was female. And in fact, in the womb, the A male embryo cannot be created but through the introduction of a certain enzyme or fill in the blank. So the original form of humanity is actually feminine. However, because God is in the business of reconciling the broken world to God's self, you have to use language that will connect with people. The son here is often Ben Ben Adam in Hebrew. But Ben and its feminine equivalent, Bar again, I contend, and I think that the Bible makes very clear that It's more appropriate to say the child of humanity. A child of humanity will come in a cloud with power and great glory. Don't be confused. An ordinary person is capable, with God, of coming with power and great glory. Doesn't matter your sex, doesn't really matter your age, in fact if we want to go into that conversation when a child will lead them in Isaiah. So when we think of all these biases that we get in our head about who the cool kids are and who the outcasts are. Yahweh consistently is saying, Nope, let me turn that upside down for you. Primogeniture the first born male heir is supposed to get the lion's share of an inheritance. God consistently chooses or allows to be chosen the youngest sibling, whether that's Jacob, the younger child or the younger brother of Esau whether that's Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, the youngest children and kind of grandchildren of Isaac or Jacob David, the youngest of eight it, the list could go on, but God is in the business of flipping all of our biases on its head. And the Bible, which is inspired by God, is consistently bringing us back to our roots to remind us, not only are we the youngest in the generations of creation, in Genesis 1, but that call, that brings responsibility because of the power that we are given. We have that responsibility to care for creation. We are all of creation's keeper, and we are all of, and we are one another's. Keepers. And so when the, toward the end of this selection, Jesus is telling his followers this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. And that seems prophetic, right? Jesus did not write anything. But his followers did. That's a lot of trust on the part of God. People won't fuck it up. And it's true. Jesus words, Joshua's words, have not passed away. The challenge to us is to find those words and to Do the work of hearing them by interpretation and exegesis and hermeneutics. That's why you'll hear me play with language a lot in this podcast. When I read the psalm, every other Sunday, I will read psalms with a feminine pronoun for God. When we dig into and really go deep on the language, you'll find some of these, symbols and meanings that have been given to us by the church, by other people, sometimes have become inadequate. The son of man. Daniel uses it, prophetic literature uses it, like it is, it's the child of humanity. And every person is capable of doing this thing. And Jesus is the child of humanity, the most representative the distillation of the essence of God but that is not to say, Oh Jesus is just going to do everything for us. We just have to pray, and, talk to God, and God will make all things right. No. God came to earth because it, as a reminder, prayer Without action is just cheap. Talk is cheap. We know this, right? So don't think that, there's some fanciful thing off in the ether that will come and, make everything better if that thing that is happening does not include us. The church is the church in so much as it embodies and incarnates the work of Christ in the world. Sitting in church and praying once a week on Sunday is not what Christ did. Christ went with the poor. Christ was willing to sacrifice himself. for the good of others, even unjustly. And so with First Formation, I suspect this will challenge a lot of people. I know when I dug into the Bible and brought my own hermeneutic to it, it opened up some things that were startling and inspiring. But as I was, as I'm sometimes reminded, we don't grow unless we are made to feel uncomfortable. When you're comfortable, when you are, satiated you might be led to think that the work is over. And it's not. The work is always going on. The poor will always be with us. Jesus and Joshua will not pass away. But that doesn't mean that the Messiah is going to do everything for us. There's a denominational kind of motto that I really like. I think it's the disciples or maybe it's UCC. And the symbol is a comma. And the motto is something like, God is still speaking. God is still speaking because the church has not passed away. But there's a lot of things that are wrong with the church. And I think it's time that, a new wineskin is found. I think there's been rumblings of birth and birth pangs for a long time. There's a lot of fear following the latest election for Donald Trump's second term. And that, for a lot of people, certainly feels chaotic, certainly feels unpredictable and feels like the roaring of the sea and the waves. What can God do in this moment? God speaks through the actions of the church and how we order ourselves, how will influence and affect how the world is ordered in the wake of this disorder. Now, I mean that, our world being America, Western society and democratic ideals. I think those are not, I think those are divine. But they have slipped from our grasp because we've missed something and it's up to us to figure out what that thing is and to order it. But in order to figure out what we've done wrong and how to interpret this moment if we can't do the work of The difficult work of deliberation, discernment, will, what we thought was the church will pass away and maybe we will be right. But if we take a hard look at what the church was made for, and how it was made, and under what circumstances, we have all these resources and tools and, Information and scholarship that we could apply, that we could draw from, will be difficult. There will be fear and foreboding and there will be, the powers of heaven will feel like they're shaking. But that is precisely where creation and growth is meant to occur and it's up to us to not look away. But to see the signs, to stand our ground, and hear, what God is doing in the midst of humanity.