Lectionary Notes: Feb 16, 2025
tl;dr: This week includes themes of trust, wealth, and judgement.
I've joined a group spanning a few churches to share reactions to the lectionary text for the week. Here are my notes going into February 16, 2025, the sixth Sunday after Epiphany.
The Texts
I'm not going to do each text separately as I have the past few weeks, because there isn't a lot unique between them jumping out at me. There are a couple major themes, though.
Trust and Wealth
A theme in all four texts is to trust in God, not in the ways of the wicked. The Luke text at least partially equates "the wicked" with "the rich."
They each tackle that we have some drive, maybe naturally and/or maybe fueled by the advice of those wicked systems and individuals, trying to convince us that we will be satisfied if we pursue wealth for ourselves. We just need to climb to the top of the social hierarchy and then everything will be fine. Not for the people we have to climb over, of course, but let's not think about them - let's focus on me.
But Jeremiah says that this leads to being like a shrub in the desert, not seeing relief, unlike those who trust in the LORD who will continue to bear fruit and not be anxious. Psalm 1 emphasizes that the wicked will be driven away by the wind, while again those who delight in God will yield fruit and not wither. Those are very similar metaphors.
1 Corinthians starts to tie this into the resurrection. If that hope of trusting in God is only in life, it is futile. It is obvious that if we are judging only by short-term material wealth and social power, the way of Jesus is pretty naive and ineffective. But if we believe that there is a longer arc of history than that, that there is resurrection, the hope is valid.
Luke most explicitly ties this into wealth, sending woe on the rich and blessings on the poor. Matthew's version of this in the Sermon on the Mount is a bit more abstracted, about the "poor in spirit" without the accompanying woe on the rich, but Luke is more direct to the point. If you prioritize wealth and people speaking well of you, you might get it in the short term, but that's the entire reward. It's an Ebenezer Scrooge situation, where you get your wealth for now but you are miserable and have no meaning beyond that. "You have received your consolation."
Hope for Justice
Another related theme that is present here is that 3 out of the 4 texts (not really the Corinthians one) clearly displays some desire to see negative consequences for those who are doing evil. This is often not a popular position among more privileged "liberal" communities who often want to get rid of any language like that entirely, since it sounds too close to the vindictive god held by more conservative communities who are also often privileged in other ways.
But I don't think justice and vindictive punishment need to be the same thing. When you have been truly mistreated, especially on a systemic level, it is absolutely normal and in my opinion correct to wish to see consequences - the "woe" that Jesus promises - on those who are hurting you. That doesn't need to be violent gleeful punishment, but we should be able to acknowledge that something is wrong with this picture and something needs to be done to change it.
To bring in the Corinthians a bit less directly, what if God's justice looks like the death and resurrection of Jesus. It was not justice that killed Jesus. It was profoundly unjust, with those in power deciding to shut down somebody who challenged their power, even though he had not done anything provably illegal to justify a death penalty even by the laws of the time. And yet, if we believe Jesus was the incarnate God who chose that willingly and then was brought back to life? That changes how we think about justice. It isn't about hurting for the sake of hurting the Romans who killed Jesus, but it does expose and overcome the injustice they committed. God's power is greater than that injustice and greater than death, which is often the implicit or explicit threat of those carrying out the injustice. If those acting unjustly no longer have the power of death to threaten you, they have no real power over you at all. Real justice requires exposing their injustice. At best, maybe they learn from the consequences of their injustice being exposed and they repent (turn around to a more just way of being).
It's the difference between retributive justice, seeking to punish for the sake of punishing, and restorative justice, seeking to make the world whole again (including the oppressors if they will accept it). Being critical of retributive justice is great, but don't replace that with "well I guess there is no justice." Instead, try to imagine a restored world, where the oppression is stopped and hopefully the oppressor learns after experiencing those negative consequences to not try it again.