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3rd SUNDAY AFTER
PENTECOST
Our lessons for this Sunday hold up the theme of righteousness.
Not hard to find out who is righteous and who is wicked in the first
lesson: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation”
(Gen. 6:9). The second lesson offers a dense teaching of two kinds
of righteousness and in the gospel lesson Jesus connects action with
words as the way that leads to kingdom life.
Genesis 6:11-22; 7:24; 8:14-19-Giving Way to Justice and
Judgment
Noah and the Arky Arky might be how we learned the story in
Sunday School, but we cannot fail to see the ominous clouds that
carries much more than rain. The story speaks to the violence that
has become loathsome in God’s eyes: God seeks to put an end to
such corruption and violence but yet divine judgment comes wrapped
in promise: “Make yourself an ark . . .” Law is mixed with
promise, sin mixed with abounding grace. All flesh will come to a
screeching end for violence can only breed more violence. Yet God
extends a covenantal relationship to a single strand of
humanity-Noah, who “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Thus
the story carries forth promise of salvation, but also suggests God
as being angry and vengeful.
Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)-Sacred Anthropology 101
This is “the richest and most important paragraph in the whole
letter,” says C.K. Barrett. The common denominator, the equal
access for all humanity is, according to Paul, justification by
faith in Jesus Christ. To dissect this part of Paul’s argument is
to get to the gist or grist of what Paul teaches and preaches
elsewhere in his epistles. We’re all in this together, so the
teaching goes, members of a fallen race who stand in need of
restoration; how we get there (“there” meaning the return to the
pristine state of right relationship to God) is non-negotiable for
Paul: relationship is restored not through personal effort or
achievement, but through the action of Another, Jesus Christ.
Matthew 7:21-29-Same Circumstances, Different Foundations
When the discussion moves to Matthew’s favorite topic, “Kingdom
of Heaven,” he has a way of begging the question: “Who gets in
and who gets locked out of the Kingdom?” “Surprise!” Jesus
seems to suggest. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’
will enter the kingdom . . .” This lesson, which closes the first
of five teaching blocks in Matthew, suggests that neither words nor
action alone will get us on the gospel train, but performance-the
combination of the two. For “everyone who hears . . . and
acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house upon rock.”
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