Text: Luke 22:7-30

Speaker: Joel Miller

The image on your bulletin insert is old.  It definitely looks old.  To see it, you have to go underground.  It’s a fresco painting found in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome, still there.  It has been dated as early as 100-150 CE, which means it could have been painted before all the books of our New Testament were written.  It’s one of the oldest preserved Christian artworks.  It’s possibly the oldest preserved portrayal of…well, What is this going on here?? 

If you’re getting Last Supper vibes, you’re on to something.  These folks are gathered around a meal table.  The person on the left is holding up a small loaf, ready to break it and offer it to the others.  The painting is called “Fractio Panis.”  Fractio, like fracture, to break.  And Panis, like pan, which the Spanish takes from the Latin for bread.  Fractio Panis, “Breaking Bread,” like we still do at the Communion Table.  The two-handled cup near the bread-breaker would contain that other familiar element, the wine.

But this isn’t Jesus and his disciples, like what Leonardo da Vinci would paint centuries later.  There are seven people around the table, not 12 plus one.  Who are these people? What are there names? We don’t know.  Traditionally, it has been held that this is six males and one female.  Although modern scholarship has looked more closely at the dress and hairstyles and suggested that most or even all are female.  The scene is likely an early house church.  While the state-sanctioned sacrifices of Rome continued to reinforce the dominant order of gods and men, early Christians were practicing an alternative sacrificial meal with its own symbolic universe.  It presented a different kind of ordering.  The kind Jesus saw himself bringing into the world. 

And – There’s more…

Text: Matthew 5:3

Guest Speaker: Vince Ford, Senior Minister at Genessee Avenue Church of Christ

Introduction

Jesus is not only our healer, he’s our teacher. Life has a way of working out in a way that is counterintuitive to the earthly mind.

So here we are with Jesus and the beatitudes, even within the confines of the current culture of the community, Jesus is turning things on it’s head. In the cultural context the beatitudes were used as an expression of connection between a person’s deeds and what happens to the person. So here Jesus said Matthew 5:3 ““Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

It’s a paradox, in the sense that happiness typically wouldn’t be the outcome of people who are poor in spirit and devalued in society. The four beatitudes in the first stanza can be interpreted as having eternal reversals, these are virtues of aspiration, they are circumstances that we find ourselves in. Those who are pour, those who mourn, those who are humble, those who hunger and thirst for justice.

Life Can Make You Feel Worthless

This is not just an economic poverty, but a feeling of despondent, or despair.

Essentially life has you in a position that the very seat of who you are is desolate and impoverished.

Essentially the feeling that you are completely unable to help yourself.

Even become the socio-economic outlook of the text we can understand that lowly in spirit and humility can overlap. You’ve heard the phrase, “he or she comes from humble beginnings”. Jesus is talking to the abandoned ones in Israel, those who humbly trust God even when their loyalty results in oppression and material disadvantage.

We can’t disregard the ethical element of this text. Before we climb the mountain Matthew 4:24–25 “Then His fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought to…

Text: Acts 16:11-15, 40

Speaker: Joel Miller

It’s the year 1528, almost 500 years ago.  A woman in her early 40s is visiting a group of prisoners in her home area –Tyrol in Austria.  A movement that would soon be called Anabaptism has sprung up, spreading across the region.  In defiance of official church and legal orders, adult believers are getting re-baptized and forming small study and worship groups.  At a time when church and state are intertwined, infant baptism functions like a birth certificate.  It registers a person as part of the domain, a future taxpayer and eligible soldier – an official member of Christendom. 

That unifying order of Christendom had been massively disrupted by the Black Plague in the 14th century.  It wiped out a third to a half of the population of Europe.  The peasants who survived suddenly found themselves on the favorable side of low supply and high demand for their labor.  The invention of the printing press in the 15th century enabled ideas to spread faster and farther than ever.  New ideas, like Martin Luther’s critique of the Pope which led to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.  And very old ideas, like those in the New Testament – a voluntary church who followed the teachings of Jesus.  And even older ideas from the scriptures like fair wages for laborers, and the conviction that the earth belongs to God, and not the king or the lords.

Peasant revolts, an explosion of print, a refusal to swear loyalty oaths to territorial rulers…the early Anabaptists were intertwined with all these forces.  It was not a welcome development in Catholic or Protestant territories. 

Those prisoners in 1528 Tyrol, Austria, 106 in total, are all Anabaptists.  The visitor is taking a big risk.  She, herself, is under suspicion of being an Anabaptist, and…

Scripture: Luke 19:41-48

The most recent edition of the Anabaptist World magazine had the theme “Faithful and Political.” I think many of us have the political world on our minds as we continue to get closer to the midterm elections and consider the many possible ramifications of their outcomes. So I was intrigued to see what kinds of articles a magazine connected to our historical peace church might have to say about what it means to be faithful and political; what it means to be a courageous peace witness in relation to the political world. 

There were actually many interesting articles exploring these topics from many different viewpoints, and I was impressed with the editors’ ability to present articles with so many different nuances. If you don’t get the publication at home, I encourage you to check out the church’s copy once it makes its way out to the racks in the lobby. 

What struck me from the beginning of diving into the magazine, however, was the way the first two main articles presented approaches to this topic that were, on first read, similar, but upon further reflection quite different. In the first article by Nathan Good titled “Citizens of a Different Kingdom,” Good shares about how he, as a preacher and pastor, is not afraid to engage political topics because the good news of Jesus is political. Yet by the end of the article, it became clear that Good wanted to maintain this idea of dual, competing kingdoms. He writes, “if we are to faithfully follow King Jesus, we must not focus on political speech and organizing. We must use our money, time, houses, relationships and possessions to serve those in need.” (p. 9)

If you flip to the very next page of the magazine, you come to an article titled “Actions…

Texts: Mark 10:46-52; 1 Samuel 16:14-23

Speaker: Joel Miller

46 They came to Jericho. As (Jesus) and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48 Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49 Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” 50 So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. 51 Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” 52 Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

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If you were doing a crossword puzzle, and the clue was “masculinity,” five letters, and you already have t-o _ i-c, I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority would confidently write an “x” in the open space and consider that one solved.  

As far as I can tell, the phrase “toxic masculinity” goes back to the 1980s.  It was coined, surprisingly, by men.  The self-diagnosis was that men were suffering from the ills of industrialized society: individualism, competition over comradery, loss of traditional rituals and initiation rites that give boys and men a clear sense of obligation to their community, the sense that men aren’t supposed to feel anything, except anger.  That’s the stew, they taught, that creates toxic masculinity.  This mythopoetic men’s movement – as it was called – was inspired by the feminist movement.  It…