At last.

This is the last issue of Preaching Helps that I will be editing. Sixteen years ago George Hoyer cast his mantle on me, and it has been (mostly) a pleasure to edit 96 issues over the course of these past years. Always being on the lookout for writers has been good for me. It has put me in touch with many teachers and preachers whom I would otherwise not have known. It has also taught me more than a few things about the homiletical task.

For example, Currents/Preaching Helps works with a rather long lead time. I have ordinarily issued invitations six months or even a year in advance of the deadline. And then I have sent edited copy to Chicago for the printer two months before the issue will be mailed out. This kind of schedule has one very important consequence, one that weighs more heavily on me now than it used to. It has meant that the studies appearing here, even in the section that I have called "Pastoral Reflections," fail to reflect pastorally and homiletically on the news of the day.

Many of you know Andy Weyermann or at least know of him. In more than one conversation this last year he has said that he regrets having neglected to preach and to teach others how to preach on the pressing social and political and cultural issues of the day. We have been neglectful, he thinks, in part because the issues are sensitive, and we fear that dealing with them will offend important elements in the congregation. But he says we are called to "fear and love God" above all things. We fail the test of the first commandment if we stick to safe topics out of fear of the congregation.

Some may breathe a sigh of relief that the pulpit does not "get political." It is true that the effort easily goes awry, but how can we press beyond the issues of individual piety and address wider issues of community and public life?

I haven't been able to manage it. Let me confess another shortcoming. Maybe this one is an indication that I have held on to the job of editor too long. In our June issue we unwittingly published studies and reflections on the texts that are assigned by the LBW instead of following our usual practice of commenting on the texts appointed by the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). It is my error for not communicating clearly with the author of the materials.

That error had two results: (1) Texts appointed by the RCL for the sixth through eighth Sundays after Pentecost (June 22-July 6) were actually treated in our June issue, but they appeared under the LBW dates: July 20-August 3. Aargh! (2) In the second place, the following RCL texts were not dealt with at all: Mark 6:14-29 (July 13), Mark 6:30-34,55-56 (July 20), John 6:1-21 (July 27), John 6:24-35 (August 3). I am going to comment briefly on these texts right here. Once we caught our error, we sped up the production process in hopes that you might receive this August issue in time for some of this to feed into your preparation process, assuming, as we have been, that you are using RCL.

Mark 6:1-56 is a long and coherent set of narratives. Preachers usually complain that the lectionary gives them fits in the summer of Year B, since the lectionary has substituted John's version of the feeding of the 5,000 for Mark's version. The lectionary grabs hold of John 6 and breaks it up into five fragments. Then it directs preachers to distribute these very similar tasting fragments to their congregations Sunday after Sunday, until preacher and congregation are all fed up.

I love John 6, but it is a shame that the lectionary has inserted it where it has in the sequence of readings. It has done violence to Mark's story. Mark 6 begins with Jesus' visit to his hometown of Nazareth (6:1-6a). Jesus offers wisdom in the synagogue and lays healing hands on a few sick people. But he is all too familiar to his old neighbors. They recognize him only as "the carpenter" or "craftsman," and they seem to know his whole family and imply that "we knew him when." Mark says, "They took offense at him." Jesus sums up the situation this way: "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown.... "And he is amazed at their lack of faith.

Having coined (or repeated) the proverb about lack of respect for prophets, Jesus goes right on (6:6b-13) to appoint "the twelve" to go out as prophets! He certainly gives them a prophetic mission: Go out, two by two, taking only a staff; no bread, no bag, no money tucked into your waistbands; travel light and depend totally on freely offered but sometimes fickle hospitality. So off they go, these newly minted prophets, casting out demons and anointing the sick.

These two stories together (Mark 6:1-13 = Pentecost 4, July 6) speak to us of the ultimate rejection of Jesus and of his call to us to fear not but to take up the prophetic task of speaking truth and dispensing cures, no matter what the cost.

The plot thickens as Mark continues (Mark 6:14-29 = Pentecost 5, June 13). We might ask, "How hard can it get for prophets?" Some will say, "Can't you handle a little rejection?" Mark will answer those questions. As the twelve go off on their mission, Mark interrupts their story and turns to King Herod. Mark's segue is the remark that the missionary journeying of the twelve came to King Herod's attention. Herod begins to speak all in one breath of Jesus, John the Baptist, Elijah, the prophets of old. God's Spirit, Herod fears, is once again stirring up trouble for us politicians!

In part, Mark is interested in telling us what Herod thought about Jesus, because he wants to tell us how bad it can get for prophets. It can't get much worse than it did for John the Baptist, who in his gruesome death foreshadows the coming execution of Jesus. John the Baptist is the forerunner of Jesus as he meets his end at the hand of powerful social and political forces.

Mark sandwiches the story of John's execution between the commissioning of the twelve (6:6b-13) and their return and report to Jesus (6:30). Being prophetic, speaking the truth to power, can be dangerous to your health!

Mark has meditated on John's execution in ways that the other evangelists do not. The Fourth Gospel has no story of the Baptist's death, and from Luke's words (3:18-20 and 9:7-9) we would not necessarily deduce that the Baptist was executed on Herod's order. Matthew shares much of Mark's account, but Mark is the evangelist who offers the richest and most colorful narrative of Herod's fateful birthday party (6:14-29).

I do not think it is an accident that Mark first reports Herod's birthday banquet and then immediately narrates Jesus' feeding of the 5,000 in the wilderness (6:30--44; cf. John 6:1-21 = Pentecost 7, July 27). Mark wants readers to contemplate these two kings, King Herod and King Jesus. Think, says Mark, about the huge difference between the kingdom of Herod (he promised up to half of it to his dancing daughter, 6:23) and the kingdom of God/kingship of Jesus.

Of course, this Herod is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. He was actually "tetrarch" of Galilee and not a king. But Mark deliberately calls him "king" (6:14, 22, 25, 26, 27) and speaks of his "kingdom" (6:23). He does that not because he flunked history. He wants us readers to think about the awesome wonder of the "kingdom" that Jesus announced already in the first words he ever uttered in this Gospel (1:14-15), and he wants us to ponder the strange truth of the placard over the cross, the "king of the Jews" (15:26).

"King" Herod is portrayed as serving up the head of John the Baptist like a bizarre offering of meat on a silver platter (Mark 6:8). Jesus in the wilderness (Mark 6 and John 6) and at table in Jerusalem (Mark 14:22-25) acts in a manner diametrically opposed to the custom of worldly powers. He looks with compassion on the crowds that pursue him into the wilderness and sees that they are "like sheep without a shepherd," subjects and citizens suffering under the callous indifference of their political leaders (Mark 6:30-34,53-56 = Pentecost 6, July 20). Unlike Herod, Jesus welcomes the nameless and the powerless and gives them an honored place at his table. He cures their ills (Mark 6:56) and finally offers himself as truly nourishing food and drink (John 6:51-58 = Pentecost 10, August 17).

In his account of the feeding of the 5,000 (Pentecost 7, July 27), John features the command of Jesus, "Gather the fragments that nothing may be lost" (John 6:12). John sees the whole mission of Jesus as one of "gathering" people into the life of God so that they may no longer be "lost," wandering aimlessly in the dark, subject to the lie (John 3:16; 11:51-52; chapter 17). "As the grains of wheat, once scattered on the hill were gathered into one to become our bread, so may all your people from all the ends of earth be gathered into one in you" (With One Voice 705; Didache 9:4).

"Seeking" is another persistent Johannine theme, and it emerges in John 6:24-35 (Pentecost 8, August 3). The first word out of the mouth of Jesus himself in the Fourth Gospel is the question, "What are you seeking?" (1:38) I believe that Jesus is addressing that word to every reader of John's Gospel. What are we seeking in this book? What are we seeking as we read this narrative of Jesus? What are we seeking with all our energy and all our time? What are we looking for as we move through life? What is our aim, our goal? The Jesus portrayed in John's Gospel has been called "elusive." God, even though ever-present, is elusive, not merely obvious to all. So in the synoptic Gospels Jesus calls out, "Seek first the kingdom of God" (Matthew 6:33; Luke 12:31; Psalm 27:8, "Come," my heart says, "seek God's face!"). In the Fourth Gospel, people seek Jesus in two different ways. They seek him in order that they might abide with him and enjoy the life he bestows, or they seek him in order to kill him. What are we seeking?

The Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle of Jesus narrated in all four Gospels. Mark and John (and the others) have meditated long and deeply on this marvelous feeding. Mark 6 and John 6 deserve all the attention we are capable of mustering.

"Preaching the law" might be described as weaning people off their bad diets, hazardous to their health. And "preaching the gospel" means filling listeners with the One who is true food and true drink, who feeds us with genuine life.

So this is issue number 96 for me. I suppose I could have stuck around for four more and made it an even hundred. But enough! This end for me is a fresh beginning for Preaching Helps and its new editor.

In April of 2002--more than a year ago!--I invited Craig Satterlee, Professor of Homiletics at LSTC, to write for this issue of Preaching Helps, and I was delighted when he accepted that invitation. About that same time I announced to Ralph Klein my intention of giving up the editorship of these pages. In September of 2002 I learned that Craig had agreed to assume the task of editing these materials. So Craig is the author in this issue, and he will be the editor in issues to come. My delight has been doubled.

Ordained in 1987, Craig served congregations in upstate New York and in Michigan before taking up his duties at LSTC in 2000. He received his M.Div. and S.T.M. at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, and he earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in homiletics and liturgical studies from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Ambrose of Milan's Method of Mystagogical Preaching and coauthor of Creative Preaching on the Sacraments. And he has other books in the works. Craig describes his ministry as one of "preparing and renewing women and men to be proclaimers of Jesus Christ."

As a person who is legally blind, Craig has a passion for ministry with persons with disabilities, and he has a unique perspective on the faith and on church and world. He makes his home with his wife Cathy and daughter Chelsey in Chicago's Hyde Park.

What a pleasure for me to introduce Craig Satterlee to our readers and to commend you and him to one another as you continue good preaching, good feeding, good proclaiming.

Yours,

Robert H. Smith 

Editor of Preaching Helps 1987-2003

Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary 

2770 Marin Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94708

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