May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Thanksgiving Day
PROPER: A, B, C
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 27,1997
TEXT: Matthew 6:25-33 - Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat? or What will we drink? or What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father know that you need all these things. But strive first for the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these thing will be give to you as well.
ISSUE: We Americans are indeed often anxious about our lives. Our focus, according to the Scripture, needs to be on the fact that God provides us what we really need. Keeping focused on God makes us truly aware of what we have to be thankful for: We are God’s people with mission and meaningful purposes.
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The passage from Matthew today is directed by Jesus to peasant people of his time. They were indeed anxious about their lives. They lived day to day, hand to mouth. Not only were wages minimal, but they were heavily taxed. Like us Americans who are often anxious about our old age, our retirement, and whether or not Social Security will hold out, the peasants of Jesus time struggled with each day.
Jesus, however, comes to them with this message not to be anxious. Neither men nor women. “Consider the birds of the air,” he says. (The Aramaic word for Birds is a masculine noun.) “They neither reap, nor sow, nor gather into barns.” Reaping, sowing, and gathering was men,s work.
“Consider the lilies of the field,” says Jesus, “They neither toil nor spin.” (The Aramaic word for lilies is a feminine noun) And, of course toiling (or making clothes) and spinning was women’s work.
Jesus makes an appeal to the whole of the community not to be anxious about their lives. Anxiety will not add anything to their lives. Their focus is to be upon God who is the Giver and the Provider of all things needful. The poor of Jesus’ time are to place their faith and confidence in the bountiful love of God to provide for them all that they need. They are to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the other things will come. Jesus assured them of God’s love and caring.
Most of us in the next few weeks ahead will be just as likely to be anxious about what we are going to buy and get for Christmas. We are likely to be anxious about getting the perfect gifts and planning for the most beautiful and the most perfect of all Christmas seasons. Perhaps the passage needs to speak to us as much as it needed to address the anxiety of 1st century peasants. This is a time and a season to contemplate the Kingdom of God. It is a time for us to focus on what God is doing and has already done in our lives. It is a time to consider what God calls us to do and be.
On Thanksgiving Day in our country we pause to give thanks. More often than not our first items of thankfulness for which we are grateful may well be all the stuff and junk we have accumulated in our garages, basements, and attics. Aren’t we a blessed people, because we have so many possessions. In some sense they are. But our affluence is hardly all that there is to be thankful for. Usually we think of possessions as something we ourselves have gotten and accomplished. After all we are supposed to be self-made men and women. What of those who are poor and dispossed in terms of posessions? Are unaffluent to thought of as the cursed of God?
We can also be grateful for good schools, for this good country founded upon the principles of democracy and our forefathers who provided this form of government. We can be grateful for those who have been dedicated to healing and health. Tremendous strides have been made in so many scientific and medical areas that have given real comfort and hope to our lives. Are the uneducated, the diseased and the victims of tyrannical governments also the cursed?
We also have in many instances family, children, spouses, friends, people who love us. These are surely a precious gifts for which to be grateful. We may be truly blessed to know and enjoy the comfort and the deep inner peace that comes from being loved by others. Yet there are those who are alone and depressed.
Our own being is special. We have the remarkable ability to reason, to have memory, to be skilled with so many varieties of talents. Loss of mental capacity and loss of physical abilities are often seen as great tragedy and a partial living death.
What is, however, the great issue for us as Christians, as a people of God, is that every good and perfect gift is from God. All that we are and all that we experience in our lives comes from God the Creator. And while there are times when we forget to be grateful, and times when we are intent upon being anxious, greedy, and self-involved, we are still given the comfort and the knowledge of a forgiving and loving God.
We may well gather here this morning to thank God and to be truly grateful for the inestimable bounty and love of God. But it is also important that we respond to the God who has given us so much to be sharing and giving in the way we live our lives.
Young immature children often have great trouble with the concept of sharing. They see sharing a toy as losing it to someone else. They become very anxious and will fight, cry, or throw a tantrum to keep what they believe to be their own. It is only through the process of growing and maturing that children come to learn that sharing in community is as much fun if not more so.
In our world to be a greedy anxious people is immature and destructive. To be anxious about what we will eat, or drink, or wear, and thankful for being more fortunate than others is truly a sinful and immature way of being. To grow in maturity and to be a sharing and giving people makes for a very different kind of world. To seek God and his kingdom is to discover that all things from the very beginning are God’s possessions. He has shared them with us and for that we can indeed be grateful, for life is a wonderful, wonderful gift from God. To share it with others, to share the wealth, to share forgiveness, to share love, to be God’s own giving people is surely the way we live out our thankfulness for all that God has given us and it is truly a healthy way a responsible way of living.
Do not be anxious for all the possessions. First seek God and his Kingdom, his way, and rejoice and give thanks for the ability to share the abundance.
Thursday, November 27, 1997
Sunday, November 23, 1997
Last Pentecost - Christ the King
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Last Pentecost - Christ the King
PROPER: 29B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 23,1997
TEXT: John 18:33-37 - Jesus before Pilate - Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
ISSUE: Along with the Daniel and Revelation apocalyptic readings, Jesus standing before Pilate is also apocalyptic in nature. Jesus is the unique revelation of God’s truth. He is not encumbered with all the trappings that go with the world and its meaning of kingship. Jesus is utter simplicity that reveals the Glory of God’s forgiveness and his love. All who focus on him and listen to him, who embrace him, embrace a truth of God. Jesus on the cross sums all that up, once and for all. Keeping focused upon him and following him leads to the way and Kingdom of God. At this time of the year, this focus is not always too easy.
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Today is named by the church as “Christ the King” Sunday. Actually the celebration of Christ the King Sunday was originally celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church as a kind of reaction to the Lutherans. Back in the 1920’s, according to Marion Hatchett a distinguished liturgist at Univ. of the South, the Lutherans celebrated Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday of October. The Roman Church sort of said, “You Lutherans go ahead and honor your Martin Luther if you want, but we Catholics will honor Jesus Christ as our King on that Sunday.” After Vatican II, the Roman Church moved the celebration of Christ the King to the last Sunday before Advent. When our Episcopal Calendar was revised we followed along with that theme of this last Sunday of Pentecost being referred to as both The Last Sunday of Pentecost and/or Christ the King Sunday. There is, of course, a reasonable sense in ending the Church’s year with a celebration that the Lord Jesus Christ whom we have studied, worshiped and adored over the year would be celebrated as our spiritual King.
The Sunday is also The Last Sunday of Pentecost. It marks the end of the church year, which begins anew next Sunday with the beginning of the Advent Season. As last week, today’s reading carry on an apocalyptic theme. The Old Testament vision from the Book of Daniel portrays an Ancient One (God) whose dominion and kingship will never pass away inspite of all the commotions and wars, persecutions, and the rising and falling of nations. God who is king will prevail and never be destroyed. It is a message of hope for the time.
The epistle reading from Revelation is also the apocalyptic literature of the early Christian Church which was also experiencing when this book was written some very difficult times. Romans were demanding Emperor Worship, and Christians were being thrown out of the synagogues and therefore were not exempt, like the Jews were. So the early Christians were suffering persecution from all directions. They looked for and to Christ to come again from the throne of God, from the Alpha and the Omega (beginning and end) to be their ultimate hope and salvation.
The Gospel reading is also apocalyptic in a sense. Taken from the Gospel of John, Jesus has come to his end in the world. He is seen standing before Pilate in judgement just prior to his crucifixion on the cross. Unlike the synoptic accounts where Jesus is largely silent, here Jesus and Pilate are in conversation. Jesus attempts to reveal something to Pilate that he can not really grasp. Pilate who has the power to release Jesus questions him as to whether or not he is really a king: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies that he is not a king in the way in which the world understands political kingship. “My Kingdom is not from this world.” Pilate keeps trying to insist and demand, “So you are a king?” But Jesus will not accept Pilate’s definition of his ministry as a king. He has eome to bear witness to the truth, the truth about God.
For Pilate and for many of the people of Jesus’ time, a King was a political leader. Actually most of the kings, and especially the Jewish Herodian kings were poor rulers. With kingship came power, prestige, wealth, honor, status. For even our own time, Kingship, royalty is a place, and arena of prestige that conjures up images of political influence and prestige. In so many instances the status of grandeur and power rises and falls. Remember that early on in the church year, usually early in Lent, we read the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan. Satan will give Jesus all the nations of the world but for a moment of adoration. Jesus refuses to succumb. He has not come to the world for this kind of power. Satan goes away and bides his time. Now that Jesus confronted with crucifixion and death, Satan comes again in Pilate: Won’t you be a king? Surely you are a king? Pilate cannot understand that Jesus is not after power and prestige as the world knows it. Jesus refuses to play the game. He refuses to be a king as the world understands it. He has come to bear witness to the truth. He has come not for himself and his own honor and glory. He has come to keep people focused and aimed upon God. If there is any king for Jesus it is God who is King, and he is merely a servant. Jesus is the great servant and indeed the great revelation of what God is like. His life, ministry, and his crucifixion is to reveal the beauty of God as accessible to every human being.
The English word truth is closely associated with the word old German word “troth.” Remember in the Marriage services we used to say: “I pledge thee my troth.” I pledge to you my faithfulness, my trust. Jesus, as the revealer of truth is the one who betrothes all who listen to him to a loving relationship with God.
Jesus’ world knew many very poor people. There was considerable sickness and death. Persecutions by the Romans were prevalent. Crucifixion was common. Many people felt themselves to be outcast, lost, least. The religious ways and the political structures of the time were seen as much of the cause of the suffering of people. The ministry of Jesus was to enter into the human condition and to restore a sense of the presence of God and the hope of God. The parables and teachings of Jesus challenged the very system of his time. The last were seen as the first in the eyes of God according to Jesus’ parable. The bad guy was restored and welcomed home again. The righteous were shamed and challenged to look at their hardened hearts. Hungry folk were fed with love and hopefulness. Children were allowed to find their way into his presence, and women and widows were honored. People were called into meaningful servanthood to care for and with one another. Human hearts that were touched by Jesus were changed. When Jesus triumphally entered Jerusalem he was not riding upon the horse of triumph but upon the beast of burden. A new age was dawning. A new kind of kingdom is being claimed and a new definintion of royalty was being revealed. Jewels and crowns, power and prestige, manipulation, force, and fury, worldly influences and were not what this way of life was about. It was about being a community focused again on the simple loveliness and the beauty of God. Changed, healed, loved, accepted, included, forgiven transformed human beings with renewed hearts were people who saw themselves as new citizens worthily entering God’s Kingdom. Something wonderful was ruling in their hearts. It was the way of God revealed in Christ, and he was a king unlike the world’s understanding of kingship. Yet for the early church, there was something indeed royal about him.
Now as we come to the end of this church year and are about to begin a new one, we are faced with the question of who or what is it that rules our lives? What is the truth? To what are we faithful? What are we really betrothed to? To what or to whom do we pledge our troth, our homage, or fidelity? Who is king for us? What are we intently focused upon? What dominates our lives? What or who rules in our hearts? We all have our obsessions and our interests which are not necessarily bad. Some are. We can be caught-up in destrutive interests and behaviors like drugs and alcohol, pornography, addictive gambling. But it is not only the negative destructive things that can captivate our lives. We can becomes very captivated by our jobs and careers. We can become fixed and devoted to being right about certain things and issues, if not pompous. In our time there is a real devotion and commitment to family and family values. Sports and hobbies can rule our time. Devotion to our wealth and the making of money, and the holding on to it can possess our interests. It’s a busy world with many distractions and attractions, many philosophies and demands. But again, what rules, what governs us? What is the truth about ourselves that is at the foundations, at the very bottom, that governs from the deepest recesses of our hearts?
We live in an age and a country that is not comfortable with kings and princes. Many in the world loved Princess Diana, but largely because she was not cut from and at least rebelled against the from the royal mold. We don’t like anything that has a reputation for ever being tryannical. Nor do we like to think in our time that there is a specific truth. Our age is the age of relativity where there are many truths and varieties of ways of seeing things and appreciating reality. And yet inspite of ourselves we do allow things to effect and rule us and direct who and what we are. We do fail, become disenchanted, disappointed, and sometimes inspite of all we have feel an empitiness or an anxious uncertainty about our humaness. Our imperfections and an ever changing world are a constant challenge to our proclaimed truths. What rules us, save us, helps us, forgives us? What is the truth, the faith and fidelity of our lives that lasts and endures the test of time?
Pilate stood before Jesus and asked: Are you a king? . . . . What is the truth? What do you think about these things and how would you answer?
SEASON: Last Pentecost - Christ the King
PROPER: 29B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 23,1997
TEXT: John 18:33-37 - Jesus before Pilate - Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
ISSUE: Along with the Daniel and Revelation apocalyptic readings, Jesus standing before Pilate is also apocalyptic in nature. Jesus is the unique revelation of God’s truth. He is not encumbered with all the trappings that go with the world and its meaning of kingship. Jesus is utter simplicity that reveals the Glory of God’s forgiveness and his love. All who focus on him and listen to him, who embrace him, embrace a truth of God. Jesus on the cross sums all that up, once and for all. Keeping focused upon him and following him leads to the way and Kingdom of God. At this time of the year, this focus is not always too easy.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Today is named by the church as “Christ the King” Sunday. Actually the celebration of Christ the King Sunday was originally celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church as a kind of reaction to the Lutherans. Back in the 1920’s, according to Marion Hatchett a distinguished liturgist at Univ. of the South, the Lutherans celebrated Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday of October. The Roman Church sort of said, “You Lutherans go ahead and honor your Martin Luther if you want, but we Catholics will honor Jesus Christ as our King on that Sunday.” After Vatican II, the Roman Church moved the celebration of Christ the King to the last Sunday before Advent. When our Episcopal Calendar was revised we followed along with that theme of this last Sunday of Pentecost being referred to as both The Last Sunday of Pentecost and/or Christ the King Sunday. There is, of course, a reasonable sense in ending the Church’s year with a celebration that the Lord Jesus Christ whom we have studied, worshiped and adored over the year would be celebrated as our spiritual King.
The Sunday is also The Last Sunday of Pentecost. It marks the end of the church year, which begins anew next Sunday with the beginning of the Advent Season. As last week, today’s reading carry on an apocalyptic theme. The Old Testament vision from the Book of Daniel portrays an Ancient One (God) whose dominion and kingship will never pass away inspite of all the commotions and wars, persecutions, and the rising and falling of nations. God who is king will prevail and never be destroyed. It is a message of hope for the time.
The epistle reading from Revelation is also the apocalyptic literature of the early Christian Church which was also experiencing when this book was written some very difficult times. Romans were demanding Emperor Worship, and Christians were being thrown out of the synagogues and therefore were not exempt, like the Jews were. So the early Christians were suffering persecution from all directions. They looked for and to Christ to come again from the throne of God, from the Alpha and the Omega (beginning and end) to be their ultimate hope and salvation.
The Gospel reading is also apocalyptic in a sense. Taken from the Gospel of John, Jesus has come to his end in the world. He is seen standing before Pilate in judgement just prior to his crucifixion on the cross. Unlike the synoptic accounts where Jesus is largely silent, here Jesus and Pilate are in conversation. Jesus attempts to reveal something to Pilate that he can not really grasp. Pilate who has the power to release Jesus questions him as to whether or not he is really a king: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies that he is not a king in the way in which the world understands political kingship. “My Kingdom is not from this world.” Pilate keeps trying to insist and demand, “So you are a king?” But Jesus will not accept Pilate’s definition of his ministry as a king. He has eome to bear witness to the truth, the truth about God.
For Pilate and for many of the people of Jesus’ time, a King was a political leader. Actually most of the kings, and especially the Jewish Herodian kings were poor rulers. With kingship came power, prestige, wealth, honor, status. For even our own time, Kingship, royalty is a place, and arena of prestige that conjures up images of political influence and prestige. In so many instances the status of grandeur and power rises and falls. Remember that early on in the church year, usually early in Lent, we read the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan. Satan will give Jesus all the nations of the world but for a moment of adoration. Jesus refuses to succumb. He has not come to the world for this kind of power. Satan goes away and bides his time. Now that Jesus confronted with crucifixion and death, Satan comes again in Pilate: Won’t you be a king? Surely you are a king? Pilate cannot understand that Jesus is not after power and prestige as the world knows it. Jesus refuses to play the game. He refuses to be a king as the world understands it. He has come to bear witness to the truth. He has come not for himself and his own honor and glory. He has come to keep people focused and aimed upon God. If there is any king for Jesus it is God who is King, and he is merely a servant. Jesus is the great servant and indeed the great revelation of what God is like. His life, ministry, and his crucifixion is to reveal the beauty of God as accessible to every human being.
The English word truth is closely associated with the word old German word “troth.” Remember in the Marriage services we used to say: “I pledge thee my troth.” I pledge to you my faithfulness, my trust. Jesus, as the revealer of truth is the one who betrothes all who listen to him to a loving relationship with God.
Jesus’ world knew many very poor people. There was considerable sickness and death. Persecutions by the Romans were prevalent. Crucifixion was common. Many people felt themselves to be outcast, lost, least. The religious ways and the political structures of the time were seen as much of the cause of the suffering of people. The ministry of Jesus was to enter into the human condition and to restore a sense of the presence of God and the hope of God. The parables and teachings of Jesus challenged the very system of his time. The last were seen as the first in the eyes of God according to Jesus’ parable. The bad guy was restored and welcomed home again. The righteous were shamed and challenged to look at their hardened hearts. Hungry folk were fed with love and hopefulness. Children were allowed to find their way into his presence, and women and widows were honored. People were called into meaningful servanthood to care for and with one another. Human hearts that were touched by Jesus were changed. When Jesus triumphally entered Jerusalem he was not riding upon the horse of triumph but upon the beast of burden. A new age was dawning. A new kind of kingdom is being claimed and a new definintion of royalty was being revealed. Jewels and crowns, power and prestige, manipulation, force, and fury, worldly influences and were not what this way of life was about. It was about being a community focused again on the simple loveliness and the beauty of God. Changed, healed, loved, accepted, included, forgiven transformed human beings with renewed hearts were people who saw themselves as new citizens worthily entering God’s Kingdom. Something wonderful was ruling in their hearts. It was the way of God revealed in Christ, and he was a king unlike the world’s understanding of kingship. Yet for the early church, there was something indeed royal about him.
Now as we come to the end of this church year and are about to begin a new one, we are faced with the question of who or what is it that rules our lives? What is the truth? To what are we faithful? What are we really betrothed to? To what or to whom do we pledge our troth, our homage, or fidelity? Who is king for us? What are we intently focused upon? What dominates our lives? What or who rules in our hearts? We all have our obsessions and our interests which are not necessarily bad. Some are. We can be caught-up in destrutive interests and behaviors like drugs and alcohol, pornography, addictive gambling. But it is not only the negative destructive things that can captivate our lives. We can becomes very captivated by our jobs and careers. We can become fixed and devoted to being right about certain things and issues, if not pompous. In our time there is a real devotion and commitment to family and family values. Sports and hobbies can rule our time. Devotion to our wealth and the making of money, and the holding on to it can possess our interests. It’s a busy world with many distractions and attractions, many philosophies and demands. But again, what rules, what governs us? What is the truth about ourselves that is at the foundations, at the very bottom, that governs from the deepest recesses of our hearts?
We live in an age and a country that is not comfortable with kings and princes. Many in the world loved Princess Diana, but largely because she was not cut from and at least rebelled against the from the royal mold. We don’t like anything that has a reputation for ever being tryannical. Nor do we like to think in our time that there is a specific truth. Our age is the age of relativity where there are many truths and varieties of ways of seeing things and appreciating reality. And yet inspite of ourselves we do allow things to effect and rule us and direct who and what we are. We do fail, become disenchanted, disappointed, and sometimes inspite of all we have feel an empitiness or an anxious uncertainty about our humaness. Our imperfections and an ever changing world are a constant challenge to our proclaimed truths. What rules us, save us, helps us, forgives us? What is the truth, the faith and fidelity of our lives that lasts and endures the test of time?
Pilate stood before Jesus and asked: Are you a king? . . . . What is the truth? What do you think about these things and how would you answer?
Sunday, November 16, 1997
26 Pentecost
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: 26 Pentecost
PROPER: 28B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 16,1997
TEXT: Mark 13:14-23 - The Little Apocalyse - “But be alert; I have already told you everything.
ISSUE: Be alert and keep the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ foremost in our hearts and minds. The world knows many times of calamity and tribulations. Our lives know extraordinarily difficult times. False messiahs and feel good philosophies can be very attractive. Yet it is Christ who leads us to God, to God’s love and hope. The scripture readings today are all written out of difficult times of various forms of persecution. Yet the Good News of God revealed in Christ is that in being faithful we shall never be lost. Our hope resides in the Christ.
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I began talking with you last Sunday about the fact that the passage from the gospel was somewhat disturbing, in that it challenged us to look hard at the ways in which we spend our lives both in terms of our abilities and our finances in being people who are truly giving and serving people who embrace Christ. Well, this morning’s passage is also one which is indeed a distrubing passage. It is what we refer to as apocalyptic scripture which deals with the end of things, as in the end of the world. Such notions can be disturbing. The end of the world is often pictured as a time of great disaster. You get something of the disastrous imagery in the gospel passage this morning: “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter. For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that god created until now. . . .”
There are often two basic reactions to Apocalyptic writings. The first is to take them so very seriously and so literally as to end up kind of looking ridiculous. These are the types who get into predicting when the end will come, and often look foolish when their appointed date passes. They make such silly predictions that 666 stands for Henry Kissinger or Ronald Regan, that Prince Charles is the anti-christ. Jim Jones in Guyanna, David Koresh in Waco, The Heaven’s Gate crowd in California led their flocks to unnecessary disaster through their apocalyptic foolishness. The other reaction is not to take apocalyptic literature seriously at all and to pass it off as having no worth. I believe that when we try to appreciate the scripture and its cultural and historical background we will come up with a better understanding of what it all means for us.
In the Old Testament reading this morning from Daniel, he is predicting and prophecying that Israel will come through a very difficult period in her history with God’s protection given through the Archangel Michael. The Jewish people suffered greatly at the hand of a conqueror, a Syrian King, Antiochos Epiphanes. He was trying to force Greek culture upon the entire kingdom and did all he could to eradicate Jewish cuture. He forbid Jews to practice their ancient custom of circumcision, which was a basic covenantal liturgical practice in Judaism. He forced them to sacrifice pigs, unclean animals in the Jewish temple. In fact, Antiochus set up images of pagan God’s in the Jerusalem Temple and turned it into a brothel for temple prosititution. It was a time of great agony for faithful Jews. It marked the end of a time of peace for the Jewish people. It marked a period of their faith being almost completely wiped out. It was a time of horrendous spiritual disaster for God’s faithful. Yet Daniel called the faithful to persevere and a time of reward and hope would come. This time of spiritual devastation was some 170 years before the coming of Christ. Antiochus was eventually over come by the Maccabean revolt.
When Mark is writing his gospel, about 65 A.D. Israel and the Jewish people were ruled by the Romans. The hostilities between the two peoples was significant. Crucifixions were common. The Romans were oppressive. The outcome for the Jewish people did not look good. It was quite grim. Mark reports that Jesus says: “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be, then those in Judea must flee to the mountainsl the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat.” Historians report that one of the Roman Emperors, Caligula was planning to place of statue of himself inside the Jeruaslem Temple. Such an act would again have caused great turmoil, revolt, and war. Caligula never did get the statue put up in the Temple, but the Romans did destroy the Temple and all of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Israel became a totally destroyed nation, never to gain any semblance of being a sovereign country again until the recent 1950’s. These times were seen as very difficult agonizing periods in the history of the Jews and the early Christians. Orthodox Jews were at odds with the early Christians. Roman power was in the process of destroying Judaism. People of the period lived short lives, Jesus himself being an old man at age 30. Disease was rampant. It was an honor dominatedculture in which it was hard to trust anybody for the lying, secrecy, and deception. It was for many people a time thought to be approaching the end. And when people are desperate they grasp for anything that will give them some kind of hope. Varieties of kinds of cults developed. People longed to escape the disasters of these forbidding times. But through it all in Mark’s Gospel account Jesus simply says, “Do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will apprear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be alert; I have already told you everything.” It is a great call to trust in, to believe in, to place one’s confidence in Jesus the Christ to be the deliverance from the disaster. This message was strongly proclaimed by the early church. Faith in Jesus as not only another messiah, but the Christ, the anointed of God, would be the hope of the faithful. It does not say that there will not be times of turmoil, upheval, and anxiety. There will be. But the gospel message reveals hope and resurrection. Out of the ashes God who is the creator and maker of all things can and will renew the face of the earth and his kingdom is now and is coming now and will come to reclaim those of faith. Be alert and ready for the renewing presence of God that comes in and through Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
Every age has had its apocalytic signs. Our great grand parents, grandparents and parents came through some bloody revolutions. They saw the horrors of war in World War I and II with all the suffering caused by bombings, infantry fighting, toxic and noxious gases. They saw the abominations of sacriliege of Hitler murdering six million Jews and other so called dissodents. Some of us hid ourselves under school desks in anticipation of atomic war. So many men today suffer the painful, awful, memories of Korea, and especially the Vietnam conflict. Many have seen the horrors of earthquakes, fires, and floods taking away their homes and possessions. Some in Hiroshima saw the skies turn black and a world turn to dripping blood.
Today we may seem somewhat relatively complacent in a world that seems to be mostly at peace. But today the signs of the end may be more subtle. Today we see the breaking down of the family as we once knew it. It is period in which it is hard to trust anyone. Fewer people are dependable: clergy, church, parents, fathers, mothers, sports heroes, and politicians. Their hypocisy is often a let down. Their messianic hope is false. Today there is a more subtle and sometimes an almost undetectable enemy. There is the fear of the unknown terrorist and the unpredictable violence that stalks our city and county streets and neighborhoods. There is the abomination of desolating sacrilege the great idol of secular materialism that provides us with a new kind of religion. Material possessions will give us honor and happiness we are told to believe. Or is it Science that will be our salvation that will give us longer years to live and all kinds of miracles and new body parts. But how shall we live at peace in a world that becomes over populated, and polluted beyond hope? What does a world whose temperatures is rising have to offer when severe weather conditions could be catastrophic? Wherein does our salvation lie?
Our only hope lies in seeing ourselves ultimately in the hands of a loving God. Turning to God to with faith and surrender that God will use us to be his instruments of justice and his people who embrace the caring and compassionate ways of Christ is our hope. Mark has Jesus telling us that we cannot go back. There is no turning back. There is no hiding. All we can do is face the future whatever it may be, and be alert to the world’s need for God, for the renewing presence of Christ Jesus who gives the stamina to face the world with hope and the trust that it is God who is ultimately making all things new. How and when the world will end is not ours to know. Jesus himself did not claim to know, but that such knowledge belonged to the Father alone. All we can do is be faithful, trust in God. We read, we learn, we mark, we inwardly digest the scriptures of God’s mighty act and works. We look for his coming again. We are called upon to be alert to what is good and precious. We trust that Christ has led us in the way of God and that we shall be his people of love and compassion and a people of hope. We rejoice in the glory of God around us.
Not everything around us is perfect nor will it be. L:ife to be truly valuable and meaningful will have its challenges and its hardships. We will not be perfect, and we will not be living in a perfect world. Yet we trust that God is with us and in us. The purposes of God in time will ultimately be revealed. We rejoice in what is good and hopeful. Meantime we live by faith and not phoniness nor false messiahs that would have us believe that everything will be or should always be wonderful and happy. Yet we stand at the edge of new hopes and new beginnings when our faith is in God.
We have about come to the end of the church’s year. Next week will be the last of Pentecost, before we begin the new church year in Advent. The scriptures have us looking at the end of things which sometimes and for some people have an element of disaster. Yet through the eyes of the faithful, life does not end but is changed, and we begin looking for the renewed coming of Christ into our lives and world as its catalyst for change. We begin thinking about repentance, which means change of mind, and receiving into our lives the renewal of the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ who leads us to the Father who has created us in His image, in the image of Love.
We wrestle with these apocalyptic issues in a way this is not just thinking of them as silly, or as unimportant. Facing the hard times and what seems hopeless is a matter of dealing with the turning points in our lives that enable us recognize our need for God and our hope in turn to God.
SEASON: 26 Pentecost
PROPER: 28B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 16,1997
TEXT: Mark 13:14-23 - The Little Apocalyse - “But be alert; I have already told you everything.
ISSUE: Be alert and keep the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ foremost in our hearts and minds. The world knows many times of calamity and tribulations. Our lives know extraordinarily difficult times. False messiahs and feel good philosophies can be very attractive. Yet it is Christ who leads us to God, to God’s love and hope. The scripture readings today are all written out of difficult times of various forms of persecution. Yet the Good News of God revealed in Christ is that in being faithful we shall never be lost. Our hope resides in the Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I began talking with you last Sunday about the fact that the passage from the gospel was somewhat disturbing, in that it challenged us to look hard at the ways in which we spend our lives both in terms of our abilities and our finances in being people who are truly giving and serving people who embrace Christ. Well, this morning’s passage is also one which is indeed a distrubing passage. It is what we refer to as apocalyptic scripture which deals with the end of things, as in the end of the world. Such notions can be disturbing. The end of the world is often pictured as a time of great disaster. You get something of the disastrous imagery in the gospel passage this morning: “Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter. For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that god created until now. . . .”
There are often two basic reactions to Apocalyptic writings. The first is to take them so very seriously and so literally as to end up kind of looking ridiculous. These are the types who get into predicting when the end will come, and often look foolish when their appointed date passes. They make such silly predictions that 666 stands for Henry Kissinger or Ronald Regan, that Prince Charles is the anti-christ. Jim Jones in Guyanna, David Koresh in Waco, The Heaven’s Gate crowd in California led their flocks to unnecessary disaster through their apocalyptic foolishness. The other reaction is not to take apocalyptic literature seriously at all and to pass it off as having no worth. I believe that when we try to appreciate the scripture and its cultural and historical background we will come up with a better understanding of what it all means for us.
In the Old Testament reading this morning from Daniel, he is predicting and prophecying that Israel will come through a very difficult period in her history with God’s protection given through the Archangel Michael. The Jewish people suffered greatly at the hand of a conqueror, a Syrian King, Antiochos Epiphanes. He was trying to force Greek culture upon the entire kingdom and did all he could to eradicate Jewish cuture. He forbid Jews to practice their ancient custom of circumcision, which was a basic covenantal liturgical practice in Judaism. He forced them to sacrifice pigs, unclean animals in the Jewish temple. In fact, Antiochus set up images of pagan God’s in the Jerusalem Temple and turned it into a brothel for temple prosititution. It was a time of great agony for faithful Jews. It marked the end of a time of peace for the Jewish people. It marked a period of their faith being almost completely wiped out. It was a time of horrendous spiritual disaster for God’s faithful. Yet Daniel called the faithful to persevere and a time of reward and hope would come. This time of spiritual devastation was some 170 years before the coming of Christ. Antiochus was eventually over come by the Maccabean revolt.
When Mark is writing his gospel, about 65 A.D. Israel and the Jewish people were ruled by the Romans. The hostilities between the two peoples was significant. Crucifixions were common. The Romans were oppressive. The outcome for the Jewish people did not look good. It was quite grim. Mark reports that Jesus says: “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be, then those in Judea must flee to the mountainsl the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat.” Historians report that one of the Roman Emperors, Caligula was planning to place of statue of himself inside the Jeruaslem Temple. Such an act would again have caused great turmoil, revolt, and war. Caligula never did get the statue put up in the Temple, but the Romans did destroy the Temple and all of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Israel became a totally destroyed nation, never to gain any semblance of being a sovereign country again until the recent 1950’s. These times were seen as very difficult agonizing periods in the history of the Jews and the early Christians. Orthodox Jews were at odds with the early Christians. Roman power was in the process of destroying Judaism. People of the period lived short lives, Jesus himself being an old man at age 30. Disease was rampant. It was an honor dominatedculture in which it was hard to trust anybody for the lying, secrecy, and deception. It was for many people a time thought to be approaching the end. And when people are desperate they grasp for anything that will give them some kind of hope. Varieties of kinds of cults developed. People longed to escape the disasters of these forbidding times. But through it all in Mark’s Gospel account Jesus simply says, “Do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will apprear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be alert; I have already told you everything.” It is a great call to trust in, to believe in, to place one’s confidence in Jesus the Christ to be the deliverance from the disaster. This message was strongly proclaimed by the early church. Faith in Jesus as not only another messiah, but the Christ, the anointed of God, would be the hope of the faithful. It does not say that there will not be times of turmoil, upheval, and anxiety. There will be. But the gospel message reveals hope and resurrection. Out of the ashes God who is the creator and maker of all things can and will renew the face of the earth and his kingdom is now and is coming now and will come to reclaim those of faith. Be alert and ready for the renewing presence of God that comes in and through Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
Every age has had its apocalytic signs. Our great grand parents, grandparents and parents came through some bloody revolutions. They saw the horrors of war in World War I and II with all the suffering caused by bombings, infantry fighting, toxic and noxious gases. They saw the abominations of sacriliege of Hitler murdering six million Jews and other so called dissodents. Some of us hid ourselves under school desks in anticipation of atomic war. So many men today suffer the painful, awful, memories of Korea, and especially the Vietnam conflict. Many have seen the horrors of earthquakes, fires, and floods taking away their homes and possessions. Some in Hiroshima saw the skies turn black and a world turn to dripping blood.
Today we may seem somewhat relatively complacent in a world that seems to be mostly at peace. But today the signs of the end may be more subtle. Today we see the breaking down of the family as we once knew it. It is period in which it is hard to trust anyone. Fewer people are dependable: clergy, church, parents, fathers, mothers, sports heroes, and politicians. Their hypocisy is often a let down. Their messianic hope is false. Today there is a more subtle and sometimes an almost undetectable enemy. There is the fear of the unknown terrorist and the unpredictable violence that stalks our city and county streets and neighborhoods. There is the abomination of desolating sacrilege the great idol of secular materialism that provides us with a new kind of religion. Material possessions will give us honor and happiness we are told to believe. Or is it Science that will be our salvation that will give us longer years to live and all kinds of miracles and new body parts. But how shall we live at peace in a world that becomes over populated, and polluted beyond hope? What does a world whose temperatures is rising have to offer when severe weather conditions could be catastrophic? Wherein does our salvation lie?
Our only hope lies in seeing ourselves ultimately in the hands of a loving God. Turning to God to with faith and surrender that God will use us to be his instruments of justice and his people who embrace the caring and compassionate ways of Christ is our hope. Mark has Jesus telling us that we cannot go back. There is no turning back. There is no hiding. All we can do is face the future whatever it may be, and be alert to the world’s need for God, for the renewing presence of Christ Jesus who gives the stamina to face the world with hope and the trust that it is God who is ultimately making all things new. How and when the world will end is not ours to know. Jesus himself did not claim to know, but that such knowledge belonged to the Father alone. All we can do is be faithful, trust in God. We read, we learn, we mark, we inwardly digest the scriptures of God’s mighty act and works. We look for his coming again. We are called upon to be alert to what is good and precious. We trust that Christ has led us in the way of God and that we shall be his people of love and compassion and a people of hope. We rejoice in the glory of God around us.
Not everything around us is perfect nor will it be. L:ife to be truly valuable and meaningful will have its challenges and its hardships. We will not be perfect, and we will not be living in a perfect world. Yet we trust that God is with us and in us. The purposes of God in time will ultimately be revealed. We rejoice in what is good and hopeful. Meantime we live by faith and not phoniness nor false messiahs that would have us believe that everything will be or should always be wonderful and happy. Yet we stand at the edge of new hopes and new beginnings when our faith is in God.
We have about come to the end of the church’s year. Next week will be the last of Pentecost, before we begin the new church year in Advent. The scriptures have us looking at the end of things which sometimes and for some people have an element of disaster. Yet through the eyes of the faithful, life does not end but is changed, and we begin looking for the renewed coming of Christ into our lives and world as its catalyst for change. We begin thinking about repentance, which means change of mind, and receiving into our lives the renewal of the ways and teachings of Jesus Christ who leads us to the Father who has created us in His image, in the image of Love.
We wrestle with these apocalyptic issues in a way this is not just thinking of them as silly, or as unimportant. Facing the hard times and what seems hopeless is a matter of dealing with the turning points in our lives that enable us recognize our need for God and our hope in turn to God.
Sunday, November 9, 1997
Pentecost 25
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 25
PROPER: 27 B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 9, 1997
TEXT: Mark 12:38-44 - The Pharisee’s Injustice and The Widow’s Offering
As Jesus taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes . . . . They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” . . . . . . “For all of them have contibuted out of their abundance; but she out of her powerty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
See also: I Kings 17:8-16 - Elijah and the Widow
ISSUE: The passage reveals an unrighteous behavior on the part of the scribes who are self-serving and unjust. They give but it is out of an abundance accumulated out of their own greed. The widow, who herself has been victimized by the system, still gives her whole living out of her poverty. She is devoted and faithful to God. She represents, as Jesus, the Elijah-like figure reveals, a deep sensitivity to human need out of her own poverty. The passage raises the issue of how we as individuals and as a church act as good stewards in today’s world, and how we need to wrestle with our own values of giving and sacrifice.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Today’s passage from Mark is fascinating in terms of what it was like to be, or to have known the scribes in Jesus’ time, the 1st century Mediterranean culture. Jesus was really at odds with their behavior, and surely his condemnation of the scribes as we have it here in Mark’s account of the gospel is good reason for Jesus to have been sought out by the scribes and crucified. The passage is also disturbing to our culture as it challenges motives and behaviors around how we live out our lives in meaningful and giving ways.
Jesus and his disciples have now arrived at the Jerusalem Temple, and the passage from Mark is really scathing criticism of the Scribes by Jesus and the early church. The scribes in this period were lawyers. They were a learned class of people who taught and interpretted the Law of Moses. People turned to them for explanation, interpretation, and understanding of the law. They were probably also used to mangage the accounts or estates of widows who had no sons.
From the point of view of this passage today, there were many at the Jerusalem Temple who were considered to be a rather unscrupulous bunch. The scribes were in a position of honorby virtue of their superior knowledge of the law, and they persisted constantly in grasping for more and more honor. They like to wear their long prestigious robes even in the marketplaces, like a priest wearing his cassock to the super market today. It gave them great attention. They were awarded the best seats in the synagogue where they could rest the backs against the wall where the Torah was kept, and they sat on a platform above the people facing them. At banquets, the scribes were given the best seats of honor. They attended many feasts as a result of the many sacrifices that were offered. Jesus concludes that by virtue of their rich long robes, their conspicuous consumption at banquets, they were also devouring the estates of widows to support their extravagant life styles. While they claimed to support or give to the poor, the giving went largely to themselves.
In contrast, widows (a word in the Hebrew which means “silent one” or one unable to speak) were often vicitimized. A widow without a son had no honor status, and no voice in public matters. They were women, and women without the protection of a son or husband, and therefore were very vulnerable to the unscrupulous. They were not included in Hebrew inheritance laws. Their resources were very limited, and they often returned to their home of origin.
In the story as we have it this morning, Jesus is condemning the scribes for their conspicuous comsumption habits and devouring the living of widows. Furthermore, Jesus points out how a widow is so very oppressed by the system. People contributed in the temple by pouring coins into a metal funnel, trumpet like, where they fell into a thief proof container. The rich would pour in their coins and it would make a great racket of noise. Everyone would “oooh” and “aaah.” They would receive their honor and reward by the crowds. Jesus, however, points out that a poor widow has gone to the trumpet to contribute her share, and by the sound of the “tinkle” you can tell that it is no more than two tiny copper coins, about 1/64th of a days wage. Jesus makes the dramatic point that the woman is thereby being robbed by this corrupt system. She is totally dishonored in her poverty! She had already been required to pay to have her money changed into temple currency at an exhorbitant rate. This corrupt system is abusive and demeaning. She is totally victimized by a legal system and a way of life that destroys the poor, which is supposedly intended to help it. The woman is the stereotypical symbol of the exploited and the oppressed. Jesus hated it and exposed it, and was ultimately crucified for doing so. Jesus was very very disturbing and challenging to his culture and its ways and traditions. He was very critical of a system that fed itself to the exclusion of the poor and the oppressed. Jesus saw this woman as totally victimized! Jesus predicted its decline and the very fall of the Temple itself.
The story of the widow in the temple for the early church made still another important point related to the widow’s contribution. Jesus makes the point that the widow actually put in more than anyone else in the community. In fact her offering was the most significant. She gives out of her poverty. All the rest, the rich, the affluent, and the scribes and pharisees gave according to the law and in some instances beyond the laws requirement and received their honor for doing so. They gave their tithes. But they gave because they had it to give. They gave out of their abundance. They gave out of what was left-over. The widow on the other hand gave out of her poverty, and what’s more she gave everything she had left to give. While at one point in the story, she is the victimized symbol of the exploited and oppressed, now she is the symbol of total and complete faithfulness. She gives all she has to God, even in her victimized widowhood, in complete trust. For Jesus this is the new, genuine, real, and authentic honor! She risks her whole life, meagre though it is, in complete faith and trust in God.
Incidentally, the story of Elijah and the widow from I Kings 17:8-16, is a very similar story. Elijah the prophet comes to a foreign widow woman in a time of famine. In great trust and faith, the foreign woman supports the prophet until the famine ends, and she experiences the miracle of the meal and oil that never runs out. In the Mark story, Jesus, that Elijah-like figure, sees in the widow of his time this great trust that in God she will not know emptiness, but fullness.
Did I not say that this passage is a very distrubing one? As we consider the various systems of which we are part, like our country, our businesses, our church, and as individuals in community, the passage challenges us to see ourselves in the light of the Gospel. It asks us to consider where we stand as a just society? What of our values and our expression of godly living that reflects a generosity and a deep appreciation of the oppressed? How do we really reflect our commited trust and faithfulness?
Consider some of the things going on in our own time and in our own culture. I have heard it said that Michael Jordon, the famous basketball player, receives more money advertising for Nike, the atheletic shoe maker, than they pay all of their employees in wages in one of their foreign plants.
Many CEO’s reportedly make a disproportionate amount of money in comparison to the people who work under them.
Many people, widows and the elderly, here in our own country receive minimum wages in some of our fast food establishments, while wealthier people feast on very low cost food. Local food producers are often at the mercy of imported foods.
Recently we have heard of Ted Turner’s enormously generous contribution to the United Nations. We hear of others giving large grants of money to colleges, universities, to the arts. We think of these people as the great philanthropists of our society and time. They are. They receive great press and honor. But notice too that many such gifts are out of the abundance of the wealthy giver who writes the check and then sits down to a sumptuous dinner in a mansion. It’s like the baseball player who makes ten million dollars each year and then says I can afford to give away a million dollars. That’s all well and good, but he can well afford to do so out of his wealth. Their real fair share is in a very different category from the average person’s income.
There are, of course, those who will say, I don’t have or make much money so I will keep mine for myself and let the fat-cats do the giving. But this attitude is hardly in keeping with what Jesus saw in the enormous generosity of the widow lady in the Temple who gave away her two copper pennies.
We must also consider what our churches are doing in terms of being faithful to their mission. It is tempting to become isolated, and to enjoy all the energies we put into our rituals, our church buildings, and our long robes. In recent years there has been a sad retreat and abandonment of the city of churches where members have fled to the more comfortable suburbs. We have left a vacumn there, a void of Christian influence where it is most desperately needed. This issue is one that may well need the attention of the suburban churches if they are to be genuinely oriented in Christian mission. With the advent of Christendom and the church’s fascination with long robes, sumptuous living, and the heirarchical structure that leads to competitiveness, and protection by the state, the church has not always been true to its greater sense of serving others as it has been to serving itself.
Even as individual Christians we may well need to reflect on our own selves in terms of what it is we give as Christians. Do we give and live meaningfully out of just what is left over, our abundance, or do we give and live out of sense of what is first and foremost in our lives, a sense of being God’s people and his own instruments and agents in the world that God can use? Do we live and give out of trust that God has already given to us more than we can desire or pray for? Remember the story of the Feeding of the 5,000. The boy gives his lunch of two fish and five barley loaves. He is fed and so is a multitude down through the ages. We still gather here on Sundays to feed on the wealth of God’s love expressed out of a little boy’s poverty of some 2,000 years ago.
Similar to the scribes, it is easy to think of ourselves as better than others, more deserving than others, more righteous than others, more right than others. Like the scribes we want to see ourselves to be the honorable. Yet real honor was the old widow lady, “the poor in spirit” who only had her poverty to offer. All she had was her emptiness and she becomes a sign for the ages, a sign of faith and trust that God can use to awaken hope in others. Compassion and sensitivity to human need often becomes desenstitized by rationalizations to keep things the way they are.
The scriptures today calls all of us to a self-examination of who we are and to consider the motives and values which drive us. It challenges our complacency. It makes us look at who we are and what we are able to give to God’s world, how we are a meaningful part of that world. It helps us once again to see that Christ in his own poverty and out pouring of his life brought hope for all and a deeper more profound justice for all. We are called to be responsible in terms of what God has given us, and that means a lifetime of consideration of Jesus Christ in the Gospel and our faithful response to it.
SEASON: Pentecost 25
PROPER: 27 B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 9, 1997
TEXT: Mark 12:38-44 - The Pharisee’s Injustice and The Widow’s Offering
As Jesus taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes . . . . They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” . . . . . . “For all of them have contibuted out of their abundance; but she out of her powerty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
See also: I Kings 17:8-16 - Elijah and the Widow
ISSUE: The passage reveals an unrighteous behavior on the part of the scribes who are self-serving and unjust. They give but it is out of an abundance accumulated out of their own greed. The widow, who herself has been victimized by the system, still gives her whole living out of her poverty. She is devoted and faithful to God. She represents, as Jesus, the Elijah-like figure reveals, a deep sensitivity to human need out of her own poverty. The passage raises the issue of how we as individuals and as a church act as good stewards in today’s world, and how we need to wrestle with our own values of giving and sacrifice.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Today’s passage from Mark is fascinating in terms of what it was like to be, or to have known the scribes in Jesus’ time, the 1st century Mediterranean culture. Jesus was really at odds with their behavior, and surely his condemnation of the scribes as we have it here in Mark’s account of the gospel is good reason for Jesus to have been sought out by the scribes and crucified. The passage is also disturbing to our culture as it challenges motives and behaviors around how we live out our lives in meaningful and giving ways.
Jesus and his disciples have now arrived at the Jerusalem Temple, and the passage from Mark is really scathing criticism of the Scribes by Jesus and the early church. The scribes in this period were lawyers. They were a learned class of people who taught and interpretted the Law of Moses. People turned to them for explanation, interpretation, and understanding of the law. They were probably also used to mangage the accounts or estates of widows who had no sons.
From the point of view of this passage today, there were many at the Jerusalem Temple who were considered to be a rather unscrupulous bunch. The scribes were in a position of honorby virtue of their superior knowledge of the law, and they persisted constantly in grasping for more and more honor. They like to wear their long prestigious robes even in the marketplaces, like a priest wearing his cassock to the super market today. It gave them great attention. They were awarded the best seats in the synagogue where they could rest the backs against the wall where the Torah was kept, and they sat on a platform above the people facing them. At banquets, the scribes were given the best seats of honor. They attended many feasts as a result of the many sacrifices that were offered. Jesus concludes that by virtue of their rich long robes, their conspicuous consumption at banquets, they were also devouring the estates of widows to support their extravagant life styles. While they claimed to support or give to the poor, the giving went largely to themselves.
In contrast, widows (a word in the Hebrew which means “silent one” or one unable to speak) were often vicitimized. A widow without a son had no honor status, and no voice in public matters. They were women, and women without the protection of a son or husband, and therefore were very vulnerable to the unscrupulous. They were not included in Hebrew inheritance laws. Their resources were very limited, and they often returned to their home of origin.
In the story as we have it this morning, Jesus is condemning the scribes for their conspicuous comsumption habits and devouring the living of widows. Furthermore, Jesus points out how a widow is so very oppressed by the system. People contributed in the temple by pouring coins into a metal funnel, trumpet like, where they fell into a thief proof container. The rich would pour in their coins and it would make a great racket of noise. Everyone would “oooh” and “aaah.” They would receive their honor and reward by the crowds. Jesus, however, points out that a poor widow has gone to the trumpet to contribute her share, and by the sound of the “tinkle” you can tell that it is no more than two tiny copper coins, about 1/64th of a days wage. Jesus makes the dramatic point that the woman is thereby being robbed by this corrupt system. She is totally dishonored in her poverty! She had already been required to pay to have her money changed into temple currency at an exhorbitant rate. This corrupt system is abusive and demeaning. She is totally victimized by a legal system and a way of life that destroys the poor, which is supposedly intended to help it. The woman is the stereotypical symbol of the exploited and the oppressed. Jesus hated it and exposed it, and was ultimately crucified for doing so. Jesus was very very disturbing and challenging to his culture and its ways and traditions. He was very critical of a system that fed itself to the exclusion of the poor and the oppressed. Jesus saw this woman as totally victimized! Jesus predicted its decline and the very fall of the Temple itself.
The story of the widow in the temple for the early church made still another important point related to the widow’s contribution. Jesus makes the point that the widow actually put in more than anyone else in the community. In fact her offering was the most significant. She gives out of her poverty. All the rest, the rich, the affluent, and the scribes and pharisees gave according to the law and in some instances beyond the laws requirement and received their honor for doing so. They gave their tithes. But they gave because they had it to give. They gave out of their abundance. They gave out of what was left-over. The widow on the other hand gave out of her poverty, and what’s more she gave everything she had left to give. While at one point in the story, she is the victimized symbol of the exploited and oppressed, now she is the symbol of total and complete faithfulness. She gives all she has to God, even in her victimized widowhood, in complete trust. For Jesus this is the new, genuine, real, and authentic honor! She risks her whole life, meagre though it is, in complete faith and trust in God.
Incidentally, the story of Elijah and the widow from I Kings 17:8-16, is a very similar story. Elijah the prophet comes to a foreign widow woman in a time of famine. In great trust and faith, the foreign woman supports the prophet until the famine ends, and she experiences the miracle of the meal and oil that never runs out. In the Mark story, Jesus, that Elijah-like figure, sees in the widow of his time this great trust that in God she will not know emptiness, but fullness.
Did I not say that this passage is a very distrubing one? As we consider the various systems of which we are part, like our country, our businesses, our church, and as individuals in community, the passage challenges us to see ourselves in the light of the Gospel. It asks us to consider where we stand as a just society? What of our values and our expression of godly living that reflects a generosity and a deep appreciation of the oppressed? How do we really reflect our commited trust and faithfulness?
Consider some of the things going on in our own time and in our own culture. I have heard it said that Michael Jordon, the famous basketball player, receives more money advertising for Nike, the atheletic shoe maker, than they pay all of their employees in wages in one of their foreign plants.
Many CEO’s reportedly make a disproportionate amount of money in comparison to the people who work under them.
Many people, widows and the elderly, here in our own country receive minimum wages in some of our fast food establishments, while wealthier people feast on very low cost food. Local food producers are often at the mercy of imported foods.
Recently we have heard of Ted Turner’s enormously generous contribution to the United Nations. We hear of others giving large grants of money to colleges, universities, to the arts. We think of these people as the great philanthropists of our society and time. They are. They receive great press and honor. But notice too that many such gifts are out of the abundance of the wealthy giver who writes the check and then sits down to a sumptuous dinner in a mansion. It’s like the baseball player who makes ten million dollars each year and then says I can afford to give away a million dollars. That’s all well and good, but he can well afford to do so out of his wealth. Their real fair share is in a very different category from the average person’s income.
There are, of course, those who will say, I don’t have or make much money so I will keep mine for myself and let the fat-cats do the giving. But this attitude is hardly in keeping with what Jesus saw in the enormous generosity of the widow lady in the Temple who gave away her two copper pennies.
We must also consider what our churches are doing in terms of being faithful to their mission. It is tempting to become isolated, and to enjoy all the energies we put into our rituals, our church buildings, and our long robes. In recent years there has been a sad retreat and abandonment of the city of churches where members have fled to the more comfortable suburbs. We have left a vacumn there, a void of Christian influence where it is most desperately needed. This issue is one that may well need the attention of the suburban churches if they are to be genuinely oriented in Christian mission. With the advent of Christendom and the church’s fascination with long robes, sumptuous living, and the heirarchical structure that leads to competitiveness, and protection by the state, the church has not always been true to its greater sense of serving others as it has been to serving itself.
Even as individual Christians we may well need to reflect on our own selves in terms of what it is we give as Christians. Do we give and live meaningfully out of just what is left over, our abundance, or do we give and live out of sense of what is first and foremost in our lives, a sense of being God’s people and his own instruments and agents in the world that God can use? Do we live and give out of trust that God has already given to us more than we can desire or pray for? Remember the story of the Feeding of the 5,000. The boy gives his lunch of two fish and five barley loaves. He is fed and so is a multitude down through the ages. We still gather here on Sundays to feed on the wealth of God’s love expressed out of a little boy’s poverty of some 2,000 years ago.
Similar to the scribes, it is easy to think of ourselves as better than others, more deserving than others, more righteous than others, more right than others. Like the scribes we want to see ourselves to be the honorable. Yet real honor was the old widow lady, “the poor in spirit” who only had her poverty to offer. All she had was her emptiness and she becomes a sign for the ages, a sign of faith and trust that God can use to awaken hope in others. Compassion and sensitivity to human need often becomes desenstitized by rationalizations to keep things the way they are.
The scriptures today calls all of us to a self-examination of who we are and to consider the motives and values which drive us. It challenges our complacency. It makes us look at who we are and what we are able to give to God’s world, how we are a meaningful part of that world. It helps us once again to see that Christ in his own poverty and out pouring of his life brought hope for all and a deeper more profound justice for all. We are called to be responsible in terms of what God has given us, and that means a lifetime of consideration of Jesus Christ in the Gospel and our faithful response to it.
Sunday, November 2, 1997
ALL SAINTS’ DAY
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: ALL SAINTS’ DAY
PROPER: Year B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish
DATE: Nov. 2, 1997
TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12 - The Beatitudes of Jesus from The Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . Blessed are those who mourn . . . Blessed are those who hunger and thrist for righteousness. . .
ISSUE: The Beatitudes of Jesus, which are a small but significant part of the Sermon on the Mount, tell who and what God honors, and dramatically reveals how the honor or blessedness of God is so different from most cultures of the world. While the passage is often viewed as pious in nature as we direct it to our understanding of All Saints’ Day, it was addressed to originally to the poor, dispossessed, and disenfranchised people. As written in the Hymn 293, “for the saints of God are just jolk like me,” the Beatitudes actually cut through ostentatious piety and reveal an honest truth as to what true honor and piety are and to whom the apply.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Beatitudes of Jesus as they are written in Matthew’s account of the Gospel are in credibly engaging. They reall challenge the imagination. I’ve been intrigued by them since I was a child with a little child’s book called “The Eight Beatitudes of Jesus” to this very day. Of course, the Beatitudes are part of a whole section of Matthew, Chapter 5-7, which is called The Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s account of the gospel also has an abbreviated form of the sermon and the Beatitudes in latter part of chapter 6. In these accounts Jesus gathers his disciples takes them away from the mainstream of life to give them his teachings. For some people they may be little more than pious platitudes. But to consider the Beatitudes and to embrace the Sermon on the Mount is to have to struggle with things that seem to be paradoxical and inconsistent with the way the world is and how we envision the world.
In the early part of the great Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about blessedness. He gathers his friends around him, and sits down to teach, which rabbi’s did in those days. He tells them such things that are intriguing. He tells them that there is blessedness in being poor. He tells them that there is blessedness in mourning. There is blessedness in hungering and thirsting. What’s more he tells them there is blessedness in being persecuted and slandered. Blessedness in Jesus’ time meant honor. It was a society whose main objective in life was to gain honor and to be honorable. How could being poor, grieving, hungering and thirsting give them honor? Poor people weren’t just people without money. Poor people were the lame, blind, deaf, widows without sons, people who had lost inheritances through devious means. They were the looked-down-upon. They had no honor, power, place, prestige. How could they be blessed? Many of these disciples and folk who followed Jesus up to the hillside to hear these sayings were the poor and the disenfranchised. How could they believe that they could ever gain blessedness and honor when their lives thought of as cursed. they saw themsleves in this very way of cursedness. They were at the opposite end of being blessed or honorable. Even in our thining in the modern world, we don’t think of poverty, grief, struggle, and persecution as being a way of being blessed.
In other parts of the Sermon on the Mount, which are not read today, but you are likely to be familiar with some of them, Jesus posed very striking opposites which challenged these people in terms of what they considered honorable and valuable. (If you are not familiar read over Matthew 5-7 when you get home today in the Bible. You’ll find some really fascinating stuff.) Honor was maintained by and large by keeping the rule of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If someone was gracious to you, you were expected to repay the favor, because that was honorable. At the same time if you were treated badly, to maintain your honor, you were to hold your ground and repay insult with insult, or take an eye for an eye. Yet, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, teaches that you are to love your enemies and pray for persecutors. “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left. If a man wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. If a man in authority makes you go one mile, go with him two.” Statements such as these challenged the very foundations of the culture of the period. I think maybe they still do. Even today, people will say that these are nice sayings, but they won’t work in the real world.
In Jesus’ time there was an honorable expectation of piety. People were expected to give and this was often done with a flourish of tossing coins into a noisy trumpet in public places. Honor was established and acknowledged by public pious acts of fasting and prayer in public places with ashed covered faces. Jesus denounced and apparently hated or at least distrusted ostentatious piety. He tells his people do their praying and giving quietly, without notice and never appear to fast. (He didn’t say don’ fast, but not to appear in public to fast.) For many people this display gave them honor and status in the community, and Jesus seems to take the fun out of it. People like acknowledgement and reward.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells his people not to store up treasures on earth. It only grows rusty and moth eaten, and thieves break in and steal it. Don’t be anxious about what you eat, drink, or wear. This kind of thinking flies in the very face of human nature both then and now.
Jesus in this sermon teaches his disciple not to judge others. When you have an honorable way of life that is built on law, how do you escape being judgmental?
All of these things, these ways of being and the teachings of Jesus challenged the thinking and the very foundations of the culture of Jesus’ time. What’s more they dramatically challenge our way. We also have our honor codes and the values we cherish. We believe in the law of the fittest, the best man wins. Being tough and having the biggest bomb has been a part of our American way of life. We are expected to be achievers and to get ahead. We are expected to improve our status in life. We live in a world that values consumerism and consumption. The more people have, the more materialistic, the more prestigious and powerful people are. We value being macho and strong. We value being right. We value being generous our of our affluence and power as a nation. Many people were really on edge this week as the stock market waivered and fluctuated. We really believe and trust that to make it in life we have to be in charge of our lives and self-made men and women. And we see nothing blessed about poverty, mourning, unhappiness, struggling, and persecution. Living on a “high” with all the ramifications of that word seems to be what we like best. For all who are able to accomplish the American Dream receive their sense honor, and are considered by the world to be the honorable.
Yet there is still another dimension. There is another reality. We have heard it said that even in having it all, there can be a temendous sense of emptiness. We can be lonely in a crowd. We can have it all and lose it suddenly. Having the accolades of the world may not really amount to a whole lot if we feel an inner emptiness and dissatisfaction. Suppose through failing health or stock market we lose the stuff that makes us feel good? Are we condemned to some meaningless abyss? Suppose we find out we don’t really know what is right? Are we damned to the world’s eternal condemnation? Human beings do fail. Some marriages disentegrate. Family life can be dysfunctional. Children don’t become or do what parents want or expect of them. Things we cherish do vanish, evaporate, and and change. The honor, the power, the prestige of life is sometimes little more than an illusion. We grow old, weak, we die. Life’s apparent gradeur can result in poverty, mourning, and our feeling persecuted. Where then do we really find a true, genuine, and lasting honor? For Jesus the true and genuine honor was different from the worlds. It was the very opposite of the worlds.
Jesus saw the honor of God as a gift. The poor in spirit who had no merit whatsoever are God’s own. What the world disenfranchises and those separated from worldly grandeur are God’s own. It is in recognizing that living in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth world only results in the continuation of a vicious cycle and a continually vicious world. Blessed are they who step aside and walk the extra mile and turn the other cheek. If we live continually in a judgmental world, we live in constant threat of condemnation and lack of acceptance. Can we step aside from being harshly judgmental. Stuffing ourselves with self-righteousness can make us unhealthy, unforgiving, and cruel. Yet hungering for justice for all people in the world turns us into honorable servants of God. Being a people who can mourn makes us a people who can feel, and sense, and open to realities of life. God loves and honors us for that way of being. Constantly, persistantly the world tells God’s church that its way will not work: You can’t turn the other cheek, or walk the extra mile; you can’t love your enemies. Blessed and honorable and loved are those who prevail in believing that by the grace of God in our lives and in our being the world can and will be changed. Faithful men and women down through the ages in the face of persecution have carried on the message and the hope of God. Poor people in marches, people re-building houses, people loving the poor continue to proclaim the goodnews of God’s love and hope in the face of opposition and the persecution of pessimism. People tutoring children. People who embrace the way of Christ that challenges the world become immersed into the baptismal blessing of God who honors them.
Who are the saints and what are they made of. The saints are not good people who did good things and died. They are not the pious with halos. They are the faithful; they trust. They are the one who embraced the challenging and the daring way of Christ in the midst of the principalities and powers of the world. They are the ones who see a another reality in a world of phoney illusions. They are the ones who know they need God and through God realize the deeper meaning of life and without even knowing it are the truly blessed.
SEASON: ALL SAINTS’ DAY
PROPER: Year B
PLACE: St. John’s Parish
DATE: Nov. 2, 1997
TEXT: Matthew 5:1-12 - The Beatitudes of Jesus from The Sermon on the Mount.
Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . Blessed are those who mourn . . . Blessed are those who hunger and thrist for righteousness. . .
ISSUE: The Beatitudes of Jesus, which are a small but significant part of the Sermon on the Mount, tell who and what God honors, and dramatically reveals how the honor or blessedness of God is so different from most cultures of the world. While the passage is often viewed as pious in nature as we direct it to our understanding of All Saints’ Day, it was addressed to originally to the poor, dispossessed, and disenfranchised people. As written in the Hymn 293, “for the saints of God are just jolk like me,” the Beatitudes actually cut through ostentatious piety and reveal an honest truth as to what true honor and piety are and to whom the apply.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Beatitudes of Jesus as they are written in Matthew’s account of the Gospel are in credibly engaging. They reall challenge the imagination. I’ve been intrigued by them since I was a child with a little child’s book called “The Eight Beatitudes of Jesus” to this very day. Of course, the Beatitudes are part of a whole section of Matthew, Chapter 5-7, which is called The Sermon on the Mount. Luke’s account of the gospel also has an abbreviated form of the sermon and the Beatitudes in latter part of chapter 6. In these accounts Jesus gathers his disciples takes them away from the mainstream of life to give them his teachings. For some people they may be little more than pious platitudes. But to consider the Beatitudes and to embrace the Sermon on the Mount is to have to struggle with things that seem to be paradoxical and inconsistent with the way the world is and how we envision the world.
In the early part of the great Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about blessedness. He gathers his friends around him, and sits down to teach, which rabbi’s did in those days. He tells them such things that are intriguing. He tells them that there is blessedness in being poor. He tells them that there is blessedness in mourning. There is blessedness in hungering and thirsting. What’s more he tells them there is blessedness in being persecuted and slandered. Blessedness in Jesus’ time meant honor. It was a society whose main objective in life was to gain honor and to be honorable. How could being poor, grieving, hungering and thirsting give them honor? Poor people weren’t just people without money. Poor people were the lame, blind, deaf, widows without sons, people who had lost inheritances through devious means. They were the looked-down-upon. They had no honor, power, place, prestige. How could they be blessed? Many of these disciples and folk who followed Jesus up to the hillside to hear these sayings were the poor and the disenfranchised. How could they believe that they could ever gain blessedness and honor when their lives thought of as cursed. they saw themsleves in this very way of cursedness. They were at the opposite end of being blessed or honorable. Even in our thining in the modern world, we don’t think of poverty, grief, struggle, and persecution as being a way of being blessed.
In other parts of the Sermon on the Mount, which are not read today, but you are likely to be familiar with some of them, Jesus posed very striking opposites which challenged these people in terms of what they considered honorable and valuable. (If you are not familiar read over Matthew 5-7 when you get home today in the Bible. You’ll find some really fascinating stuff.) Honor was maintained by and large by keeping the rule of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. If someone was gracious to you, you were expected to repay the favor, because that was honorable. At the same time if you were treated badly, to maintain your honor, you were to hold your ground and repay insult with insult, or take an eye for an eye. Yet, Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, teaches that you are to love your enemies and pray for persecutors. “If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left. If a man wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. If a man in authority makes you go one mile, go with him two.” Statements such as these challenged the very foundations of the culture of the period. I think maybe they still do. Even today, people will say that these are nice sayings, but they won’t work in the real world.
In Jesus’ time there was an honorable expectation of piety. People were expected to give and this was often done with a flourish of tossing coins into a noisy trumpet in public places. Honor was established and acknowledged by public pious acts of fasting and prayer in public places with ashed covered faces. Jesus denounced and apparently hated or at least distrusted ostentatious piety. He tells his people do their praying and giving quietly, without notice and never appear to fast. (He didn’t say don’ fast, but not to appear in public to fast.) For many people this display gave them honor and status in the community, and Jesus seems to take the fun out of it. People like acknowledgement and reward.
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells his people not to store up treasures on earth. It only grows rusty and moth eaten, and thieves break in and steal it. Don’t be anxious about what you eat, drink, or wear. This kind of thinking flies in the very face of human nature both then and now.
Jesus in this sermon teaches his disciple not to judge others. When you have an honorable way of life that is built on law, how do you escape being judgmental?
All of these things, these ways of being and the teachings of Jesus challenged the thinking and the very foundations of the culture of Jesus’ time. What’s more they dramatically challenge our way. We also have our honor codes and the values we cherish. We believe in the law of the fittest, the best man wins. Being tough and having the biggest bomb has been a part of our American way of life. We are expected to be achievers and to get ahead. We are expected to improve our status in life. We live in a world that values consumerism and consumption. The more people have, the more materialistic, the more prestigious and powerful people are. We value being macho and strong. We value being right. We value being generous our of our affluence and power as a nation. Many people were really on edge this week as the stock market waivered and fluctuated. We really believe and trust that to make it in life we have to be in charge of our lives and self-made men and women. And we see nothing blessed about poverty, mourning, unhappiness, struggling, and persecution. Living on a “high” with all the ramifications of that word seems to be what we like best. For all who are able to accomplish the American Dream receive their sense honor, and are considered by the world to be the honorable.
Yet there is still another dimension. There is another reality. We have heard it said that even in having it all, there can be a temendous sense of emptiness. We can be lonely in a crowd. We can have it all and lose it suddenly. Having the accolades of the world may not really amount to a whole lot if we feel an inner emptiness and dissatisfaction. Suppose through failing health or stock market we lose the stuff that makes us feel good? Are we condemned to some meaningless abyss? Suppose we find out we don’t really know what is right? Are we damned to the world’s eternal condemnation? Human beings do fail. Some marriages disentegrate. Family life can be dysfunctional. Children don’t become or do what parents want or expect of them. Things we cherish do vanish, evaporate, and and change. The honor, the power, the prestige of life is sometimes little more than an illusion. We grow old, weak, we die. Life’s apparent gradeur can result in poverty, mourning, and our feeling persecuted. Where then do we really find a true, genuine, and lasting honor? For Jesus the true and genuine honor was different from the worlds. It was the very opposite of the worlds.
Jesus saw the honor of God as a gift. The poor in spirit who had no merit whatsoever are God’s own. What the world disenfranchises and those separated from worldly grandeur are God’s own. It is in recognizing that living in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth world only results in the continuation of a vicious cycle and a continually vicious world. Blessed are they who step aside and walk the extra mile and turn the other cheek. If we live continually in a judgmental world, we live in constant threat of condemnation and lack of acceptance. Can we step aside from being harshly judgmental. Stuffing ourselves with self-righteousness can make us unhealthy, unforgiving, and cruel. Yet hungering for justice for all people in the world turns us into honorable servants of God. Being a people who can mourn makes us a people who can feel, and sense, and open to realities of life. God loves and honors us for that way of being. Constantly, persistantly the world tells God’s church that its way will not work: You can’t turn the other cheek, or walk the extra mile; you can’t love your enemies. Blessed and honorable and loved are those who prevail in believing that by the grace of God in our lives and in our being the world can and will be changed. Faithful men and women down through the ages in the face of persecution have carried on the message and the hope of God. Poor people in marches, people re-building houses, people loving the poor continue to proclaim the goodnews of God’s love and hope in the face of opposition and the persecution of pessimism. People tutoring children. People who embrace the way of Christ that challenges the world become immersed into the baptismal blessing of God who honors them.
Who are the saints and what are they made of. The saints are not good people who did good things and died. They are not the pious with halos. They are the faithful; they trust. They are the one who embraced the challenging and the daring way of Christ in the midst of the principalities and powers of the world. They are the ones who see a another reality in a world of phoney illusions. They are the ones who know they need God and through God realize the deeper meaning of life and without even knowing it are the truly blessed.
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