May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Christmas
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 24 – 25, 2000
TEXT: Luke 2:1-20 – But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, The Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
ISSUE: Few stories in the Bible have created so much attention as this story found in Luke’s gospel account called The Christmas Story. A simple poetic story is a kind of overture to the Gospel spelling out the fact that a savior has come to all the world. In lieu of the many problems of the world the story gives great hope in a savior and Lord that can be picked up and embraced.
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We have come to another Christmas Eve. We gather here this evening to do some reflection on one of the most beautiful and poetic stories in the Bible, Luke’s poetic narration of the birth of Jesus. Just as an opera has an overture, the story is something of an overture to all that follows in the Gospel, which includes a marvelous extending of God’s undeserved love, which we call grace, to the world. The story is rich in subtle meaning and profound grace.
It tells of a world whose powers centered in Augustus Caesar are oppressive and manipulative, and quite insensitive to human need. A peasant carpenter and his wife, according to Luke, are forced to make a journey back to their homeland for not very clear political reasons. Yet, Mary and Joseph journey to a town where the birth of their child will take place. It is in Bethlehem, the city of David who had been Israel’s greatest charismatic king who had brought unity, peace and prosperity to his people. The name “Bethlehem” is translated from the Hebrew, The House of Bread. Jesus is born in a king’s town and a place known for its sustenance and nurturing.
The story tells of cultural system that demeans many people. Joseph and Mary have no place to stay, no place to lay their heads in comfortable surroundings. More prestigious and honorable folk have made claim on the best places to stay. They find only very humble surroundings where peasant children are born, in a manger. There’s likely to be meaning in that as well, for the manger is a tray, or a place of feeding. It seems to be a preliminary hope and looking forward to the nurturing and spiritual food that Jesus Christ will give in his ministry as told in the stories of the Feeding of the Multitudes.
Finally, with no honor or place, nor family to sing simple welcoming songs to the child, Angels are given that role to announce to shepherds. The shepherds in the area of Bethlehem were the shepherds who raised the sheep that were used for sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple. The angels announce the birth to these same shepherds of the birth of the Lamb of God, who will also give his life as a sacrifice for the world at his eventual crucifixion in Jerusalem. Little do the shepherds know that they embrace The Good Shepherd of the Sheep, and the very Lamb of God that will take away the sin of the world. They raise him up in their arms. The Angels announce: “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. Luke prepares his readers: Into a harsh and cruel world God is coming to his people bringing hope and a new way of life to enlighten the darkness and despair of those lives.
While we come here this evening in joy to greet once again the coming of the Christ at Christmas, we also come with all of our humanness, and our human frailty. We gather with our heartaches, our pains, and our sufferings. We live in a world that can also be harsh, cruel, manipulative, and insensitive. We live at the mercy of circumstances in our lives that we cannot control, and circumstances over which we have little control. Think of the people whose lives have been disrupted by the recent tornado in Alabama, or the volcanic eruption in Mexico. Many people in the world are lonely, especially older people whose friends and relatives have died. Many people weep and grieve this night for broken relationships or lost loved ones. Many of us live with our health issues that are bothersome and worrisome. No one of us escapes our humanness. No one escapes that fact that we are at times less than honorable people ourselves. We live too in a world that has such enormous difficulty in finding peace. Think of the situation in Northern Ireland, and especially the great and long feuding in the Middle East that has world wide implications, not to mention the great suffering of its own people and especially the children.
Why does Luke’s story get our attention? Perhaps, it is because it tells us a Savior is born, who is Christ the Lord. Christ is the Savior who comes in great humility and even great dishonor. But at the same time, He is available. He shares our common humanity, and you can reach out to him, and pick him up out of the manger and hold him to your breast. In doing so we hold peace, fear is diminished, love abounds, spiritual food is given and you could just eat him up. He is our light for those who walk in darkness. He is our wonderful counselor, Mighty but humble God, our everlasting Father, our prince of peace. To those who walk in darkness, he is our new life, our light and our hope. “Come into my heart Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee.”
Monday, December 25, 2000
Sunday, December 24, 2000
Advent 4
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 4
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John’s Parish
DATE: December 21, 1997
December 24, 2000
TEXT: Luke 1:39-56 - Mary’s Visit to Elizabeth and The Magnificat. - “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
ISSUE: God works in mysterious and wonderful ways to bring about his salvation and hope. While women are seen by some to have been the cause of the Fall from Grace, as Eve at the apple and seduced Adam, Elizabeth and Mary are now seen as the channels of grace through which God’s redeeming salvation comes. Among the poor and lowly God fulfills his promises and a social inversion takes place. The passage awakens all of us to see that through our readiness to receive the savior, we also participate in being the channels of God’s grace in our world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In these last days of Advent just before Christmas, we read the beautiful story of the meeting of the two women, Elizabeth and Mary. It is indeed a story of such great joyful expectation as the two pregnant women rejoice with one another. There is an ecstasy about the passage. I hope that you won’t miss it. Let me caution you, if I may. Many people today are often inclined to literalize the Bible and so many of the stories. A literal interpretation of the Scriptures causes us to miss so much, and trying to literalize it all raises for a lot of people many unanswerable questions. Often the profound stories of the scriptures come across as mere nonsense in a modern and scientific world. In fact, the Bible was not written as a literal presentation of everything that Jesus did and said. It is not a book of science, not a book of history (except for some Old Testament writings), and it is not a biography. It is not appropriate to ask if scriptural stories really happened, but rather the issue is what does the Bible and its wonderful variety of stories mean? What is the meaning? How is God revealed in the various biblical stories and accounts.
If we see this encounter of Mary and Elizabeth as merely Luke telling us that the two women met to chit chat about their impending deliveries, and that Mary is simply traveling around the country side pregnant, and breaks into a happy song, we drastically miss the point without looking deeper into the meaning of this special and beautiful encounter of two very special women, so far as Luke is concerned. The very idea that Mary is traveling Judea by herself in this period would have simply been unheard of. People in May and Joseph’s class in this period rarely traveled. If they did, they traveled in caravans. A woman traveling alone would have been very deviant and shameful behavior. What look wants us to know, I think, is that we need to look at these two women and try to appreciate the meaning of their lives and what they had to offer to all who would come to know them. He arranges a story which puts the two women together so we can learning something of the working of God through their lives.
The meeting of the two women reminds me of the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve. Early on in the story just after the creation, Eve is tempted by the serpent and succumbs to eating the apple. She then coaxes Adam also to partake. Think what you will about Eve, but Adam who is bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh and vice versa is equally responsible. However, in the story we see the Fall of humanity. Women and men are participating in disobedience. In the stories of Elizabeth and Mary you begin to see the exact opposite beginning to happen. Elizabeth, who is barren and old, is told she will bear a son. Her husband Zechariah cannot believe it to be true and is struck dumb temporarily. Elizabeth on the other hand is faithful and accepts the possibility that by the grace of God her barren state shall be redeemed.
Close in time, an angel appears to Mary who is told that she too shall become pregnant and bear and son, and she replies, “I am the Lord’s servant; may it happen to me as you have said.” (Lk 1:38) Notice that the turn around, the repentance, the conversion. While through the disobedience of Eve, a symbol of human fallen state, it is through women, Elizabeth and Mary, that the way is paved for redemption, for renewal, for the wonderful uplifting of humanity through the women who will become God’s chosen vessels to restore humanity from its fallen state. Both women respond in faithfulness and obedience to what God has chosen them to do. They are the instruments of grace who participate in the hope of a new garden, a new kingdom, the renewed paradise of God.
As for the men, Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah, comes to his senses names the child John as the angel directs and regains his speech. Joseph, Mary’s espoused husband, is converted in a dream and accepts Mary’s pregnancy. A new age is about to be come into being, an age of redemption, reconciliation, and age of hope.
I think that it is also important to point out that when Mary visits Elizabeth, the mother of the prophet John Baptist, she also fulfills a prophetic role when she says, “And why has this happened that the mother of my Lord comes to me? At the same time all this business about pregnancy and the leaping fetus in the wombs of their mothers speaks of life, vitality, hopefulness, excitement, joy. There is such vivid dramatic expression of something wonderful to come and to be. Luke is a bit of genius as he puts this story together of the meeting of the women. Furthermore, the very idea that the impending hope of the world resides in the wombs of these women was a startling concept for the period. Notice the change, the restoration, the place of women so far as the evangelist Luke is concerned in the early church. Elizabeth is bearing the last of the great prophets that calls the world to preparedness, and Mary shall be called “Mother of God.” God is indeed doing something brand new and profoundly wonderful. God is turning the world and its traditions upside down as God’s glory is about to be revealed.
There is more in the story. Consider the women themselves. Elizabeth is old and barren. In fact what’s more, she would have been considered as cursed for not bearing children for her husband. In the period male semen contained fully developed babies in miniature it was believed. Women were the field in which they were planted. If they didn’t grow it was the woman’s fault, not the husband’s. Barren women were cursed. Yet the story tells us that God could, can, and will do the impossible to reclaim his people. God can use the old, the barren and the cursed to accomplish His purposes. Luke is also implying that the Old Testament is not barren, that within them is the messages of hope that are about to be realized. the old is giving birth to something grand. What was thought to be dried up and cursed is pregnant with hopefulness and blessedness.
From the barrenness of Elizabeth, Luke’s story tells of the unwed mother, Mary. Unwed motherhood in this period was considered totally unacceptable. But in this story the unwed mother, what is seen as unacceptable, cursed, broken, sinful and demeaning, God has the power to change it into the miraculous hope and salvation for the world. While Luke talks about a virgin birth with its various interpretations, the people of the time saw Mary as simply an unwed mother who becomes betrothed to Joseph out of his great compassion. Mary herself is among the poor and the outcast, yet God can use her and she agrees to be the handmaiden, actually the bondslave of God to be the channel through which God’s grace may flow. A new age of hope and salvation for the poor, the disenfranchised is coming into being.
In the passage Mary breaks out in song. The Song of Mary, or commonly known as The Magnificat, which is sometimes sung in our worship services was not original with Luke. Mary proclaims, “My soul does magnify and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” The song is not original to Mary or to Luke for that matter. The song comes from the Old Testament. It is the song of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. (I Sam.2:1f) Hannah herself had once been a barren women and unmercifully teased and cursed by Peninnah, her husband Elkanah’s other wife. When her prayer for a child is answered she broke out into a song, which Luke uses and attributes to the virgin mother Mary. But the point and message of the song is that God will use the unusable who turn to him in faith. God uses the poor and lifts them up, and the rich (more accurately) the greedy, the proud are scattered.
Consider last week when John Baptist was baptizing in the Jordon. All the losers were coming out to him, pitiful tax or toll collectors, and Herod’s scruffy soldiers. They were looking with hope for something new, and John called them to a repentance and deep change of heart. Today we hear to two women, one barren and cursed, the other unwed and worthy of stoning. Yet through their faith and trust they become the channels of grace for one of God’s most mighty acts, the birth of a renewing prophet and the Savior of the world.
What does all this mean? It means that God works through his people. He asks us to turn to him in faithfulness and trust that we may become his servants, and that his grace and hope may flow through our lives. Tax collectors and soldiers say, “What shall we do?” Two women, one old and barren and the other an mere immature child, open themselves up to being the servants of God. It tells of how God needs and can use all that are broken, and fallen. God uses the poor and the afflicted, those who are or think of themselves as untalented to bring on the new Garden, the Kingdom of hope and peace.
Around us my good people the high and the mighty do often fall. Hitler failed. Communism is fading away. There are movements in the world to end weapons of mass crippling and destruction such as atomic weaponry, biological warfare, and land mines. The highly proud, the greedy, the corrupted whether they be clergy (TV evangelists), high priced lawyers, bankers, powerful politicians, sports celebrities in due time are brought low. God uses the poor and lifts them up into his arms. We’ve seen the great progress of the enslaved blacks in Africa and in our own country begin and continue to have and share in what is just, right, good, and lovely.
We all stand on the edge and verge of Christ’s coming again. Elizabeth and Mary turned their lives over to the presence of God. They in their poverty became the channels of grace and hope. Christ was born and revealed the loveliness of God in way never seen before nor since. The Christ came to show the way of love and forgiveness, of a passionate redemption on a cross, and gave a message of hope, renewal and resurrection.
And so it is our time again, to return in faith and obedience, to say, “I too am the Lord’s servant. Let it happen to me as you will. Let me be changed and renewed and incorporated into a ministry through which God’s love and grace may flow.” May God use us, even with our shortcomings and fallen state, our emptiness and barrenness, our failures and foolishness. May we be open to him and allow Christ to flow through our lives, finding in us a mansion prepared.
SEASON: Advent 4
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John’s Parish
DATE: December 21, 1997
December 24, 2000
TEXT: Luke 1:39-56 - Mary’s Visit to Elizabeth and The Magnificat. - “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
ISSUE: God works in mysterious and wonderful ways to bring about his salvation and hope. While women are seen by some to have been the cause of the Fall from Grace, as Eve at the apple and seduced Adam, Elizabeth and Mary are now seen as the channels of grace through which God’s redeeming salvation comes. Among the poor and lowly God fulfills his promises and a social inversion takes place. The passage awakens all of us to see that through our readiness to receive the savior, we also participate in being the channels of God’s grace in our world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In these last days of Advent just before Christmas, we read the beautiful story of the meeting of the two women, Elizabeth and Mary. It is indeed a story of such great joyful expectation as the two pregnant women rejoice with one another. There is an ecstasy about the passage. I hope that you won’t miss it. Let me caution you, if I may. Many people today are often inclined to literalize the Bible and so many of the stories. A literal interpretation of the Scriptures causes us to miss so much, and trying to literalize it all raises for a lot of people many unanswerable questions. Often the profound stories of the scriptures come across as mere nonsense in a modern and scientific world. In fact, the Bible was not written as a literal presentation of everything that Jesus did and said. It is not a book of science, not a book of history (except for some Old Testament writings), and it is not a biography. It is not appropriate to ask if scriptural stories really happened, but rather the issue is what does the Bible and its wonderful variety of stories mean? What is the meaning? How is God revealed in the various biblical stories and accounts.
If we see this encounter of Mary and Elizabeth as merely Luke telling us that the two women met to chit chat about their impending deliveries, and that Mary is simply traveling around the country side pregnant, and breaks into a happy song, we drastically miss the point without looking deeper into the meaning of this special and beautiful encounter of two very special women, so far as Luke is concerned. The very idea that Mary is traveling Judea by herself in this period would have simply been unheard of. People in May and Joseph’s class in this period rarely traveled. If they did, they traveled in caravans. A woman traveling alone would have been very deviant and shameful behavior. What look wants us to know, I think, is that we need to look at these two women and try to appreciate the meaning of their lives and what they had to offer to all who would come to know them. He arranges a story which puts the two women together so we can learning something of the working of God through their lives.
The meeting of the two women reminds me of the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve. Early on in the story just after the creation, Eve is tempted by the serpent and succumbs to eating the apple. She then coaxes Adam also to partake. Think what you will about Eve, but Adam who is bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh and vice versa is equally responsible. However, in the story we see the Fall of humanity. Women and men are participating in disobedience. In the stories of Elizabeth and Mary you begin to see the exact opposite beginning to happen. Elizabeth, who is barren and old, is told she will bear a son. Her husband Zechariah cannot believe it to be true and is struck dumb temporarily. Elizabeth on the other hand is faithful and accepts the possibility that by the grace of God her barren state shall be redeemed.
Close in time, an angel appears to Mary who is told that she too shall become pregnant and bear and son, and she replies, “I am the Lord’s servant; may it happen to me as you have said.” (Lk 1:38) Notice that the turn around, the repentance, the conversion. While through the disobedience of Eve, a symbol of human fallen state, it is through women, Elizabeth and Mary, that the way is paved for redemption, for renewal, for the wonderful uplifting of humanity through the women who will become God’s chosen vessels to restore humanity from its fallen state. Both women respond in faithfulness and obedience to what God has chosen them to do. They are the instruments of grace who participate in the hope of a new garden, a new kingdom, the renewed paradise of God.
As for the men, Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah, comes to his senses names the child John as the angel directs and regains his speech. Joseph, Mary’s espoused husband, is converted in a dream and accepts Mary’s pregnancy. A new age is about to be come into being, an age of redemption, reconciliation, and age of hope.
I think that it is also important to point out that when Mary visits Elizabeth, the mother of the prophet John Baptist, she also fulfills a prophetic role when she says, “And why has this happened that the mother of my Lord comes to me? At the same time all this business about pregnancy and the leaping fetus in the wombs of their mothers speaks of life, vitality, hopefulness, excitement, joy. There is such vivid dramatic expression of something wonderful to come and to be. Luke is a bit of genius as he puts this story together of the meeting of the women. Furthermore, the very idea that the impending hope of the world resides in the wombs of these women was a startling concept for the period. Notice the change, the restoration, the place of women so far as the evangelist Luke is concerned in the early church. Elizabeth is bearing the last of the great prophets that calls the world to preparedness, and Mary shall be called “Mother of God.” God is indeed doing something brand new and profoundly wonderful. God is turning the world and its traditions upside down as God’s glory is about to be revealed.
There is more in the story. Consider the women themselves. Elizabeth is old and barren. In fact what’s more, she would have been considered as cursed for not bearing children for her husband. In the period male semen contained fully developed babies in miniature it was believed. Women were the field in which they were planted. If they didn’t grow it was the woman’s fault, not the husband’s. Barren women were cursed. Yet the story tells us that God could, can, and will do the impossible to reclaim his people. God can use the old, the barren and the cursed to accomplish His purposes. Luke is also implying that the Old Testament is not barren, that within them is the messages of hope that are about to be realized. the old is giving birth to something grand. What was thought to be dried up and cursed is pregnant with hopefulness and blessedness.
From the barrenness of Elizabeth, Luke’s story tells of the unwed mother, Mary. Unwed motherhood in this period was considered totally unacceptable. But in this story the unwed mother, what is seen as unacceptable, cursed, broken, sinful and demeaning, God has the power to change it into the miraculous hope and salvation for the world. While Luke talks about a virgin birth with its various interpretations, the people of the time saw Mary as simply an unwed mother who becomes betrothed to Joseph out of his great compassion. Mary herself is among the poor and the outcast, yet God can use her and she agrees to be the handmaiden, actually the bondslave of God to be the channel through which God’s grace may flow. A new age of hope and salvation for the poor, the disenfranchised is coming into being.
In the passage Mary breaks out in song. The Song of Mary, or commonly known as The Magnificat, which is sometimes sung in our worship services was not original with Luke. Mary proclaims, “My soul does magnify and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” The song is not original to Mary or to Luke for that matter. The song comes from the Old Testament. It is the song of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. (I Sam.2:1f) Hannah herself had once been a barren women and unmercifully teased and cursed by Peninnah, her husband Elkanah’s other wife. When her prayer for a child is answered she broke out into a song, which Luke uses and attributes to the virgin mother Mary. But the point and message of the song is that God will use the unusable who turn to him in faith. God uses the poor and lifts them up, and the rich (more accurately) the greedy, the proud are scattered.
Consider last week when John Baptist was baptizing in the Jordon. All the losers were coming out to him, pitiful tax or toll collectors, and Herod’s scruffy soldiers. They were looking with hope for something new, and John called them to a repentance and deep change of heart. Today we hear to two women, one barren and cursed, the other unwed and worthy of stoning. Yet through their faith and trust they become the channels of grace for one of God’s most mighty acts, the birth of a renewing prophet and the Savior of the world.
What does all this mean? It means that God works through his people. He asks us to turn to him in faithfulness and trust that we may become his servants, and that his grace and hope may flow through our lives. Tax collectors and soldiers say, “What shall we do?” Two women, one old and barren and the other an mere immature child, open themselves up to being the servants of God. It tells of how God needs and can use all that are broken, and fallen. God uses the poor and the afflicted, those who are or think of themselves as untalented to bring on the new Garden, the Kingdom of hope and peace.
Around us my good people the high and the mighty do often fall. Hitler failed. Communism is fading away. There are movements in the world to end weapons of mass crippling and destruction such as atomic weaponry, biological warfare, and land mines. The highly proud, the greedy, the corrupted whether they be clergy (TV evangelists), high priced lawyers, bankers, powerful politicians, sports celebrities in due time are brought low. God uses the poor and lifts them up into his arms. We’ve seen the great progress of the enslaved blacks in Africa and in our own country begin and continue to have and share in what is just, right, good, and lovely.
We all stand on the edge and verge of Christ’s coming again. Elizabeth and Mary turned their lives over to the presence of God. They in their poverty became the channels of grace and hope. Christ was born and revealed the loveliness of God in way never seen before nor since. The Christ came to show the way of love and forgiveness, of a passionate redemption on a cross, and gave a message of hope, renewal and resurrection.
And so it is our time again, to return in faith and obedience, to say, “I too am the Lord’s servant. Let it happen to me as you will. Let me be changed and renewed and incorporated into a ministry through which God’s love and grace may flow.” May God use us, even with our shortcomings and fallen state, our emptiness and barrenness, our failures and foolishness. May we be open to him and allow Christ to flow through our lives, finding in us a mansion prepared.
Sunday, December 17, 2000
Advent 3
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 3
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 17, 2000
TEXT: Luke 3:7-18 – “You vipers brood! . . . . Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”
ISSUE: - This passage is a call to individuals who are Christians to make determined changes in their lives. Lives lived without the willingness to serve the common good, and to bear the spirit of God are unworthy lives. This is the clear message of this passage in the face of the worlds enchantment with the festive holiday season. Without the readiness and preparedness to receive the Christ into our lives, all the rest is empty and we remain spiritually depraved.
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The Gospel reading continues with the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist. As we read this lesson, it becomes rather obvious as to how the church is truly counter cultural in our world. The world is busy with the festive holiday season, while the church is still concerned with the spiritual issue of repentance and preparation for the coming of the Savior.
Few pastors today could get away with addressing their congregation as “you vipers brood”, more literally translated “you snake bastards.” “Who warned you to come slithering down to the river to wash your snake skins to deflect God’s judgment. It is your life that must change, not the surface of your skin!” The Jewish people of this time thought that their ancestry made them at one with God, and was their saving grace. John is clear that it is the individual person that must be repentant and change. Because your grandfather was baptized in that font, or that old Uncle Bill was an acolyte in the church long ago, or even ourselves gives us no clout. It is the present and how we are acting now as God’s people or not is what really counts. Deadwood is useful for nothing but to be thrown into the fire.
The people who came to John seem to be searching for a new spirit, a new spirituality in a time when the Jerusalem Temple just was not working. Spirituality was at a low ebb, and some people come to John looking for a new spiritual direction in a world that seemed scary, empty, uncertain, and increasingly unjust.
In John’s time it was dishonorable to have more than you needed. It was a culture of limited economics. If you had too much, someone else did not have enough. Today in our industrialized affluent culture, we think very differently. Americans think resources will never run out, and the more you have and possess makes you thought of as a person of great success. In John’s time, if you had two coats then you should give one away to someone who had none.
If you had more than enough food, then give some of it away. People lived day to day. Finding and making enough money for food was difficult and hard. The majority of people lived at a subsistence level. A wider degree of sharing was important. Recall that at the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus tells his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” Why does that miracle get recorded some six times? It is about an unheard of abundance of food that comes through Christ. Recall also the story of the two brothers fighting over their inheritance (Luke 12:13-15) Jesus replies, “Watch out and guard yourselves from every kind of greed; because a person’s true life is not made up of the things he owns, no matter how rich he may be.” Is it to be understood that life is measured not by what we possess as the world would have us believe, but rather in what we give away and share?
Tax or toll collectors came to John. These were people who had no honor or respect. Few got rich, but the system of collecting tolls and taxes at bridges, roads, and other various places often led to extortion. At tax or toll collector paid for the right to collect taxes up front. Then, he had to recoup his investment, which led to extortion and burdensome charges on peasants. John calls for change among them, to collect only that which was fair and just.
Tough soldiers came to John. They were also a hated lot as they served the corrupt system and rule of Herod Antipas who was nothing more than a puppet king for the Romans. Obviously they come to John feeling demoralized and spiritually empty and are willing to bear the insult of ‘you brood of vipers.’ John orders them to stop bullying, blackmailing, and making false accusations. They were to learn to live with their pay.
John’s spiritual direction is a matter of having these people change the direction of their lives. Let go of greed. Let go of hostility and cruel injustices. Begin to bear fruit that is good fruit. Dare to change your lives, John is telling them. Be ready be prepared for the Kingdom of God, for the Messianic Hope of a new world order that John sincerely expected to come. His baptism was an immersion into the Jordon River, and let the past sins be washed away, and to begin with a changed heart and soul, and ready to enter into a new way, a new Kingdom of God. John Baptizes with water, but the one coming baptizes with Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God and an enlightening renewing energizing fire. John is calling his disciples to the matter of re-embracing the love of God and of the justice of God. To change and to look forward to the renewed presence of God in your life was good news indeed.
In our day it is sure one daring parson who would begin his sermons with the phrase, “You brood of snakes, what brought you to church today?” Modern congregations want to hear about LUV. We can be very uncomfortable with sermons about sin. Who talks about sin anymore? In fact someone even wrote a book called, Whatever Happened to Sin? But we all know that there are surely things in each of our lives that need changing for our own souls health and for the good of the community we are a part of. We all have to consider our spiritual growth and development as human beings or our lives can become pretty empty.
One of the most important things we might all look at is our family life. Men may well need to look at how they express their love and their devotion for their wives. Women may need to do the same. What are some of the specific things that any married couples could do to enhance their marriage relationship, besides taking one another for granted? It is amazing in our time how married couples can have so much and lose it so quickly and create such pain and suffering simply because they don’t work at enriching their relationships.
Parents might also look at the quality of time they spend with their children. It’s a busy world, and many distractions, school activities and sports, can usurp precious time for just being together and getting to know and listen to one another. Our affluence and toys at Christmas cannot replace that precious time together.
Another one of the things that we might look at is how extremely over zealous we are about our own needs and cherished individuality. It is often the case that we demand our rights as individuals without concern for the great good of the community. We all want the rules bent to meet our needs. It is a form of greed. We can be like children who when asked to change behavior or contribute something worthwhile will say, “You can’t make me.” This can effect the way we drive, the way we live together in community, our attitudes with one another, our respect of other human beings.
Common to the Christian calling is the virtue of servanthood. Do we each have a mission or special purpose or calling? However great or small doesn’t matter much, but it may be important for our own worth and self-esteem to be able to say I am committed to tutoring a child, or visiting an elderly shut-in person, or to working with Habitat for Humanity re-furbishing or building homes for low income people. Maybe we have a mission for taking a stand on some important social issue and seek the attention of politicians who can effect change.
Making appropriate changes to our lives may not be merely a matter of doing things for others specifically, it may well have to do with living healthier lives. Maybe we do need to give up smoking, lose some weight, exercise more, or watch the amount of alcohol we consume, or get a grip on the amount of drugs we are consuming. Actually these things may seem personal but they do effect how we live in the community and in the family. Neither are they easy to do. But neither are they impossible to do with the help of God and various other health oriented organizations. But they do require a commitment to repentance, to change, and to a change of life style.
Maybe today, old John the Baptist might not refer to us as you ‘brood of vipers’ but as you “slothful, affluent, apathetic, self-centered scoundrels that serve your selves without a specific sense of mission. Get with doing something that gives hope to the world of which you are a part. Make the appropriate changes in your life that enables us to live up to our baptismal covenant: working for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of all persons, and bearing witness to a godly way of life.
We don’t know when Christ will come again in terms of The Second Coming. No one knows that, only the Father. All we know is that he has come and brought to us forgiveness, love, and grace. He brings to us an empowering Holy Spirit. At Christmas we are once again reminded of that presence and the humility with which he comes to walk with us in our human frailty, to be our strength and guide. Lets be firm and committed in our efforts to make the changes required that enable us to walk with and in the spirit of Jesus Christ.
SEASON: Advent 3
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 17, 2000
TEXT: Luke 3:7-18 – “You vipers brood! . . . . Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?”
ISSUE: - This passage is a call to individuals who are Christians to make determined changes in their lives. Lives lived without the willingness to serve the common good, and to bear the spirit of God are unworthy lives. This is the clear message of this passage in the face of the worlds enchantment with the festive holiday season. Without the readiness and preparedness to receive the Christ into our lives, all the rest is empty and we remain spiritually depraved.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Gospel reading continues with the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist. As we read this lesson, it becomes rather obvious as to how the church is truly counter cultural in our world. The world is busy with the festive holiday season, while the church is still concerned with the spiritual issue of repentance and preparation for the coming of the Savior.
Few pastors today could get away with addressing their congregation as “you vipers brood”, more literally translated “you snake bastards.” “Who warned you to come slithering down to the river to wash your snake skins to deflect God’s judgment. It is your life that must change, not the surface of your skin!” The Jewish people of this time thought that their ancestry made them at one with God, and was their saving grace. John is clear that it is the individual person that must be repentant and change. Because your grandfather was baptized in that font, or that old Uncle Bill was an acolyte in the church long ago, or even ourselves gives us no clout. It is the present and how we are acting now as God’s people or not is what really counts. Deadwood is useful for nothing but to be thrown into the fire.
The people who came to John seem to be searching for a new spirit, a new spirituality in a time when the Jerusalem Temple just was not working. Spirituality was at a low ebb, and some people come to John looking for a new spiritual direction in a world that seemed scary, empty, uncertain, and increasingly unjust.
In John’s time it was dishonorable to have more than you needed. It was a culture of limited economics. If you had too much, someone else did not have enough. Today in our industrialized affluent culture, we think very differently. Americans think resources will never run out, and the more you have and possess makes you thought of as a person of great success. In John’s time, if you had two coats then you should give one away to someone who had none.
If you had more than enough food, then give some of it away. People lived day to day. Finding and making enough money for food was difficult and hard. The majority of people lived at a subsistence level. A wider degree of sharing was important. Recall that at the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus tells his disciples, “You give them something to eat.” Why does that miracle get recorded some six times? It is about an unheard of abundance of food that comes through Christ. Recall also the story of the two brothers fighting over their inheritance (Luke 12:13-15) Jesus replies, “Watch out and guard yourselves from every kind of greed; because a person’s true life is not made up of the things he owns, no matter how rich he may be.” Is it to be understood that life is measured not by what we possess as the world would have us believe, but rather in what we give away and share?
Tax or toll collectors came to John. These were people who had no honor or respect. Few got rich, but the system of collecting tolls and taxes at bridges, roads, and other various places often led to extortion. At tax or toll collector paid for the right to collect taxes up front. Then, he had to recoup his investment, which led to extortion and burdensome charges on peasants. John calls for change among them, to collect only that which was fair and just.
Tough soldiers came to John. They were also a hated lot as they served the corrupt system and rule of Herod Antipas who was nothing more than a puppet king for the Romans. Obviously they come to John feeling demoralized and spiritually empty and are willing to bear the insult of ‘you brood of vipers.’ John orders them to stop bullying, blackmailing, and making false accusations. They were to learn to live with their pay.
John’s spiritual direction is a matter of having these people change the direction of their lives. Let go of greed. Let go of hostility and cruel injustices. Begin to bear fruit that is good fruit. Dare to change your lives, John is telling them. Be ready be prepared for the Kingdom of God, for the Messianic Hope of a new world order that John sincerely expected to come. His baptism was an immersion into the Jordon River, and let the past sins be washed away, and to begin with a changed heart and soul, and ready to enter into a new way, a new Kingdom of God. John Baptizes with water, but the one coming baptizes with Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God and an enlightening renewing energizing fire. John is calling his disciples to the matter of re-embracing the love of God and of the justice of God. To change and to look forward to the renewed presence of God in your life was good news indeed.
In our day it is sure one daring parson who would begin his sermons with the phrase, “You brood of snakes, what brought you to church today?” Modern congregations want to hear about LUV. We can be very uncomfortable with sermons about sin. Who talks about sin anymore? In fact someone even wrote a book called, Whatever Happened to Sin? But we all know that there are surely things in each of our lives that need changing for our own souls health and for the good of the community we are a part of. We all have to consider our spiritual growth and development as human beings or our lives can become pretty empty.
One of the most important things we might all look at is our family life. Men may well need to look at how they express their love and their devotion for their wives. Women may need to do the same. What are some of the specific things that any married couples could do to enhance their marriage relationship, besides taking one another for granted? It is amazing in our time how married couples can have so much and lose it so quickly and create such pain and suffering simply because they don’t work at enriching their relationships.
Parents might also look at the quality of time they spend with their children. It’s a busy world, and many distractions, school activities and sports, can usurp precious time for just being together and getting to know and listen to one another. Our affluence and toys at Christmas cannot replace that precious time together.
Another one of the things that we might look at is how extremely over zealous we are about our own needs and cherished individuality. It is often the case that we demand our rights as individuals without concern for the great good of the community. We all want the rules bent to meet our needs. It is a form of greed. We can be like children who when asked to change behavior or contribute something worthwhile will say, “You can’t make me.” This can effect the way we drive, the way we live together in community, our attitudes with one another, our respect of other human beings.
Common to the Christian calling is the virtue of servanthood. Do we each have a mission or special purpose or calling? However great or small doesn’t matter much, but it may be important for our own worth and self-esteem to be able to say I am committed to tutoring a child, or visiting an elderly shut-in person, or to working with Habitat for Humanity re-furbishing or building homes for low income people. Maybe we have a mission for taking a stand on some important social issue and seek the attention of politicians who can effect change.
Making appropriate changes to our lives may not be merely a matter of doing things for others specifically, it may well have to do with living healthier lives. Maybe we do need to give up smoking, lose some weight, exercise more, or watch the amount of alcohol we consume, or get a grip on the amount of drugs we are consuming. Actually these things may seem personal but they do effect how we live in the community and in the family. Neither are they easy to do. But neither are they impossible to do with the help of God and various other health oriented organizations. But they do require a commitment to repentance, to change, and to a change of life style.
Maybe today, old John the Baptist might not refer to us as you ‘brood of vipers’ but as you “slothful, affluent, apathetic, self-centered scoundrels that serve your selves without a specific sense of mission. Get with doing something that gives hope to the world of which you are a part. Make the appropriate changes in your life that enables us to live up to our baptismal covenant: working for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of all persons, and bearing witness to a godly way of life.
We don’t know when Christ will come again in terms of The Second Coming. No one knows that, only the Father. All we know is that he has come and brought to us forgiveness, love, and grace. He brings to us an empowering Holy Spirit. At Christmas we are once again reminded of that presence and the humility with which he comes to walk with us in our human frailty, to be our strength and guide. Lets be firm and committed in our efforts to make the changes required that enable us to walk with and in the spirit of Jesus Christ.
Sunday, December 10, 2000
Advent 2
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 2
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 10, 2000
TEXT: Luke 3:1-6 – John the Baptist, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“He went into all the region around the Jordon proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins . . . “
ISSUE: - John is the last of the Hebrew Prophets. He is calling for God’s people to change and be open to renewal. John is Isaiah’s ‘voice in the wilderness’ call all people to a ready for the coming of God to bring salvation to a world destined to destroy itself by its alienation from God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The important figure of the Advent season is John the Baptist. He is the forerunner who calls for a readiness for receiving the Christ into our hearts.
Luke records in the passage for this morning some specific historical data. Tiberious is emperor of Rome. Pontius Pilate is governor in Judea. Herod rules Galilee along with other rulers governing other surrounding states. Caiaphas and Annas are the high priests. Luke is reassuring his reader that into human history, God is about to make his mark, or stake his claim once again.
John the Baptist is the son of Zechariah the priest. John’s ministry, however is not a ministry in the temple with the finest of vestments and privileges. John is in the wilderness around the Jordon River. This is a place of spirits, divine presence, and a place where visions and hopes are born. The Jordon River itself has significant meaning as it was once the River the People of God crossed upon entering the new Promised Land.
John is calling now in this historical age, an age of great political and religious corruption, where the Temple Priests and leaders are in collusion with the Romans, at the great expense and derision of the poor and their needs. John longs for the coming of a saviour, a messianic figure of deliverance. He preaches a sermon for repentance, for change, for human renewal with broadened horizons to accept the way of God once again. He urges repentance and change among all who come out to hear him.
As a symbol of repentance and renewal on the part of those who listen to John, they are baptized. At this time, persons who were born Jewish were not baptized. Their lineage in the Jewish community was sufficient. Only those persons who converted to Judaism were baptized. It was a symbolic cleansing ritual, that was intended to wash their past uncleanness by virtue of their being pagan, heathen, Gentiles. Thus, John’s baptism is significant in that he feels that his world and Judaism of his ancestors has become so corrupted that all people have become alienated from God. They have turned away from what is Godly, and need to turn back, or repent. They need to broaden their understanding and appreciation of God’s calling to a just world.
John in the wilderness for the people of that time, and for those first reading Luke’s Gospel, John is an Elijah like figure. He is a dynamic character in the wilderness untouched by the extravagances of the world revealing the need for a renewed presence of God in the lives of the people.
In still another sense, John is almost Moses like. He stands to confront the powers of the time. Like Moses confronted the Egyptian Pharaoh, John takes his stand condemning the powers of his time: Tiberius, Herod, Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas. As Moses led his people to the Red Sea and into the wilderness and eventually the Promised Land, John is leading his followers through the wilderness to the Jordon River to be changed, renewed, and prepared for the saving grace of God and for entrance into the Kingdom of God.
John is likened to the voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” John’s message is one of hope in a bad time. His belief is that God will not leave his people bereft. The world powers have abandoned the people of God, and God will not allow that to continue. Thus, John calls for preparation, readiness, change of hearts, and broadened horizons in religious thinking to begin looking for and anticipating the coming of the Lord to his people. He is calling for preparedness for a new presence of God with his people. Eventually, John proclaims that Jesus is one who is to come, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin and alienation of the world. But like so many of the ancient prophets, John was murdered by Herod. But, his work was accomplished.
The importance of John’s ministry is that he calls for making ready for the Christ and for appropriate change and new thinking. Jesus’ teachings we will remember require new thinking as he often offers the Great Reversals in the face of worldly thinking and trends. John work also clear points at the Jesus Christ as God’s Christ in the world, and the world’s hope. Even beyond this role that John has, John is somehow symbolic personification of the work of the church in the world today.
The work of the church throughout the ages has been a work similar to what John the Baptist did. The work of the church has been to baptize all nations into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Keep in mind that this does not merely mean sprinkling water on people. It means rather to immerse the world into the love and grace of God. All through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures we have stories in our faith about how God seeks to deliver his people and keep them in His Kingdom. Moses deliverance of the Hebrews through the dying of Jesus on the cross is all tenants of our faith in which God is redeeming love.
The role of the church throughout history has also been a prophetic role. It is called upon to stand against the injustices of the world. This role is hard. It is not always easy to know what is right, and there have been times when the church has been wrong in her judgments. But we must be humble and careful as the people of God to have are prophetic arguments well worked out and carefully thought out. It was appropriate that the church stood firm and walked with Martin Luther King in the face of grave injustices. We must continue to stand firm against racism and exclusiveness in our world. It is appropriate that the church make a clear statement in its accessibility for handicapped and physically challenged people. The Church today will need to struggle with the issues of the Middle East. Dare we to stand back and do nothing, or must we be informed about what is fair and reasonable for both the nation Israel and the Palestinians who have no homeland. It is sad to see the hostilities developing there between Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We can be so quick to demonize our enemies without first seeking new ways for peace and finding common ground for peace.
The church today may be needing to be more prophetic in its stand against the extreme consumerism, the American raping of the environment. We may have to take a stand for simpler less extravagant lifestyles in a world where resources are limited.
Sometimes we have to take bold stands on issues like gun control, when we see so many innocent children and bystanders harmed by epidemic of gun and drug related crimes.
We have to think and pray, and be concerned about the whole issue of gay and lesbian rights. What is appropriate; what is not. What’s more we need to think about the standards of what is appropriate behavior for the heterosexual community in the present day world.
In a world of that is becoming increasingly more vulgar, we may need to be concerned. Look carefully at what our children are seeing on television – what we are seeing on television! There is marked decline in what is good humor and appropriate viewing for a world that is civilized. There has been a significant decline in sitcom television. While these trends may seem harmless enough, they do diminish human dignity and standards.
It is no easy task being prophetic. You never know what words you may have to eat. We as the people of the church are not perfect. For that very reason this the season for cleaning up our own spiritual lives as the church of God. We have to take time for setting aside the distractions and reclaiming who we are and what we stand for. We must ourselves look for the coming of Christ again to direct and rule, to shape our lives. There is always the repeated need to allow Jesus Christ to come to us again to be the standard and guide of what is right coupled with compassion and mercy. Lest we become rigid and fixed, domineering, manipulating, and overbearing. . . . Lest we become to easy, trite, saccharin, sentimental, and meaningless . . . We need Christ to come to be with us. We need the presence of God in our lives that we can be his prophets and priest in a world that needs the love and the saving grace of God. John went proclaiming the need for change and repentance. He did his work well. The church in its role to proclaim the good news of God in Christ must know and look forward to his coming presence with us always.
We are called to faithfulness, study, prayerfulness, generosity. We are called to prayerfulness in our need for direction. We are called to embrace God and His Christ in everyway that we can to be faithful to our own baptism into the body of Christ, and into the role of the church.
SEASON: Advent 2
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 10, 2000
TEXT: Luke 3:1-6 – John the Baptist, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
“He went into all the region around the Jordon proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins . . . “
ISSUE: - John is the last of the Hebrew Prophets. He is calling for God’s people to change and be open to renewal. John is Isaiah’s ‘voice in the wilderness’ call all people to a ready for the coming of God to bring salvation to a world destined to destroy itself by its alienation from God.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The important figure of the Advent season is John the Baptist. He is the forerunner who calls for a readiness for receiving the Christ into our hearts.
Luke records in the passage for this morning some specific historical data. Tiberious is emperor of Rome. Pontius Pilate is governor in Judea. Herod rules Galilee along with other rulers governing other surrounding states. Caiaphas and Annas are the high priests. Luke is reassuring his reader that into human history, God is about to make his mark, or stake his claim once again.
John the Baptist is the son of Zechariah the priest. John’s ministry, however is not a ministry in the temple with the finest of vestments and privileges. John is in the wilderness around the Jordon River. This is a place of spirits, divine presence, and a place where visions and hopes are born. The Jordon River itself has significant meaning as it was once the River the People of God crossed upon entering the new Promised Land.
John is calling now in this historical age, an age of great political and religious corruption, where the Temple Priests and leaders are in collusion with the Romans, at the great expense and derision of the poor and their needs. John longs for the coming of a saviour, a messianic figure of deliverance. He preaches a sermon for repentance, for change, for human renewal with broadened horizons to accept the way of God once again. He urges repentance and change among all who come out to hear him.
As a symbol of repentance and renewal on the part of those who listen to John, they are baptized. At this time, persons who were born Jewish were not baptized. Their lineage in the Jewish community was sufficient. Only those persons who converted to Judaism were baptized. It was a symbolic cleansing ritual, that was intended to wash their past uncleanness by virtue of their being pagan, heathen, Gentiles. Thus, John’s baptism is significant in that he feels that his world and Judaism of his ancestors has become so corrupted that all people have become alienated from God. They have turned away from what is Godly, and need to turn back, or repent. They need to broaden their understanding and appreciation of God’s calling to a just world.
John in the wilderness for the people of that time, and for those first reading Luke’s Gospel, John is an Elijah like figure. He is a dynamic character in the wilderness untouched by the extravagances of the world revealing the need for a renewed presence of God in the lives of the people.
In still another sense, John is almost Moses like. He stands to confront the powers of the time. Like Moses confronted the Egyptian Pharaoh, John takes his stand condemning the powers of his time: Tiberius, Herod, Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas. As Moses led his people to the Red Sea and into the wilderness and eventually the Promised Land, John is leading his followers through the wilderness to the Jordon River to be changed, renewed, and prepared for the saving grace of God and for entrance into the Kingdom of God.
John is likened to the voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” John’s message is one of hope in a bad time. His belief is that God will not leave his people bereft. The world powers have abandoned the people of God, and God will not allow that to continue. Thus, John calls for preparation, readiness, change of hearts, and broadened horizons in religious thinking to begin looking for and anticipating the coming of the Lord to his people. He is calling for preparedness for a new presence of God with his people. Eventually, John proclaims that Jesus is one who is to come, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin and alienation of the world. But like so many of the ancient prophets, John was murdered by Herod. But, his work was accomplished.
The importance of John’s ministry is that he calls for making ready for the Christ and for appropriate change and new thinking. Jesus’ teachings we will remember require new thinking as he often offers the Great Reversals in the face of worldly thinking and trends. John work also clear points at the Jesus Christ as God’s Christ in the world, and the world’s hope. Even beyond this role that John has, John is somehow symbolic personification of the work of the church in the world today.
The work of the church throughout the ages has been a work similar to what John the Baptist did. The work of the church has been to baptize all nations into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Keep in mind that this does not merely mean sprinkling water on people. It means rather to immerse the world into the love and grace of God. All through the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures we have stories in our faith about how God seeks to deliver his people and keep them in His Kingdom. Moses deliverance of the Hebrews through the dying of Jesus on the cross is all tenants of our faith in which God is redeeming love.
The role of the church throughout history has also been a prophetic role. It is called upon to stand against the injustices of the world. This role is hard. It is not always easy to know what is right, and there have been times when the church has been wrong in her judgments. But we must be humble and careful as the people of God to have are prophetic arguments well worked out and carefully thought out. It was appropriate that the church stood firm and walked with Martin Luther King in the face of grave injustices. We must continue to stand firm against racism and exclusiveness in our world. It is appropriate that the church make a clear statement in its accessibility for handicapped and physically challenged people. The Church today will need to struggle with the issues of the Middle East. Dare we to stand back and do nothing, or must we be informed about what is fair and reasonable for both the nation Israel and the Palestinians who have no homeland. It is sad to see the hostilities developing there between Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We can be so quick to demonize our enemies without first seeking new ways for peace and finding common ground for peace.
The church today may be needing to be more prophetic in its stand against the extreme consumerism, the American raping of the environment. We may have to take a stand for simpler less extravagant lifestyles in a world where resources are limited.
Sometimes we have to take bold stands on issues like gun control, when we see so many innocent children and bystanders harmed by epidemic of gun and drug related crimes.
We have to think and pray, and be concerned about the whole issue of gay and lesbian rights. What is appropriate; what is not. What’s more we need to think about the standards of what is appropriate behavior for the heterosexual community in the present day world.
In a world of that is becoming increasingly more vulgar, we may need to be concerned. Look carefully at what our children are seeing on television – what we are seeing on television! There is marked decline in what is good humor and appropriate viewing for a world that is civilized. There has been a significant decline in sitcom television. While these trends may seem harmless enough, they do diminish human dignity and standards.
It is no easy task being prophetic. You never know what words you may have to eat. We as the people of the church are not perfect. For that very reason this the season for cleaning up our own spiritual lives as the church of God. We have to take time for setting aside the distractions and reclaiming who we are and what we stand for. We must ourselves look for the coming of Christ again to direct and rule, to shape our lives. There is always the repeated need to allow Jesus Christ to come to us again to be the standard and guide of what is right coupled with compassion and mercy. Lest we become rigid and fixed, domineering, manipulating, and overbearing. . . . Lest we become to easy, trite, saccharin, sentimental, and meaningless . . . We need Christ to come to be with us. We need the presence of God in our lives that we can be his prophets and priest in a world that needs the love and the saving grace of God. John went proclaiming the need for change and repentance. He did his work well. The church in its role to proclaim the good news of God in Christ must know and look forward to his coming presence with us always.
We are called to faithfulness, study, prayerfulness, generosity. We are called to prayerfulness in our need for direction. We are called to embrace God and His Christ in everyway that we can to be faithful to our own baptism into the body of Christ, and into the role of the church.
Sunday, December 3, 2000
Advent 1
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Advent 1
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 3,2000
TEXT: Luke 21:25-31 - Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
Zechariah 14:4-9 - Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him . . . . And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.
ISSUE: - These passages from Zechariah and Luke are images of hope for people living through and anticipating difficult times. God will not abandon his people and will come to them. The work of the church and its people today is to stand ready and prepared, fostering and looking forward to the renewed coming of Christ in our lives, and ready for the final coming.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Welcome to the beginning of a new church year with the beginning of the First Sunday of Advent. It is that time when we again look forward to the coming of Christ. Actually, there are two aspects of the Advent Season. We look forward to the coming of Christ once again in the celebration of Christmas. We also are reminded of the belief that Christ will come again to judge the world, known as the Second Coming. The concept of Christ coming again is seen as part of an apocalyptic event. When the end time comes, Christ will come. The Christian community must be prepared, watchful, and waiting for the event.
While the Apocalyptic event is often portrayed as a disaster and calamity, for the faithful people of God it is often portrayed with great hope. The Hebrew Lesson from the prophet Zechariah is one such picture. It is written in such a time when Israel, God’s people, had faced great suffering and oppression at the hands of their enemies. But, Zechariah proclaims a time of great redemption and hope for the people of God. There will be a great earthquake that will split The Mount of Olives in two, creating a great plain, which will be an escape route for the people of God. And it will be as if God or the Messiah of God will stand straddling the divided mountain as His people escape oppression and injustice. What’s more, God will change the face of the earth. The earth will be turned to perpetual daylight with no darkness at all. The cold and frost will turn to perpetual summertime. In a land known for its arid climate and lack of water, running living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, and God’s people will neither hunger nor thirst anymore.
Luke’s Gospel also tells of an awesome time. Luke is borrowing from Mark’s Little Apocalypse that we read last week. While Mark wrote when the Jerusalem Temple was being destroyed, Luke is writing after the event. It is a time of great distress for Jews and Christians alike in the face of domineering powers over them. But, Luke gives to Jesus the words that are reassuring to the faithful. When the very heaven above and the earth beneath seem to be shaken, let these events be a sign to you that God is near. “Your redemption is drawing near.” It is like a barren fig tree. It appears dead in the winter, but when you see the shoots, the signs are there that the summer is coming. When there are difficult times, let them be signs and reminders for you that the Kingdom of God is near. “Now when you see these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.
For Luke difficult times will be and are reminder that God is near, and the faithful need not fear. Look up, stand firm, and raise up your heads, your redemption is near. Again the coming of Christ forecasts a new spring, a new beginning, a new hope for the faithful. It is good news. God will come to his people.
Presently we are living through a difficult period in the history of the world, and a time of great concerns. We are living at a time when there is significant concern over the global issue of an earth growing too warm as a result of pollution. The implications are quite significant. Melting polar caps will change sea levels flooding low lying populated areas causing the need for significant migrations of people. Global warming can have a significant effect upon weather conditions, causing problems with food supplies for feeding the peoples of the world.
Recent theories on the death of dinosaurs millions of years ago, indicate that their extinction was likely to have been caused by a comet or asteroid striking the earth. In recent years this knowledge has inspired several apocalyptic movies. We live with that threat of the world as we know it coming to an end.
The more ever present event that threatens the world order today is the situation in the Middle East. We’ve already seen the sky turn black from the bombings and disaster for the people of Iraq. As that whole problem continues to fester in the Middle East and random uncontrolled terrorism and violence persists, we might begin to wonder what a world without oil would look like. Without alternative resources the outlook would be pretty grim.
In each of our personal lives, we also know difficult times. We lose jobs, marriages, people we love. We experience serious illness and death. There are things that happen to us over which we sometimes have no control. These are personal apocalyptic events that can make us feel our world has come to its end. We see no light or hope at the end of the tunnel.
One of the memorable events and a great metaphor for our time is the story of the Titanic. It was ship thought to be unsinkable and a modern marvel. Yet built at the hands of human beings, the steel was too brittle in cold water, and the rivets poorly made. Racing across the Atlantic on a calm and relatively clear night in hopes of achieving a new man made record; it side swiped an iceberg and sank. Its grandeur broke in half like a matchstick. That too, was an apocalyptic event. As terrorizing as the event was, it also created a new age for seamanship, requiring appropriate numbers of life boats, new radio monitoring codes, and gave birth to the iceberg watch patrols in the Atlantic. It also revealed the great gap between the rich and the poor, when it came to who could reach the available lifeboats first. We saw in the event a kind of judgment that we are not God but need God. It is like the old Biblical story of The Tower of Babel, where men try to storm heaven and take God’s place. Fact of the matter is that we need God and all that God represents. In recognizing that need we enter into a new age of hope and renewal.
We are also living in time of great affluence. It is an age, especially here in America, unlike any other time in history. We have more than enough, if not more than our share of the resources of the world. There is a great temptation to believe that we’ve got it made, that we are the masters and controllers over our own lives and the world. Without a greater concern for the needs and concerns of the world, which perceives us as not just rich, but greedy. We could be caught by surprise when the Son of Man returns in judgment.
This season is a very busy one. It calls for very busy lives and participation in all kinds of parties and festivities. In all of our lives there are distractions that gnaw away at our spiritual lives and our need to be in relationship with God. The call of the church in the Advent season is to keep in perspective what this season means. We stand under the judgment of God and we need God. The judgment of God is certainly awesome. At the same time is can also be fair, just, and renewing. With all that we do, with all we fear, this is the season for keeping in mind the need to allow the presence of God to be with us.
We live at a wonderful time in history. There is so much to commend this period of great scientific and technological advancement. It is also a time of insidious terrorism (the USS Cole being a vivid recent example, not to mention other bombings). In our culture there is a prevailing godlessness, moral decline, distractions, abusiveness, and a frantic busyness that is spiritually debilitating. In this sense we too live in an apocalyptic age. Our hope however is that God seeks once again to come to us to change and redeem us. The reality is that we stand in need of God to guide us and shape us, to remold us into new people of compassion, caring, and love. We need to reclaim the important of our faith in a world that is faithless. We need the vision of the God standing over us with his feet upon the mountains showing us the way to our deliverance. We need to recognize the signs, when terrorism and bloodshed prevail, when there is poverty and human suffering, God is needed. God is near. His Kingdom will come. We need to be the facilitators of his coming, open to be changed and renewed.
Jesus Christ comes again in this season in the manger at Bethlehem. Simply, humbly, his message of love comes again. His call to radical change and renewal dares the world. Humble and simple as he is, it is as if he stands with one foot on one mountaintop and the other foot on the other calling us to him and with him into the way of peace and love.
SEASON: Advent 1
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: December 3,2000
TEXT: Luke 21:25-31 - Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.
Zechariah 14:4-9 - Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him . . . . And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.
ISSUE: - These passages from Zechariah and Luke are images of hope for people living through and anticipating difficult times. God will not abandon his people and will come to them. The work of the church and its people today is to stand ready and prepared, fostering and looking forward to the renewed coming of Christ in our lives, and ready for the final coming.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Welcome to the beginning of a new church year with the beginning of the First Sunday of Advent. It is that time when we again look forward to the coming of Christ. Actually, there are two aspects of the Advent Season. We look forward to the coming of Christ once again in the celebration of Christmas. We also are reminded of the belief that Christ will come again to judge the world, known as the Second Coming. The concept of Christ coming again is seen as part of an apocalyptic event. When the end time comes, Christ will come. The Christian community must be prepared, watchful, and waiting for the event.
While the Apocalyptic event is often portrayed as a disaster and calamity, for the faithful people of God it is often portrayed with great hope. The Hebrew Lesson from the prophet Zechariah is one such picture. It is written in such a time when Israel, God’s people, had faced great suffering and oppression at the hands of their enemies. But, Zechariah proclaims a time of great redemption and hope for the people of God. There will be a great earthquake that will split The Mount of Olives in two, creating a great plain, which will be an escape route for the people of God. And it will be as if God or the Messiah of God will stand straddling the divided mountain as His people escape oppression and injustice. What’s more, God will change the face of the earth. The earth will be turned to perpetual daylight with no darkness at all. The cold and frost will turn to perpetual summertime. In a land known for its arid climate and lack of water, running living waters will flow out of Jerusalem, and God’s people will neither hunger nor thirst anymore.
Luke’s Gospel also tells of an awesome time. Luke is borrowing from Mark’s Little Apocalypse that we read last week. While Mark wrote when the Jerusalem Temple was being destroyed, Luke is writing after the event. It is a time of great distress for Jews and Christians alike in the face of domineering powers over them. But, Luke gives to Jesus the words that are reassuring to the faithful. When the very heaven above and the earth beneath seem to be shaken, let these events be a sign to you that God is near. “Your redemption is drawing near.” It is like a barren fig tree. It appears dead in the winter, but when you see the shoots, the signs are there that the summer is coming. When there are difficult times, let them be signs and reminders for you that the Kingdom of God is near. “Now when you see these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near.
For Luke difficult times will be and are reminder that God is near, and the faithful need not fear. Look up, stand firm, and raise up your heads, your redemption is near. Again the coming of Christ forecasts a new spring, a new beginning, a new hope for the faithful. It is good news. God will come to his people.
Presently we are living through a difficult period in the history of the world, and a time of great concerns. We are living at a time when there is significant concern over the global issue of an earth growing too warm as a result of pollution. The implications are quite significant. Melting polar caps will change sea levels flooding low lying populated areas causing the need for significant migrations of people. Global warming can have a significant effect upon weather conditions, causing problems with food supplies for feeding the peoples of the world.
Recent theories on the death of dinosaurs millions of years ago, indicate that their extinction was likely to have been caused by a comet or asteroid striking the earth. In recent years this knowledge has inspired several apocalyptic movies. We live with that threat of the world as we know it coming to an end.
The more ever present event that threatens the world order today is the situation in the Middle East. We’ve already seen the sky turn black from the bombings and disaster for the people of Iraq. As that whole problem continues to fester in the Middle East and random uncontrolled terrorism and violence persists, we might begin to wonder what a world without oil would look like. Without alternative resources the outlook would be pretty grim.
In each of our personal lives, we also know difficult times. We lose jobs, marriages, people we love. We experience serious illness and death. There are things that happen to us over which we sometimes have no control. These are personal apocalyptic events that can make us feel our world has come to its end. We see no light or hope at the end of the tunnel.
One of the memorable events and a great metaphor for our time is the story of the Titanic. It was ship thought to be unsinkable and a modern marvel. Yet built at the hands of human beings, the steel was too brittle in cold water, and the rivets poorly made. Racing across the Atlantic on a calm and relatively clear night in hopes of achieving a new man made record; it side swiped an iceberg and sank. Its grandeur broke in half like a matchstick. That too, was an apocalyptic event. As terrorizing as the event was, it also created a new age for seamanship, requiring appropriate numbers of life boats, new radio monitoring codes, and gave birth to the iceberg watch patrols in the Atlantic. It also revealed the great gap between the rich and the poor, when it came to who could reach the available lifeboats first. We saw in the event a kind of judgment that we are not God but need God. It is like the old Biblical story of The Tower of Babel, where men try to storm heaven and take God’s place. Fact of the matter is that we need God and all that God represents. In recognizing that need we enter into a new age of hope and renewal.
We are also living in time of great affluence. It is an age, especially here in America, unlike any other time in history. We have more than enough, if not more than our share of the resources of the world. There is a great temptation to believe that we’ve got it made, that we are the masters and controllers over our own lives and the world. Without a greater concern for the needs and concerns of the world, which perceives us as not just rich, but greedy. We could be caught by surprise when the Son of Man returns in judgment.
This season is a very busy one. It calls for very busy lives and participation in all kinds of parties and festivities. In all of our lives there are distractions that gnaw away at our spiritual lives and our need to be in relationship with God. The call of the church in the Advent season is to keep in perspective what this season means. We stand under the judgment of God and we need God. The judgment of God is certainly awesome. At the same time is can also be fair, just, and renewing. With all that we do, with all we fear, this is the season for keeping in mind the need to allow the presence of God to be with us.
We live at a wonderful time in history. There is so much to commend this period of great scientific and technological advancement. It is also a time of insidious terrorism (the USS Cole being a vivid recent example, not to mention other bombings). In our culture there is a prevailing godlessness, moral decline, distractions, abusiveness, and a frantic busyness that is spiritually debilitating. In this sense we too live in an apocalyptic age. Our hope however is that God seeks once again to come to us to change and redeem us. The reality is that we stand in need of God to guide us and shape us, to remold us into new people of compassion, caring, and love. We need to reclaim the important of our faith in a world that is faithless. We need the vision of the God standing over us with his feet upon the mountains showing us the way to our deliverance. We need to recognize the signs, when terrorism and bloodshed prevail, when there is poverty and human suffering, God is needed. God is near. His Kingdom will come. We need to be the facilitators of his coming, open to be changed and renewed.
Jesus Christ comes again in this season in the manger at Bethlehem. Simply, humbly, his message of love comes again. His call to radical change and renewal dares the world. Humble and simple as he is, it is as if he stands with one foot on one mountaintop and the other foot on the other calling us to him and with him into the way of peace and love.
Sunday, November 26, 2000
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: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 26,2000
TEXT: John 18:33-37 - Jesus before Pilate
Pilate asked him, “So your 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: Who reigns in and over our lives is the issue of this passage. Pilate represents the powers of the world. Jesus represents the loving power of God over the creation, and Jesus reveals the truth about God. Pilate cannot understand Jesus and the truth that he offers and orders the crucifixion. But while Kingdoms of this world rise and fall, Christ is risen and Christ comes again at Christmas. The challenge and the welcome to allow God and His Christ to rule over our lives continues.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This is the last Sunday of Pentecost, now commonly known as Christ the King Sunday. We have come to the end of the church’s year. The new year begins in the church next Sunday with the First Sunday of Advent. Once again for this season, the Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Scripture readings are apocalyptic writings from Daniel and Revelation. Each written at times of great tribulation for God’s people, when great foreign powers ruled and viciously attacked the people of God. But each of these readings proclaim the power of God to over rule those foreign powers, and God’ people are given hope.
In a fascinating vignette the Gospel reading from John portrays Jesus before Pontius Pilate. For all intents and purposes this is the end of Jesus’ life. It is his apocalyptic moment standing before the great power of the world. Pilate the Roman governor of Israel stands with Jesus. It is a fascinating picture. Pilate represents the world’s great power, the Roman Empire. Jesus has no power at all as the world understands power. He is little more than an itinerant preacher, a magician-healer, sage, a rebel prophet. His enemies bring him before Pilate with a charge that he claims to be King of the Jews, or of Israel. He is brought before Pilate, since the Judean authorities have no power to execute him. Pilate begins a dialog with Jesus. He wants to know if there is any validity to the charge that Jesus claims to be a king, “Are you the King of the Jews?” It is curious that Pilate and Jesus enter into this dialog, which was hardly required on the part of Pilate. He is by far the greater authority here. Jesus verbally spars with him, which insinuates that in some sense they are equals. In the sparring Pilate assumes Jesus is some sort of king, but why would ones own people turn him over to Roman Authority. Then Jesus makes the startling claim, “My kingdom is not of this world.” It is not a kingdom of Israel. Rather it is the Kingdom of God, the realm of God, the dominion of God. Jesus has come to bear witness to the truth.
Much like Jesus’ own disciples, Pilate cannot understand. He doesn’t get it. He cannot understand that Jesus comes to reveal, proclaim the Kingdom, Dominion, Realm of God. He has come to bear witness to the truth about God and about God’s Kingdom. Unable to understand, Pilate says, “And what is truth?” He then does the only thing he knows how to do, he orders the execution, the crucifixion of Jesus. The end of Jesus’ ministry has come. This scene is an apocalyptic one. The end has come. The disciples are depressed and dispersed. The flee and hide. The sky turns black, the earth is shaken by a quake. Doomsday has come. But then what happens. A new day comes, a new age is born, and Christ appears risen. The truth about the power of God over the powers of the world, of Pilate’s world is revealed. The truth is that God rules over the powers of the world in spite of what people think.
Now, I know that we might be wondering why we are talking about the Crucifixion of Jesus when we are about to enter into the Advent-Christmas season. It is because we have come to the end of the year, and as Christ came to the end of his life and was raised. We also come to the end of this year and enter into a transition of Christ, The King, being born again into the anxieties, difficulties, troubles, uncertainties, foolishness, and sinfulness of our lives.
Notice in all of this the challenges to our human and worldly way of thinking. The Kingdom, Domain, Realm, Empire of God is quite the opposite. It is the great turn around, the great reversal, which is “the truth” that Jesus comes to reveal. Jesus and Pilate stand before one another. Pilate and the corrupted Judeans appear to hold the reigns of power. However, they only hold the reigns of power that lead to death. Jesus proclaims and participates in the power of God, that leads to resurrection, new life, beginning again, with the assure that Christ will come again to the people of God with reconciliation, redemption, and hope. That’s what our Advent transition is all about, the coming of Christ again to the sinfulness and brokeness, to the world’s culture of death. The world’s culture of death is its drugs and drug dealers, its atomic weapons, its biological weapons, its corruption, its poverty and crime in the streets, its racism and sexism.
“What is the truth?” Pilate asks. What is truth in the Realm Of God over which Jesus proclaims and rules? The truth is that God loves the poor and hates the greedy. The truth is that God loves those who are suffering and hate those who laugh at and are apathetic about human suffering and need. God loves and honors those who are hungry and hates those who stuff themselves and watch out only for themselves. God honors and loves those who are persecuted for the sake of demanding justice.
The truth in God’s kingdom is that the last, least, the lost, the lonely, are invited into the banquet of God. Anybody even sinners can welcome their own family and friends, who pay you back and give you gifts in return.
In the Kingdom of God the truth is that you hate your own worldly mother and father, sister and brother, and see all of God’s people, gay, Asian, Black, Hispanics, Caucasian as your family and the people with whom you are to be intimate.
The truth in the Kingdom of God is that people turn the other cheek, and walk the extra mile, and give their clothing away.
In the realm and Kingdom of God, the truth of the matter is that people don’t walk out on one another: their wives, husbands and children for greener pastures elsewhere.
In Jesus’ kingdom, God is like some poor old widow lady who demands justice from the corrupt rulers and judges of this world.
In the Kingdom of God, the bratty selfish kid who wants things his way and ends up nearly dead is welcomed back and forgiven. What’s more good and faithful are challenged to lighten up and come and join the festivit5ies of God.
In the Empire of God, God is like a no good foreigner that reaches out to the very religious people who hate him, and extends an abundance of grace, far more than they can or could ever deserve.
Those who bear the burden of the day in God’s kingdom, working in his garden and picking his grapes receive the same benevolent and generous salary and benefits of those who come at the end of the day.
In the Kingdom of God, and the truth about that Kingdom or Domain, or Realm is that the Widows, the children, the least get a place of honor and status. The least are allowed to sit on the lap of the Son of God and to join with him.
In the Realm of God, the truth is that all who come to Christ as their Lord and Master, their King of Kings, and invited to participate in the fellowship, in the companionship, the eating together with God. And so it goes, in dying and serving, taking up the cross we take on meaningful, purposeful lives in the Kingdom of God.
We live in a world that knows little else but being anxious about what we are going to eat, drink, and wear. Yet the truth of the Kingdom of Christ is that God will provide the ‘stuff’ we need, and we do not worry or become anxious. It does nothing, and adds not one cubit to our stature. But we seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness. That’s the stuff of which we are meant to be made.
Jesus and Pilate stand before one another. Pilate represents the culture and human condition of force, manipulation, domination, and power as the world understands it. In sharp, keen, contrast Jesus represents the power of God, the truth about God. God is love. God is forgiving. God reaches out in affection. God is patient and kind. It is a power that touches the human condition with love and enables free response and the freedom to change. It is the love that raises up that which has fallen. It is the power and love that comes not in prestigious pomp and circumstances, but that comes in the form of a suffering servant and in the form of an infant child that touches human hearts and changes them. Standing before Pilate and in the manger, all who hear his voice and cry know the real truth about God that stands as hope for the powers of the world.
SEASON: Last Pentecost - CHRIST THE KING
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 26,2000
TEXT: John 18:33-37 - Jesus before Pilate
Pilate asked him, “So your 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: Who reigns in and over our lives is the issue of this passage. Pilate represents the powers of the world. Jesus represents the loving power of God over the creation, and Jesus reveals the truth about God. Pilate cannot understand Jesus and the truth that he offers and orders the crucifixion. But while Kingdoms of this world rise and fall, Christ is risen and Christ comes again at Christmas. The challenge and the welcome to allow God and His Christ to rule over our lives continues.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This is the last Sunday of Pentecost, now commonly known as Christ the King Sunday. We have come to the end of the church’s year. The new year begins in the church next Sunday with the First Sunday of Advent. Once again for this season, the Hebrew Scripture and the Christian Scripture readings are apocalyptic writings from Daniel and Revelation. Each written at times of great tribulation for God’s people, when great foreign powers ruled and viciously attacked the people of God. But each of these readings proclaim the power of God to over rule those foreign powers, and God’ people are given hope.
In a fascinating vignette the Gospel reading from John portrays Jesus before Pontius Pilate. For all intents and purposes this is the end of Jesus’ life. It is his apocalyptic moment standing before the great power of the world. Pilate the Roman governor of Israel stands with Jesus. It is a fascinating picture. Pilate represents the world’s great power, the Roman Empire. Jesus has no power at all as the world understands power. He is little more than an itinerant preacher, a magician-healer, sage, a rebel prophet. His enemies bring him before Pilate with a charge that he claims to be King of the Jews, or of Israel. He is brought before Pilate, since the Judean authorities have no power to execute him. Pilate begins a dialog with Jesus. He wants to know if there is any validity to the charge that Jesus claims to be a king, “Are you the King of the Jews?” It is curious that Pilate and Jesus enter into this dialog, which was hardly required on the part of Pilate. He is by far the greater authority here. Jesus verbally spars with him, which insinuates that in some sense they are equals. In the sparring Pilate assumes Jesus is some sort of king, but why would ones own people turn him over to Roman Authority. Then Jesus makes the startling claim, “My kingdom is not of this world.” It is not a kingdom of Israel. Rather it is the Kingdom of God, the realm of God, the dominion of God. Jesus has come to bear witness to the truth.
Much like Jesus’ own disciples, Pilate cannot understand. He doesn’t get it. He cannot understand that Jesus comes to reveal, proclaim the Kingdom, Dominion, Realm of God. He has come to bear witness to the truth about God and about God’s Kingdom. Unable to understand, Pilate says, “And what is truth?” He then does the only thing he knows how to do, he orders the execution, the crucifixion of Jesus. The end of Jesus’ ministry has come. This scene is an apocalyptic one. The end has come. The disciples are depressed and dispersed. The flee and hide. The sky turns black, the earth is shaken by a quake. Doomsday has come. But then what happens. A new day comes, a new age is born, and Christ appears risen. The truth about the power of God over the powers of the world, of Pilate’s world is revealed. The truth is that God rules over the powers of the world in spite of what people think.
Now, I know that we might be wondering why we are talking about the Crucifixion of Jesus when we are about to enter into the Advent-Christmas season. It is because we have come to the end of the year, and as Christ came to the end of his life and was raised. We also come to the end of this year and enter into a transition of Christ, The King, being born again into the anxieties, difficulties, troubles, uncertainties, foolishness, and sinfulness of our lives.
Notice in all of this the challenges to our human and worldly way of thinking. The Kingdom, Domain, Realm, Empire of God is quite the opposite. It is the great turn around, the great reversal, which is “the truth” that Jesus comes to reveal. Jesus and Pilate stand before one another. Pilate and the corrupted Judeans appear to hold the reigns of power. However, they only hold the reigns of power that lead to death. Jesus proclaims and participates in the power of God, that leads to resurrection, new life, beginning again, with the assure that Christ will come again to the people of God with reconciliation, redemption, and hope. That’s what our Advent transition is all about, the coming of Christ again to the sinfulness and brokeness, to the world’s culture of death. The world’s culture of death is its drugs and drug dealers, its atomic weapons, its biological weapons, its corruption, its poverty and crime in the streets, its racism and sexism.
“What is the truth?” Pilate asks. What is truth in the Realm Of God over which Jesus proclaims and rules? The truth is that God loves the poor and hates the greedy. The truth is that God loves those who are suffering and hate those who laugh at and are apathetic about human suffering and need. God loves and honors those who are hungry and hates those who stuff themselves and watch out only for themselves. God honors and loves those who are persecuted for the sake of demanding justice.
The truth in God’s kingdom is that the last, least, the lost, the lonely, are invited into the banquet of God. Anybody even sinners can welcome their own family and friends, who pay you back and give you gifts in return.
In the Kingdom of God the truth is that you hate your own worldly mother and father, sister and brother, and see all of God’s people, gay, Asian, Black, Hispanics, Caucasian as your family and the people with whom you are to be intimate.
The truth in the Kingdom of God is that people turn the other cheek, and walk the extra mile, and give their clothing away.
In the realm and Kingdom of God, the truth of the matter is that people don’t walk out on one another: their wives, husbands and children for greener pastures elsewhere.
In Jesus’ kingdom, God is like some poor old widow lady who demands justice from the corrupt rulers and judges of this world.
In the Kingdom of God, the bratty selfish kid who wants things his way and ends up nearly dead is welcomed back and forgiven. What’s more good and faithful are challenged to lighten up and come and join the festivit5ies of God.
In the Empire of God, God is like a no good foreigner that reaches out to the very religious people who hate him, and extends an abundance of grace, far more than they can or could ever deserve.
Those who bear the burden of the day in God’s kingdom, working in his garden and picking his grapes receive the same benevolent and generous salary and benefits of those who come at the end of the day.
In the Kingdom of God, and the truth about that Kingdom or Domain, or Realm is that the Widows, the children, the least get a place of honor and status. The least are allowed to sit on the lap of the Son of God and to join with him.
In the Realm of God, the truth is that all who come to Christ as their Lord and Master, their King of Kings, and invited to participate in the fellowship, in the companionship, the eating together with God. And so it goes, in dying and serving, taking up the cross we take on meaningful, purposeful lives in the Kingdom of God.
We live in a world that knows little else but being anxious about what we are going to eat, drink, and wear. Yet the truth of the Kingdom of Christ is that God will provide the ‘stuff’ we need, and we do not worry or become anxious. It does nothing, and adds not one cubit to our stature. But we seek first the Kingdom of God and God’s righteousness. That’s the stuff of which we are meant to be made.
Jesus and Pilate stand before one another. Pilate represents the culture and human condition of force, manipulation, domination, and power as the world understands it. In sharp, keen, contrast Jesus represents the power of God, the truth about God. God is love. God is forgiving. God reaches out in affection. God is patient and kind. It is a power that touches the human condition with love and enables free response and the freedom to change. It is the love that raises up that which has fallen. It is the power and love that comes not in prestigious pomp and circumstances, but that comes in the form of a suffering servant and in the form of an infant child that touches human hearts and changes them. Standing before Pilate and in the manger, all who hear his voice and cry know the real truth about God that stands as hope for the powers of the world.
Sunday, November 19, 2000
Pentecost 23
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 23
PROPER: 28B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 19, 2000
TEXT: Mark 13:14-23 The Little Apocalypse
“But be alert; I have already told you everything.”
See also: Daniel 12:1-13
ISSUE: - Apocalyptic scripture speaks of terrible times, and is a sign of the end of an age. The challenge of the church is to stand firm for Jesus Christ. Every age seems to know its difficult times. Christians are called upon to stand firm in our faith and not be distracted. We believe that God is with us in Christ, and will see us through those difficulties. The age to come for the Christian is the prevailing Kingdom and Realm of a victorious God to whom we have been led through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We are coming now to the ‘end’ of the church’s year. This is the 23 Sunday of Pentecost, with next Sunday being the last of the Pentecost season. It is transition period of moving from the life story and teachings of Jesus in the Gospel to the transitional period of John the Baptist calling for repentance, and followed by the birth of Jesus as the herald and of a new age.
The readings today, and up coming lectionary readings are defined as “Apocalyptic” readings. They are readings that deal with the end of the age. There is in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures a number of sections that are apocalyptic in their structure. One of the earliest apocalyptic writings is the story of Noah and The Ark. The story tells of a time when there is great hatred and injustice, wickedness. It is a time of great unfaithfulness toward God. Noah, the one righteous man of the time, follows the instruction of God, preparing for the devastation that is to come in the great flood. It is a time of great transition. Evil is washed away, and a new order begins.
The Book of Daniel tells of extraordinarily difficult times for Israel, conquered by evil destructive enemies. The Book is thought to have been written during the reign of a pagan ruler Antiochus Epiphanes IV had desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem by slaughtering pigs on the altar, turning the Temple into a brothel, and erecting an image of himself. For people living in this age, they saw it as an abomination, the end of the age, and with anticipation and hope that God would bring about a new age.
The most popular apocalyptic literature is the Book of Revelation. It tells of a period of great tribulation and turmoil for the early church during the persecutions. The Roman Emperor and Empire is seen as the great beast, that was about to devour the child to born of the virgin. The dragon is the beast of the Empire consuming all that is good and holy. All of this is written in symbolic language that the people of the time understood quite well. But Revelation is also a message of great hope that a new Jerusalem will come and Christ will be the ultimate victor.
Mark’s gospel refers to the “desolating sacrilege’ being set up. He warns the people of the time, a very difficult time is coming, the end of the age. God’s people will be going through a great period of transition. Apocalyptic literature is usually written in periods of transition. Now recall that last Sunday was the story of the Widow giving her last penny. Jesus saw this scene as one of great injustice. The Temple leadership in league with the Romans had become terribly corrupt. Jesus leaves the Temple telling his disciples that every ‘beautiful’ stone will be torn down. There was an indication that the Emperor Caligula planned to place a statue of himself in the Temple, declaring himself to be a god. Thus, Mark says in this gospel, ‘“When you see the desolating sacrilege set up” (you know what I’m talking about) then you can expect all hell to break loose. It will be the end of the age. Flea to the mountains, and God forbid that it is winter or that a woman is pregnant.’ By the time Mark is writing this gospel, the Temple was being destroyed by the Romans. It was leveled and never rebuilt. They raised flags with the image of the Emperor over the ruins. But consider what that meant. The Temple was Israel religious center. It was the seat of its government. To lose that was to lose everything. Then end is and had come. If the destruction had not stopped when it did no one would have survived by the grace of God. There were false messiahs, false messengers who led people to believe that they could fight back, but that was impossible against such a formidable Roman force. The final message is that Christians keep the faith. Stay faithful and God will prevail, and a new age of hope will come. The faithful shall be saved and come through the ordeal.
Even in our own time we have experienced apocalyptic events. There have been in recent years for many of us periods of great cultural anxiety. Those who lived through World War II sure new the anxiety of that age. The great vulture, the horrible dragon was laying waste in Europe. Adolph Hitler. Democracy was being gobbled up. Genocide was rampant as six million Jews were murdered. The war ended with an atomic explosion when the sky turned black in Hiroshima. It was truly an apocalyptic age. The world then looked forward to a new age of the rebirth of democracy and of peace.
The next generation brought about a new apocalyptic ear. The Cold War, that was most vividly expressed and not really so cold came the shape of the Vietnam War. The age of cultural anxiety continued as that period was fought out on the battle field and in the streets and colleges of this country. Remember one of the popular movies, Apocalypse Now! We lived on the brink of disaster in the so called cold war through the Cuban missile crisis.
Even today we live in a period of great cultural anxiety in so many ways. Terrorism is a significant and an insidious beast. Milosevich, Sadam Hussane and Asamabad bin Ladin (spellings?)are the beasts of our age. They are the names and the images of the beasts of our age. The weaponry of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorist, laser weapons, biological weapons of destruction are an awful frightening reality in our time.
Since the recent unresolved election cultural anxiety is heightened in this threatened age. A peaceful government and election by the people, and the peaceful transition of power are up for grabs. It is scary. We are uncertain about the future leadership, and how a country will be governed in the midst of such political division, not to mention that it appears that the real governing forces are not individuals by large controlling corporations and lobbyists. The struggle between good and evil continues. Drugs, racisim large corporations, horrendous weaponry, sexism are all the beasts and the dragons of our time gnawing away and consuming what we cherish and create dissension and grief.
Notice the symbols and icons that have developed in our own culture in our ages of anxiety. We had Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Spiderman, the Ningent Turtles. In all of these is the subtle recognition that humanity needs something stronger, something beyond itself, and stronger than itself, something more powerful and at one with justice, with righteousness, and hope. We loved characters like Roy Rogers and John Wayne, western heroes. We try to look to fellows like Gus Griffin and Christa McCalluf, astronauts, that gave us some hope that we could reach for the stars. But quite often even our cultural idols or icons disappoint us, some like Magic Johnson, Pete Rose, Jim Jones and Jimmy Swaggart turn out to be nothing but false messiahs.
Where do we turn? We have to turn to God. We have to be faithful, loyal and committed, in a world that is ailing. We need a new rainbow. We need a new Jerusalem. We need God, and the Realm, Domain, or Kingdom of God. We need the Christ who can and does lead the way. We need the resurrection that lifts us up in hope. What is that we have seen in Jesus Christ. We have seen the one who came and entered into the human condition. We saw Jesus who in humble birth embraced the expendable peasantry, the poor, the lame, the blind, and the imprisoned victims, and who stood firm in his accusations against the corrupt powers of this time. In Christ we see the stories and parables that call for the great reversals, the great turn a rounds required. Those who are of faith, loyalty, trust, and commitment are invited to step into the Kingdom of God. Stay awake, be alert, the Kingdom of God has come in Christ, and continues to come.
We do not escape the fact that every age has its apocalyptic events. The struggle between good and evil goes on. But for those of faith, the victory, the hope, we embrace and hold fast to the Christ. Christ’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of God is realized and continues to come into being. God will have it no other way until the full victory is accomplished.
SEASON: Pentecost 23
PROPER: 28B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 19, 2000
TEXT: Mark 13:14-23 The Little Apocalypse
“But be alert; I have already told you everything.”
See also: Daniel 12:1-13
ISSUE: - Apocalyptic scripture speaks of terrible times, and is a sign of the end of an age. The challenge of the church is to stand firm for Jesus Christ. Every age seems to know its difficult times. Christians are called upon to stand firm in our faith and not be distracted. We believe that God is with us in Christ, and will see us through those difficulties. The age to come for the Christian is the prevailing Kingdom and Realm of a victorious God to whom we have been led through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
We are coming now to the ‘end’ of the church’s year. This is the 23 Sunday of Pentecost, with next Sunday being the last of the Pentecost season. It is transition period of moving from the life story and teachings of Jesus in the Gospel to the transitional period of John the Baptist calling for repentance, and followed by the birth of Jesus as the herald and of a new age.
The readings today, and up coming lectionary readings are defined as “Apocalyptic” readings. They are readings that deal with the end of the age. There is in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures a number of sections that are apocalyptic in their structure. One of the earliest apocalyptic writings is the story of Noah and The Ark. The story tells of a time when there is great hatred and injustice, wickedness. It is a time of great unfaithfulness toward God. Noah, the one righteous man of the time, follows the instruction of God, preparing for the devastation that is to come in the great flood. It is a time of great transition. Evil is washed away, and a new order begins.
The Book of Daniel tells of extraordinarily difficult times for Israel, conquered by evil destructive enemies. The Book is thought to have been written during the reign of a pagan ruler Antiochus Epiphanes IV had desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem by slaughtering pigs on the altar, turning the Temple into a brothel, and erecting an image of himself. For people living in this age, they saw it as an abomination, the end of the age, and with anticipation and hope that God would bring about a new age.
The most popular apocalyptic literature is the Book of Revelation. It tells of a period of great tribulation and turmoil for the early church during the persecutions. The Roman Emperor and Empire is seen as the great beast, that was about to devour the child to born of the virgin. The dragon is the beast of the Empire consuming all that is good and holy. All of this is written in symbolic language that the people of the time understood quite well. But Revelation is also a message of great hope that a new Jerusalem will come and Christ will be the ultimate victor.
Mark’s gospel refers to the “desolating sacrilege’ being set up. He warns the people of the time, a very difficult time is coming, the end of the age. God’s people will be going through a great period of transition. Apocalyptic literature is usually written in periods of transition. Now recall that last Sunday was the story of the Widow giving her last penny. Jesus saw this scene as one of great injustice. The Temple leadership in league with the Romans had become terribly corrupt. Jesus leaves the Temple telling his disciples that every ‘beautiful’ stone will be torn down. There was an indication that the Emperor Caligula planned to place a statue of himself in the Temple, declaring himself to be a god. Thus, Mark says in this gospel, ‘“When you see the desolating sacrilege set up” (you know what I’m talking about) then you can expect all hell to break loose. It will be the end of the age. Flea to the mountains, and God forbid that it is winter or that a woman is pregnant.’ By the time Mark is writing this gospel, the Temple was being destroyed by the Romans. It was leveled and never rebuilt. They raised flags with the image of the Emperor over the ruins. But consider what that meant. The Temple was Israel religious center. It was the seat of its government. To lose that was to lose everything. Then end is and had come. If the destruction had not stopped when it did no one would have survived by the grace of God. There were false messiahs, false messengers who led people to believe that they could fight back, but that was impossible against such a formidable Roman force. The final message is that Christians keep the faith. Stay faithful and God will prevail, and a new age of hope will come. The faithful shall be saved and come through the ordeal.
Even in our own time we have experienced apocalyptic events. There have been in recent years for many of us periods of great cultural anxiety. Those who lived through World War II sure new the anxiety of that age. The great vulture, the horrible dragon was laying waste in Europe. Adolph Hitler. Democracy was being gobbled up. Genocide was rampant as six million Jews were murdered. The war ended with an atomic explosion when the sky turned black in Hiroshima. It was truly an apocalyptic age. The world then looked forward to a new age of the rebirth of democracy and of peace.
The next generation brought about a new apocalyptic ear. The Cold War, that was most vividly expressed and not really so cold came the shape of the Vietnam War. The age of cultural anxiety continued as that period was fought out on the battle field and in the streets and colleges of this country. Remember one of the popular movies, Apocalypse Now! We lived on the brink of disaster in the so called cold war through the Cuban missile crisis.
Even today we live in a period of great cultural anxiety in so many ways. Terrorism is a significant and an insidious beast. Milosevich, Sadam Hussane and Asamabad bin Ladin (spellings?)are the beasts of our age. They are the names and the images of the beasts of our age. The weaponry of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorist, laser weapons, biological weapons of destruction are an awful frightening reality in our time.
Since the recent unresolved election cultural anxiety is heightened in this threatened age. A peaceful government and election by the people, and the peaceful transition of power are up for grabs. It is scary. We are uncertain about the future leadership, and how a country will be governed in the midst of such political division, not to mention that it appears that the real governing forces are not individuals by large controlling corporations and lobbyists. The struggle between good and evil continues. Drugs, racisim large corporations, horrendous weaponry, sexism are all the beasts and the dragons of our time gnawing away and consuming what we cherish and create dissension and grief.
Notice the symbols and icons that have developed in our own culture in our ages of anxiety. We had Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Spiderman, the Ningent Turtles. In all of these is the subtle recognition that humanity needs something stronger, something beyond itself, and stronger than itself, something more powerful and at one with justice, with righteousness, and hope. We loved characters like Roy Rogers and John Wayne, western heroes. We try to look to fellows like Gus Griffin and Christa McCalluf, astronauts, that gave us some hope that we could reach for the stars. But quite often even our cultural idols or icons disappoint us, some like Magic Johnson, Pete Rose, Jim Jones and Jimmy Swaggart turn out to be nothing but false messiahs.
Where do we turn? We have to turn to God. We have to be faithful, loyal and committed, in a world that is ailing. We need a new rainbow. We need a new Jerusalem. We need God, and the Realm, Domain, or Kingdom of God. We need the Christ who can and does lead the way. We need the resurrection that lifts us up in hope. What is that we have seen in Jesus Christ. We have seen the one who came and entered into the human condition. We saw Jesus who in humble birth embraced the expendable peasantry, the poor, the lame, the blind, and the imprisoned victims, and who stood firm in his accusations against the corrupt powers of this time. In Christ we see the stories and parables that call for the great reversals, the great turn a rounds required. Those who are of faith, loyalty, trust, and commitment are invited to step into the Kingdom of God. Stay awake, be alert, the Kingdom of God has come in Christ, and continues to come.
We do not escape the fact that every age has its apocalyptic events. The struggle between good and evil goes on. But for those of faith, the victory, the hope, we embrace and hold fast to the Christ. Christ’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of God is realized and continues to come into being. God will have it no other way until the full victory is accomplished.
Sunday, November 12, 2000
Pentecost 22
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 22
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 12, 2000
TEXT: Mark 12:38-44 (13:1-2_ - Jesus’ Lament Over the Widow Victimized by the Temple System
“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
ISSUE: - In this passage from Mark, Jesus laments the victimization of the poor. It is believed to be Jesus’ last visit to the Temple. The widows of the period were often victimized like so many of the poor. The passage stands as a challenge to how the church functions in the world today, and how we develop a sense of stewardship, compassion, and meaningful, faithful giving of our lives.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I must begin this morning by saying that I stand here somewhat uncomfortable in my long robes after reading that Gospel. We clergy are also often greeted after services with respect and the title of “Father.” So having both read and heard this passage from Mark, I assure you it is with humbling concern.
It is a very challenging passage as it refers to the widow who stands as a stark contrast to the rich scribes and Pharisees that dump large sums of money into the Temple coffers as compared to the poor widow who puts drops in two copper coins worth about a penny. The implication is that those who can well afford to put in large sums could probably have done even better, while the poor widow has given everything that she has. There are those with millions who giving even a tithe of all they have are not giving really as much as a poor person with only a few dollars giving a tithe is a far greater sacrifice.
This passage seems to be an appropriate one for this season, in which many churches are in the midst of their stewardship campaigns. It almost appears that it is a deliberate story placed at this point in the lectionary. Needless to say it seems an important point that the poor widow in the story gives every appearance of being most generous and extraordinarily trusting that God will provide for her well being in response to her generosity. She is not only a contrast to the scribes and Pharisees, but all to the rich young man who came to Jesus in the story a few weeks ago. He was told to sell everything and give it to the poor and follow Jesus, but recall how he went away very sad for he was very rich. Here again the poor widow who has so little gives everything. We may well commend her generosity as an example to a very rich and affluent country that we are. Even the poor in this country, I am told, are far better off than the poor in other countries. It has recently been pointed out that the real questions for Americans today is not “Who wants to be a millionaire?” like the popular TV Show asks, but rather “Who is Already a Millionaire,” because there are many in this country, (if not a few in this parish!)
This passage, however, has another twist to it. Modern Biblical Scholars are saying we need to pay more attention to what this story is really all about. The point of the story (and my reason for adding the additional verses to it) is that it is not about the widow so much as about the corrupt scribes and Pharisees. I tell you once again, I stand here in my long robes, a little nervous about the real meaning of this story.
Jesus has come to the Temple with his disciples. He observes how the scribes and Pharisees, who are community leaders are behaving. They enjoy their long rich robes. They like being greeted in the marketplaces. Since they were of higher honor, persons of lesser honor were required to greet them. They sought out the best seats at the banquets that they attended and got the best seats in the Temple where they faced those of lesser honor, and had back rests because of their esteemed position. Jesus goes on to challenge and insult them for their long prayers, when they were in fact cheating and devouring the homes of widows.
Widows, (a word in Hebrew which means silent ones) in a man’s world were extraordinarily vulnerable. Without a husband and son, they had no one to speak up for them. A widow in such a position was totally dependent upon the lawyers, scribes and Pharisees, to settle their estates and manage their affairs. The widows were often cheated and eventually lost their homes; hence, they and their homes were devoured. Jesus sat with his disciples watching the rich, which means greedy, dumping their sums of money, much of which had been extorted from the poor, into the Temple coffers. Then along comes one of the widows and contributes all she has. While we have often thought that this was a great noble act on the part of the widow, and it may well have been, Jesus is outraged. She is being victimized. How can a person who dumps in everything live? What has she to live on? She’s been duped by a corrupt system. The Temple was both the political and religious center governed by the educated scribes and Pharisees, who were themselves manipulated by Roman authority. It was so very corrupt that the coins of the widows and the properties stolen from them were buying the long royal robes and supporting the great sumptuous banquets of the scribes and Pharisees.
The Temple structure was so corrupt that from Jesus’ point of view it needed to be torn down stone by stone. Biblical Scholar, John Pilch, refers to this story not as a statement about the great generosity of the widow, but as a great lament on the part of Jesus. He weeps for the widow who has been victimized by a corrupt system. The rich and greedy can well afford to give away all they have, and need to follow a higher power, but the poor who have nothing need not be further victimized. Let every stone of the temple, let everything that symbolizes and holds this corrupted system be torn down and ultimately destroyed. Jesus was not crucified because he told nice stories about, and pointed out the generosity of widows. He was crucified because he hated the system of the corrupted powerful, who play acted (were hypocrites with long prayers) at being godly when underneath the reality of their cunning was downright evil. We have often referred to the story of Jesus going into the Temple and upsetting the tables of the moneychangers as the “Cleansing of the Temple.” Not so. It was far more likely that it was Jesus’ symbolic gesture at destroying the Temple and its corruption. Once again you see Jesus turning things, the world, its way of thinking and being, upside down. The story is not commending the widow; it is lambasting the larger rich, greedy, and corrupt system that is destroying the old lady. She has nothing to live on and no one to stand up for her. She will now die. Jesus will never again according to the synoptic gospels ever step into the Temple again. It had become symbolic of a world system that drained impoverished people dry. The good news is that Jesus dares to challenge the system so that all might live and have life more abundantly.
It’s interesting, fascinating, that Jesus takes his disciples to the Temple to watch, to observe what is going on. Can we suppose that Christ with all the company of heaven are gathered here this morning watching, observing our actions and motives. And, the priests and clergy in Churches around the world are standing before their respective altars in their long robes lifting up in offering the bread and wine, and the gifts we have placed into the offering basin. What in fact is being lifted up as gathered Christian congregations worship in their finery? What is seen there in that behavior and action? As we gather to worship this day and so many Sundays what is the modern American Christian offering to God today?
They may well be offerings out of our abundance, which may be but a pittance of what we really have and possess. They may be profoundly sacrificial. They may be significant gifts for the church’s building fund, and mere modest token gifts to be used toward human need. The gifts we offer may be offerings accumulated through an economic system that has gained its wealth off of the backs of poor people around the world working in sweat shops for the meager wages that educated Americans and labor unions would not themselves tolerate for an instant. Maybe we offer our gifts out of fear that God will somehow punish us if we are negligent in our giving. Maybe we give out of a thanksgiving that we are well, healthy, and able to contribute to the fullness of life in everything we do. Maybe we give because we ourselves feel, sense, and know the abundant love and forgiveness of God that has been bestowed upon us.
In the story of the opulent scribes and the impoverished widow, perhaps we ourselves can also observe that the scribes are really the more impoverished spiritually than the widow who having so little possession can give herself in loyalty, trust, commitment and faith to God’s care. The fact of the matter is that we are all spiritually impoverished to some degree. We live in the most prosperous age in all of history. Yet, the statistics of our time declare that:
· That the Divorce Rate is doubled.
· Teen suicide has tripled.
· Violent crime has quadrupled.
· The prison population has quintupled.
· And babies born to unwed mothers has sextupled (no-pun intended).
· Cohabitation, which is according to some a predictor of divorce, has increased sevenfold. (Homiletics/2000, Text file NOV1200.TXT)
Maybe all that we have to offer is the victimization and spiritual impoverishment that the modern culture and its hedonistic philosophies have bestowed upon us. Like the scribes and Pharisees we may all contribute to victimization, insensitivity towards, and the humiliation of others. On other occasions we may be the victimized trying to give, even beyond our means with little sense of hope. But then this is the human condition in need of a savior. We need one who stands as the standard that challenges the world’s corruption and demands it be demolished stone by stone. We need the savior who calls us and shows us the way to being responsible stewards and citizens in the Realm of God’s Domain and Kingdom of justice, fair play, compassion, intense caring for human need, and with an insatiable love for God.
SEASON: Pentecost 22
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: November 12, 2000
TEXT: Mark 12:38-44 (13:1-2_ - Jesus’ Lament Over the Widow Victimized by the Temple System
“Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
ISSUE: - In this passage from Mark, Jesus laments the victimization of the poor. It is believed to be Jesus’ last visit to the Temple. The widows of the period were often victimized like so many of the poor. The passage stands as a challenge to how the church functions in the world today, and how we develop a sense of stewardship, compassion, and meaningful, faithful giving of our lives.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I must begin this morning by saying that I stand here somewhat uncomfortable in my long robes after reading that Gospel. We clergy are also often greeted after services with respect and the title of “Father.” So having both read and heard this passage from Mark, I assure you it is with humbling concern.
It is a very challenging passage as it refers to the widow who stands as a stark contrast to the rich scribes and Pharisees that dump large sums of money into the Temple coffers as compared to the poor widow who puts drops in two copper coins worth about a penny. The implication is that those who can well afford to put in large sums could probably have done even better, while the poor widow has given everything that she has. There are those with millions who giving even a tithe of all they have are not giving really as much as a poor person with only a few dollars giving a tithe is a far greater sacrifice.
This passage seems to be an appropriate one for this season, in which many churches are in the midst of their stewardship campaigns. It almost appears that it is a deliberate story placed at this point in the lectionary. Needless to say it seems an important point that the poor widow in the story gives every appearance of being most generous and extraordinarily trusting that God will provide for her well being in response to her generosity. She is not only a contrast to the scribes and Pharisees, but all to the rich young man who came to Jesus in the story a few weeks ago. He was told to sell everything and give it to the poor and follow Jesus, but recall how he went away very sad for he was very rich. Here again the poor widow who has so little gives everything. We may well commend her generosity as an example to a very rich and affluent country that we are. Even the poor in this country, I am told, are far better off than the poor in other countries. It has recently been pointed out that the real questions for Americans today is not “Who wants to be a millionaire?” like the popular TV Show asks, but rather “Who is Already a Millionaire,” because there are many in this country, (if not a few in this parish!)
This passage, however, has another twist to it. Modern Biblical Scholars are saying we need to pay more attention to what this story is really all about. The point of the story (and my reason for adding the additional verses to it) is that it is not about the widow so much as about the corrupt scribes and Pharisees. I tell you once again, I stand here in my long robes, a little nervous about the real meaning of this story.
Jesus has come to the Temple with his disciples. He observes how the scribes and Pharisees, who are community leaders are behaving. They enjoy their long rich robes. They like being greeted in the marketplaces. Since they were of higher honor, persons of lesser honor were required to greet them. They sought out the best seats at the banquets that they attended and got the best seats in the Temple where they faced those of lesser honor, and had back rests because of their esteemed position. Jesus goes on to challenge and insult them for their long prayers, when they were in fact cheating and devouring the homes of widows.
Widows, (a word in Hebrew which means silent ones) in a man’s world were extraordinarily vulnerable. Without a husband and son, they had no one to speak up for them. A widow in such a position was totally dependent upon the lawyers, scribes and Pharisees, to settle their estates and manage their affairs. The widows were often cheated and eventually lost their homes; hence, they and their homes were devoured. Jesus sat with his disciples watching the rich, which means greedy, dumping their sums of money, much of which had been extorted from the poor, into the Temple coffers. Then along comes one of the widows and contributes all she has. While we have often thought that this was a great noble act on the part of the widow, and it may well have been, Jesus is outraged. She is being victimized. How can a person who dumps in everything live? What has she to live on? She’s been duped by a corrupt system. The Temple was both the political and religious center governed by the educated scribes and Pharisees, who were themselves manipulated by Roman authority. It was so very corrupt that the coins of the widows and the properties stolen from them were buying the long royal robes and supporting the great sumptuous banquets of the scribes and Pharisees.
The Temple structure was so corrupt that from Jesus’ point of view it needed to be torn down stone by stone. Biblical Scholar, John Pilch, refers to this story not as a statement about the great generosity of the widow, but as a great lament on the part of Jesus. He weeps for the widow who has been victimized by a corrupt system. The rich and greedy can well afford to give away all they have, and need to follow a higher power, but the poor who have nothing need not be further victimized. Let every stone of the temple, let everything that symbolizes and holds this corrupted system be torn down and ultimately destroyed. Jesus was not crucified because he told nice stories about, and pointed out the generosity of widows. He was crucified because he hated the system of the corrupted powerful, who play acted (were hypocrites with long prayers) at being godly when underneath the reality of their cunning was downright evil. We have often referred to the story of Jesus going into the Temple and upsetting the tables of the moneychangers as the “Cleansing of the Temple.” Not so. It was far more likely that it was Jesus’ symbolic gesture at destroying the Temple and its corruption. Once again you see Jesus turning things, the world, its way of thinking and being, upside down. The story is not commending the widow; it is lambasting the larger rich, greedy, and corrupt system that is destroying the old lady. She has nothing to live on and no one to stand up for her. She will now die. Jesus will never again according to the synoptic gospels ever step into the Temple again. It had become symbolic of a world system that drained impoverished people dry. The good news is that Jesus dares to challenge the system so that all might live and have life more abundantly.
It’s interesting, fascinating, that Jesus takes his disciples to the Temple to watch, to observe what is going on. Can we suppose that Christ with all the company of heaven are gathered here this morning watching, observing our actions and motives. And, the priests and clergy in Churches around the world are standing before their respective altars in their long robes lifting up in offering the bread and wine, and the gifts we have placed into the offering basin. What in fact is being lifted up as gathered Christian congregations worship in their finery? What is seen there in that behavior and action? As we gather to worship this day and so many Sundays what is the modern American Christian offering to God today?
They may well be offerings out of our abundance, which may be but a pittance of what we really have and possess. They may be profoundly sacrificial. They may be significant gifts for the church’s building fund, and mere modest token gifts to be used toward human need. The gifts we offer may be offerings accumulated through an economic system that has gained its wealth off of the backs of poor people around the world working in sweat shops for the meager wages that educated Americans and labor unions would not themselves tolerate for an instant. Maybe we offer our gifts out of fear that God will somehow punish us if we are negligent in our giving. Maybe we give out of a thanksgiving that we are well, healthy, and able to contribute to the fullness of life in everything we do. Maybe we give because we ourselves feel, sense, and know the abundant love and forgiveness of God that has been bestowed upon us.
In the story of the opulent scribes and the impoverished widow, perhaps we ourselves can also observe that the scribes are really the more impoverished spiritually than the widow who having so little possession can give herself in loyalty, trust, commitment and faith to God’s care. The fact of the matter is that we are all spiritually impoverished to some degree. We live in the most prosperous age in all of history. Yet, the statistics of our time declare that:
· That the Divorce Rate is doubled.
· Teen suicide has tripled.
· Violent crime has quadrupled.
· The prison population has quintupled.
· And babies born to unwed mothers has sextupled (no-pun intended).
· Cohabitation, which is according to some a predictor of divorce, has increased sevenfold. (Homiletics/2000, Text file NOV1200.TXT)
Maybe all that we have to offer is the victimization and spiritual impoverishment that the modern culture and its hedonistic philosophies have bestowed upon us. Like the scribes and Pharisees we may all contribute to victimization, insensitivity towards, and the humiliation of others. On other occasions we may be the victimized trying to give, even beyond our means with little sense of hope. But then this is the human condition in need of a savior. We need one who stands as the standard that challenges the world’s corruption and demands it be demolished stone by stone. We need the savior who calls us and shows us the way to being responsible stewards and citizens in the Realm of God’s Domain and Kingdom of justice, fair play, compassion, intense caring for human need, and with an insatiable love for God.
Sunday, October 29, 2000
Pentecost 20
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 20
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 29, 2000
TEXT: Mark 10:46-52 - Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”
See also: Isaiah 59:1-19 - “We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.”
ISSUE: - A poor blind beggar wants to see again. He is willing to cast off the past in hope of restoration to community, a whole, full, strong, healthy life. He calls out to Jesus Christ in faith, and by his grace the blind man is restored and follows him. As humans we all often stumble in the darkness and keeping the status quo. We’re satisfied with some of the meager things in life, the monetary materialistic things that satisfy. But, the blind man in the story does not want mere hand outs, he wants life. By faith he receives the grace to be with Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The story from Mark which tells of the blind man receiving his sight is a powerful and wonderful story. It tells of a poor blind man whose life has been given to begging for a living. Tired of all that he calls out to Jesus Christ giving him great honor, calling him Son of David. And by his clear intentional faith, grace comes to him and he receives his sight and follows along the way.
In Jesus’ time, the first century, blindness was quite common. The disease was Trachoma, a contagious infection of the mucous lining of the eyelids and cornea. It was spread by flies and poor hygiene. Hand washing would have helped, but water in the land was scarce and not readily available among the poor. Pharisees, in fact, criticized Jesus’ disciples for not washing their hands before eating. But wealthier persons in position of leadership had that luxury. Peasants did not, and thus you had significant number of blind beggars. The disease is curable today.
Blindness in the first century was also thought by many to be a curse, the result of some sinfulness. It meant that a person bore great shame, and could not enter the Temple in Jerusalem. Blind person got their living through begging along the roads.
The story today tells of Bartimaeus, the Son of Timaeus (a name meaning highly prized or honored) who seeks out Jesus for healing. The crowds are on their way to the temple in Jerusalem taking the route through Jericho. This time was a good time for beggars who would stand outside the city gates to beg from the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. As the crowds are passing by, this one Bartimaeus learns that Jesus is in the crowd passing by. He calls out to Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me!” The crowd tell him to “Shut-up.” How dare this shameful, sinful, beggar cry out. He’s an expendable nothing. But he dares to challenge the crowd, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” The blind man is bestowing a title of great honor upon Jesus. He gives to Jesus an honorable messianic title, “Son of David, the greatest King of Israel, the father of Solomon who was wise and considered to be near omniscient and omnipotent ruler.” (J. Pilch) “Honorable Jesus, you can reward me with healing.” This scene is one in which the blind beggar is so focused in faith and loyalty, trust, that Jesus can restore his sight. Jesus accepts the accolade and rewards him. So Jesus calls him to him. The blind Bartimaeus gets up, throws off his coat and runs to Jesus.
Mind you, a blind man does not throw his coat away. He may never find it again. We are given an enhanced appreciation of the great faith of the blind man.
Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Get this point, and get it good. It’s important. The poor shameful blind beggar who sits in the gutters on the side of the road dares to approach Jesus with the title “Son of David”, an extremely royal and highly honorable title: you are as great as they come O Royal One, high potentate. But, Jesus taking the role of a slave says to the beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” What shock to his disciples that wanted to sit at his right hand and left hand when Jesus came into his glory. “What can I do for you?” are the words a slave asks of his master.
The blind Bartimaeus replies to this servant master with another title of great honor, “My teacher (or rabbi), I want to see again.” He wants to be enlightened. He wants to come into the light. He wants to live a meaningful fulfilled life again. And he believes that through his faith in Jesus Christ he can be fully restored with his shame done away. He risks everything. He’s thrown away his coat, perhaps a symbol of his past. He’s given up his way of life. He may have been a beggar, but at least it was a living, and his only living. He gives it all up. “Teacher, let me see again.” Through his faith in Jesus Christ, the grace of healing restoration flows. Having given up his past, he follows Jesus on the way. Incidentally, “The Way” was what Christians were originally called, “People of the Way.”
Note too that the blind man when asked by Jesus, “What can I do for you?” could have replied, “Give me five bucks.” It was not affluence, materialistic gain, which would have kept him there always at the beggars gate that for which the blind man asks. He is ready in faith to move on, to be changed, to be enlightened, to carry on new life. He throws away his old coat in eager hope of healing restoration so that he can see the way of God’s free gift of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation (friendship with God) through Jesus Christ.
This story is such a powerful and wonderful one, of a man whose life is in darkness, whose life is despairing, whose life is shamed, whose life is reduced to the gutter, but who finds great hope and healing in and through Jesus Christ the great high priest, and yet the slave of all who extends the graciousness of God. Who of us have not known such times in our lives when we felt deep in the dark not knowing where to turn, groping in the darkness. Sometimes life can be like groping in the dark. Sometimes it is hard to know which way to turn. The human condition is described in the Isaiah passage today (59:1-19) in a time when people had lost touch with God:
“We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.”
This passage came from a time when people were very litigious, suing one another frivolously, cheating one another, having no respect for human need of the poor. Government was corrupt. It was nation robbed of its dignity and godliness. Sound familiar? We as a people and nation still have our problems and a great deal of indifference and apathy, blinded to our need for vital responsibility to community, and to the common good.
The situation in the Middle East today appears to be one, at least from the American perspective, where the Israeli’s and the Palestinians cannot find the way to peace. The old ways of pride, fear, prejudice, corruption, terrorism keep getting in the way. They can’t seem to throw off the past and cry out for mercy, compassion. There are blinders that keep them from seeing the larger picture. Continued vengeance maintains the status quo. There appears to be no surrender to God, and need for God’s mercy to help and heal. The misery goes on without a commitment to real peace.
One of the things in my ministry that has been troublesome is how spiritually blind many men are. So many families have been destroyed by men who cannot see the abounding grace in their midst. I think of men who have nice homes, good jobs, children, devoted wives in many instances, but who will throw it all away on the whim that they can have a better life somewhere else, when a good life is in their midst. Jobs, and children, and wives, and homes are work. They are all demanding, and life in God, in Christ is servanthood. That’s the clearer picture. We are called to be faithful, as God is faithful and responsive to us. But the values of faithful devoted commitment to our vows becomes hazy, out of focus, and lame excuses for our behaviors lead us away from stability to groping in the darkness.
It is hard for us to see (another way of saying that we are blind) that unless we embrace our faith in God, in Jesus Christ, unless we embrace ministries, a character of servanthood, nothing ever changes very much. Without we become committed to justice, then we face blight, insurrection, rebellion, decaying cities, communities, and nation, not to mention a decaying church without people with a focused faithfulness.
Many of us Christians today have allowed ourselves to be hazy, unclear, out of focus so far as our faithfulness is concerned. The world encroaches on our way to finding insight, hope, and we let it. We are undisciplined. We are casual about our religious commitments. The world tells us not to claim Christ as Lord, and we say, “Okay”, and shut up. The meager hand outs of shallow plastic affluence and materialism suffice, but people are miserable, and nothing changes.
For those of us who wear glasses, we know that without them we get to the point where we are legally blind. We see colors and shapes, but things around us get very fuzzy. Unless the print on the page is very large and very dark, we cannot see to read. We can’t find our way through the pages, until we put our glasses on and then things around us become sharp and clear again. It’s a lot like putting on faith in Jesus Christ. It helps us to see things in perspective again.
The blind man in the story had some inkling that the love, the forgiveness, the hope, the wisdom, the teachings of Jesus offered more than what his world of shame, depravity, alienation, prejudice, and injustice could ever offer. He dared to break free and to honor Christ. He dared to throw off the burden of the past and risk in faith a new way of life that was devoted unequivocally to Jesus Christ. The servant Christ responded to him. He could see again.
SEASON: Pentecost 20
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 29, 2000
TEXT: Mark 10:46-52 - Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”
See also: Isaiah 59:1-19 - “We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.”
ISSUE: - A poor blind beggar wants to see again. He is willing to cast off the past in hope of restoration to community, a whole, full, strong, healthy life. He calls out to Jesus Christ in faith, and by his grace the blind man is restored and follows him. As humans we all often stumble in the darkness and keeping the status quo. We’re satisfied with some of the meager things in life, the monetary materialistic things that satisfy. But, the blind man in the story does not want mere hand outs, he wants life. By faith he receives the grace to be with Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The story from Mark which tells of the blind man receiving his sight is a powerful and wonderful story. It tells of a poor blind man whose life has been given to begging for a living. Tired of all that he calls out to Jesus Christ giving him great honor, calling him Son of David. And by his clear intentional faith, grace comes to him and he receives his sight and follows along the way.
In Jesus’ time, the first century, blindness was quite common. The disease was Trachoma, a contagious infection of the mucous lining of the eyelids and cornea. It was spread by flies and poor hygiene. Hand washing would have helped, but water in the land was scarce and not readily available among the poor. Pharisees, in fact, criticized Jesus’ disciples for not washing their hands before eating. But wealthier persons in position of leadership had that luxury. Peasants did not, and thus you had significant number of blind beggars. The disease is curable today.
Blindness in the first century was also thought by many to be a curse, the result of some sinfulness. It meant that a person bore great shame, and could not enter the Temple in Jerusalem. Blind person got their living through begging along the roads.
The story today tells of Bartimaeus, the Son of Timaeus (a name meaning highly prized or honored) who seeks out Jesus for healing. The crowds are on their way to the temple in Jerusalem taking the route through Jericho. This time was a good time for beggars who would stand outside the city gates to beg from the pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. As the crowds are passing by, this one Bartimaeus learns that Jesus is in the crowd passing by. He calls out to Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me!” The crowd tell him to “Shut-up.” How dare this shameful, sinful, beggar cry out. He’s an expendable nothing. But he dares to challenge the crowd, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” The blind man is bestowing a title of great honor upon Jesus. He gives to Jesus an honorable messianic title, “Son of David, the greatest King of Israel, the father of Solomon who was wise and considered to be near omniscient and omnipotent ruler.” (J. Pilch) “Honorable Jesus, you can reward me with healing.” This scene is one in which the blind beggar is so focused in faith and loyalty, trust, that Jesus can restore his sight. Jesus accepts the accolade and rewards him. So Jesus calls him to him. The blind Bartimaeus gets up, throws off his coat and runs to Jesus.
Mind you, a blind man does not throw his coat away. He may never find it again. We are given an enhanced appreciation of the great faith of the blind man.
Jesus asks Bartimaeus, “What do you want me to do for you?” Get this point, and get it good. It’s important. The poor shameful blind beggar who sits in the gutters on the side of the road dares to approach Jesus with the title “Son of David”, an extremely royal and highly honorable title: you are as great as they come O Royal One, high potentate. But, Jesus taking the role of a slave says to the beggar, “What do you want me to do for you?” What shock to his disciples that wanted to sit at his right hand and left hand when Jesus came into his glory. “What can I do for you?” are the words a slave asks of his master.
The blind Bartimaeus replies to this servant master with another title of great honor, “My teacher (or rabbi), I want to see again.” He wants to be enlightened. He wants to come into the light. He wants to live a meaningful fulfilled life again. And he believes that through his faith in Jesus Christ he can be fully restored with his shame done away. He risks everything. He’s thrown away his coat, perhaps a symbol of his past. He’s given up his way of life. He may have been a beggar, but at least it was a living, and his only living. He gives it all up. “Teacher, let me see again.” Through his faith in Jesus Christ, the grace of healing restoration flows. Having given up his past, he follows Jesus on the way. Incidentally, “The Way” was what Christians were originally called, “People of the Way.”
Note too that the blind man when asked by Jesus, “What can I do for you?” could have replied, “Give me five bucks.” It was not affluence, materialistic gain, which would have kept him there always at the beggars gate that for which the blind man asks. He is ready in faith to move on, to be changed, to be enlightened, to carry on new life. He throws away his old coat in eager hope of healing restoration so that he can see the way of God’s free gift of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation (friendship with God) through Jesus Christ.
This story is such a powerful and wonderful one, of a man whose life is in darkness, whose life is despairing, whose life is shamed, whose life is reduced to the gutter, but who finds great hope and healing in and through Jesus Christ the great high priest, and yet the slave of all who extends the graciousness of God. Who of us have not known such times in our lives when we felt deep in the dark not knowing where to turn, groping in the darkness. Sometimes life can be like groping in the dark. Sometimes it is hard to know which way to turn. The human condition is described in the Isaiah passage today (59:1-19) in a time when people had lost touch with God:
“We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.”
This passage came from a time when people were very litigious, suing one another frivolously, cheating one another, having no respect for human need of the poor. Government was corrupt. It was nation robbed of its dignity and godliness. Sound familiar? We as a people and nation still have our problems and a great deal of indifference and apathy, blinded to our need for vital responsibility to community, and to the common good.
The situation in the Middle East today appears to be one, at least from the American perspective, where the Israeli’s and the Palestinians cannot find the way to peace. The old ways of pride, fear, prejudice, corruption, terrorism keep getting in the way. They can’t seem to throw off the past and cry out for mercy, compassion. There are blinders that keep them from seeing the larger picture. Continued vengeance maintains the status quo. There appears to be no surrender to God, and need for God’s mercy to help and heal. The misery goes on without a commitment to real peace.
One of the things in my ministry that has been troublesome is how spiritually blind many men are. So many families have been destroyed by men who cannot see the abounding grace in their midst. I think of men who have nice homes, good jobs, children, devoted wives in many instances, but who will throw it all away on the whim that they can have a better life somewhere else, when a good life is in their midst. Jobs, and children, and wives, and homes are work. They are all demanding, and life in God, in Christ is servanthood. That’s the clearer picture. We are called to be faithful, as God is faithful and responsive to us. But the values of faithful devoted commitment to our vows becomes hazy, out of focus, and lame excuses for our behaviors lead us away from stability to groping in the darkness.
It is hard for us to see (another way of saying that we are blind) that unless we embrace our faith in God, in Jesus Christ, unless we embrace ministries, a character of servanthood, nothing ever changes very much. Without we become committed to justice, then we face blight, insurrection, rebellion, decaying cities, communities, and nation, not to mention a decaying church without people with a focused faithfulness.
Many of us Christians today have allowed ourselves to be hazy, unclear, out of focus so far as our faithfulness is concerned. The world encroaches on our way to finding insight, hope, and we let it. We are undisciplined. We are casual about our religious commitments. The world tells us not to claim Christ as Lord, and we say, “Okay”, and shut up. The meager hand outs of shallow plastic affluence and materialism suffice, but people are miserable, and nothing changes.
For those of us who wear glasses, we know that without them we get to the point where we are legally blind. We see colors and shapes, but things around us get very fuzzy. Unless the print on the page is very large and very dark, we cannot see to read. We can’t find our way through the pages, until we put our glasses on and then things around us become sharp and clear again. It’s a lot like putting on faith in Jesus Christ. It helps us to see things in perspective again.
The blind man in the story had some inkling that the love, the forgiveness, the hope, the wisdom, the teachings of Jesus offered more than what his world of shame, depravity, alienation, prejudice, and injustice could ever offer. He dared to break free and to honor Christ. He dared to throw off the burden of the past and risk in faith a new way of life that was devoted unequivocally to Jesus Christ. The servant Christ responded to him. He could see again.
Sunday, October 15, 2000
PENTECOST 18
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: PENTECOST 18
PROPER: 23B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 15,2000
TEXT: Mark 10:17-31 - As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” . . . . . . . . .Jesus looking at him loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.
ISSUE: - This passage from Mark is definitely a radical one, as Jesus calls for the rich young ruler to sell everything, and abandon his present life for life in the Kingdom of God. Having all that the young man has till leaves him with a sense of some emptiness. The passage appropriate in its time, as it is today must not be minimized. It calls all of us in a secular world enchanted with wealth and possessions to put God and service with Christ first and foremost. Without that kind of commitment and relationship our humanity is empty, unreal, meaningless, and not authentically human.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This passage from Mark is a really challenging one. “Go, sell it all, give to the poor, and follow me!” The preacher is tempted to try to find ways to make this radical scriptural passage more palatable. Well, Jesus maybe didn’t quite mean that you sell all and follow him. As we might want to minimize the passage, the fact remains that all of the synoptic Gospels tell this story: Matthew, Luke, and Mark. In fact, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, tells how in fact early Christians did sell lands their lands and gave it to the apostles to be used by all. An old professor of mine in New Testament Studies at the University of the South repeatedly reminded his students, “It’s our Bible, and we’re stuck with it!” It’s our faith, our Lord and we can respond or not.
A rich young man, or ruler, runs up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Again in this culture, questioning was usually confrontational, or aggressive. He refers to Jesus as Good Teacher, which may well have been sarcastic. Calling someone good, “buttering them up”, may have implied that Jesus was assuming too much honorable status. ‘So how do you smart guy presume to tell us how to get eternal life?’ Jesus again takes the young rich ruler on: “What do you call me Good? No one is good but god alone.” Jesus dismisses any idea that he has any honor. Only God has honor and status. He confront the young man on his own level, you know what gives eternal life, the commandments of God: don’t murder, commit adultery, don’t steal, lie, or defraud you neighbor; honor mother and father.” You know the rules Jesus implies that gives us the best of life. So the rich young ruler proudly replies, “been there; done all that since I was a child.”
“Well then,” says Jesus looking at him lovingly - he is a fellow Israelite committed to the law - “Maybe you lack still one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Or a place in the domain of God). The implication is that then your life will be an authentic, meaningful, purposeful, real human life. But the young rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Jesus humorously responds, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for the rich (greedy) to enter into the kingdom, the domain, or the realm of God!”
What is also interesting here, is that the disciples themselves are amazed. They’re confused. Who then can be saved or enter into the realm of God, if the rich can’t? The belief of the time was that the poor, the dishonorable, the blind, lame, deaf and mute, the tax collectors and prostitutes were the last to be worthy of God’s Kingdom. They were the cursed. The wealthy were seen as the blessed and honorable. They had clients that looked to them for help and favors, and thus they were the ones with status and honor, and thereby worthy of being in the domain of God. They were the ones who had, like the rich young man, the ability to keep all the laws from the time he was a child. But here again, Jesus is proclaiming a great reversal: “the first shall be last, and the last will be first.”
The rich young man wants to hold on to the stuff that gives him honor and status. You might say that he has become possessed by his own possessions and comfortable way of life. However, at the same time it is likely that by the very fact that he comes to Jesus at all, his life is unsatisfactory. He has so much, and is yet still uncertain as to what is meaningful in life, what gives a purposeful, useful, authentic, real life of value. He wants to keep the rules, the religious laws and regulations, and visit the shrines the give him the semblance of respectability. But Jesus looks lovingly at the young man, and says if you want real authentic life you have to give your stuff away and enter into a way of sharing, caring, serving, compassionate way of generosity. You have to change your priorities as to what is really important. Even the disciples are confused who can be saved?
Jesus calls the man and his followers to renewed trust, faith, loyalty, and commitment. By the grace of God all things are possible, new things can happen, and lives can be changed. Jesus Christ makes the promise: go, sell, give to the poor, follow me, and you will still have a life with more than enough in the family of God with houses, brothers, sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions, meaningful, eternal, purposeful, authentic, real life. But the young rich ruler unable to grasp it, unable to get it, goes away grieving, lamenting, his inability to find release from his possessions to claim the real prize of the Kingdom, Domain, or Realm of God.
Today we Americans are living in the most affluent age of all time. One of our hit television shows is “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” “The Survivors” TV show has its contestants try to vote one another off the island in hopes of becoming a millionaire. The prospect of such wealth keeps people enchanted and vicariously glued to their TV sets. Who doesn’t want to win the Lottery? We also have an instant lottery for those of us what need instant gratification. We send our athletes off to bring home “the gold.” Americans are maybe profoundly obsessed, don’t you think, with commitment to solid portfolios for the purpose of security in our old age. We want to win as many chips as we can. Remember the man with the most toys wins. These comments are not meant to say that we are all bad. We aren’t. But often goodness and being religious, gives us status and respectability, like the young man in the passage. We have filled lives with so much to do and so much to buy and so much to take care of, and yet our lives often feel unfulfilled; filled lives by yet unfulfilled.
In the midst of our national affluence, in this time of building great monuments to our rich athletes at Camden Yards and the Ravens Stadium, we have schools for our children that are less than effective, old and deteriorating, and a diminishing number of people willing to work and teach in those schools. Our money and resources, our political interests are going elsewhere. We have a tragic yearning among so many of our nation’s young people for drugs to give them a “high” that nothing else in their lives can do. We are a people that have a hard time keeping our human relationships together, and sorting out our priorities and values as to what is really important beyond a big house with lots of ground around it. It may getting to the point that our good fortune, our affluence, our wealth is bordering on, if it is not already, being seen as the greediest nation of self-centered, lackadaisical, apathetic people in human history.
A self-confident, sophisticated, educated, wealthy young religious whipper snapper (a first century yuppie) comes to Jesus wanting to know what’s the deal. How do I get more? How do I get eternal life. Tell me about that old man Jesus, if you think you’re so smart. I do all the right respectable things. And Jesus, the old man, dares to say, “Sonny, you’ve got cash in your chips. You’ve got to become generous; you have to cash in your life that you think has given you such security. Give it to the poor and follow me.” Unless you are willing to die to a stifling greedy life, you can’t know what it means to be a real, authentic human being. You can’t know what it means to have a life of real purpose. Unless you die to yourself and popular feel-good psychology and popular pious respectable religion, you can’t be a follower of mine on the way to the Kingdom of God’s Domain in a world where justice prevails. Jesus sets off a depth charge in this passage that shakes the very foundations of popular thought and religious piety. He requires wholeheartedness, half measures won’t do. He requires death and rebirth. He dares to challenge his followers to put their money and their respectability where their mouth is. Cash it all in. Scary isn’t it. He even shook his own disciples. How is that possible? Maybe we need to try it. We might like it. We might even find lives that seem more human, more worthwhile, more loving, and caring, more forgiving, more Christ-like, more like the real Kingdom of God with eternal quality and substance. All things are possible with God. Instead of praying to win the lottery tonight, maybe we might pray to be changed, for a new life with Christ that leads to God.
SEASON: PENTECOST 18
PROPER: 23B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: October 15,2000
TEXT: Mark 10:17-31 - As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” . . . . . . . . .Jesus looking at him loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.
ISSUE: - This passage from Mark is definitely a radical one, as Jesus calls for the rich young ruler to sell everything, and abandon his present life for life in the Kingdom of God. Having all that the young man has till leaves him with a sense of some emptiness. The passage appropriate in its time, as it is today must not be minimized. It calls all of us in a secular world enchanted with wealth and possessions to put God and service with Christ first and foremost. Without that kind of commitment and relationship our humanity is empty, unreal, meaningless, and not authentically human.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This passage from Mark is a really challenging one. “Go, sell it all, give to the poor, and follow me!” The preacher is tempted to try to find ways to make this radical scriptural passage more palatable. Well, Jesus maybe didn’t quite mean that you sell all and follow him. As we might want to minimize the passage, the fact remains that all of the synoptic Gospels tell this story: Matthew, Luke, and Mark. In fact, the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke, tells how in fact early Christians did sell lands their lands and gave it to the apostles to be used by all. An old professor of mine in New Testament Studies at the University of the South repeatedly reminded his students, “It’s our Bible, and we’re stuck with it!” It’s our faith, our Lord and we can respond or not.
A rich young man, or ruler, runs up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Again in this culture, questioning was usually confrontational, or aggressive. He refers to Jesus as Good Teacher, which may well have been sarcastic. Calling someone good, “buttering them up”, may have implied that Jesus was assuming too much honorable status. ‘So how do you smart guy presume to tell us how to get eternal life?’ Jesus again takes the young rich ruler on: “What do you call me Good? No one is good but god alone.” Jesus dismisses any idea that he has any honor. Only God has honor and status. He confront the young man on his own level, you know what gives eternal life, the commandments of God: don’t murder, commit adultery, don’t steal, lie, or defraud you neighbor; honor mother and father.” You know the rules Jesus implies that gives us the best of life. So the rich young ruler proudly replies, “been there; done all that since I was a child.”
“Well then,” says Jesus looking at him lovingly - he is a fellow Israelite committed to the law - “Maybe you lack still one thing: go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” (Or a place in the domain of God). The implication is that then your life will be an authentic, meaningful, purposeful, real human life. But the young rich man went away grieving, for he had many possessions. And Jesus humorously responds, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of needle than for the rich (greedy) to enter into the kingdom, the domain, or the realm of God!”
What is also interesting here, is that the disciples themselves are amazed. They’re confused. Who then can be saved or enter into the realm of God, if the rich can’t? The belief of the time was that the poor, the dishonorable, the blind, lame, deaf and mute, the tax collectors and prostitutes were the last to be worthy of God’s Kingdom. They were the cursed. The wealthy were seen as the blessed and honorable. They had clients that looked to them for help and favors, and thus they were the ones with status and honor, and thereby worthy of being in the domain of God. They were the ones who had, like the rich young man, the ability to keep all the laws from the time he was a child. But here again, Jesus is proclaiming a great reversal: “the first shall be last, and the last will be first.”
The rich young man wants to hold on to the stuff that gives him honor and status. You might say that he has become possessed by his own possessions and comfortable way of life. However, at the same time it is likely that by the very fact that he comes to Jesus at all, his life is unsatisfactory. He has so much, and is yet still uncertain as to what is meaningful in life, what gives a purposeful, useful, authentic, real life of value. He wants to keep the rules, the religious laws and regulations, and visit the shrines the give him the semblance of respectability. But Jesus looks lovingly at the young man, and says if you want real authentic life you have to give your stuff away and enter into a way of sharing, caring, serving, compassionate way of generosity. You have to change your priorities as to what is really important. Even the disciples are confused who can be saved?
Jesus calls the man and his followers to renewed trust, faith, loyalty, and commitment. By the grace of God all things are possible, new things can happen, and lives can be changed. Jesus Christ makes the promise: go, sell, give to the poor, follow me, and you will still have a life with more than enough in the family of God with houses, brothers, sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions, meaningful, eternal, purposeful, authentic, real life. But the young rich ruler unable to grasp it, unable to get it, goes away grieving, lamenting, his inability to find release from his possessions to claim the real prize of the Kingdom, Domain, or Realm of God.
Today we Americans are living in the most affluent age of all time. One of our hit television shows is “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” “The Survivors” TV show has its contestants try to vote one another off the island in hopes of becoming a millionaire. The prospect of such wealth keeps people enchanted and vicariously glued to their TV sets. Who doesn’t want to win the Lottery? We also have an instant lottery for those of us what need instant gratification. We send our athletes off to bring home “the gold.” Americans are maybe profoundly obsessed, don’t you think, with commitment to solid portfolios for the purpose of security in our old age. We want to win as many chips as we can. Remember the man with the most toys wins. These comments are not meant to say that we are all bad. We aren’t. But often goodness and being religious, gives us status and respectability, like the young man in the passage. We have filled lives with so much to do and so much to buy and so much to take care of, and yet our lives often feel unfulfilled; filled lives by yet unfulfilled.
In the midst of our national affluence, in this time of building great monuments to our rich athletes at Camden Yards and the Ravens Stadium, we have schools for our children that are less than effective, old and deteriorating, and a diminishing number of people willing to work and teach in those schools. Our money and resources, our political interests are going elsewhere. We have a tragic yearning among so many of our nation’s young people for drugs to give them a “high” that nothing else in their lives can do. We are a people that have a hard time keeping our human relationships together, and sorting out our priorities and values as to what is really important beyond a big house with lots of ground around it. It may getting to the point that our good fortune, our affluence, our wealth is bordering on, if it is not already, being seen as the greediest nation of self-centered, lackadaisical, apathetic people in human history.
A self-confident, sophisticated, educated, wealthy young religious whipper snapper (a first century yuppie) comes to Jesus wanting to know what’s the deal. How do I get more? How do I get eternal life. Tell me about that old man Jesus, if you think you’re so smart. I do all the right respectable things. And Jesus, the old man, dares to say, “Sonny, you’ve got cash in your chips. You’ve got to become generous; you have to cash in your life that you think has given you such security. Give it to the poor and follow me.” Unless you are willing to die to a stifling greedy life, you can’t know what it means to be a real, authentic human being. You can’t know what it means to have a life of real purpose. Unless you die to yourself and popular feel-good psychology and popular pious respectable religion, you can’t be a follower of mine on the way to the Kingdom of God’s Domain in a world where justice prevails. Jesus sets off a depth charge in this passage that shakes the very foundations of popular thought and religious piety. He requires wholeheartedness, half measures won’t do. He requires death and rebirth. He dares to challenge his followers to put their money and their respectability where their mouth is. Cash it all in. Scary isn’t it. He even shook his own disciples. How is that possible? Maybe we need to try it. We might like it. We might even find lives that seem more human, more worthwhile, more loving, and caring, more forgiving, more Christ-like, more like the real Kingdom of God with eternal quality and substance. All things are possible with God. Instead of praying to win the lottery tonight, maybe we might pray to be changed, for a new life with Christ that leads to God.
Sunday, September 24, 2000
Pentecost 15
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: Pentecost 15
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 24,2000
TEXT: Mark 9:30-37 - “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he (Jesus) took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
ISSUE: The disciples are set in their ways in terms of the cultural norms. They seek honorable status as to who is the greatest. They are resistant to new enlightenment. Jesus astounds them with suggesting they welcome children who were at the bottom of the honor scale. Jesus powerfully upsets the norms of his time. We, like the disciples, become set in our ways resisting the challenge and teaching of Jesus to be unique in the world. We are called to a mission of servanthood as opposed of the position of grandeur and materialistic respectability. The world needs the new spirituality of caring love, and grace that was inherent in Jesus’ teaching.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jesus takes his disciples away from the crowds in this passage from Mark today to do some teaching. He is their leader, their rabbi, and he fulfills that role through his teaching of the twelve disciples. He doesn’t want anyone to know where they have gone just so that he can have time alone with them to teach some very important concepts of his way of life, and what they may expect in terms of their own discipleship. It is a fascinating passage, and one that is so relevant to the way things are in our own understanding of the mission and teachings of Jesus.
Jesus begins to tell his disciples that he, The son of Man, is going to be betrayed and killed. His messianic mission will indeed be a unique one. His ways and teachings are really drastic changes. He opposes the Pharisees and their absorption in pious rules and regulations. He antagonizes their self-righteousness, and the concepts of what is honorable. Jesus goes around eating with the poor and tax collectors. He touches lepers and embraces the blend and the deaf. He doesn’t merely provide hand-outs for the poor, he embraces them. He has an intimate relationship with them. He sees dignity and worth in all people, even the cursed and the outcast. Jesus had a remarkable appreciation of women for a man of his time. Because of his concept of a loving and forgiving God that reaches out to all people, even the disenfranchised who cannot keep all the laws, Jesus is seen as suspect, deviant, a rebellious challenge to the status-quo. What’s more, Jesus’ affection for the poor and his successful riposte or challenge of the leadership was causing him to gain honor and status which was threatening to the powers of the time.
Jesus expected he would be killed. But beyond that expectation was the issue of the dawning of a new age, a new beginning. He would also be resurrected. The glorious ways of God would not ultimately be defeated. God’s kingdom would prevail. Thus, Jesus taught men and women to be faithful. He called for a complete trust, loyalty, confidence in God to sustain, redeem, and renew his creation and all that was in it. More than being good and doing good things. Jesus called his people to be faithful . . . to trust . . . to be loyal . . . to be confident . . . in the power and love of God.
From all we know bout Jesus and his parables and healings and affections for people, we can rest assured that these were the kinds of things that he was trying to instill into the hearts and minds of his disciples. Jesus is teaching some drastically new compelling stuff.
Having done his best Jesus asks the disciples what their argument was about as they were traveling with him along the road. They are ashamed to answer because what they were arguing about was what their honor status would be as the disciples of Jesus who is leading them into the Kingdom of God. They were arguing about who would be the greatest. They just can’t get it! They are so dense and so immature, so trapped in their culture. They resist any enlightenment in not asking him any questions. They choose to be totally deaf when it comes to any understanding of the meaning of death and resurrection. They are entrenched in their worldly cultural norms of status and honor. Kingdom of God and messiahship still means honor, status, and militant grandeur and conquest that was familiar to the world.
Jesus must really have wanted to shake them out of shear frustration. He sits them down and shocks them: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all!” This is an unheard of concept for the culture of the time. He picks up a little child and says: “Whoever welcomes on such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” The disciples must become like children. To embrace child-likeness is to embrace the way and teaching of Jesus. To appreciate this concept you have to understand how children were seen in Jesus’ time. It was very different from our time. For Jesus to suggest that his disciples welcome a child-likeness was shocking and insulting.
In Jesus’ time and in Middle Easter Mediterranean culture, children were not pampered. To be a child was to be in a stage of terror. Children were very vulnerable. The infant mortality rate was about 30%. Sixty percent of all children were dead by the time they were teenagers. They were the victims of poor hygiene and disease. Children had no honor status, and were given the status of slaves or servants with no rights but required to work. In times of famine, if there was any food, children were fed last. Children were thought to be inherently evil and were in need of strong correction. Thus, in the Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, especially in the Book of Proverbs there are repeated passages about how children were to be disciplined whipped, and beaten. It was believed that you had to beat or whip children into shape. It was a sign that you loved them. Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son was sharp contrast to this notion. The forging father in the story is seen by the people of that time as weak and a threat to the community.
Parents strongly disciplined children out of love for them because they were their social security. They would take care of their parents in their old age. They also provided the family continuity, carrying on their parents’ immortality and the family business. But the man ;point here is that children were not honored. They were least and last, basically evil. It was difficult for the disciples to grasp that Jesus wants them to embrace and welcome the last and the least. That children were like him, and what his ministry was about was startling. He used this image of welcoming children to penetrate their dim-wittedness and their inability to break free from the cultural norms of the time. The disciples wanted honor and prestige, like the Pharisees who had servants and slaves, but Jesus is telling them to become the slaves to wash feet. The counter-cultural teaching of Jesus was about servanthood, as he served the poor, the lost, the last, the least, the little, and the lonely. That concept was hard for them to grasp. It is hard for us too.
Even for us today who have been brought up in our so called Christian Culture, it is hard for us to appreciate the counter-cultural teachings of Jesus. During the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, Christians in Germany sat around Christmas trees singing carols while may of the people of God were being abused and massacred. Similar racial and religious persecution continues even today in various parts of the world. For centuries in our own country Native Americans and African Americans were segregated and treated as less than human by the white power structure. Today, immigrants, the mentally retarded, people with AIDS, the poor among us are often treated as inferior and cursed. We comfort ourselves with sending rags for the raggedy, and food, and making contributions, but the issue of deeper involvement is always at issue. Do we welcome the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised and get to know them and have a relationship of love with them.
There is also the issue of where we stand politically and how we vote. Do we support politically with tax dollars a ministry to the poor and the needy, the sick and the disenfranchised?
The passage today is indeed a fascinating one. The disciples have Christ in their very midst and yet are so entrenched in their old ways of thinking that they neither hear him nor allow themselves to be open to any enlightenment whatsoever. We may remain committed to our achievements, appearances, and ambitions. We like being self-righteous and it is comforting to our image to have someone else to look down upon. We like thinking we are the comfortable righteous. But, again the passage for today is again challenging our status-quo. What might Christ say to us, to this parish? It is only when you welcome the people with AIDS, the mentally retarded, the broken, and the lost and the least of this society, and you parish has clear vision of where you are going, you cannot truly be welcoming or embracing the way of Christ. To welcome is to extend hospitality, to have a relationship with someone. The people of Jesus’ time did not welcome children or extend hospitality to them. They were the servants. They were not likely to return honor, to proclaim you’re generous hospitality. They didn’t pay you back. To welcome a child was to enter another world. In affluent America today, having a relationship, and extending hospitality to the poor and disenfranchised, to the least, last, and lost is not going to give much of a pay back. In spite of that, to be generously sensitive to human need is the way of Jesus Christ.
While children were the least in Jesus’ time, they were also the most dependent. Their every need had to be supplied by the family. They could not make it on their own. This aspect of childhood has not changed. Even today, children are totally dependent. What’s more we are all the children of God, and every bit as dimwitted, evil, resistant, unenlightened, rebellious, and immature as children, and as Jesus’ disciples themselves. Yet Christ still loved them, forgave them, called them to trust and believe in God’s redeeming love and power. He died for them and us, and for all. Placing our trust and confidence, our faith, and embracing his way, we live in hope of being raised up as a people as a nation into the Kingdom of God.
SEASON: Pentecost 15
PROPER: B
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: September 24,2000
TEXT: Mark 9:30-37 - “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he (Jesus) took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
ISSUE: The disciples are set in their ways in terms of the cultural norms. They seek honorable status as to who is the greatest. They are resistant to new enlightenment. Jesus astounds them with suggesting they welcome children who were at the bottom of the honor scale. Jesus powerfully upsets the norms of his time. We, like the disciples, become set in our ways resisting the challenge and teaching of Jesus to be unique in the world. We are called to a mission of servanthood as opposed of the position of grandeur and materialistic respectability. The world needs the new spirituality of caring love, and grace that was inherent in Jesus’ teaching.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jesus takes his disciples away from the crowds in this passage from Mark today to do some teaching. He is their leader, their rabbi, and he fulfills that role through his teaching of the twelve disciples. He doesn’t want anyone to know where they have gone just so that he can have time alone with them to teach some very important concepts of his way of life, and what they may expect in terms of their own discipleship. It is a fascinating passage, and one that is so relevant to the way things are in our own understanding of the mission and teachings of Jesus.
Jesus begins to tell his disciples that he, The son of Man, is going to be betrayed and killed. His messianic mission will indeed be a unique one. His ways and teachings are really drastic changes. He opposes the Pharisees and their absorption in pious rules and regulations. He antagonizes their self-righteousness, and the concepts of what is honorable. Jesus goes around eating with the poor and tax collectors. He touches lepers and embraces the blend and the deaf. He doesn’t merely provide hand-outs for the poor, he embraces them. He has an intimate relationship with them. He sees dignity and worth in all people, even the cursed and the outcast. Jesus had a remarkable appreciation of women for a man of his time. Because of his concept of a loving and forgiving God that reaches out to all people, even the disenfranchised who cannot keep all the laws, Jesus is seen as suspect, deviant, a rebellious challenge to the status-quo. What’s more, Jesus’ affection for the poor and his successful riposte or challenge of the leadership was causing him to gain honor and status which was threatening to the powers of the time.
Jesus expected he would be killed. But beyond that expectation was the issue of the dawning of a new age, a new beginning. He would also be resurrected. The glorious ways of God would not ultimately be defeated. God’s kingdom would prevail. Thus, Jesus taught men and women to be faithful. He called for a complete trust, loyalty, confidence in God to sustain, redeem, and renew his creation and all that was in it. More than being good and doing good things. Jesus called his people to be faithful . . . to trust . . . to be loyal . . . to be confident . . . in the power and love of God.
From all we know bout Jesus and his parables and healings and affections for people, we can rest assured that these were the kinds of things that he was trying to instill into the hearts and minds of his disciples. Jesus is teaching some drastically new compelling stuff.
Having done his best Jesus asks the disciples what their argument was about as they were traveling with him along the road. They are ashamed to answer because what they were arguing about was what their honor status would be as the disciples of Jesus who is leading them into the Kingdom of God. They were arguing about who would be the greatest. They just can’t get it! They are so dense and so immature, so trapped in their culture. They resist any enlightenment in not asking him any questions. They choose to be totally deaf when it comes to any understanding of the meaning of death and resurrection. They are entrenched in their worldly cultural norms of status and honor. Kingdom of God and messiahship still means honor, status, and militant grandeur and conquest that was familiar to the world.
Jesus must really have wanted to shake them out of shear frustration. He sits them down and shocks them: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all!” This is an unheard of concept for the culture of the time. He picks up a little child and says: “Whoever welcomes on such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” The disciples must become like children. To embrace child-likeness is to embrace the way and teaching of Jesus. To appreciate this concept you have to understand how children were seen in Jesus’ time. It was very different from our time. For Jesus to suggest that his disciples welcome a child-likeness was shocking and insulting.
In Jesus’ time and in Middle Easter Mediterranean culture, children were not pampered. To be a child was to be in a stage of terror. Children were very vulnerable. The infant mortality rate was about 30%. Sixty percent of all children were dead by the time they were teenagers. They were the victims of poor hygiene and disease. Children had no honor status, and were given the status of slaves or servants with no rights but required to work. In times of famine, if there was any food, children were fed last. Children were thought to be inherently evil and were in need of strong correction. Thus, in the Old Testament, Hebrew Scriptures, especially in the Book of Proverbs there are repeated passages about how children were to be disciplined whipped, and beaten. It was believed that you had to beat or whip children into shape. It was a sign that you loved them. Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son was sharp contrast to this notion. The forging father in the story is seen by the people of that time as weak and a threat to the community.
Parents strongly disciplined children out of love for them because they were their social security. They would take care of their parents in their old age. They also provided the family continuity, carrying on their parents’ immortality and the family business. But the man ;point here is that children were not honored. They were least and last, basically evil. It was difficult for the disciples to grasp that Jesus wants them to embrace and welcome the last and the least. That children were like him, and what his ministry was about was startling. He used this image of welcoming children to penetrate their dim-wittedness and their inability to break free from the cultural norms of the time. The disciples wanted honor and prestige, like the Pharisees who had servants and slaves, but Jesus is telling them to become the slaves to wash feet. The counter-cultural teaching of Jesus was about servanthood, as he served the poor, the lost, the last, the least, the little, and the lonely. That concept was hard for them to grasp. It is hard for us too.
Even for us today who have been brought up in our so called Christian Culture, it is hard for us to appreciate the counter-cultural teachings of Jesus. During the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, Christians in Germany sat around Christmas trees singing carols while may of the people of God were being abused and massacred. Similar racial and religious persecution continues even today in various parts of the world. For centuries in our own country Native Americans and African Americans were segregated and treated as less than human by the white power structure. Today, immigrants, the mentally retarded, people with AIDS, the poor among us are often treated as inferior and cursed. We comfort ourselves with sending rags for the raggedy, and food, and making contributions, but the issue of deeper involvement is always at issue. Do we welcome the poor, the sick, the disenfranchised and get to know them and have a relationship of love with them.
There is also the issue of where we stand politically and how we vote. Do we support politically with tax dollars a ministry to the poor and the needy, the sick and the disenfranchised?
The passage today is indeed a fascinating one. The disciples have Christ in their very midst and yet are so entrenched in their old ways of thinking that they neither hear him nor allow themselves to be open to any enlightenment whatsoever. We may remain committed to our achievements, appearances, and ambitions. We like being self-righteous and it is comforting to our image to have someone else to look down upon. We like thinking we are the comfortable righteous. But, again the passage for today is again challenging our status-quo. What might Christ say to us, to this parish? It is only when you welcome the people with AIDS, the mentally retarded, the broken, and the lost and the least of this society, and you parish has clear vision of where you are going, you cannot truly be welcoming or embracing the way of Christ. To welcome is to extend hospitality, to have a relationship with someone. The people of Jesus’ time did not welcome children or extend hospitality to them. They were the servants. They were not likely to return honor, to proclaim you’re generous hospitality. They didn’t pay you back. To welcome a child was to enter another world. In affluent America today, having a relationship, and extending hospitality to the poor and disenfranchised, to the least, last, and lost is not going to give much of a pay back. In spite of that, to be generously sensitive to human need is the way of Jesus Christ.
While children were the least in Jesus’ time, they were also the most dependent. Their every need had to be supplied by the family. They could not make it on their own. This aspect of childhood has not changed. Even today, children are totally dependent. What’s more we are all the children of God, and every bit as dimwitted, evil, resistant, unenlightened, rebellious, and immature as children, and as Jesus’ disciples themselves. Yet Christ still loved them, forgave them, called them to trust and believe in God’s redeeming love and power. He died for them and us, and for all. Placing our trust and confidence, our faith, and embracing his way, we live in hope of being raised up as a people as a nation into the Kingdom of God.
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