Let it be with me according to your Word Advent 4C

 

Let it be with me according to your Word.

Advent. A time of waiting. A time to prepare. We have identified at least two prayers this Advent to give some sort of shape to our waiting and our preparations: Come, Lord Jesus. And then this from Maggie Ross: Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy. This Fourth Sunday in Advent suggests to us another prayer from that moment in time that makes Advent possible. This, of course, is the Annunciation-when the Angel Gabriel appears, or perhaps better, is suddenly perceived to be with a young woman named Mary. 

My new favorite portrait of this moment is a sixteenth century painting by Lorenzo Lotto that shows God in the clouds sending Gabriel into Mary’s kitchen, with a clearly alarmed cat dashing away from the angel, and Mary, with her back to Gabe, who is on one knee with a lily seeming to make a proposal, as Mary seems to appeal to the viewer, her hands palms-up facing us, perhaps inviting us into the experience of the very surprising holiness that has taken hold of the entire scene! So that the angel is not only proposing to Mary, but also to the viewer, you, me, all of us who dare to hope, pray, prepare, and wait for the arrival of Christ in our lives. [i] 

I suspect Lorenzo Lotto’s scene is closer to what it must have been like than the traditional placid, quiet, orderly depictions with which we are all too familiar. This is the moment. This is the starting point. For without Mary’s response, we would not be here at all. For indeed, she was asked, not commanded, to participate in the most extraordinary way to exceed all human expectations. After being invited to bear a child of God, God incarnate, she becomes, as our Orthodox siblings call her, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, and calmly replies, “Let it be with me according to your word.” [ii] 

Maggie Ross, reflecting on the Annunciation, writes that she suddenly realizes “…that the bread made God and the God made bread with which we live so intimately in the Eucharist was possible only because of her response, her acceptance; that the Sacrament is the earthly and tangible culmination of her saying, “yes.” Let be with me according to your Word. [iii] 

To sit with this story, we need not only let go of our own very real human expectations, but also to let go of any and all concepts we have of God and try to begin to understand God’s concept of us – who, and what, and how we are meant “to be.” We may recall that night when Nicodemus went to see Jesus in the dark of night, only to be told of his need to be “born again,” or “born from above.” Poor Nic cries out, as Mary does at first, “How shall this be?” Just as John the baptizer’s father Zechariah cries out, “How shall this be?” Just as Abraham’s and Sarah’s laughter when they learned that he, age one hundred, and she in her nineties, would have a son! 

“How shall this be?” it turns out, is a central dimension of faith and just what God’s concept of us is all about. As we read in Hebrews, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” [iv] It turns out it’s those things that are ‘unseen’ which are most central to faith. Surely, Mary never saw, let alone imagined, what she was being asked to do: to bear Christ to the world. Do we begin to understand that what God asks of Mary is what God asks of us all? That we are to bear Christ to the world in all we say and all we do. 

This leads Maggie Ross to conclude, “This is the answer to Nicodemus: that in order bear the Word of God, to enter the Kingdom, we must indeed be born from the Spirit, not for the second time in the womb of our natural mothers, but continuously in the love of the Mother of God that brought forth her Son, and at the same time, like her, to bear him as well. Mary, then, is my mother in this second birth, just as she is Nicodemus’s mother.” [v] Mary becomes the Mother of us all. 

Mary then rushes to see her cousin Elizabeth, who in her advanced age became the surprising and surprised mother of John the baptizer. Elizabeth understands. What ensues is one of the very first song texts of our tradition which we call the Magnificat, or Song of Mary. The Greek text is unclear as to whether Mary or Elizabeth made this pronouncement, but it is so vitally important to understanding who and what we are meant to be that we read it twice on this Fourth Sunday of Advent. It is so central to what it means to be a follower of Christ, that every household is expected to read it every evening as appointed in our Prayer Book for Evening Prayer. It is a revolutionary creed really. It speaks to turning the world right-side-up again: it speaks of scattering the proud, casting down the mighty, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, and sending the rich away empty. All of which is wrapped in repeated mention of God’s everlasting mercy! As Jesus asserts in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the merciful!” 

One wag once suggested that the Beatitudes are attitudes of being, what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ: merciful, peacemakers, righteous, pure in heart, the salt of the earth, the light of the world. [vi] Long ago I heard a French hymn by the poet, Didier Rimaud. It’s called Les Arbres dans la Mer – Trees in the Sea. It is based on Jesus teaching his followers how with just a tiny bit of faith as small as a mustard seed, one can plant trees in the sea, help the blind to see, the lame to walk, and set prisoners set free. The English text of the poem goes something like this:

            1

Look! The Virgin has a child,

A man is born of God,

Heaven is among us,

the people are no longer alone!

It would take only a bit of faith

and you would see trees in the sea

Beggars who are kings

The powerful overthrown,

Wealth is shared!

2

Look! Water turns into wine,

Wine becomes blood,

Loaves multiply,

People are no longer hungry!

It would take only a bit of faith

and you would see trees in the sea

Deserts full of flowers

Harvests in winter

Granaries are overflowing!

3

Look! the lame can walk

the blind see the light of day

the deaf are delivered

the people are no longer in pain!

It would take only a bit of faith

and you would see the trees in the sea

Executioners without work

Rusty handcuffs

Prisons are useless!

4

Look! The cross is empty and bare,

Your graves are pierced,

and the man stands

the people are no longer afraid!

It would take only a bit of faith

and you would see the trees in the sea

Guns buried

Armies discarded

Mountains dancing!

 

I believe this is the vision Mary and Elizabeth mean to share with us every day. This is what it means to take that first step into God’s kingdom. I believe were we to read the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, at least once a day, this vision can become not just a part of us, a part of our Community of Love, but a reality for all the world. For this we wait. For this we prepare. This is Advent. 

It all begins when we join with Mary and say, “Let it be with me according to your Word.”

Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy.

Come, Lord Jesus, come… 

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[i] https://www.etsy.com/listing/976761420/annunciation-angel-young-mary-god?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-d-art_and_collectibles&utm_custom1=_k_CjwKCAiAgoq7BhBxEiwAVcW0LNLhcv56CLFHGbzacxyIuAyH1hRDAcEU-xdSXnR1I2Zwkd4zCoqzyBoCW8AQAvD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_21506855477_167985809239_716809480969_pla-314954651933_c__976761420_5328323151&utm_custom2=21506855477&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAgoq7BhBxEiwAVcW0LNLhcv56CLFHGbzacxyIuAyH1hRDAcEU-xdSXnR1I2Zwkd4zCoqzyBoCW8AQAvD_BwE

[ii] Luke 1:38b

[iii] Ross, Maggie, The Fire of Your Life (Paulist Press, New York:1983) p.19.

[iv] Hebrews 11:1

[v] Ibid, Ross p.20

[vi] Matthew 5:1-16

The Wrath to Come Advent 3C

The Wrath to Come

“You brood of vipers!” John cries out. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!” [i] This, no doubt, strikes us a fine “how do you do?” to a crowd that has gathered from all of Jerusalem and all of Judea to participate in John’s ritual bathing in the River Jordan. The man in the wilderness crying! 

It should be noted that the word “wilderness” connotes more than a place beyond a civilized city like Jerusalem – the place believed to be where Abraham was all set to plunge a knife into his only son Isaac; the of the Temple, with its holy of holies, the resting place for the Ark of the Covenant with the tablets of the Ten Commandments; the very place where it was believed God’s, YHWH’s finger, touches the Earth to hold it steady, safe and reliable. Wilderness also describes the broken, fractured, and dangerous state of the world, civilized or not. Even before the Roman occupation, the regions of Israel known as Galilee and Judea were beset with a religious elite placing financial demands on the people; rapacious land owners, the oiko-despots, who bought up all the farms of families so far in debt that they were reduced to tenant farmers, or worse, slaves, producing crops for the profit of others; no possibility of ever retiring their debt. With Rome came more tax collectors, who often were Israelites conscripted to collect the taxes, but were only paid by what they themselves could get away with tacking on to the tax, which were more like tolls on the roads to take goods to market. They were seen as collaborators with the Empire’s greed. And, of course, the military, loyal only to Caesar and no other, who also supplemented their meager pay by demanding protection money, food and clothing from the already burdened am haretz, the people of the land. 

To this picture of Judea in the time of John and Jesus one must remember that at the time Luke assembled this account of the Gospel and the Book of Acts, Jerusalem had suffered a terrible holocaust. The Temple and the city lay in ruins, while nearly one million Israelites had been killed, with as many as 500 being crucified daily by the Roman Legions. First Century Israel was indeed a wilderness, broken and unsafe under the Roman Empire’s rule of brutality. 

Enter John, son of Zechariah, one of the Temple priests. John is portrayed as one of a long-line of God’s prophets. He issues a call to repent – to turn society’s lives around back to the Way of the Lord as articulated in Torah: a way of life rooted in Love of the God of the Covenant, and love, compassion and care for one’s neighbor. All neighbors, including strangers from other lands looking to Israel as a place to escape famines and brutalities in neighboring regions. 

Perhaps the single most important take-away in this story of John preparing the way for the arrival of Jesus is the sheer number of people who come down to the river. And the incredible cross section of society represented. All of Jerusalem, which then as it is today, perhaps the single most cosmopolitan city on Earth. People from all the world, east, west, north and south travelled trade routes that ran through the region, and many stayed to witness the miracle that was God’s people descended from Abraham and Sarah. And as Luke portrays it, there were also tax collectors, who might be Jews or Gentiles, and Roman soldiers, all of whom were Gentiles. 

The crowd represents the peculiar character of God’s people called Israel: when things were bad, when life had returned to wilderness status, when the world was truly broken and in need of repair, they did not point fingers at one another, and did not blame others for the broken state of affairs. Instead, the people of God take responsibility for their failure to live lives that reflect the love of God and love of neighbor. It must be our own fault that things are this bad, they would say. We need to repent. We need to turn back to the Way of our God. And so they join in John’s ritual bathing. 

So, they turn to John, who greets them roughly, and warns that there will be a reckoning in the Day of God’s Wrath. The axe is set at the root of the tree, says John. Trees that do not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown in the fire. The people beg John to tell them what they need to do in the meantime. 

To the general crowd it begins with baby steps: share food and clothing with all those who are without resources – those who hunger and thirst, and who cannot afford a winter coat. The tax collectors ask what they need to do, and the task is simple: do not jack on surcharges above the tax itself for yourself; just collect the tax. And the Gentile soldiers ask, what can we do: do not extort money from our citizens; don’t make false accusations; be happy with your pay. 

That is, the coming presence of the Lord that John announces calls for “changes in the nature of human life, so that justice, compassion, and honesty take the place of their opposites.” [ii] This is what repentance is to look like: justice, compassion and honesty with one another. The people are astonished, and begin to wonder if John is “the One who is to come.” To which he says emphatically, “No! I am not worthy to tie or untie his shoes. But be ready! For he will baptize you with water and fire! His winnowing fork will be in his hand, sifting to gather the wheat into his barns, but the chaff he will burn with “unquenchable fire!” If that does not motivate them to repent and become more loving toward one another, thinks John, nothing can. 

Sidenote: Poor John. He has a skewed vision of what the time of Jesus will look like. The wrath of God embodied in Jesus will look more like a good shepherd who has compassion on his flock. He feeds people. He heals people. He welcomes people. He serves people, not asking them to serve him. There’s no winnowing fork in his hand. It’s up to us to choose to be gathered into his Body, or to opt out and become chaff of our own choices – choosing not to seek justice for others, not to be compassionate toward others, not to be honest with others. It’s up to us. Jesus calls us. We are to respond. 

Years ago, Maggie Ross, an Anglican Solitary, or anchorite, wrote a book, The Fire of Your Life.While reflecting on loneliness as portrayed in George Balanchine’s ballet, Prodigal Son, a story that only appears in Luke’s Gospel. The Prodigal Son descends into utter despair, loneliness, and a grief that brings him to a moment of repentance – a turning back toward home and his father. His father, who welcomes him home with open arms. 

Ross concludes, “The wrath of God is his relentless compassion, pursuing us even when we are at our worst.” To which she adds a prayer, “Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy.”  [iii] This is the very essence of Advent – do we choose to turn, to repentance, to return to a life of justice, compassion, and honesty which is the very heart of God’s relentless pursuit to bring us home, our true home wrapped in the arms of his never-ending love and mercy. Will we choose to become those people who live lives of tikkun olam, those who repair the world? If we so choose, the Wrath to Come will be a day to rejoice and give thanks! 

Lord, give us mercy to bear your mercy.

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[i]  Luke 3:7-18

[ii] Brueggemann, Gaventa, et.al., Texts for Preaching Year C (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville: 1994) p.20

[iii] Ross, Maggie (Paulist Press, New York: 1983) p.137.

The Second Coming of Christ Advent 1C

 The Second Coming of Christ

Beverly Gaventa, one time Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary, and at Columbia Theological Seminary, writes about the apocalyptic language in Luke 21:25-36 saying, ‘One way of summarizing this passage might be to say that “things are not necessarily what they appear to be.” To look only at things that seem to be close at hand is to miss the larger picture.’ [i] 

The larger picture being what all four Gospels recall Jesus’s primary proclamation was, is, and will always be, “The Kingdom of God is at Hand.” Which I have always taken to mean that if one places one’s arm outstretched in front of one’s face, where your hand ends up is just how close, or far away, the kingdom of God is from us at any given time. Suggesting, of course that it is nearby, much closer, than we might imagine; closer than even folks like Jeremiah and Luke could possibly imagine. 

What Jesus and Ms. Gaventa are saying is that so many other “things” like family issues, political issues, nations at war, what Jesus describes as “dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life,” tend to dominate our day-to-day consciousness. The result being that it becomes all too easy to forget what is perhaps the most important truth Jesus proclaimed, proclaims,: the kingdom of God is at hand. Lower case, as I am thinking that making kingdom of God upper case leads to our putting off much thinking about this core proclamation to some other day, some later or latter day, with so many other concerns pressing in on us literally begging for our full attention. 

We may notice that Jeremiah, that sixth century BCE reluctant prophet of the Lord, who upon learning that he was to be a prophet replied, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” [ii] No my son, says the Lord, since before the birth of time I have appointed you, and “you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you… Now I have put my words in your mouth.” This seems to be a “Day of the Lord” for Jeremiah, who later writes in 33:14-16 says, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” 

Two things we might take away from this: It is the Lord himself who promises “days,” not a day, but days of the Lord when the promises of God’s kingdom will become manifest. And that Jerimiah addresses a divided country, for at the time of his speaking on God’s behalf Israel was still divided into two regions, Israel in the north, and Judah in the south. Just as Jesus addresses a divided Israel, Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees and others all claiming to know for sure what God desires from all of us. 

For anyone asking what all this apocalyptic language means to us today, we might just need to admit that much of the world is as divided as Israel was at the time of Jeremiah. Think of Israel vs Gaza and the West Bank, Global North vs Global South, Ukraine vs Russia, Red US vs Blue US, just to name a few. This is not to forget the divisions between and within the Church of Christ itself. We may want to pay closer attention to Jeremiah and Luke’s “little apocalypse” than we do to the “dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.” Things are not simply as they appear to be, there is a larger picture that Jesus has in mind when he says elsewhere that he will come again, and when he insists that the kingdom of God is a lot closer than we think. If we think of it at all. 

In some committee decades ago, it was thought that these musings on the days of the Lord and the second coming of Christ are just the texts with which we need to grapple on the First Sunday in Advent. A season fraught with misunderstandings since it is not just a season to prepare us to remember that first advent of the Christ Child lying in a manger, but to also look forward to what has been called his second coming as well. All of the preparations of the next four weeks have become devoted to making a big deal out of his first advent, with scant attention at all in our decorations, manic purchasing of gifts beginning not just on Black Friday, but even the weeks before that have become Black Friday addenda! How does one even decorate for the Second Coming? What kind of gifts are appropriate to point us toward that Second Coming Jesus himself proclaims is “at hand.”? 

Borrowing, as I often do, from Fredrick Buechner, an author of over a dozen novels, and himself a seminary trained Presbyterian minister, we might begin where the Christian Bible ends: a prayer, in Revelation (Not “revelations”): “Come, Lord Jesus.” [iii] Quite possibly the shortest prayer in our tradition, and one that ought to be prayed every day at least once among the dissipations, drunkenness and worries of this life. [iv] Buechner first observes that Jesus’s first advent was rather unobtrusive. Except for Mary and Joseph of course, and perhaps a handful of shepherds, “nobody much knew or cared.” So how will we know when he comes a second time? What, when, or where will he appear? Even he says, “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). People in search of a timetable try to crack the coded language of the Book of Revelation are on a wild goose chase. People who claim that only those who join their sect will be “saved,” whatever they may mean by that, and all others lost are wrong. Jesus himself says in Matthew 25:31-46 that those who will know are those of us who feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and prisoners. “If you love, in other words, you’re in. If you don’t, you are out.” It does not matter to him if you are a Jew, Muslim, Christian, Jehovah’s Witness, Catholic, Episcopalian, Taoist, or an Atheist! No one can say what will happen when those “days” come, but that it will be a day to remember. These days come upon all who live upon the face of the Earth. 

“Things are not necessarily what they appear to be.” Beverly Gaventa remarks that the signs of the future Jesus speaks of have become, in fact, signs of the present day. Just as the coming of new leaves always and inevitably indicates that summer will soon be at hand, so it is that the kingdom of God, indeed, lies close at hand. I wonder. In a world in which so many well-meaning Christians believe they have broken the code, if the fact may be that Jesus always comes to us a second time here and now, if, when he knocks on our door, as depicted in the third chapter of Revelation, we for once open the door and let him in. What it is like when we do that is no doubt difficult to put into words – words which inevitably begin to sound strange to others. In trying to do so myself, I find I get lost in metaphor every time. Yet, when Jesus comes to Paul on that road to Damascus, who had spent a career arresting followers of Jesus, he says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made great in weakness.” [v] I take that to mean, if Paul can be saved, there’s hope for me. For all of us. For it will come upon all who live upon the face of the earth. If only we watch. Wait. Be alert. Open the door. It is in that hope only that we dare say, “Amen,” to the prayer that brings all scripture to a close.

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[i] Texts for Preaching Year C, Cousar, Gaventa, Brueggemann, et.al. (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville:1994) p. 8-9

[ii] Jeremiah 1:6-10

[iii] Revelation 22:20

[iv] Buechner, Fredrick, Whistling in the Dark: An ABC Theologized (Harper & Rowe, San Francisco, 1988) pp.101-102, with apologies to the author!

[v] 2Corinthians 12:9

What Is Truth? Christ the King B 2024

 What Is Truth?

This is what Pilate really wants to know. It is the central question in this passage assigned to us for this Christ the King Sunday from John 18:33-37, but we would not know that given verse 38 was left off. Verse 38 is the climax in this story of Good Friday, the Day of Preparation for the Passover in Jerusalem that year Pilate’s day has been interrupted as he tries to get some idea from Jesus as to why there is such a commotion among the Temple authorities. Pilate seems to understand what all of us come to know at one time or another: we live in a world of competing truths, competing world views or narratives if you will. It’s early in the morning. Pilate has yet to finish his first cup of coffee and what he promises will be his last cigarette. Every year, the city is awash with people from all over the ancient world; some to celebrate the Passover, others curious to see just what this Festival of Freedom and the God of the Jews is all about. 

Pilate asks Jesus if he is in fact king of the Jews. Jesus says his kingdom, that is, his Father’s kingdom, is not of this world. It’s not at all like this world in which there are competing kings and emperors all claiming to be anointed by some god or another, or, like Caesar, claiming to be god themselves. Jesus makes the point that were he a king, his followers would be “fighting to keep me from being handed over” to the authorities. That is how unlike Caesar’s Rome the kingdom of God is. And as we hear from John the Revelator, his Father’s kingdom was, is, and will always be very different than Rome, or Judea, or Egypt, or Babylon, or Syria. And from every kingdom throughout history to this day. [i] 

To Pilate, who has successfully risen up the ladder of the Roman power structure to be the fifth governor of the province of Judea, all this sounds pretty much like blah, blah, blah. Why can’t these so-called messiahs give a straight answer. “So, you are a king,” he says, taking another slow drag on his last cigarette. 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.” Exhaling, Pilate says in a voice half-interested and half-sarcasm, “What is truth?” This is the missing verse 38. Jesus is silent. There is nothing else to say. For Truth stands before Pilate in the flesh. The God of the Passover, the truth, who was, who is, who is to be. Truth is everything from Alpha to Omega; or, as we might say, from A to Z; all that is seen and unseen; all that has been, is, and is yet to be. 

In his novel Desert, Noble Laureate author J.M.G. Le Clezio writes about the desert: “Out there, in the open desert, men can walk for days without passing a single house, seeing a well, for the desert is so vast that no one can know it all.” [ii] As it is with the desert, so it is with Truth, with  God.  The vastness of it all. No one can know it all. What more is there to say? Truth stands in the silence. If only Pilate, if only the rest of us, could see that; know that; feel that. 

In a time not unlike the first century world of Rome, Judea, Galilee, Greece, and the rest of the ancient world, after World War I, Pope Pius XI saw a world of authoritarian-strongmen, fascists, dictators, who sought to rule like kings, espousing extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, white supremacy, racism, and anti-immigration and anti-democratic policies throughout Europe. Recognizing the falseness of these ideologies, Pius instituted Christ the King Sunday in 1925 to refocus us all on why we are here – to be icons of God’s love in this seriously broken world. Originally set as the last Sunday of October, in 1969, Pope Paul VI moved it to the Last Sunday before Advent and called it, “The Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.” Pius noted that while there had been a cessation of hostilities, there was no true peace. He wrote, “Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by his teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by … imitating His example…The faithful, moreover, by meditating upon these truths, will gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal ... He must reign in our minds…in our wills…in our hearts… [so that in] the words of the Apostle Paul, [we might serve] as instruments of justice unto God.” [iii] 

What is the truth Christ and his followers lived? What kind of king is Jesus, if he is to be a king at all? These words from a pamphlet at Bath Abbey, Bath, England, tries to sum it up like this:

“Jesus was born in an obscure Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, over 2000 years ago. During his first 30 years he shared the daily life and work of an ordinary home. For the next three years he went about teaching people about God and healing sick people by the shores of Lake Galilee. He called 12 ordinary men to be his helpers. 

“He had no money. He wrote no books. He commanded no army. He wielded no political power. During his life he never travelled more than 200 miles in any direction. He was executed by being nailed to a cross at the age of 33.

“Today, nearly 2 billion people throughout the world worship Jesus as divine - the Son of God. Their experience has convinced them that in the wonders of nature we see God as our loving Father; in the person of Jesus, we discover God as Son; and in our daily lives we encounter this same God as Spirit. Jesus is our way to finding God: we learn about Jesus by reading the Bible, particularly the New Testament and we meet him directly in our spiritual experience.

“Jesus taught us to trust in a loving and merciful Father and to pray to him in faith for all our needs. He taught that we are all infinitely precious, children of one heavenly Father, and that we should therefore treat one another with love, respect and forgiveness. He lived out what he taught by caring for those he met; by healing the sick - a sign of God's love at work; and by forgiving those who put him to death. 

“Jesus' actions alone would not have led him to a criminal's death on the cross: but his teaching challenged the religious, political and moral beliefs of his day. People believed, and do to this day, that he can lead us to a full experience of God’s love and compassion. Above all, he pointed to his death as God's appointed means of bringing self-centered people back to God. Jesus also foretold that he would be raised to life again three days after his death. When, three days after he had died on the cross, his followers did indeed meet him alive again; frightened and defeated women and men became fearless and joyful messengers. 

“Their message of the Good News about Jesus is the reason Bath Abbey exists. More importantly, it is the reason why all over the world there are Christians who know what it means to meet the living Christ, and believe that He can lead us all to heal and repair a broken world. May your time in Bath Abbey be a blessing to you, and also to us in the church.” [iv] 

This is why the Church is here at all: to follow Christ; to heal, gather, repair, restore, and unite everyone and everything in this broken world. To be icons of God’s love to all the earth, and everything therein. To be a community of God’s Love. May God for us, whom we call Father; God alongside us, whom we call Son; and God within us, whom we call Spirit; hold and enliven us to a full experience of God’s love and compassion; that in all that we say and all that we do, we may become God’s Truth, a community of Love, Justice and Freedom for all peoples, all creatures, and all the Earth. This is Christ, the Truth that stands silent before us. Amen.

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[i] Revelation 1:4b-8

[ii] Le Clezio, J.M.G, Desert (David R. Godine, Boston: 2009) p.142.

[iii] wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Christ_the_King

[iv] Reproduced from the Abbey pamphlet by permission

The Widow Proper 27B

 The Widow’s Mite

That’s what the church traditionally calls the story in Mark 12:38-44. Which is to overlook at least half, if not all, of what this little episode may really be about. Appearing in what we euphemistically call “stewardship season,” when we not only urge but honestly need people to reconsider their annual support of the local church and its mission to the world in which it lives and moves and has its being, we have tend to trumpet the extravagant, if not downright foolish, generosity of this poor widow who puts he only two coins into the Temple Treasury. I say “trumpet” because evidently in the Court of Women in the Jerusalem Temple there were a number of large trumpet-shaped containers in which people would place monetary offerings to support the administration of the Temple and its system of sacrifices – burnt offerings believed to make the One God of Israel happy and therefore continue to send rain and sunshine to produce an abundance of crops, and good luck in dealing with neighbor countries which often sought delight in plundering Israel’s good fortune. 

The general arc of sermons in this season often say something like, “Look, if this poor widow can give everything she has to the Temple, you can certainly increase your pledge to your local congregation so we can keep the lights on and to heat and air condition our buildings to keep ourselves cozy and comfortable – which surely must be an important component of being God’s covenant people in today’s world.” I will confess to being guilty of turning this poor widow into a hero of sacrificial giving to support the institutions we love to think of as ours; as our own little real estate holding in the emerging Kingdom of God. 

Upon closer review, this turns out to be a fumble that ought to be recovered by the other team. And yes, that other team would be Jesus’s team – those seeking, as he will say later in the Passover week ahead, a kingdom “not of this world,” much to the bafflement of one Pontius Pilate, representative of the Emperor Caesar, whose face was on all the coins of the empire proclaiming, “Caesar is God!” Which of course raises the question already raised earlier in chapter 12 of Mark’s Gospel – why would the administrators of the Temple, the Chief Priests and Sadducees, and of course the Scribes, those arbiters of what the Torah scrolls say and mean, why would these folks be so insistent on gathering as much of these Roman coins as possible if indeed said coins proclaim that a mere mortal like Caesar is God? 

Again, just a few verses earlier in Mark chapter 12, Jesus is asked by a Scribe what is the greatest of all the commandments, of which in Torah there are 613 – 365 “thou shalt nots,” and the remaining 248 “thou shalts”. Jesus answers correctly, reciting the one prayer recited several times a day, the Shema, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” And then adds, from Leviticus, “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” The Scribe is impressed, and goes so far to say, “…this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question. This Scribe represents the critique of the Temple’s sacrificial system lodged by all the prophets of the previous six or eight hundred years! That to put all our energy into sustaining this sacrificial institution is to imperil the neighbors we are meant to be loving as God loves us – especially for those who by circumstance and no fault of their own have no male patriarch to look out for them, no pater familias as the Greeks and Romans would have it.

 Of these neighbors in need, it was understood that God had repeatedly commands that widows, women who had lost their pater familias, as well as orphans and aliens - sojourners, strangers in the land fleeing poverty, warfare, or any number of conflict and problems in their own countries - were all to receive the same love, sustenance, and care as one’s own family and fellow Israelite neighbors. All of these particular circumstances – widowhood, orphanhood and migrant worker-hood– had no benefit of a pater familias, and therefore are to be cared for by the community at-large.   

Admittedly it is strange, that after Jesus had such a meaningful encounter with a Scribe who was understood that the Kingdom of God means to care for these marginalized groups of people like the widow in our story, that Jesus would then rip into the Scribes for wearing long robes, saying long prayers, and demanding preferred seating in synagogues and banquets. I confess, every time I read this and similar instructions from Jesus not to wear two tunics, etc, I tremble each Sunday morning as I put on long robes to lead our worship, to sit in front of even the front row week after week, and recite long prayers over our sacred meal we share – a meal that calls us to care for those without resources like our widow and her fellow orphans and resident aliens. Indeed, this story is meant to hold a mirror before each and every one of us. Most especially me. 

For the central question in this would be: to what degree do we participate in sustaining institutions that allow there to be individuals in our society that have nothing more than these two little coins which even in today’s world would be worth a little less than two dollars? 

As we were sharing in Holy Communion at Diocesan Convention on Friday, I found myself jotting down in my notes: Just what kingdom do we support and serve? The Kingdom of God? Or, the kingdom of presidents; the kingdom of Congress; the kingdom of Wall Street; the kingdom of corporations; the kingdom of Church? Or, the kingdom of those in need? 

The Widow’s Mite. I suspect Jesus does not mean to make her the hero of the story, or even a role-model for disciples of his. The widow is, and ought to be, an embarrassment for the Scribes and all of the rest of us who fail to honor her need and follow in the Way of Jesus. She and her cohort of orphans, and sojourners in the land, the homeless, the hungry, and any and all who have no source of family and friends to offer them sustenance, support, and a place to rest their weary bones should not exist if we were to honestly love God and love neighbor.

 Every day on social media I read scathing and even hateful critiques of “the church” and religion, and religious institutions. Yet, it is a fact, that in The Episcopal Church, a percentage of each dollar one gives to the local church goes to the Diocese, and a percentage of that goes to The Episcopal Church Center, to support programs that serve those in need at home and abroad, programs that no local congregation could sustain on its own. We are a mutual aid society. Our official corporate name is: The Foreign and Domestic Missionary Society. We serve people in our community, across the state of Maryland, and throughout the world with each dollar we pledge right here in Rock Spring and all Parishes. And this is for all of us and our small and mighty parish, Good News – the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God according to Mark.

All Saints Day 2024B

One day a parishioner from a nearby parish cornered me in my office on All Saints Day and asked, in all sincerity, “Why do we pray for the dead?” I was taken aback. And mumbled something like, “Because they are no longer dead, but alive in Christ. And they pray for us.” He was unimpressed and unmoved. 

All Saints Day is part of at three-day Christian festival and mediation on death and new life. It begins with All Hallows Eve, with little munchkins demanding treats, feigning tricks, and giving us ample permission to laugh at that which we try so hard to forget and transcend. Death. The one certainty like taxes we all must face. As when Saul, fearing death, sought refuge with the Witch at Endor. She was scared since the king sought to put an end to her kind. Yet, here he was, asking her to help him to speak to the dead. Surprisingly, she knows what he really needs: care, in the form of rest and food – hospitality, or what the Bible calls love of neighbor – even the most unlikely of neighbors. It’s a story meant to remind us that God is never far from us at such times. It has been suggested that fear is that singular point of vulnerability through which God actually reaches us, touches us, to transform our fear into hope. 

Hallows Day, or All Saints Day, then arrives and presents itself as a time to look back at those who in our tradition have experienced that presence and touch of God in difficult time, and allow their experiences to fuel our collective imagination to move us beyond our greatest fears to believe that a hopeful future is real, and even within our reach! Perhaps the first example of a saint as we think of them would be Miriam, sister of Moses, who celebrates after the great escape from bondage in Pharaoh’s Empire of endless toil to a newfound, and unimaginable future with God as she gets the sisters together with their tambourines to dance and sing their way forward with God: Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.  And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” [i] 

Try to picture that moment? Imagine the relief, the joy, the laughter, the singing, the dancing The end of generations of darkness into a new world of light. A world, as Psalm 24 declares, is God’s world, not ours: The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein. This world does not belong to the endless number of Pharaohs and their empires of bondage and toil for all but a handful of elites. This is God’s world, where wonders never cease – only if we refuse to let our remembrance of things past and our prophetic imaginations dwindle and fade. 

This is why we recall the words of that prophet of the exile, Isaiah and his companions, who though God’s people had been swept away to yet another faraway empire, a long way from home, imagined a great homecoming as a feast: “a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.” The death dealing of Babylon and Pharaoh shall be swept away forever. “Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” [ii] And it is the imagination of Isaiah that envisions that one day the God of Israel would make straight a highway from Persia back to Jerusalem, the City of Peace, and once again the people would dance and sing their way home once again. 

In the midst of yet another occupation under yet another brutal empire, comes another man of the Lord to reinforce the prophetic imagination among an exhausted, lonely, and beaten-down people. He was good friends with sisters Martha and Mary. They called for him when their brother Lazarus was dying. After a delay of several days, word comes to them that Jesus is at the edge of town. The sisters are sitting shiva, the days of mourning. Martha, ever the more practical of the two, marches out to the edge of town and lets Jesus know her frustration that he had not come when they called. “Our brother might still be alive!” she shouts at him. “He will live again,” he says. “Do you believe this?” She says, “I know he will rise again on the Last Day, the day of resurrection, but we want him now.” Says Jesus, “I am resurrection, and I am life. Do you believe this?” That’s when it happens. Martha is transformed on the spot. She forgets all her anger and her fears, “Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Christ coming into the world.” 

Mary joins them. The crowd at the house sitting shiva comes along. At the tomb Jesus weeps. The crowd murmurs, “See how he loves him!” Yet, others complain in the midst of his weeping. Jesus prays to his father. Jesus calls Lazarus to come out. Out he comes, wrapped in the funeral cloths, not unlike Jesus was wrapped in swaddling-cloths “in the beginning.” “Unbind him, and set him free!” Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty Lazarus and we are free at last. No doubt they remembered that first Mary, Miram and the sisters, dancing and singing the people into a new reality, a new world, a new life. [iii]

All Saints reminds us that there have been others. There is an out-of-date list in our Book of Common Prayer of others who have shed God’s light in the darkness of later times. Even in our own times. Baltimore’s own Thurgood Marshall and Pauli Murray are on that list today, who like Martin King issued a new call for their people to be “unbound and set free.” We remember them all on All Saints so that we too might follow in the Way of Christ as they once did. 

Another woman is in consideration for sainthood in the Catholic Church. Were she alive, I have no doubt she would tell them to stop it! Dorothy Day, a lay woman who cared for the working man and woman, who founded a series of houses for those in need of shelter across the country, and who founded a newspaper in the midst of the Depression, The Catholic Worker, which fearlessly advocates hope for a better future for America’s working class. She worked tirelessly for a more just society, inspired by people like Miriam, Isaiah, Jesus, and others. She wrote this in her autobiography: “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” 

I wish I had known this when I faced my questioner in my office. We have all known the long loneliness, the long darkness, the long days of war, the fear of others, fear of the future, fear of one another. I might have said to him, “The only solution is love, and love comes with community.” Community with one another. Community with those Saints have gone before. Community with Christ, Miriam, Isaiah, Martha, Mary, Thurgood, Pauli, Martin, and that most imaginative of all biblical writers, John the Revelator who declares, “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.’” [iv]  For this and for all the saints we give thanks! Amen.

---

[i] Exodus 15:20-21

[ii] Isaiah 25:6-9

[iii] John 11:32-44

[iv] Revelation 21:1-6a 

What DO You Want Me to Do for You! Proper 25B

 

What Do You Want Me to Do for You?  Mark 10:46-52

This sermon was written for Sermons That work by the Rev. Canon Whitney Rice for Proper 25 (B) in 2021. 

Who doesn’t love blind Bartimaeus? Here is a man who knows what he wants and goes after it no matter how much he embarrasses everyone else. “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” he shouts. His fellow townspeople are mortified. “Shut up!” they say. “Be quiet, you hollering maniac! The one celebrity we get in this town and you yell at him like a yokel!” Bartimaeus doesn’t care. He knows Jesus has what he needs and he is going after it. He will not be silenced. We could learn a lot about boldness in prayer from Bartimaeus. We could learn a lot about asking for what we need. 

But even more important than Bartimaeus’ persistence in this gospel is Jesus’ response to him. Bartimaeus is hollering and causing a ruckus, and “Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’ And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. Then Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’” 

This is one of the most important moments in the entirety of the gospels for telling us about who Jesus is. Jesus does not assume that Bartimaeus wants to be made able to see. He does not assume that Bartimaeus sees his blindness as a disability. Furthermore, although Jesus undoubtedly knows what is best for Bartimaeus, Jesus does not force it on him. Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” 

Neither does Jesus impose his will on us, or make any assumptions about what we need or want. He asks us as openly as he asks Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?” 

Just by asking this one question, Jesus provides us with a mechanism to delve deeper spiritually. It’s a deceptively simple question. On the surface, it seems like a matter of value exchange. What can we earn or get from our relationship with Jesus? But if we spend time with this question we find new truths opening up within ourselves. 

Let’s sit with the question ourselves. Jesus asks us, “What do you want me to do for you?” 

Well, first off, Jesus, it would be great if you could make our churches successful. 

Is that really what we want? He asks us again, “What do you want me to do for you?” 

Could you magically make all our money and membership worries go away? 

Again, that would be great, but that’s not really what we truly want at the bottom of our hearts. We know because he’s asking us again, “What do you want me to do for you?” 

Okay, we’ll try again. Jesus, could you make our ministries a success? No, that doesn’t feel right either. 

“What do you want me to do for you?” 

Could you make us successful as disciples and ministers? No, still not it. We’re starting to dig through the layers of our ego as Jesus continues to ask us this pivotal question. If we dig deep enough, maybe we’ll hit our hearts. 

“What do you want me to do for you?” 

Help us to do more, to try harder, to do better, we say to Jesus. Getting closer to the truest desire of our hearts, but not there yet. 

“What do you want me to do for you?” Help us to love people more, to love people better?

Very close, but he asks us one more time with such gentleness in his voice: “What do you want me to do for you?” 

“My teacher, let me see.” 

Bartimaeus’ words become our words. Let us see how loved we are, let us see how hungry for love others are, how worthy of love they are, how precious and beautiful and wonderful our neighbors are. And let us see that all this love comes from you, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and God the Creator, and the indwelling Holy Spirit. “My teacher, let me see.” 

Digging down through all the immediate superficial answers, down through fear and ego and all the concerns of this world, we find the desire at the core of our being, which is the desire to give and receive love, the desire to give and receive God. “My teacher, let me see.” Let us see that below all the noise and through all the distractions and beyond all the divisions that can isolate us from one another is the Presence that outlasts the stars. That is what we want you to do for us, Jesus. Let us see the Love. And then let us share it. 

Bartimaeus occupies a unique niche in the gospel: his is both a healing story and a call story. It is his healing that enables his call and it is his call that is the final ingredient of his healing. “Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” 

This is worth a very close look in our own lives, this relationship between healing and call, how very short a distance there is between the two, how intermingled they are. Often we feel unequipped to answer the call Jesus places in our lives, too broken and mixed up, sinful or apathetic or trapped in a net of responsibilities and habits that seems inescapable, even for gospel work. How could someone as “unhealed” as we are do something radical for Jesus? 

But we do not have to wait for healing to answer Jesus’ call. Bartimaeus doesn’t. The people in the crowd say, ‘‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’ So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.” Still blind, relying on no guidance from the people around him to feel his way, reacting with joy and abandon, he throws away his cloak and goes to Jesus. 

This is not an insignificant moment. Bartimaeus was homeless, a blind beggar on the street. His cloak was his only asset. It was his only protection from the weather and the cold, the closest thing to shelter he had. He cast it away without a second thought, and still blind, still unhealed, answers the call to make his way to Jesus. We can do the same. 

And in perhaps the most remarkable turn in this remarkable story, Bartimaeus is not the only one healed and called in this story. Did you catch who else had a radical conversion? The crowd. They begin with cruelty and exclusion in their hearts, doing everything they can to keep Bartimaeus away from Jesus: “Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’” And this is the pivotal moment. Jesus does not call Bartimaeus directly. He calls the crowd to call Bartimaeus. “Jesus stood still and said, ‘Call him here.’” 

And then the redemption, so easy to skip over if you’re not paying close attention. “And they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take heart; get up, he is calling you.’” This is the moment of the crowd’s conversion, the crowd’s healing, and the crowd’s call. Jesus’ love is so sneaky and so powerful that it broke open their hardened hearts and they probably didn’t even notice it. They go from trying to keep people away from Jesus to urging them forward. They go from seeing Bartimaeus as an embarrassment and trying to shut him up and keep him hidden, to telling him to take heart and go forward into Jesus’ embrace. 

What we learn here is that call is never individual. We hear call in community. Bartimaeus calls for Jesus, Jesus calls the crowd, the crowd calls Bartimaeus, then Jesus calls Bartimaeus to follow him on the way. This entire process of call and response is deeply healing to everyone involved. 

Where do we start? We listen, and we call out to Jesus, just as Bartimaeus did: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Because he is always calling and always healing. And it begins with his simple question to us: “What do you want me to do for you?” So we take Bartimaeus’ words to our hearts, “Teacher, let me see.”

To Follow Christ Proper 22B

 

To Follow Christ

Beginning in Mark 8:22 and continuing to the end of chapter 10, we find Jesus making his way to Jerusalem. The narrative is bracketed by the healing of two blind men: one in Bethsaida, and the other, Bartimeus, outside the gates of Jericho. Both seem to represent those, like many of the demons in Mark, who recognize who Jesus is immediately, so unlike the disciples, who almost never do. 

The pivotal question throughout the saga of this journey is the one Jesus puts to the disciples just after the first blind man recovers his sight. After first asking the twelve who people are saying he is, he puts the question directly to them, and in turn to all of us: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter appears to be on the right track, answering, “You are the Christos, the anointed, the Messiah.” Jesus orders them “not to tell anyone about him,” and goes on to teach them that it is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things, be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise. Peter objects, to which Jesus replies, “Get out of my sight, Satan, you don’t judge things the way God does, but the way people do.” i This was the first time he spoke plainly to them about what would happen when they got to Jerusalem. 

Just before our episode with James and John, Jesus tells them for a third time, “The Son of Man will be handed over to the high priests, be condemned to death, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles – that is, the Roman occupational forces. The Romans will mock him, spit on him, flog him, and kill him. After three days he will rise.” Again, Jesus speaks plainly to them, that it is the Gentiles, the Empire of Caesar, Rome, who will kill him. ii 

It is then and there that the Brothers Zebedee, James and John, a couple of fishermen, walk up to Jesus and say, “Uh, Teacher, whatever we ask, you have to do it, okay?” Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” They reply, “Uh, okay. Give us this: in your glory, one of us sits on your right, and one of us on your left. Okay?” Jesus replies, “You have no idea what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? Or the baptism I must undergo, are you able to take that, too?” iii 

It helps to understand that in the Psalms and prophetic literature, “the cup” means to indicate the fate that lies ahead of a person, which Jesus has three times tried to make clear. And he is not referring to the baptism of John, nor Christian baptism, but rather invokes a common biblical metaphor in which trials and dangers that lie ahead are going to be like passing through turbulent and stormy waters. What we today might call a “baptism by fire.” Confronting the Roman Empire is not going to go well. Jesus has just asked them if they, too, are ready to endure that which he has made clear now for the fourth time, rendering their response at best ironic, and even laughable: “Sure, we can do that. No problem!” 

Yet, surprisingly, rather than chastising them, Jesus affirms their declaration: “Yes, you will drink the same cup, and yes, you will face a baptism of fire, but sitting on my right and left is not for me to say. It belongs only to those for which it was prepared by my Father. Please understand, there is not going to be an immediate and happy ending. I’m not going to emerge as some imperial potentate with absolute power over all the world. I will suffer, as I have said, and I will surrender my future into the hands of God my Father, in whose power, mercy, love, forgiveness, and generosity I have complete trust.” 

Before James and John can say anything else, the ten remaining disciples are angered by the brothers’ pre-emptive strike for sharing in what they perceive will be Christ’s power and glory. Glory throughout the Bible refers first to God’s aura of splendor, power, and sovereignty, often understood as God’s presence in Israel as a brightness of light that shines visibly, as when he had guided the people out of Egypt and through the wilderness sojourn. And any person, like Jesus, who might share in God’s glory is considered a person of significant “weightiness, power, influence, prestige, and gravitas.”  This is what the brothers want for themselves. iv 

Realizing once and for all the need to spell out the misunderstanding of what it’s going to be like once they are in Jerusalem, Jesus says, “You know that the ones who seem to rule over the Gentiles, like Rome, like Babylon, like Egypt, lord it over them. Their great ones push them around. It is not to be that way with you! On the contrary: You want to be great? Wait on tables. Serve others. You want to be in first place? Become everyone’s slave. The Son of Man, after all, did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life, a ransom worth many people.” 

Ransom, he says, as opposed to sacrifice, signifies a price paid to liberate people from some kind of bondage. When he says, “many people,” this is a Semitic idiom that does not mean, “many people, but not all,” but rather is inclusive. That is, it does not mean that many are saved, but some are not, but between the many and the one that acts on their behalf, all will be liberated. v 

What begins with Jesus’ attempt to counter the disciples’ blind ambition becomes instead the most profound interpretation of just what his death in Jerusalem means for the community of those of us who wish to follow him. Father Brendan Byrne, an Australian Jesuit and biblical commentator, sums it up like this: The statement that concludes this episode “grounds the community’s exercise of authority as ‘service’ on nothing less than the redemptive action of Christ. If James and John and the other ten disciples – and indeed all who would be disciples – wish to enter into and share Jesus’s glory, the only ‘way’ is to follow him in the self-sacrificing service of humanity that will have its high point of concentration on the cross.” 

We do well to acknowledge that the Church has, throughout history, vacillated between the blind ambition and presumed power sought by James and John, and believing that to serve Christ as he serves the world is perfect freedom. We must look back at eras like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust as times when we were like James, John, and the ten and acted in ways contrary to the Way of Christ, which is the Way of the Cross. Fortunately, there have been examples of those like Lawrence, Deacon of Rome, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King, Jr., who have shown us the way of service to ransom the lives of many. 

It is no coincidence that the lessons from Isaiah and Hebrews today are also included in the lectionary for Good Friday, to which this entire section of Mark’s Gospel points those of us who wish to be faithful in following Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We are to see in the cross a mirror that reflects our true image: The image of who we are reflects the image of what we are; the image of love incarnate that serves the world; the image of Christ. vii  May God the Father, his Son our Lord, and the Holy Spirit help us to remember who we are and whose we are, and to act accordingly. Amen. 

i  Mark 8:31-33

ii  Mark 10:33-34

iii  For the following excerpts of the text in Mark 10:35-45, I am guided by the translation of Richard W. Swanson in his book, Provoking the Gospel of Mark (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 2005) p.303-305.

iv  Brueggmann, Walter, Reverberations of Faith, (Westminster-John Knox Press, Louisville: 2002) p.87-89

v Byrne, Brendan, A Costly Freedom (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota:2008) p.169, n.61

vi  Ibid, Byrne, p.169

vii  Delio, Ilia, The Primacy of Love (Fortress Press, Minneapolis:2022) p.49-50

Supersessionism, Marriage, and Metaphor Proper 22B

 

God speaks to us in many different ways at many different times. Once upon a time, The Letter to the Hebrews was thought to be one of Paul’s letters. The lack of greeting common to all his letters, the vocabulary, and a carefully sustained argument, sets it apart as utterly un-Pauline. In fact, it stands out from all other New Testament documents in three distinct ways: it is the only document that contains a sustained argument on the nature of Christ as both human and divine; its origin is unknown, its intended audience is unknown, and thus its connection to the rest of the New Testament is unclear; and it is often perceived as among the New Testament’s most anti-Jewish texts. [i] It is this third perception that has caused much mischief, especially as we witness a meteoric rise of anti-Semitism in America, and around the world, today. 

Which is too bad. We can never know the unknown author’s intention in this regard. It is too bad because in many ways it is the very best example of New Testament Greek rhetoric, and presents some of the more compelling early reflections on who and what Jesus is. From the very outset in its opening statement, it tells us that God speaks to us in many different ways in different times. Long ago God spoke in one way through the prophets, then in a new way through a Son “whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his power word.” There is perhaps no more majestic depiction of just how this unknown author has experienced Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is a ‘reflection’ and an ‘imprint’ of God. He is not God, but it is easy to see how one might get that impression. 

Where Hebrews gets into trouble is when it makes similar suggestions that this ‘appointed heir’ is a new kind of priest, not like the Temple priests, offering a new kind of sacrifice only one time, instead of repeatedly, and therefore it has been interpreted by some to say Christianity replaces Judaism and God’s covenant with Israel. This replacement theory is called supercessionism, and suppersessionism happens to be the foundation upon which the current White Christian Nationalist movement is based. Jesus never meant to start a religion, let alone a nationalist movement. In fact, for nearly three hundred years it was anti-nationalist, and served as an alternative to the brutality of life in the Roman Empire. Jesus called people to become a community of love – to love God and to love neighbor. All neighbors. For becoming a community of love, the earliest Christians were routinely arrested, tortured and killed by the Empire. All notions of a modern Christian Nationalism go against all that Jesus taught and lived, and against our founders intention that in America there be a separation of Church and State. 

Such interpretations of this document called Hebrews stands in direct contradiction to Paul’s assertion that those of us who follow Christ have been grafted onto the vine that is Israel, and that together we are all God’s people. I have no doubt that our unknown author likely believed something similar to Paul, but from time-to-time Hebrews can be understood to suggest that Jesus and Christianity replaces Israel. Such an interpretation of Hebrews seems also to contradict Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan which teaches that we are all in this together, even those most unlike ourselves, and that as the familiar hymn Jesu, Jesu puts it, “All are neighbors to us and you.” Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Jew, and all other religious and wisdom traditions are neighbors to be loved, as God loves those of us who strive to faithfully receive the call to follow Jesus of Nazareth, who lived, died, and rose again as a Jew – a beloved Son of Israel. Whatever Jesus was, is, and always shall be, he is no anti-Semite, and no White Christian Nationalist. 

Then consider the opening episode in chapter 10 of Mark’s Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God. It is easy to interpret it as fundamentally being about divorce. The Pharisees ask Jesus if it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife. What is not in the text is the fact that for nearly a century, the Pharisees had been debating this question among themselves. There were two schools of thought: the school of Shammai said only the man can dismiss his wife, and only for unfaithfulness, while Hillel allowed for more latitude, which eventually included a woman being able to initiate a divorce as well. Jesus is a real shrewdie and is not about to enter into this long-standing debate. He knows it’s a trap either way. Instead, he changes the conversation to be about marriage. It helps to remember that marriage in first century Israel was still a business arrangement between two fathers, involving dowry payments meant to protect everyone’s interests, but which payments would need to be returned if the marriage failed. 

Marriage, says Jesus, is a covenant, very much like the covenant God makes with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that is, with Israel. In fact, the prophets use marriage as a metaphor for the covenant between God and Israel. Which covenant is utterly unlike a typical marriage contract in the ancient world in that no matter how many times Israel gives up on God, God never gives up on Israel. Jesus knows this better than most. Despite his cries of abandonment on the cross, he rose to live another day.  He also knows that the debate on divorce misses the essential truth: when relationships of any kind break down, everyone is hurt no matter who initiates the breakdown, and no matter what happens next. 

Which may be why Jesus brings back the teaching on children which began back in chapter nine where the disciples evidently did not learn the lesson. People are bringing children to Jesus for a blessing, and the disciples try to send them away. Oy vey! Children had no rights, and, like women, were considered property. They were in every way marginalized like the poor, the halt, and the lame. Jesus says in effect, if you welcome me into your life, you must welcome them. As you reach out and receive into your life and into your heart those who are most hurt, damaged, marginalized and broken, it is as if you have welcomed me and my Father into your heart. Let’s not get hung up on blaming one another for whatever breaks down in our relationships, but rather let’s love one another, as my Father loves us and never gives up on us. We may not agree on all the details, we may go our separate ways, but if we do not stay in relationship with one another, then all truly is lost. 

God speaks to us in many different ways in many different times. As we consider these sacred texts from Hebrews and Mark: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

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[i] Levine, Amy-Jill, Brettler, Marc Zvi, The Jewish Annotated New Testament (Oxford University Press, USA:2017) p 460