Month: November 2021

Today’s readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

It’s the first Sunday of Advent, the start of the liturgical year. But instead of parties and shouts of “Happy New Year,” the church starts the year with anxious waiting. Advent is not quite penitential, but it is filled with a combination of hope and fear. In the Gospel, Jesus talks about “the signs in the sun, the moon and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.” He goes on to look forward to the time when Heaven and Earth will pass away, and warns us to be ready for that day. Not a very happy message, but one that resonates with many of us, facing climate change and its impact on the world we live in, never mind a pandemic that has been going on for almost two years now. The earth is sending us messages. But between wars, famines, droughts, and earthquakes, such messages have been heard at many times and in many places. Not surprisingly, the apocalyptic writings of scripture have been among preachers’ greatest hits fairly regularly over the last 2000 years! We live in a world where things go wrong, and people suffer. The end of that might not be a bad thing.

If Luke warns us to be ready for all the terrible things that will happen before Jesus comes again, I found myself drawn more to the words of Jeremiah, where he describes the world that God will bring, when God “will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel”. Jeremiah reminds us why we might look forward to that. When the “righteous Branch” of David comes, “he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.” This is the world we want to live in. As the US continues its long racial reckoning, and the Sunday after the murderers of Ahmaud Arbery were found guilty, it is good to remember that justice brings safety.

The psalmist is not concerned with the coming of a new world, but offers us a path. He asks to be taught — “Lead me in your truth and teach me”. We’re told that the Lod’s “compassion and love . . . are from everlasting”. And he asks the Lord, as we all must, to “Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love.” The psalm offers reassurance that “All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”

I am glad that we get to Luke’s warnings after we have heard from Jeremiah and the Psalmist. They put justice and love at the center. Building a world of justice and righteousness, we have learned over thousands of years, is not easy. But movements toward justice have often come from what felt like end times. The warnings that Luke offers and the promise that Jeremiah gives us are necessarily intertwined. I don’t know what it means to be ready for the “Son of Man coming in a cloud”, but if that is what it takes to get to the world of justice, righteousness and safety, I will do my best, like the psalmist, to follow the Lord’s paths.

“My kingdom is not from this world”, Jesus tells Pilate in today’s gospel (John 18:36). This Sunday, the last in the church year, is commonly known as “Christ the King Sunday”, or “The Reign of Christ”. If Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world, what does it mean in this world? In the epistle, taken from Revelation, we’re told that Jesus is “ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5). In our first reading, the last words of David, we are told that “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land” (2 Samuel 23:3-4). All this talking about kings and kingship is a bit strange for those of us living in a republic founded on the rejection of kings!

I’m not sure I know what to think about Christ’s kingdom: it’s not from this world, but this world is the only one I know. The multiple metaphors around the idea of Christ’s kingship suggest it’s one that many have struggled over. When I read about the light of the morning, I know it is a kingdom I wish for. It is simultaneously not from this world, but one we seek to build in this world. So today I have no bright ideas, just a question to ponder. What does it mean for you that Christ is King, that we are living in the reign of Christ? What do you differently because of that? How can we feel the light of morning? What are we doing to build the kingdom?

In today’s Hebrew scripture, we hear the story of Hannah (1 Samuel 1:4-20). Hannah is much loved by her husband Elkanah, but she has no children: “the Lord had closed her womb”. Her husband’s other wife, Peninnah, had “sons and daughters”, and taunts Hannah with her childlessness. Hannah, we’re told, grieves her childlessness. The account in scripture suggests very messy family dynamics, as Hannah is apparently the favorite wife, even though she was childless.

Hannah goes to the temple to pray, “deeply distressed”. She is watched by the priest Eli as she prays silently and weeps, and he asks her “How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself?” When she tells him she is not drunk, but praying from “anxiety and vexation”, he asks the God of Israel to grant her petition. And so it is: the story tells us that she and Elkanah worshiped before the Lord, went back to their house, and that Elkanah “knew his wife Hannah”. She conceived and bore a son, Samuel.

I am intrigued by Eli’s initial reaction, his concern that Hannah is making a spectacle of herself. She’s altogether too emotional in her prayer. Is Eli a closet Episcopalian? I’m uncomfortable with people who make a big deal about their faith. Like many Episcopalians, I’m not big on extemporaneous emotional prayer! Yet when we pray from our hearts, sometimes it is emotional. If we’re sharing with God our deepest joys, longings, fears, and griefs, there should be emotion. Maybe it’s time for me, like Eli, to better value the prayer that comes from the heart. And even make a spectacle of myself!

When I read the scriptures for today, I was struck that we have spent the last few weeks with women who need or want to bear a child. Ruth and Naomi are widowed; without a husband and a child, their place is uncertain. When Ruth bears a child to Boaz, Naomi helps raise him; they are safe. Ruth’s son is the father of Jesse, who is the father of David. Hannah’s position is more secure, loved as she is by her husband, but she longs for a child, and may feel that her long term security depends on bearing one. Again and again, we are reminded that God’s purposes are effected through the birth of children. As we hear Jesus, at the end of today’s Gospel, talking about the “birthpangs” of the new creation, his metaphor reflected the very real importance of bearing children in his society.

Today’s gospel (Mark 12:38-44) tells the story of Jesus watching people coming to the temple and making gifts to the treasury. The reading starts with Jesus’ warning, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces . . . they devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

My first reaction when I read this was to smugly assure myself that I’m not one of them: it is other people who pretend to piety but rip people off. I’m certainly not one for long prayers! And I don’t think I devour widows’ houses. But the second part of the reading brought me up short. Here Jesus observes rich people putting in “large sums” to the treasury at the temple, and then a poor widow put in two coins, worth a penny. She had given more, Jesus tells us, because she gave not out of abundance, but out of scarcity. She gave “everything she had”.

Maybe, then I am like the scribes: I haven’t given everything I have, either financially or otherwise. I own a house, travel for pleasure (at times), and give time and attention to things other than God. My job certainly takes up more of my time and attention than God or Church. Church is one of my things, but by no means the only one.

Our congregation has been asked to be more intentional about stewardship. My old church talked about stewardship of “time, talent, and treasure”. What would it mean for me to give, if not everything I have, more of what I have? What can I do that’s sacrificial? Like so many of us, there are many demands on my time. If I am, like the widow, to give “all that I have”, maybe that’s where I need to focus. How can I make more time for God? If I don’t want to be a scribe, I need to think about this.

We think we know what love is, but today’s readings remind us of its many dimensions.

Today in the Gospel of Mark, we read the familiar great commandment, as Jesus answers what is clearly asked as a test: “‘The Lord our God , the Lord is one: 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.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'” (Mark 12:29-31) This passage was memory work in my Sunday School in 3rd grade. I’m always intrigued about what I hear when we read such familiar words. Today, it was the way loving God was a full body experience: heart, soul, mind and strength.

We also see love that involves heart and mind and strength in the reading from Ruth. The custom of the Hebrews was what is called levirate marriage: a childless widow is expected to marry the next brother, and her first child with him will be considered that of her first husband. If that’s not possible, a woman should return to her birth family and be married again. Naomi has no more sons, and is to old to bear another. As a foreigner in Moab, Naomi is planning to return home: there she will not be a stranger but a neighbor. Ruth resists the rules of patriarchal society, refusing to return to her mother. Somewhere in the years of her marriage, Naomi had become important to her. “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.” (Ruth 1:16)

We often hear this passage read at weddings, where the love and loyalty that creates unity is focused on husband and wife. But the love that frames the story of Ruth was not the conventional love of husband and wife, but the close ties between women across generations. That love was strong enough for Ruth to break the rules. She went with Naomi back to Judah, where she was a stranger and a foreigner. The familiarity of the passage obscures the risk that Ruth took.

Love, scripture repeatedly reminds us, is not easy, and it’s certainly not soft. The great commandment tells us that loving God takes everything we have; loving another human being, as Ruth does Naomi, is how we learn to take the risks, and maybe even breaking the rules, that loving God demands of us.