Month: November 2024

Last Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 29, November 24, 2024: 2 Samuel 23:1-7;
Psalm 132:1-13 (14-19); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

This Sunday is the last in the Church year: we begin the liturgical year next week, with the beginning of advent. For many years it was called Christ the King Sunday, though now it is more often called “The Reign of Christ”. As we end the year, we are reminded of the whole range of God’s promises to us and the wonders of God’s kingdom.

Samuel starts, telling us that “he has made with me an everlasting covenant,
ordered in all things and secure”. In the psalm, we hear how David promised not to rest until he finds the ark of the covenant, where the Israelites believe the Lord lived. David would provide a home for it, so it would not get lost. After, the Lord makes a promise to David, “If your children keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their children will sit upon your throne for evermore.” The Lord has chosen Zion as his home, he “delights” in her. “I will surely bless her provisions, and satisfy her poor with bread.”

These are the promises that name the Israelites as the chosen people; these were stories that were told to remind them of their place in God’s kingdom. The covenant is a two way street for the Israelites: they must be faithful to the Lord, and the Lord will protect them. They need to repeat the stories because they fail, but when they return to the Lord, he forgives them.

In today’s Gospel we hear the story of Jesus and Pilate. When asked if he is indeed a King, he does not really answer. Instead he says, “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.”

Like so many of Jesus’ statements, this is a bit cryptic. There’s nothing about saving sinners, or bringing people to God. Insofar as Jesus has a kingdom, it is not defined by geography or even creeds, just a commitment to truth. It is not a kingdom defined by power as we know it in the world; it is a kingdom defined by understanding that we are all children of God. The truth is the commandments, to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. In the words of Micah, whose teachings are echoed by Jesus, what the Lord requires is you “to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God”.

We live in a world where the truth is hard to come by, with other nations and corporations spending lots of money to tell us lies. And the rewards of this world seem so tempting: we are surrounded by people selling us things, from pills to make us thin to ideas that will (supposedly) make us rich. Some politicians promise that if the people we hate are taken care of, everything will be fine. The piles of stuff in the aisles of stores are a reminder of our crazy level of consuming goods. Where is truth here? How can we find it? How do we stay faithful to it? With all this stuff, what does it mean to do justice and love kindness?

John tells his readers that Jesus is coming with the clouds. “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” The alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. The Lord is indeed the whole story. If we remember that the Lord is indeed the beginning and the end, we will generally be truth-tellers.

The reign of Christ is one where everyone always remembers that God is the beginning and end. With that, and in loving our neighbors as ourselves we are among the truth-tellers.

Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 27, 10 November 2024: Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17; Psalm 127; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

Last week we heard Ruth declare that she would follow Naomi back to Naomi’s home in Bethlehem. This was a risky decision: support depended on being part of a household headed by a man, and Naomi and Ruth were both widowed. So they arrived in Bethlehem destitute. Naomi is working to link Ruth to the men in her family, who were obligated to protect them. But Naomi does not do this by demanding directly; she does it by making her relatives see their responsibility. In the sections we have not read, Ruth works gleaning in Boaz’s fields, and he is kind to her. When she lies at his feet on the threshing floor, she is asking him to take responsibility for them. And when the most senior relative refuses to marry her, Boaz does.

Reading this story this week, I am conscious of the vulnerability of migrants. Ruth and Naomi returned to Naomi’s place of origin, but needed to find protectors. It was not automatic. Boaz was generous to a foreigner, and also offered protection to Naomi.

Why is this story part of the scriptures? It is explained in the last sentence. The child born to Ruth and Boaz is grandfather to King David. Thus an immigrant, a foreigner, is a crucial link in the descent of Jesus. She was expected to return to her parents, but instead she followed her mother-in-law. While the Biblical genealogies omit women (and even in the genealogy that follows in Ruth 4:18-22, it is only fathers), here we have a whole book telling us the story of how one woman came to be a mother, in this case part of the genealogy of David. The story reinforces a key commandment in the Hebrew scriptures, which are full of reminders to be kind to strangers. For example:

You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deut 10:19);

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. (Lev 19:34)

And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place. (Jer. 22:3)

Jesus picks up on this theme when he separates the sheep from the goats, and promises that those those who fed and welcomed him would inherit the kingdom. When they asked when they had done this, the response is ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ (Matt 25:35, 40) It is not surprising that hospitality has long been seen as a central virtue.

Last week we were reminded that a key to understanding the commandments was to “love your neighbor as yourself”. This week we are reminded that foreigners, strangers, and aliens are all our neighbors. May live as if this was so.

Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 26, 3 November 2024: Ruth 1:1-18; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 12:28-34

“Which commandment is the first of all?” The scribe’s question to Jesus is not a trick question, but it’s a hard one: the Torah contains over 600 commandments, and sorting them out is an intellectual challenge. Jesus answers in what have become familiar words, but were not when he said to the scribe,

“The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: 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.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The first commandment is known in Judaism as the “Shema”, from the first word of the commandment, “Hear”. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Faithful Jews will recite the Shema twice a day, at rising and going to bed, as an affirmation of their faith. If you are faithful, you love God completely, with heart, soul, mind and strength: this is not an easy faith. And so Jesus’ response is an entirely orthodox Jewish response.

The second part of his answer is less formulaic for first century Jews, but still orthodox: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. This too draws on the Torah, in Leviticus 19:18. It summarizes a whole raft of commandments which detail how one is to treat others. Similarly, Rabbi Hillel the Elder (who died about 20 years before Jesus) answered a similar question by saying, “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”

It is worth paying attention to the fact that you love others as you love yourself. Loving yourself, treating yourself with respect, acknowledging your needs, is necessary to serve others well. Churches have not always been good at talking about this; women in particular are often urged to a sacrificial giving without respect to their needs. But taking care of ourselves does not necessarily make us narcissistic egomaniacs: it makes us healthy human beings. You cannot offer love to others if you do not offer it to yourself.

Over the past several weeks we had had some more challenging readings from Mark; he has repeatedly reminded his followers of the need to give up what they have to follow him. He tells them it will be hard, and they will suffer. Yet here, asked for the central commandments, he turns to love. The love here is not the soft pictures of romantic love, but the hard work of treating everyone we meet the way we would want to be treated. It does not come easily.

Our reading from the Book of Ruth offers a vision of another kind of love. In this case, it is the faithfulness of a daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. Naomi is widowed, and her sons have died. She is too old to have more sons for them to marry. She wants to send her daughters-in-law home to their families of birth, so they can be married and have children. She has nothing to offer. And yet, despite repeated urging, Ruth refuses to leave her. In a lovely poem, Ruth makes a promise:

Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge;

your people shall be my people, and your God my God.

Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried.

Naomi and Ruth will support each other: in the end, Ruth will marry again, and have a son, so Naomi is protected in her old age. As we will see next week, the story is complicated, but here we have a simple statement of faithfulness. Ruth will not let Naomi return to her home alone.

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.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

It sounds simple. It is the work of a lifetime.

Feast of All Saints, 1 November 2024: Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9; or Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, and tomorrow is All Souls: over these two days we remember those who have gone before us. Here in California, the Mexican custom of the Día de los Muertos has been widely adopted, with ofrenda, the altars with offerings and remembrances, not just at home but in schools and workplaces. The calaveras, the highly decorated skulls of the ofrenda, have been incorporated into American Halloween culture. I am always moved when I see ofrenda: they tell stories both about those who have died and those who remember them.

The point is, of course, that we remember the dead. In theory, All Saints celebrates those who are in some way saints, while All Souls celebrates all the souls who have gone before us. But whether saints or sinners, (or a mixture of both, like most of us) the dead may remain alive to us for years. We remember them, or the stories about them: some of those I remember died before I could really know them.

And so our readings today offer comfort not in memory, but in the promise of the future, what happens to the dead after they have died. The Wisdom of Solomon tells us that,

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.

From Isaiah:

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

From Revelation:

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.“

And then our Gospel, the story of the raising of Lazarus. For me, the thing in this story that sticks out is that Jesus grieves with Lazarus’ family. He is there. He is with us in our sorrow. We have the promise that “he will wipe every tear from their eye”, and we believe it because we saw him do it.

As Christians we believe that death is not the end. But that does not mean that we do not feel the loss of those who have died. So we remember those we have known, who have touched our lives. What makes their spirits live on? What do we carry from them?

It is good to remember, to mourn those we have lost. We say their names, and join them to other more public saints: Robert, Thorry, Kent, Lisa, Lee, Dolores, Lorna, Bradd, Julia, David, Kitty, Dora, Romina, John, Joan, Joann, Jean, Evelyn, Connie, Jan, Joseph, Joseph, Alice, Tom, Betty, Bill, Don, Sigmund, Clara, Clive, Don, Ann, Natalie, Diane, Hanne, Margo, Annie, Laura, Ray, and so many more. As we remember, though, we can also sing,

      But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;      The saints triumphant rise in bright array;    The King of Glory passes on his way.       Alleluia, alleluia!*

* From “For All the Saints”, The Hymnal 1982, #287