November 17, 2024
The Collect: Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel: Mark 13:1-8
As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, `I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.”
In the Name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen. I bidGrace and peace to each of you, welcome, and good morning on this 26th Sunday after Pentecost. With the holidays almost upon us, and the long green season of Pentecost ending, we hear this cautionary passage from the Gospel of Mark, and are given to wonder what it means, and how to place it in the context of Jesus’ ministry, and of our lives, especially with Advent just around the corner. This may seem to represent a paradox or an abrupt clash of seasonal messages, hearing this apocalyptic or eschatological language—which simply means prophetic talk of the end-times, common in both Christian and Hebrew scripture—just as we are turning the corner on the season of waiting and watching for the birth of Jesus.
And, yet I wonder. Is this simply an anomaly of the lectionary, or is there perhaps more in common with these themes than we might see at first glance? Such language is not limited to religion, of course. Feeling that one is living in uncertain times and facing an ambiguous future is a theme found in literature from Lord of the Rings, to Harry Potter, to the Wizard of Oz. And we are in what some call the “postmodern age,” a time in which prevailing narratives such as science and religion, and even the truth, are contested and groaning beneath the weight of competing claims. Some have called this the “age of anxiety” for precisely this reason. As Jesus and the disciples leave the temple, the disciples gaze at the impressive stones and buildings, and suggest that they seem immovable. Jesus disrupts their worldview by saying that even the great stones that serve to create the temple will one day be thrown down, and this troubling vision understandably prompts questions. In our age, of course, we have seen the falling of the twin towers, super-storms of unprecedented ferocity, our neighbors in Western North Carolina experiencing a storm unlike any in history for that region, and other events, including political discord of epic proportions. What does one do in response to such events, and how might we hear Jesus’ response to the disciples’ anxious questions—and perhaps our own? To whom do we turn when the ground is shifting around us, and the times, as songwriter Bob Dylan said, ‘they are a changing’? To whom or what do we turn when we are lost, and do not know which way to go?
And these need not be events on a grand scale. Sometimes events that are harbingers of change happen on a much smaller, subtler, local level, and yet may profoundly affect the lives of those in their wake. For some 30 or more Thanksgiving mornings, for example, I ran the Atlanta half-marathon. The race-course changed a few years ago, however, and now makes a large and fascinating circle through the city, from Turner field to Georgia Tech, and from Atlantic Station to Piedmont Park ; to Sweet Auburn, and Oakland Cemetery. I always got a bit wistful, I confess, when we ran through Atlantic Station. When I was in college I worked each summer at the Atlantic Steel Company, located where shops, grand boulevards, homes, and gleaming office towers now stand. But for a season, this was a world unto itself, replete with a baseball team and field, a small hospital, company housing, and the fascinating, living creature that was a steel mill in full form, including the fire-breathing dragon at the heart of it all—the massive furnace. For a college kid, this was a wondrous place, filled with interesting men and women, and maybe best of all, excellent pay. It was my ticket to a wonderful liberal arts education after my father told me that if I did not attend UGA, I could pay for college myself. My job was that of a welder’s apprentice, assigned to the summer welding team, based in Warehouse #13, about where the Cirque du soleil tent is as we speak. The mill shut down incrementally in the summer, and we followed the steam cleaners and machinists as we worked through the mill repairing equipment and laying new beads of molten metal on miles of conveyers. I became attached to my co-workers, and to those men and women whom I respected, and admired. And, let me add here, welding is tough. The best welder on our team, far and away, was a Black woman who elevated welding to an art form and who adopted me as her friend.
She, and my supervisor, Gene Rainey, patiently tried to teach me the trade, but I never really caught on to it. During my third summer at the mill, as my junior year in college approached, Mr. Rainey lifted his welder’s visor one afternoon, paused, and said “William, you are not a very good welder.” “No sir,” I replied. “I am not.” “But you could be,” he said. “And it’s a good life. I see you reading these books all the time. Where will they get you? Do you know what you want to do with your life? Do you know where all this is heading?” I confessed that I did not. And what I knew, but did not say then, was that I, too, had questions about where college was taking me, and I had a home-town girlfriend, and things at home were, I knew, not on firm ground. I did not know where I was going, or where all that “book learning” as Mr. Rainey put it, was leading, and I was secretly thinking about staying home when school began…about taking some time off. “Stay here in September,” he said. “In 18 months, you can be a union member, and get your welding license, and I promise you’ll be making $60K a year. Think about it.” And I did. I thought about it a lot, and I prayed for some sense of direction, and I had to remind myself that, as a much wiser person than I once said, “All who wander are not lost.” In the end, in September, I went back to school. I still was not sure where all that book learning was leading, but I believed that I was somehow on the right course, and that if I focused on what was most important, I would find my way. I would find my vocation—my calling—my life. Several years later a Canadian company bought Atlantic Steel and moved the mill to Cartersville, and not too long after that, that gleaming new mill shut down. You can visit it today, a veritable ghost town, empty, its furnaces cold, and its men and women, most of who had too much seniority to find jobs elsewhere, out of work. I was not there the day they removed the last brick from Atlantic Steel, and I am glad I was not. But as a young man I could not imagine the wondrous place that had once been that mill would be gone, like the last, fading notes of a summer song.
And the economy that had built and sustained it was changing as well. The lives of those men and women were irrevocably altered, and some measure of my own youthful innocence, to borrow a phrase from Yeats, was gone with it. The steel mill had been thrown down, to use the language from today’s Gospel, and an era was passing away. Last November, at my 50th high school reunion, a football teammate of mine who had joined the Marines out of high school and gone on to become a police officer referred to me as a “jock gone bad from too much education.” I told him that I had received a wonderful blue-collar education at Atlantic Steel on the way to a life-changing liberal arts education. He paused for a moment, took a sip of beer, and said “I’m sorry. I did not know.” These false dichotomies between blue collar workers and college graduates, and binary thinking, either/or thinking, are posing a tremendous threat to us all. Perhaps it is the folly of humanity to seek permanence in the things of this world, and yet it seems to be our nature. The Roman Empire, responsible for killing Jesus because he was a threat to their agenda, lasted only 300 years. Perhaps it is our deep angst in knowing our own mortality that leads us to build structures of many kinds: buildings, ships, corporate businesses, political empires, steel mills, even families. When we half-marathoners enter Atlantic Station on the Northside Drive entrance there is one, lone reminder of Atlantic Steel Company in the form of a large steam engine turned sculpture, echoing the arch found a mile or so down 17th avenue. I suspect that only a handful of runners know its history, or that of the steel mill now gone. God has placed in us a deep-seated need to create something that will transcend the finitude of our earthly lives. As the author David Brooks has written,
“About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical, and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all…When I meet such a person it brightens my whole day. But I confess I often have a sadder thought: It occurs to me that I’ve achieved a decent level of career success, but I have not achieved that. I have not achieved that generosity of spirit, or that depth of character…A few years ago I realized that I wanted to be a bit more like those people. I realized that if I wanted to do that I was going to have to work harder to save my own soul. I was going to have to have the sort of moral adventures that produce that kind of goodness. I was going to have to be better at balancing my life…It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?
Begging the question, what will it be, those core values that transform who we are? And so, within the broader context of this chapter of Mark’s gospel, Jesus reminds us that our work is to be faithful, patient and we are advised to keep awake, because God is working out the plan of salvation and has not abandoned us. All shall be well, as Julian of Norwich said, because God has promised that all shall be well. Christ promises us that things will be all right because when death on the cross appeared to be the end, God had the last word at an empty tomb.
Throughout our lives, we will experience death and resurrection many times over as the neatly arranged structures of our lives are thrown down. These apocalyptic words of Jesus remind us to hang on, and to place our trust in something more than ourselves, our possessions, our stock portfolios, our relationships to the political agendas of the day, our health, our intellect. It is to place our ultimate trust in the One from whom all these things come. It is to accept our finitude and mortality in a radical trust of God’s unchangeable grace and goodness so that we might be freed from the captivity of anxious fear, and finally live fully and freely as God’s beloved children. Whether a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions, or a terrorist attack or wars and rumors of wars, or the loss of a young persons’ innocence and a radically shifting economy, our focus must be not on whatever signs may be evident, but on the one who is to come—and who reminds us amidst destruction that blessing is certain, and the center will indeed hold. And in the meantime, seek justice, do mercy, believe that the moral arc of the universe is long and bends toward justice. Who is leading us astray, to quote today’s Gospel, in our time? I leave that to each of you, and your own discernment based on your core values, to determine. Increasingly I am looking at the world through the eyes of my grandchildren. Who would I like to see them look up to, and emulate? How do I want my granddaughters to be treated as the young women they are becoming, and who in the public sphere is an example of this? Who is best approximating our Baptismal Covenant, especially the part about respecting the dignity of every human being? Who is speaking the truth? The best may lack all conviction, while the worst may be full of passionate intensity, as Yeats said, but those of us who watch, and wait, will still have good and faithful work to do. As Wendell Berry said;
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium.
Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest….Practice resurrection. Amen.
November 10, 2024
The Collect:O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Mark 12:38-44
38As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces,39and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!40They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”41He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.43Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.44For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
In the Name of the God of Creation,
November 3, 2024
24th Sunday after Pentecost – Bill Harkins
The Gospel: John 11: 32-44
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
October 27, 2024
23rd Sunday after Pentecost – Ted Hackett
Lessons 10: 6-27
Job and Evil
The last four Sunday’s Hebrew Bible readings have been from the Book of Job.
In those four readings we have pretty well covered the Book …
Hebrew Scriptures…our Old Testament…
Have four parts…
The Law…the first 5 books, the Prophets, and then pretty much everything else … called the “Wisdom Literature”…
Wisdom contains a lot of good sage advice about how to live….plus some stuff that doesn’t fit any particular category.
The Book of Job goes here.
You all know poor Job…and the saying : “The patience of Job”…and of course we have read selections from it over the past four weeks.
So basically…you know the story…
but let’s review…
It’s a very theological story!
Job is a good and righteous man…
He is generous…supporting widows and poor people…making civic gifts..
He is so well respected that when he goes to sit among the men of the community where they gather by the front gate of the city…that the other men do not speak…out of respect.
And Job was very prosperous…
Property, crops, livestock, Sons and Daughters
And in his time and place…
According to orthodox theology…
Such success was proof of his righteousness…
A leader,