Author: Rosemary Lovelace

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 26^th 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 50^th 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 17^th 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.

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, who loves us all…Amen. Good afternoon, and welcome to Holy Family on this 24th Sunday after Pentecost, in this Season of All Saints. The Gospel reading for today is the story of the Widow’s Mite, with which we are all familiar. By the time this text rolls around in the lectionary, many churches will have already completed their fall stewardship drives. In some ways, it may seem to be a fastball right down Peachtree for a stewardship homily. If you like baseball metaphors, which I do, this may be a pitch too tempting to refuse—simply give like this poor widow—and give freely—and leave it at that. But the more I thought about this passage, the more I wondered what we are about today. If I were to write a letter to the widow in this story, it might go something like this:

Grace and peace to you. I hope this finds you and finds you well. We do not know each other. In fact, I do not even know your name. I decided to write to you, someone I have never met, because we read out loud the story of how you put all that you had into the treasury plate. I have some questions, though, about what this gesture meant to you, and I thought it might help me answer them if I wrote to you. Sometimes when I write I can figure things out. Maybe in the process I can learn more about you, and the church, and what it means to give.    Your story is read often this time of year to inspire people to give to the church. Often, the point of the sermon is to suggest giving in the manner that you gave—not simply to give a little off the top to God—or perhaps more to the point, to the church—but to dig deep, and give freely, all that one has.

My scholar colleagues, however, note that this use of the text may go against the way Mark’s Gospel originally intended the story to be heard. Indeed, by pairing the story of Jesus observing your offering with his pronouncement against the religious leaders in the preceding verses (12:38-40), perhaps we are invited to hear this scene differently than most usually preach it. In denouncing the scribes, Jesus says they “devour widow’s houses” (v. 40). When Jesus comments that the widow “out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (v. 44), he is less praising the widow and more condemning a religious institution that would take a “poor widow’s” last penny. You were no doubt on the margins of your society, both by virtue of being a widow, and simply because you were a woman in a culture where the rights of women were often overlooked or devalued. Many in my own culture, by virtue of circumstance, are also on the margins and, indeed, we are living in a time when women’s rights are once again being challenged. Though you never say a word in this passage, your actions speak volumes. So, while your story may indeed call for a stewardship sermon, perhaps its focus should not be on the stewardship of those sitting in the pews. Rather, I wonder if the focus should be on the church’s stewardship of money given on behalf of those who, like you, are on the margins of society. As a biblical representative of the marginalized and powerless, your actions call the church not to take from the poor but to provide for them. I am often confused when I flip through channels and see one televangelist after another preaching the prosperity gospel. “If you pray right, live right, and send me money,” they often say, “God will bless you with success, happiness, and financial security.”  

The Christianity they proffer is nothing more than a lottery—you pay a dollar and take a chance on winning more. And like the lottery, this kind of “stewardship” preys on the most desperate, the most anxious. It is the psychological equivalent of taking hostage those who are most vulnerable. While most churches and preachers in my time do not distort faith in this way, in our materialistic society, and for some, this message may seem to be an offering of salvation. I am grateful that the congregation I currently serve is dedicated to giving back to the community. May it continue to be so, and perhaps in some way your story is a reminder of the importance of doing exactly that.

It may be that we need to “un-hear” the usual message preached from your story to hear a more theologically appropriate interpretation. I wonder, if you were to speak, whether you might offer a positive model for how the church should care of the “widows” of today, and those who are marginalized, and suffering. I wonder if we can only really give things that are really ours. In other words, we must own before we can give. Stewards are managers, and managers are not owners. Managers are people who handle resources on behalf of the owner. Managers act in the interest of the owner, who is in this case God. Even the wealth of our households is not ours in any permanent sense. It passes through us. I think you understood this. I think you knew that the money you gave—those two coins—were in some sense not even yours. And so, the question is, did Jesus point to your example as a model for giving in this way? What might you have really been saying to us? Many of the scribes whom Jesus condemns in this passage probably thought, like me, that they were doing what was honorable, and good. Perhaps Jesus is calling each of us who are at risk of benefitting from systems of oppression to consider specific and sustained action by engaging in spiritual practices that challenge oppression and marginalization whenever and wherever we find them, especially in our own backyard. Maybe when you put those coins in the plate you were asking us to explore what it really means to give all that you have, to live in faith. Perhaps you were investing, if you will, in a kind of Ignatian “Holy Indifference.” This does not mean one does not care, but rather means a total openness to the will of God in one’s life. In other words, I will strive to discern my will in relation to God’s for the world. And I will do so without being attached to the outcome in unhealthy ways. As the poet Dante expressed it: “In God’s will is our peace.” Or, as Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

We are called to ministries of healing and reconciliation, ministering to the sick, the friendless, and the needy. We are called to respect the dignity of every human being.  I wonder if those two coins you gave represented these deep values. We are called to free people from anything that would separate them from God, from others, and from their most authentic, true selves. You are asking us to remember that the true meaning of sin is to “miss the mark.” Perhaps in pointing to your story, Jesus is not just celebrating your giving. Maybe he is also emphasizing that the giving was in the wrong direction.  Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. “Behold what you are…become what you receive,” St. Augustine said about the Eucharist. I think you understood that we do become what we receive, and what we give. In a sense those two coins symbolized who you had become, and who you were becoming. I remember Mildred, another widow who gave so much, and who was a resident on the Alzheimer’s Unit at Wesley Woods. She never said a word to me in the nine months I served as chaplain there, but she knew every word of every hymn we sang in worship. She had become the songs she sang in the little Methodist Church she attended all her life, and Alzheimer’s could not, would not ever rob her of this deepest core self. She sang with gratitude, and with joy. “Behold what you are…become what you receive.” Indeed, and what we give in gratitude, without thought of what we receive in turn, reminds us that through our participation in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist we are transformed into the Body of Christ, to be taken, blessed, broken, and given for the world. Amen.

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!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

In the name of the God of Creation who loves us all…Amen.

Good morning and welcome to Holy Family on this 24^th Sunday after Pentecost, and a weekend when we observe the Feast of All Souls. Today we hear a Gospel passage about life abundant. We are called to consider the choices that may lead to a theology of scarcity, or abundance. And let’s remember that we will revisit the Lazarus story again during Lent, because the context of the passages for today eventually causes the council and the high priest to plot Jesus’ death. Indeed, in the Palm Sunday story we hear these words: “So the crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to testify…the Pharisees then said to one another, ‘You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!” It is precisely this feeling of powerlessness in the face of a charismatic, potentially dangerous figure that impels the Pharisees to seek Jesus’ death. Indeed, it is the resurrection of Lazarus that leads to Jesus being killed. So, we find a theme that runs throughout these passages and the passion narrative from today, to Holy Week: the theme of ego, hubris, and pride versus self-denial and the death of ego.

This is the paradox that runs throughout the drama that unfolds this week. “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This paradox is not limited to agricultural examples. In my work as a pastor and therapist I see this remarkable truth borne out again and again. Persons whose egoism, pride, and selfish desires so obscure their true selves that they are trapped in a cage of “I, me, and mine,”—and are thereby cut off from God and others. As my colleague Walter Brueggemann from Columbia Seminary has said, we tend to view the world from the perspective of a theology of scarcity—we live as if there is simply not enough of God’s abundant love to go around. And so, we grasp at those things at hand to secure us in our anxiety—to make us feel whole, to tell ourselves that we can do just fine without relationship to God and others. The ways we seek to do this can often take seemingly benign forms. Indeed, we can often use the very tools with which we are taught to construct our lives, even in wonderful educational institutions. Academic excellence, athletic glory, talents of one kind or another are all good things, to be sure. But it is precisely the nature of the human to be at risk for misusing them—for construing them as ultimate—as enough to ground us in sacred ways—when they cannot. We see this paradox at work in the narrative that unfolds this week. The world is fickle. As Walter Brueggemann has reminded us, the world is often an unreliable place, neither its hostility nor its adoration can be trusted. Those who shouted “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday will shout, “crucify him” on Friday. Jesus’ opponents will succeed in killing him, but their apparent victory will turn to dust as Jesus emerges from the tomb and begins to “draw all people to himself.” Death, in this story, paradoxically ends in relationship. The seed must die if it is to bear fruit. Those who rely too much on the trappings of the ego, and forego the path of servant-hood, are at risk. The paradox is this: to die to ourselves is to live fully, in relationship, with compassion. Indeed, arguably, compassion—a radically relational idea, is the cardinal virtue of the pastoral tradition, and it has a rich heritage in our Judeo-Christian tradition.

In Judaism compassion, or rachamin, is the first of thirteen attributes of God listed in Exodus 34:6. The Hebrew rachamin links compassion to the idea that all human beings are related, and connects compassion with justice and obligation in such a way as to emphasize action, rather than feelings. From the Latin, com-passio, means to suffer with the other. Thus, we accept God’s love for humanity and the intrinsic worth of every individual as a child of God. “Drawing all to himself,” then, God calls us into relationship, and compassion occurs precisely in the context of relationship. But we must get ourselves out of the way for this to happen. I am reminded of a wonderful short story, by Garrison Keillor, in which he recalls a game he played as a teenager, with his beloved Aunt Lois. “My favorite game was strangers,” he said, “pretending that we didn’t know each other. I’d get up and walk to the back of the bus and turn around and come back to the seat and say, “Do you mind if I sit here?” And she said, “No, I don’t mind,” and I’d sit. And she’d say: “A very pleasant day, isn’t it?” We didn’t really speak that way in our family, but she and I were strangers, and so we could talk as we pleased. “Are you going all the way to Minneapolis, then?” “As a matter of fact, ma’am, I’m going to New York City. I’m in a very successful hit play on Broadway, and I came back out here to Minnesota because my sweet old aunt died, and I’m going back to Broadway now on the evening plane. Then next week I go to Paris, France, where I reside on the Champs-Elysees. My name is Tom Flambeau, perhaps you’ve read about me?” “No,” she said, “I’ve never heard of you in my life, but I’m very sorry to hear about your aunt. She must have been a wonderful person.” “Oh, she was pretty old. She was all right, I guess.” “Are you very close to your family, then?” “No, not really. I’m adopted you see. My real parents were Broadway actors—they sent me out to the farm thinking I’d get more to eat, but I don’t think that people out here understand sophisticated people like me.” She looked away from me. She looked out the window for a long time. I’d hurt her feelings. Minutes passed, but I didn’t know her. Then I said, “Talk to me, please.” She said “Sir, if you bother me anymore, I’ll have the driver throw you off this bus.” “Say that you know me. Please.” And then, when I couldn’t bear it one more second, she touched me and smiled, and I was myself again.” Indeed. We become our true selves in the context of relationship. The Gospel of John reminds us of this truth. We must die to the messages of success that we receive so often in our culture—that the path to freedom lies in our self-motivated ambitions and accomplishments and that we are justified in doing whatever is necessary in achieving our goals. And alienation from self, other and God can result in many different forms of death. Jesus was a master at recognizing that relationships have the power to heal what is broken, even when we do not recognize it ourselves.

The story is told of the response of some in Denmark to the Nazi invasion of that country. I first heard this story in a history class at Rhodes College, but it bears repeating here for many reasons. Seems that in 1940, German tanks rumbled across the borders of the peaceful country of Denmark. The Nazi’s, already possessing control of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, encountered little resistance from the small northern nation. Soon, other countries fell to the German forces as well: Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France. Vicky and I have recently returned from Paris, where many reminders of the occupation of that city by Nazi Germany remain. As part of their systematic method of intimidation and oppression, the Germans announced that every Dane of Jewish descent would be required to wear a yellow Star of David. They had done the same thing in Germany and other countries. Any Jew who failed to comply would be put to death. The Star of David, a proud symbol of the Jewish faith and culture, would be used to mark them as undesirable members of society—to rob them of their dignity, their possessions, and even their lives. The Danish government and its people were in no position to do battle against the powerful German army. But their leader, King Christian the 10^th, made a bold and courageous move. He called for all the Danish citizens to wear the Star of David, for every Danish household to stand in solidarity as partners with their Jewish neighbors. And remember, many leading theologians of the day used scripture to justify the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Tremendous fear must have gripped the hearts of those first Gentile citizens to venture forth from their homes the morning after the Kings’ announcement. Would they be the only ones to heed the Kings’ announcement? Would they be singled out, prosecuted and killed along with their Jewish brothers and sisters?  

What they saw was nothing short of a miracle. There were Stars of David everywhere. The Jews among them wept when they love and support of their fellow Danish citizens. And because the people stood together, the Nazi’s full plan of persecution of Jews in that country was never carried out. God calls us into relationship. And these relationships of accountability and transparency have the power to heal what is broken, to make whole our tendency amid a theology of scarcity that we alone have what we need to secure ourselves. And the great paradoxical truth is that to be fully in relationship, we must die to ourselves and give ourselves over to compassion. This is the great common denominator of the great religions of the Abrahamic tradition. There is plenty of God’s love to go around, and it is passed one to another in relationships like those I have described this morning. Drawing all to himself, Jesus asks that we die to self. In so doing we do not die to excellence in academics, athletics, art and drama—all the wonderful qualities that make this school the remarkable place that it is. Rather, we are asked to keep these goals in perspective, and remain vigilant, lest we lose sight of that which is most deeply human—that it is more important to be in relationship, than to be right—more important to die to self, than to live in the belief that the self is all we need. Yeats reminded us that without relationships of accountability and compassion “things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Without dying to self, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” This season of All Souls reminds us that these categories are not mutually exclusive. We can be persons of conviction, embodying the Divine spark of compassion that is our God-given gift. God calls us into relationship, where we can become our truest, best selves—precisely when we lose ourselves in service and compassion. In this season of stewardship let us remember to give ourselves away, with gratitude, in relationship.  Amen.

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, a philanthropist…

Respected by all…

Job had everything…

And he deserved it!

Meanwhile…

In Heaven, God is sitting in his omnipotent majesty…

Looking down on Job with some pride!

Job is pretty much what God intended us to be…faithful and righteous.

But then…the plot complicates…

In comes Satan…

Satan….the “adversary”…the “accuser”.

Now, you may ask: what is Satan doing in Heaven… 

And how come he and God seem like pals?

Good question…

No one seems to have come up with a good answer as to why evil exists…

Why God allows it to exist…certainly I don’t!

But…there it is…

Evil is a reality!

Well…Satan has been, he says, patrolling earth…

Checking things out.

God asks if he has observed Job…

God is proud of him…he’s so good!

Satan says: “Of course he’s good…why shouldn’t he be…You’ve given him everything!” “But”, says conniving Satan… “take away his prosperity and he will curse you!”

God takes the bait…

He’ll strike him with all kinds of misfortune and bet Job will remain faithful.

And he does!

To make a long story short…

Job does not curse God in his misfortune…

Satan insists…hit him with more misfortune…

Take away everything except his life!

In this long agonizing process…Job’s friends and even his wife…give him advice…

The leading theory offered to Job is that he must be hiding some secret sin…

God knows about it and Job must confess! 

But Job is truthful…

He is not hiding a secret sin!

Even Job’s wife…who is tired of his misery…

Tells him: “Go ahead…Curse God and die!”

But Job has too much integrity to do that!

So, sitting on a dung-heap, in misery, scraping scabs off his body with a potsherd…

He dares God to meet face-to-face…

He asks God to explain his unjust suffering.

Now, Job is speaking for all humanity….

WHY IS THERE UNDESERVED SUFFERING? Why are innocent Palestinians and Jews dying?

Why are children starving?

Why do corrupt politicians get power and grind down the needy?…

For that matter…why are there natural disasters?

Earthquakes, forest fires, landslides, plagues…

Only part of this can be laid at the feet of such as humans misusing nature…

Job is wrestling with the problem Dostoevsky put this way: “The death of one innocent child refutes the goodness of God!”

So Job challenges God to a face-to-face meeting…

And surprise!…God agrees…which is unusual!

But when God appears…what happens?

God makes a power-play!

Who is Job… measly, powerless, just human, Job?

Did Job create the mighty seas?

The stars…sun, moon?

The vast array of animals and the

Other miracles of nature?

Next to God, Job is a puny moment.

Next to God…

Humans are like dust!

And of course, confronted with the infinite, omniscient power and majesty of God…

Confronted with glory of God…

Poor human Job cannot stand…

How does one argue with the omniscient creator and sustainer of all that is or ever will be?…

There is no way…

Job caves in and says:

“I see you and I repent in dust and ashes!”

God has pulled a power-play and simply overwhelmed poor Job…

But notice….Job has never retracted his complaint…

Job has submitted to power…

But he has not taken back his accusations…

He has been treated unjustly.

The final act of the Book of Job has God restoring him with even more goodies than he had before…more animals, more crops more children and more public esteem…

Seems it is “happily ever after”ending…

The idea is, God is fair and just after all…

Though I wonder about those dead innocent family members…

But probably a scribe added this ending to square with the theology of the time

Probably the original left things up in the air…or there may have been a less “Happy ever after” ending.

But the question in Job…which is our question too   is not answered…

How is it that bad things happen to good people?

That innocent children are bombed and their parents maimed or killed?

Job’s God has no personal experience of the plight of we little human beings…Of a mourning Jewish or Palestinian mother…

But Jesus was different…

God may have been moved by Job’s argument…and decided to share our human experience.    

We know he changed his mind and healed an unclean Gentile child.

Because he had compassion…

God changed God’s mind!

Think of it…

God changes the Divine Mind.

Of course in the Hebrew scriptures, God changes his mind all the time…

For instance when God is angry at Israel sometimes someone like Moses cleverly talks him out of destroying his people…

It happens several times…

God even repents…spares wicked Nineveh for instance…

But in most of the Old Testament God still acts like an all-powerful dictator.

But something happened around the time of later Judaism…

Around the time of Jesus…

God….who had been the omniotent ruler of all…

God…who conceived, created and sustains all that is or ever will be…

God who is infinite and above all the messiness of human life…

Decided…maybe after his encounter with Job…

Decided he really could not fully understand us…

Could not understand we humans…from the infinite distance of eternity…

So God….became incarnate from a human Mother…

For us humans and our salvation…

Became one of us….became human!

As Paul says:

“Emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born human…”

And then…He suffered and died…

Pinned to a criminal’s cross for hours of agony…

God knew…

God lived though human pain and doubt and fear…

And God…I dare say it.

God died our human death!  

So now there is nothing in our experience which God does not know from God’s own experience!

So…then…

Why doesn’t God “fix” it and get rid of sin and suffering and death?

I don’t know…

No one does I suspect…

But we do have a promise…

A promise from one who knows…personally…

What it is to suffer helplessly…

To die our death…                  

But then…to rise victorious…

God died a human…a human like you and me…

In order that we might become like Him…

And live forever in the fullness of love!

So now even in the face of death…

We can sing: “Alleluia! Alleluia….Alleluia!

22nd Sunday After Pentecost – Byron Tindall

They just didn’t get it, again for the umpteenth time.

Zebedee’s sons, James and John, indicate what kind of kingdom they are expecting when Jesus takes over the leadership of that kingdom. “…and they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’”

The place of honor at a ruler’s court at that time was just to the right and left of where the ruler sat. It seems like James and John were expecting Jesus to come back as some type of political ruler or a leader who would be recognized as such by the way his court was organized.

“But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’”

The brothers agreed that they were capable of following Jesus down that road and told him so.

About this time, the other 10 disciples got wind of the conversation that was going on between Jesus, James and John. They got a little miffed.

Jesus called the 12 to come to a meeting where he tried to explain to them that his kingdom was unlike any other kingdom ever seen on earth. They just didn’t get it.

Matthew and Luke report similar incidents in their Gospels. John makes no mention of this exchange between Jesus and his disciples. Interestingly enough, Matthew has the request to sit on either side of Jesus coming from James’s and John’s mother.

This exchange between Jesus and the 12 amounted to one of the passion announcements.

When we stop and think about it for a minute, James and John, along with Peter, are the most often mentioned of the disciples in all four of the Gospels.

We have another announcement of the Passion of Jesus earlier in Mark.

In Chapter 8, verses 30-38, Mark wrote: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’”

This time, the main character who was confused was Peter. Peter, just like the rest of them, just didn’t get it.

The so-called passion announcements are not the only time the followers of Jesus didn’t understand what he was attempting to tell and teach his followers.

On more than one occasion in the Gospels, Jesus had to take his disciples aside to explain to them what he was saying in one of his parables. Sometimes even then they just didn’t get it.

Misunderstanding Jesus is not limited to the 12 either.

In the Third Chapter of John’s Gospel, we find the exchange between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus who was also a member of the Jewish Council.

After hearing Jesus answer his question, Nicodemus replied, “How is this possible?” After the explanation of his answer, Nicodemus once again asked, “How is this possible?” He just didn’t get it.

Using parables to get a point across can be risky, as parables can be understood on many levels at the same time. The message may not necessarily come through the same way on the different levels. People hear the same message differently.

It’s a lot like the difference between a sign and a symbol.

For those of us with drivers’ licenses, when we come to an eight-sided sign with white lettering on a red background, we know we are supposed to come to a complete stop. I have to admit, however, there are those who respond to this sign by slowing down a bit and continuing on through the intersection. These signs are supposed to mean stop, not just slow down.

I have a collection of crosses I wear, mostly on Sundays. For me, they are a symbol of my belief and faith. For others, a cross is a pretty piece of jewelry with no indication of anything else. Either meaning is acceptable.

That eight-sided sign is supposed to have a universal meaning. A cross on a chain can be understood on many levels.

But I digress a little.

In the Baptismal Covenant in the Book of Common Prayer, the celebrant and people in the congregation engage in an exchange, which goes, in part:

Celebrant: Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers ?

People: I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant: Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

People: I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant: Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

People: I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

People: I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

People: I will, with God’s help.

The way I read and understand this, following Jesus does not just mean giving up an hour or so once a week to come together to worship him. It’s a 24/7 commitment, but sometimes we just don’t get it.

In a little over two weeks, we should exercise our right and responsibility to vote for the next President and Vice President of the United States. I’m not going to tell you for whom you should vote. I ask you to remember your commitment to follow Jesus when you mark your ballot.

The expression goes, “If you don’t vote on Tuesday, you don’t have the right to complain on Wednesday.” Sometimes, we just don’t get it.