“Apocalypse Now?” (Mark 13:1-8)

It seems like “apocalypse” is a subject of endless fascination for us humans: the is Greek in origin, and it means “revelation.”  Our biblical book of Revelation, which of course was written in Greek, was originally referred to as “The Apocalypse of John,” because (a)  it is of the literary genre of apocalypse and (b) it was written by somebody named John, imprisoned we think on the Greek island of Patmos, which is actually closer to modern-day Turkey than to mainland Greece. Apocalyptic literature, apocalypse as a genre, was very popular in the few centuries surrounding the birth of Christ, and the Bible contains some fine examples of it, most notably Revelation, but also a few chapters in the Book of Daniel and a chapter each—give or take a few verses—in Matthew, Mark and Luke, of which this morning’s lectionary reading is a part.

By classic definition, apocalyptic literature is written in extremis; that is, it’s written as a reaction to extreme conditions, or in anticipation of those conditions.  That is certainly true of Revelation: it was written, we think, as a reaction to all that went on in the second half of the first century after Christ, which included most notably the invasion of Jerusalem by the Romans and the destruction of the Temple, including its desecration, to use apocalyptic language, by the placing of the Emperor front and center instead of the Lord God almighty.  For Jews, the destruction of the Temple—it happened in 70 AD—was an event that was cataclysmic, far more so than would be the burning of a church for us.  The Temple was the center of religion for them, and equally important, the center of their culture and civilization.  God was literally thought to reside there; if the Temple wasn’t in Jerusalem, then neither was God.

 Of course, apocalyptic literature is written today, isn’t it?  Pam and Mike and I went to see the film Zombieland  when it first came out because, well, we like a good zombie flick, and it is set in the time after the zombie apocalypse, which will occur—behold!—because of our general environmental meddling and bad hygiene, which allows some kind of bacteria to get out of hand and turn a significant portion of the populace into, you know, zombies.  In at least a slightly higher literary vein, Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is set in the times after some unspecified conflagration, and follows the travels of a father and son across the blasted landscape.  It won the  Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which I can assure you that Zombieland did not, even though it’s a lot more fun, and shows how apocalypse has come up in the estimation of human culture since the first century AD.

It also shows how the definition has shifted: it originally meant “revelation,” as in the revelation of a final cataclysmic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, with the forces of light inevitably winning in the end, that will nevertheless end civilization as we know it.  Thus the naming of the literary genre.  Now, in our popular usage, it refers to the ultimate battle itself, or the ultimate conflagration, that ends our culture and technology and et cetera.

There’s another species of modern writing about things apocalyptic that most of us are familiar with; though it’s not apocalypse in a classic literary sense, it nevertheless trades on and profits from our fascination with all things apocalyptic every bit as much as Zombieland and The Road.  The most well-known example at present is the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which has 13 volumes in the original series and 3 or 4, now, in the prequel series, Before They Were Left Behind. But the apocalyptic craze of the latter half of the 20^th century all started with a guy named Hal Lindsey, who wrote a certain book that started the entire end-of-century popular Christian fascination with the end times.

Lindsey was educated theologically at Dallas Theological Seminary, after batting around as a tugboat captain, and went to work for what was then called Campus Crusade for Christ and is now simply Campus Crusade.  In 1970, he co-authored The Late Great Planet Earth with a ghost-writer who in later editions would receive author credit.  It was published by Zondervan Press, a Christian house associated with the Southern Baptists, and though a great many similar books had come before, the book’s breezy style and clear exposition of very complex ideas ensured it was a major hit amongst Christians.  Then, in 1973, it was picked up by Bantam, the first such book to be published by a secular publisher, and sales went through the roof.  When it was all said and done, The Late, Great Planet Earth had become the number one nonfiction bestseller of the 1970s, with over 9 million copies sold.  Its successor, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, to the general consternation, no doubt, of the New York Times.

The Late, Great Planet Earth and its sequel attempt to come up with a coherent set of predictions about the end times from the complex, highly symbolic, and often contradictory apocalyptic literature in Daniel, Revelation and the gospels.  Using a literal interpretive lens, they assign players on the contemporary world stage—both nations and individuals—to roles within the book of Revelation.  For example, the Soviet Union was the bear, and guess who was the eagle?  Guess who were the good guys?  And although Lindsey wouldn’t let himself get pinned down to exact dates, his reading of the apocalyptic passages in scripture convinced him that the end was near, and that it would probably happen sometime during the 1980s.  And I don’t know if you noticed, but that didn’t happen, and so he set about revising his prophecies, sharpening them up to try to make them more accurate and—just incidentally, of course—sell more books.

What makes people go ga-ga over apocalypse?  I myself, as an impressionable youth, spent many an hour discussing Lindsey’s book, and I even went with a college group to hear him speak.  Why do we spend millions of dollars on the enterprise, along with expending a large chunk of our lives reading about and talking and fulminating about the end times?  I think part of it is a simple, innocent desire to know the future, to know that despite what it looks like in the present—and nobody would doubt the prevalence of wars and rumors of war in the last part of the last century—things will come out in the end, that good will win over the forces that beset us, that God will win in the end.

But there’s a darker side as well, and it’s shown in Lindsey’s activities since it became apparent that he was, uh, a little off in his predictions.  At present, he holds forth on Trinity Broadcast Network, at his own expense, still prophesying, pointing out signs he thinks might be significant, such as whether Israel signs some particular treaty or not, and railing against the forces of the anti-christ.  Forces such as liberals, and Barack Obama, for example.  Now you may or may not agree with them politically, but most of us would hardly call align them with the anti-Christ . . . but Lindsey does, and the dark side of apocalyptic literature, and our tendency to pore over it, is that there always is a dark side, and it tends to consist of whomever we don’t like.  The apocalypse is often an excuse to demonize our enemies.

The Left Behind series shows this clearly: in the latter books, where the end-war—which some call Armageddon—is fairly under way, the books depict Christ melting the faces off of unbelievers, of slaughtering them on a great white steed, millions of them.  When questioned by interviewers how they could reconcile this with a God who the Bible says is love, and with God’s Son who is called the Prince of Peace, they shrug their shoulders and say: “Hey, I didn’t write it, it’s in the Bible.” 

Perhaps this is why the Bible itself takes something of a dim view of expending a lot of time and effort trying to figure out when it will all end.  Paul tells the people of the church at Thessalonica, in his first letter to them, that regarding the end times—what he calls the “times and seasons”—they don’t need anything written to them, because they themselves “know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” And he uses the Jewish-apocalyptic term “day of the Lord,” from which our concept of the Kingdom of God evolved.

Paul isn’t very keen on worrying too much about when the second coming is going to be; as he says, it’ll catch us unawares, it’ll come like a thief in the night . . . he just tells his congregation members to keep awake, by which he means “keep ready.”  You never know when it’s going to happen, you never know when it’s going to come.

In the so-called “little apocalypse” part of which we read today, Jesus says much the same thing.  First he predicts the destruction of Jerusalem—and he was right on the money about that—and the “desolating sacrilege”—i.e., the emperor, who sets himself as equal to God—which will come and occupy the temple, and then he says “Of course, you’ll see the signs like when the fig tree gives off its tender shoots you know that Summer is near.  And after those days”—after the destruction of Jerusalem, but note that he doesn’t say how long after—“after those days, people will see the coming of the Son of Man.”  Which, of course, is he himself.  But, he warns, “about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only God.”

So it’s not surprising that Hal Lindsey doesn’t know, or Tim LaHaye, not even the Son knows, Jesus says, not even he knows, only God. Sorry Charlie, but that’s the way it is.  And why should we waste precious time and money and talent pursuing something that we aren’t meant to know in the first place?  Why should Christians spend millions of dollars on books purporting to tell us something we aren’t going to know in the first place?  Why should we spend millions of hours running after something, millions of dollars and talent that we could spend doing what is important, like, oh, I don’t know, spreading the Gospel, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick?

But there’s one other thing I’d like to point out before we leave the subject . . . and that’s the whole thing about God being in the wholesale slaughter business.  Jesus talks about what the end-timers call the “tribulation,” at least a bit, and while some—including me—interpret that as mostly about the Roman invasion and destruction of Jerusalem, note that whatever it will be, God will not be responsible.  The God of love, the God who is equated with love, is not responsible.  “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” he says.  “They will hand you over to councils, you will be beaten,” but not once does he say that it is God who will do it.  Go on, read all of Chapter 13 after we’re done.

Unlike Jenkins and LaHaye and Lindsey, Jesus does not blame God for our propensity toward war and destruction, for our inclinations to kill those we disagree with, of slaughtering those who stand in the way of getting our way.  Now, as in the past, it’s convenient to blame God, to project our own deadly fantasies upon the God who is the exact opposite of death.  God is a God of forgiveness, a God of peace, and God’s son the Prince of Peace.  Though I don’t know how, and certainly don’t know when, of that I am assured:  In our God there is no revenge, no slaughter, no violent retribution.  Our God is Life, and we are the children of Life.  Amen.

“Scribes, Part II” (Mark 12:28-34)

Last week we saw Jesus describe some scribes, and he did it this way:  “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” Remember?  They sound like pretty unsavory characters, don’t they?  Devouring the domiciles of widow, grabbing the best seats in the house—maybe knocking over one of said widows in the process—and saying those exhausting prayer, that have everybody reaching for the caffeine, for one of those 5-hour Energy Drinks, just to keep awake for it.  And when Jesus gets to the end of that list, he passes judgment: “They will receive the greater condemnation.”

But his week we see a very different view of scribes, one scribe anyway, and notice that in the text, it’s the episode before the last weeks, and in fact, in the lectionary it would have come last week, but I switched it around so that we’d be reading the widow’s mite on consecration Sunday . . . and I kind of like it here, though,  It’s like we’re going from a generalization to a specific, as if we’re saying: “Yes, scribes can be slimy, but there are always exceptions  . . .”  Or to put it theologically, grace is for anyone, there is nobody who cannot be saved, no matter how hypocritical, no matter what kind of evil things they might have done, which is surely good news for all of us . . .

But it’s important to place today’s passage into a greater context:  Jesus is contending with some of the learned of Palestine, but not just any learned, he was contending with Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducess (oh, my!), three dominant parties within Judaism of the day.  They’re like Republicans and Democrats and, oh, maybe Libertarian, and they contend with one another—and with Jesus—over theology, over their vision of how we relate to God.  It’s also important to realize that what they were doing with Jesus wasn’t unusual, it was the way that Jews of the day disputed with one another, the way they sharpened their beliefs.

Not that it wasn’t dangerous for Jesus, you understand . . . if he gave the wrong answer, he could have been apprehended—the most famous example of this lot was the question about paying taxes: if he said it wasn’t right to pay taxes, he’d have been in trouble with the Roman contingent.  If he’d said that you must pay taxes, it wouldn’t have set well with another contingent, who believed that it was an act of sacrilege to pay taxes to the Roman overlords.  And so when he gets out if it with a cunning answer—asking them (a) to produce a denarius and (b) tell him whose face is on it—the answer he gives in reply impresses the dickens out of the scribe . . .

And he sees that Jesus answered well, and he asks him an important question – Which commandment is first, which commandment is greatest of them all?  And by answer, Jesus recites the Shema, that we read a few minutes ago in Deuteronomy 6 . . . “Hear O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD 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 . . .” and with this answer, Jesus shows that he’s square in the middle of Jewish tradition, because of course this is the command, the one that is nailed in the doorways of the home of every observant Jew.  They take literally the command to write it on their doorposts.  By naming the Shema, Jesus shows that it’s not the God of the Assyrians or the Sumerians or Egyptians you’re supposed to love, it’s not just any old God, but a very specific God, the one God, the God of Abraham, whose name they know, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and out of exile in the land of Babylon . . .  And they’re to love this God, this one God, with all of their heart and soul and strength – and Jesus adds mind to the command in Deuteronomy.  With our whole kit and kaboodle, they – and we – are supposed to love this God, this God who is one, this God who stands alone.

And even though the scribe asks only for one, Jesus adds a second instruction: “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  And here’s where we modern Christians need to be a little careful . . . we like to think that the love command is unique to Christians, that what somehow separates the Old Testament from the new is this emphasis on love . . . but “love your neighbor as yourself” is straight from the Old Testament – Leviticus, as a matter of fact.  But what’s interesting is how Jesus links the two . . . love the Lord your God . . . love your neighbor as yourself.  One and two, as if they are intertwined . . . as if one rolls from the other, like an ever-flowing stream.  Is love of neighbor possible without the love of God?  Is love of God probable, is it there without the love of neighbor?

One day, it’s been a decade or so now, a friend called and told me that she had found a new spiritual path . . . she’d been through some major stuff, some major heartache and pain, over the years before that.  We used to go to the same Presbyterian church in Mississippi, but after her life blew up, she hadn’t gone back there much . . .  it’s not that the pastor wasn’t compassionate, she was, it’s not that the congregation’s wasn’t caring, they were.  But whatever Rachael needed, she’s didn’t get it there.

She told me about her new spiritual direction, guided by some of the thinking of Christian Science, afraid that I’d disapprove, but I was  thinking that this poor woman had gone through so much that whatever kind of peace she could find was all right by me, and she described it as based on love, radically loving one another . . . that the path to spiritual maturity lay in loving everyone . . . and I thought “that’s not so bad”  but as I listened I realized that she wasn’t saying much about the other side of the equation that Jesus offered.  She wasn’t saying much about the “Love the Lord your God” part.  She did mention coming into greater communion with God, and that the end of the spiritual pathway is a mystical union with God, the kind of ideas that have been present in Christian spirituality for millennia, but she didn’t say much about loving God . . .  and any spiritual director will tell you that cultivating a love of God is one of the major goals, if not the goal, of a spiritual life . . . prayer, even intercessory prayer, is not so much to get God to do something, but to get us to a more mature, loving relationship with the Divine.  And from that love, a love of self and neighbor will naturally bloom . . .

So then are we to wait for some future-level of love for God before we can start loving our neighbor?  Should we say to our neighbors “Sorry, I just don’t love God enough yet, come back later?”  As Paul would say, of course not!  Love is a verb, not just a feeling, it’s an action . . . we are commanded to love, and love by doing . . . Jesus lists the commands in order, he doesn’t predicate one on the other . . . we’re supposed to do ‘em both.  To paraphrase James, love without works is dead . . . warm and fuzzy feelings and fifty cents will get your neighbor a cup of coffee . . . love is housing the homeless, love is healing the lame, love is setting-free the captives, bringing good news to the poor.

      And I think that in our story, the scribe – that embodiment of status quo religion – gets it!  You’re right, he says – and he calls Jesus Teacher, just like the rich young man, and just like James and John, a title of respect – Teacher, he says, you’re right: you’ve said a mouthful: ‘God is one, and beside him is no other’ and you should love this God with all that you are, all your heart and understanding and strength . . . and to love your neighbor as yourself”. . . and then he makes an intuitive leap, he says more than Jesus did: “this is much more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  And for a scribe – an authority on the Jewish religion – to say this is remarkable, and just as he saw that Jesus answered well, Jesus can sees that he answers wisely . . . this is much more important, the scribe says, than our entire religious program – built as it was on sacrifice – and in response, Jesus says: “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”

      The whole contraption of Hebrew religion, its whole apparatus built upon burnt offerings and sacrifice . . . they were in the shadow of Temple mount, where grates in the rock channeled the blood of slaughter off the mountain, where the greasy smoke of sacrifice stained the air, and for this scribe, this Temple officer, it must have been a bombshell, a revelation, and for him – and Mark’s readers – it’s like he’s saying that loving God and your neighbor is greater than religion itself . . . and Jesus just smiles, ‘cause he sees that the man speaks wisely, that he understands it:  “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  And it was so outrageous – yet so indisputably true – that all the other scribes and Pharisees around him were dumbstruck, no one dared ask him anything else.

I read recently that “Religion is for people trying to stay out of hell; spirituality is for those who’ve been there.”  And our friend Rachael has been there and back, and she’s seeking a measure of depth and a meaning for her life . . . and she’s not seeking it in the church . . . our version of sacrifices and burnt offerings, our church-night suppers and Sunday-morning hymn sings and preaching don’t seem to be cutting it for her . . . and the question is “why not?”  why aren’t damaged people coming to us to be healed?  I know, I know . . . some are.  But many more are going in the direction of pop spirituality, of popular forms of Buddhism or Taoism or stuff like that . . . why aren’t the mainline churches attracting the damaged people, or just those hungry for spiritual direction?  Could it be that we’re not – and here I’m talking about the church as a whole – could it be that we’re not satisfying Jesus’ love equation, that we’re not providing the tools to grow spiritually, to love God with all our hearts and mind and strength?  By the same token, could it be that we’re not exhibiting the love for one another – much less our neighbors – that Jesus would have us do?  Rachael was a member of the community, a Christian in the fold, and yet she’s no longer going to any church.

      You hear it all the time, from people who used to go to church but do so no longer . . . people who’ve been hurt by an unloving glance, by an unkind remark . . . they call it hypocrisy, they say we talk a lot about love, that love is the mark and measure of our faith . . . and yet we show precious little of it inside the walls.  Oh, we’ve got a lot of rules – we don’t do this, or we do that but not this other, or you’ve gotta do this before you’re really a Christian – and we’ve got a lot of ritual – stand up, sit down and say these words.  But as the scribe knew, love is greater than all of it, greater than all the sacrifice and Sunday School, all the bible study and pot luck offerings, greater than glorious worship and even the worship committee is love.

      You say “But Pastor . . . it’s only natural that in here we’re just like we are out there, and that our there, we’re like everybody else . . . we can’t help ourselves, we’re only human, it’s too hard.  We’re on the road to God, but we’re not there quite yet,” and I say hallelujah!  that’s it exactly . . . we’re on the road . . . with Jesus, on the road with God . . . that’s the miracle of grace, the Good News for modern man.  We can’t do it ourselves, but we don’t have to.  That’s the beauty of it, the grace of it: for God so loved the world, that God gave us God’s only Son, who sent us the Holy Spirit, who will be with us, and teach us how to pray, teach us how to draw closer to God and love God – and our neighbors – as ourselves.  Through prayer and study – both of which the Spirit bestows on us, if we ask – through prayer and study, we grow closer to God, and closer to what we were created to be – loving members of Christ’s body on earth.  Amen.

“Mighty Mite” (Mark 12:38-44)

The story of the Widow’s Mite is one of the most well-known in the New Testament, and it gets drug out about this time every year for stewardship season.  It’s so iconic that the Lectionary obligingly places it at about the time churches are working up their budget.  The word “mite” comes from the King James Version, there were no coins called that in Jesus’ day, but there was a “mite” in 16th Century England.   The Greek word that is rendered in  our translation as “small coins” is lepton, which means small in Greek . . . they were minted in vast numbers by one Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judea from 103 until 76 B.C.E.  There were so many of them made that they abound even today, and you can pick up a couple of widow’s lepta on the internet for $20 or so.

You can even find fine widow’s-lepta jewelry, a fact in which I find a certain irony, because the widow of this tale certainly couldn’t afford such a thing . . . she was poor as a church mouse.  If two lepta were all she had to eat on, she must not have eaten hardly at all . . . together, the two were worth about the same as a quadrans, the smallest denomination of Roman coin, which I guess is why the our translation says they’re worth a penny.  Almost all the paintings of the story—like this one—show her with a child, but it’s not in the text, either here in Mark or over in Luke.  I guess it’s to increase the pathos of the scene, as in “look, she’s got a child, for gosh sake . . . are those rich folks heartless or what?”

Actually, pathos is probably the least of what Jesus is going for here.  Widows—along with orphans—are stand-ins for the poorest of the poor in first century Palestine.  Whenever Jesus—or another storyteller—says “widow” or “widows and orphans” we’re meant to think of a whole class of people, a whole substrate—the people whose backbreaking labor supported the few at the top, the few like the scribes, the story of whom our lectionary (rightly) includes in the passage.  They like to wear long robes—a symbol of wealth and piety—and walk walk around the marketplace and be greeted with respect . . . I can see them now, the most learned men in Judaism, cruising through the stalls like ships of state, giving the queen’s wave . . . Jesus says to beware of these folks, don’t get tangled up with them . . . they go to church on Sundays, and sit at the best pews, and say wonderful, sonorous prayers—almighty Creator, we come to thee humble and full of wonder, and thank you for all with which you have blessed us—and then on Monday they go to work and foreclose on that single mom, or pick up a piece of  “distressed property” from an out-of-work dot-commer, or cut another couple thousand jobs ‘cause profits are down—got a fiscal responsibility to the stockholders, you know  . . . and the widow is an icon, a placeholder, an avatar for the poor of the time.

And Jesus said beware of them, because they will gut you like a fish, they are only concerned with themselves . . . they will callously discard you, foreclose on your house at the drop of a hat . . . but I wonder if that’s the only reason . . . could Jesus mean that we’re to beware of people like that because if we get tangled up with them, if we do business with them, we’ll become like them?  There seems to be something of that sense about it, else why would he tell us what fate awaits them?  Why tell us that they will receive a greater condemnation if he’s not warning us not to be like them?

The scribes are engaged in the time-honored practice of compartmentalizing their religion and their secular life, separating them out so that they do not conflict.  It’s convenient that way: their beliefs don’t have to infect how they live their day to day lives.  Even though Jesus is very clear about what awaits those who deal harshly with the poor—we can only imagine what “the greater condemnation” entails—we Christians, just like the scribes, are very good at not letting that sort of thinking get in the way of making money.

Well.  Just as the scribes can be considered an object lesson for a certain type of behavior—beware!—so can the widow, because conveniently, here comes one, one of the very embodiments of the poor and exploited . . . and has this widow had her house devoured lately?  Has she been swindled out of it, or just couldn’t pay the mortgage?  Whatever has happened to her, we know she doesn’t have a lot, cause as we saw, those two lepta aren’t worth much.  And while Jesus and the disciples watch, rich folks come along and put a lot of money into the pot, doubtless after looking around to make sure the right people are observing them, but the widow puts in those two lepta, worth together a Roman cent, the last penny she has.

Who do you identify with in this story?  If you say “the widow, of course” I say “Not so fast” . . . I know who I identify with, and I squirm when I think of it.  As you can see, I haven’t missed many meals, and my family’s always had some kind of health insurance.  I can go out and buy triple-mocha decaf lattés, if I want, and see a movie if I want, and I can even buy a book or a DVD once in a while.  I know on what side of the equation I belong, and it isn’t with the down-trodden.  But to be fair, if I can’t identify with the widows and orphans, I can’t identify exactly with the scribes.  I mean, I haven’t devoured any widows’ lately, I haven’t foreclosed on any single mom's houses . . . I give to charities, volunteer my time for those less fortunate . . . and that’s probably where a lot of us are, we’re not bad people, in fact we’re good people, especially by our society’s standards . . . so if we’re not widows and orphans, and we’re not really those hungry scribes, who are we in this passage?  Well . . . we’re us, that’s who we are, we are ourselves . . . and there really was no counterpart for us in those days, there was no middle class . . . we have disposable income and leisure time, but most of us are hardly rich . . . but we do support the rich, don’t we?  We buy their products, we shop for bargains, we drive the great, consumer engine that produces the Ken Lays and Bill Gateses . . . we are the consumers, and we have the power to change things, if we would . . .

Jesus calls over the disciples – he doesn’t say this to the crowds – he calls them over, and the disciples know that this is a teaching, because he begins with the words “Truly I say unto you” and the Teaching goes “this poor widow has given more than all those contributing to the temple, for they all contributed out of their abundance” – and other translations here call it surplus or money they could spare – “but she had put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”  In other words, the rich put in from their disposable income, from money they could spare – and remember, only they had it – while the widow gave all she had to live on.

Whoa!  All she could live on!  What is that supposed to mean?  Surely not what it says, not the plain sense of it, surely not that we're supposed to give all we have . . . Ah think ah’m gonna be faint . . . but that's what Jesus says, and we could mince words, we could parse it and claim that Jesus didn't actually say that everyone had to give everything that they owned, only that because she did, her gift was more important, we could try to interpret it away, but the essence of the teaching remains the same: the widow was being more faithful by giving two measly pennies, because they were all she had, than the rich who gave huge sums.

The psalmist writes: the earth is the Lord's, and all that is in it . . . Paul speaks of our lives – of our lives – being bought for a price, which is the life and death of Jesus Christ . . . this widow's giving shows that she knew this fundamental reality beneath all of stewardship: everything we have, all our money, our houses, even ourselves – is not our own, it belongs to God.  Sorry, folks, but it's true . . .  all the money we'll ever earn, all our stuff, everything, is the Lord's.

The rich, who gave only from what they could spare, their disposable income, held themselves up against God, they balanced their own selves, their own needs with God's.  And holding your needs, your money – indeed yourself – up in balance with God is idolatry, plain and simple, and God doesn't like an idolater.

We might say that this notion that all belongs to God is the first principle of stewardship, and the second is this: who’s on first? The answer of the rich, who gave only from what they could spare, was clear: they came first, not God.  They held themselves in higher regard than the Almighty.  The widow showed – by very drastic action, designed to drive the point home – that (1) everything belongs to God and (2) with her, God came first.  In the Old Testament, where the notion is first seen, a tithe is to be the first fruits of the labor of the people of God, in other words, the stuff off the top.  Whenever they got the harvest, or money from selling, their goods, they gave first to God, and they gave the most choice, un-blemished goods, the before-any-other-tax-or-expenditure cream off the top.  Then they fed themselves.

      And that is the idea historically behind a Christian tithe as well . . . it's a before-tax, before anything else offering to God . . . And we like to think of it as a gift, as if we're being generous, as if it entitles us to be first in line, or have a greater say in how things are run in the church, but it's really not.  After all, how can we gift God with something – our time, our money or our selves – that belongs to God in the first place?  That’s a principle the widow knew all too well.

And there you have it: the story of the Widow’s Lepta, the Widow’s mite.  And I would not presume to tell you all how much to give, that would be a kind of judgment, and that of course is up to God.  But it’s important to give something, ‘cause we’re all adults here: we all know that it costs money to run the church, and that those costs go up every year.  So prayerfully consider how much God is leading you to give, and drop your pledge into the basket this Consecration Sunday, or fill out the form online.  Amen.

No ... Your Other Right (Mark 10:35-45)

     I must confess that people who bust into line in front of me test the Christian charity in me to the limit.  One time, Pam and I were coming back from Europe, we’d spent 10 days in France and  not once had been the victims of the infamous French snottiness, until just as we were getting ready to land back in the States, and I went to get my coat out of the over-head bin, and I noticed another guy had it – I think it looked like his or something – and he said in a thick French accent – “Do not worry, I am not stealing your coat,” and he almost added “you stupid American,” but he didn’t have to, the animosity was radiating off him in waves, and his wife was glaring at me, and his kids were glaring at me, and I don’t handle conflict well, you know, so I was just glad to get away from them.  Well, we had a two-hour layover, so after getting through customs, we went in search of dinner and ended up at McDonalds at the end of a long line, resigned to wait for our greasy burgers – another thing I don’t do well – and who should come along but the French guy from the plane, wife and kiddies in tow, and they barged right to the front of the line.  And I was really mad, and filled with righteous indignation . . .

     And that’s exactly how the other disciples feel when, on the road to Jerusalem, the Zebedee brothers, James and John, take Jesus aside and ask him to let them go to the front of the line – “Grant us to sit,” they say “one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”  Not that Jesus had ever said there was gonna be any glory, mind you . . . but he’d just got finished predicting his death and burial and resurrection, and maybe they figured that anyone who’s raised again’s gotta have some clout somewhere . . .

    But Jesus knows what they haven’t yet figured out – Jesus knows what following him will mean.  “Are you able to go all the way?”  he says, “Are you able to do what it takes?  to drink the cup I drink?  to be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”  And they say yes, of course they’re able, and Jesus says “OK, you will . . . you will drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized . . .” and we need to understand it’s not an accident Jesus is speaking about the sacraments . . . the Christian life is a life immersed in his, a life defined by him and by his mission . . .

     Following Christ is sacramental, it is sacred. sanctified . . . bounded on one end by baptism, the new birth in Christ, and on the other by the cup, the new covenant in his blood . . . at baptism, we are made new, decisively marked as God’s children, heirs – as Paul would say – to the promise.  And along the way, throughout our Christian journey, we partake of the life-giving cup of the covenant – our lives as Christians are defined by the cup, to which we return again and again, for food and encouragement and power.  And through our walk with Christ, God works to mold us and conform us to God, to draw us into a sweet, mystical communion with God . . .  in a sense, the Christian life is a sacrament, performed by God through us, by which we are gradually transformed into the likeness of Christ . . .

     But of course, there’s a darker side to Jesus’ words – you will drink the cup that I drink . . . because just as Christ was sacrificed for them, just as he gave his life for them, so are they expected to give theirs for him . . . and indeed, we are told in Acts that James, at least, was martyred by Herod Agrippa fourteen years after our passage takes place . . . and  Jesus knew it right there on the way to Jerusalem that they would drink the cup he drinks, be baptized with the baptism he is baptized with.

     Note that Jesus is saying his life is exemplary in the literal sense, as an example that the disciples are to follow . . . James and John ask him for a place of privilege, to sit at his right and left hand in his glory, and Jesus tells them instead what it means to be his disciples, to be his followers . . . it means to imitate him, to use his life as an example for theirs.  Jesus is about sacrifice his life for them, and he’s saying it will come to that for the disciples as well.  Here he was, heading to Jerusalem, heading for the cross, for his passion, and he's telling them that they must experience it in their own lives.

     Every night, before they go to bed, the monks at Benedictine monasteries around the world pray the office of Compline.  It's sometimes called the “dear office,” because it's the most personal, private prayer-time . . . it's the only one that's prayed alone, not in the chapel with the whole monastic community.  The prayer begins with “Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit . . .” and if it sounds familiar, it should . . . Jesus says it on the cross in Luke, just as he dies.  And so Compline helps those who celebrate it to remember Christ's death every night, as the darkness comes, and the light has long since faded . . . what's more, it helps them relate their own approaching “little death” of sleep to Christ’s.  Finally, at Compline's close, they pray the Song of Simeon: “Now you set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised . . . these eyes have seen the savior whom you prepared for all the world to see . . .” and simultaneously with identifying with Christ's death, they look forward to their own, and remember that during their waking hours, during that very day, they've seen Christ, they've experienced him in every place, in every face, and deep within their own hearts . . . and so Compline helps place those who pray it deep within the life of Christ, deep within his death . . . it helps them drink the cup that Christ drinks, and be baptized with the baptism of Christ . . .

     And now the other disciples have gotten wind of the Zebedee brothers' request, and they aren't happy, to say the least, and so Jesus – I imagine with a heavy sigh – gathers them around for a little chat.  It seems he's going to have to spell it out for them, after all.  “You know those Gentiles,” he begins, “their rulers, their top dogs lord it over them, their great ones are tyrants over them, for Pete's sake . . . they take credit for all their workers’ hard work  and pay themselves 300 times more than them.  They put their name first in the papers, take the twenty-seventh-floor corner office with a Central-Park view, and when everything goes South, do they take the blame?  When the bottom falls out of the dot-coms, do they take the hit?  Of course not!  They strap on their golden chariots, and ride away into the sunset, leaving the little guys out in the cold, laid off without work or health-care or retirement.  Well, it isn't like that among you, among my followers . . . it isn't like that in the Kingdom of God!  In the kingdom of God, whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant.  That's right!  Your servant!  And further, whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”  And why?  Because of that imitation thing, because Jesus' life is an example, and that's in the end what he came to do – serve.  “For the Son of Man,” he says, “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  As the last, greatest example of his service, he would give his life.

     And I'll bet James and John were kicking themselves, I'll bet they were wishing they'd never even brought it up, because this wasn't exactly what they wanted to hear.  They wanted to hear that they were going to be rewarded for following Jesus, that they were going to get seats of honor in the great by-and-by, where they had the ear of the master for all eternity, where their names would be above all others – except God and Jesus, of course – in perpetuity. All this talk about being slaves and losing one's life wasn't what they wanted to hear at all.

     It's certainly not what a lot of us want to hear these days, either . . . we lionize those Gentile rulers, those captains of industry, those Pharaohs of the boardroom.  And for many of us – especially us male worker bees – we strive to get to the top, or at least to a little higher rung on the ladder . . . a bit more prestigious position, a few more people to supervise . . . in the case of pastors, it's often a little bigger church in a little better neighborhood.  In almost every occupation there's a hierarchy of workers, sometimes based on merit, but sometimes only on something as trivial as time spent on the job, that determines status, that determines who’s the top dog.  But the Kingdom’s standards aren’t the standards of the world.  In the kingdom, the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  And in case you didn’t get just how last, Jesus is telling us right here: to be first among us we must be slaves of all.  Bummer.

     But, you know it’s true . . . just look at Mother Theresa, beatified just seven short years after her death, on the fast track to sainthood, a status she’s liable to receive in record time, and all she had to do is to spend her life living down in the muck and mire of Calcutta, down on the streets with her charges, and she’ll reach a place none of those Cardinals gathered in the Vatican this week will likely get to, even with all their playing the game of power, the worldly game of climbing the old ladder, even if it is in the church.  Theresa wasn’t perfect, she could be severe with her nuns, she was criticized for taking money from the shady characters that perpetuate the grinding poverty on the streets . . . but Jesus didn’t say we have to be perfect, just that we have to serve, and be a slave to all.

     And he used his own life as an example, as an exemplar. After all, he became that ultimate slave, who willingly served us all by giving his life . . . and can we drink that cup, can we be baptized with that baptism?  That question is just as relevant to us, here today, as it was to the disciples.

     But you know what?  The life and death of Jesus isn’t the only thing in the equation, is it?  Think about the baptism image for a second . . . Jesus went into the water – that’s the death part, the going into the grave, into the ground – but he came back up out of it as well, in a glorious resurrected body . . . we go every night to the little death, to the sleep that renews us, and in the morning we awaken to a new day, a fresh chance, new hope that breaks in upon us from above . . . and in fact that’s the  good news, that life does come after death, daily in the cycle of our planet, and hourly, minute-by-minute, after all our little losses, our quiet mortalities, the failures and humiliations we suffer every day.  Through the presence of the risen Lord, we are afforded life after these deaths, and we are promised, and have in Christ a sure hope, that just as he rose out of the waters of death, just as he was raised from the dead, so shall we, for we are assured that if we participate in his life and death, we shall participate in his resurrection as well.  We shall not perish, but have everlasting life.  Amen.

Camels and Needles and Rich Men, Oh My! (Mark 10:17-31)

      I love movies . . . and the best way to see them at home is on DVD or Blu-Ray, those little disks the size and shape of a CD that a whole movie – and more! – can fit on.  I love to sit with my feet up, put a movie in the player, turn the stereo sound up – Pam says too loud – and get lost for a couple of hours in the story of Butch Cassidy or ET or Saving Private Ryan . . . and I’ve got quite a growing collection of DVDs, let me tell you . . . over a hundred of them, all lined up nice and pretty on a living room shelf, all alphabetized, protected, and on display, and woe betide anyone who leaves one of them sitting around OUT OF THEIR CASE or SCRATCHES ONE OF THEM or . . . well you get the picture, and so there they are, and I can look at them and count them and watch them over and over again . . .

      And then I read this morning’s passage and – Oy Vey! – I see a lot more of the rich man in me than I’d like . . . like him, I love things, I love my stuff much more sometimes than I ought to.  Is it the same with you?   Are there things that you love a lot?  Maybe a building, a house or a church, that you take great pride in, that you guard with your life, you make sure it stays in great shape . . . or a car, it’s gotta be polished and buffed, and shined and kept in tip-top shape . . . or maybe it’s money, a savings or retirement account . . . God help the wife who scratches or dents the mint-condition 1998 Dodge Ram Quad Cab, or the youth group who doesn’t vacuum the fellowship-hall floor, or the child who breaks a piece of treasured, heirloom dinnerware.  This kind of thing damages friendships and church functioning . . . it says to other people – our loved ones, our youth, our brothers and sisters in Christ – “Our stuff is more important to us than you are.”  Love of things gets in the way of relationships, in the way of mission, in the way of life . . .

      And Jesus is saying in our passage that possessions have a way of getting in the way of our relationship with him.  This man – over in Luke, he’s called a rich ruler – this man falls on his knees in front of Jesus, so we know that his problem isn’t that he’s proud – kneeling, after all, is the universal sign of submission, of humility . . . he looks upon Jesus as his superior, and he calls him “good teacher,” a formal address of student to rabbi, and he asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life.  And immediately, Jesus disabuses him of the notion that anyone but God is good – and of course, as Christians, we believe that he is God, and so there’s a double irony at play here – but Jesus says “You know the commandments . . .” and the man with many possessions says “Yes, and I’ve kept all of them since my youth” And we have no reason to disbelieve him, he’s a good man, reverent and faithful . . .

      Then Jesus, who sees into the heart, who knows what is inside of us all looks upon him and loves him, and I can imagine the intimate, compassionate, penetrating gaze  . . . and as he looks upon him with love, he tells him what he must do: give up everything, all he owns, sell it and give the money to the poor, and then come follow Jesus . . . and the young man’s face sags in realization, as he comes to understand what discipleship will entail . . . for he has many possessions, and he loves them well, and he grieves for his lost dream of the Kingdom of God . . .

      Saint Benedict, in his Rule for communal living, forbids his monks to own anything . . . he felt so strongly about the subject that he wrote an entire chapter on it.  He says “Those in monastic vows should not claim any property as their own . . . absolutely nothing at all, not even books and writing materials.”  He calls personal ownership of property a “wicked practice” and that “everything in the monastery should be held in common,” as in the early church described in Acts.   And although Benedict doesn’t say, I imagine this passage was one he had in mind  . . . that, and his own personal experience in community life, how it could be poisoned by possessions, tainted by personal stuff . . .

      After the rich man goes away, Jesus uses the episode as a teaching moment, an object lesson for his disciples . . . “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,” but the disciples are perplexed, they don’t get it, even after the rich guy’s refusal to give up all he owns costs him everything . . .it kinda reminds me of today, when we don’t get it either . . . so we spiritualize this passage, interpret it to mean give up spiritual baggage, or we say it’s an ideal, one to aspire to, but in Jesus’ context, he meant exactly what he said . . .  give up all you have and follow me.

      So Jesus gives them an analogy, a visualization: “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who’s rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  And now they get it, it becomes crystal clear, and they all have this mental image of somebody pushing on a camel’s behind, trying to shove it through a needle . . . and they ask in despair “Then who can be saved?”  And Jesus looks at them – the same way he looked at the rich man, and loved him – Jesus looks at them in love and says that “for humans, it’s impossible . . . but for God, all things are possible.”

      Humans cannot save themselves, but God can . . . God can make it possible, God can reach down and redeem anyone God pleases, just like that . . . this statement is rich with nuance, rich with the stuff of God’s kingdom . . . in a sense, all the Good News is wrapped up in it . . . our God is a God of the possible, a God of the infinite, a God who is doing something new, something powerful, day by day.  For us, it is impossible, but for the creator, all things are possible.  Do the disciples get the depth, the rich, nourishing stew of hope contained in that statement?  God can save whomever God wants, whether she lives in Palestine or not, whether she gives up all she has or not, even whether she follows Jesus or not, if God wants to . . . and case in point, the rich man couldn’t give up his stuff on his own, but God can.  And you can see the root of profound  tension here: the rich man is told to give up all he owns, but he can’t do it, only God can do it . . .

      And perhaps Peter senses all of this, for he says “We’ve done it . . . we’ve given up all we’ve got, and we’re following you . . .”  And that’s opening for one last lesson, the most astounding one of all: “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields” Jesus says “who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions” and the disciples look around at each another, and wonder what he means.  Aside from the persecution – and they’d had plenty of that – where were all these things?  Where was even one house, one brother or sister, one field – much less a hundred-fold – to replace the ones they gave up?  What’s Jesus talking about?  And Mark doesn’t say if they get it or not, but we do: Jesus isn’t talking about personal possessions here.  Remember – they just get us in trouble.  He’s talking about the world-wide community of Christians . . . every Christian, world-wide, is the brother and sister of the disciples and the houses and fields of every Christian are theirs also . . . and the persecutions of every Christian on earth are theirs persecutions as well . . . what Jesus is talking about is the coming Kingdom of God, which is here right now in the persons of Christ’s body on Earth.

      The rich man couldn’t participate in the kingdom, he couldn’t partake of the radical sharing community of Christians unless he gave everything up, unless he quit making his things the center of his life, and focused on Jesus instead.

      And right after our passage – but interestingly, not in the lectionary – Jesus predicts his death once again – “the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes . . . [who will] hand him over to the Gentiles; who will and kill him . . .”  And once again, the link is made between Jesus’ radical life, his radical economics and his death . . . is it any wonder they killed him?  Is it any wonder that a system where the accumulation of wealth is based on barter and trade and buying and selling would kill somebody who advocated that his disciples own nothing?

      And of course, the message is every bit as radical today as it was back then . . . our economic system is every bit as dependant on owning and buying and selling things as the one in Jesus’ day.  Even more so, actually . . . there was no middle class in those days, just the wealthy who fed off the lower classes . . . today, the vast majority of wealth is still accumulated by a small percentage of our population, and it’s still built on the backs of the poor, but now there’s the middle class as well, with enough money to feed themselves, and disposable income as well . . . and our insatiable desire for things is amplified by Madison avenue, which exists to create a craving for goods and services, and our love of possessions is cynically exploited and fed by the Powers that Be to increase their wealth.

      What Jesus is preaching here is not some denial for denial’s sake, not some half-baked, hair-shirted scheme of personal penance, but liberation . . . liberation from the rat-race, the tread-mill of work, work, work to acquire more and more stuff, so we can work and work and work some more to feed and maintain this stuff, so we can get more stuff to poison our relationships and our minds and our souls, to alienate ourselves from our families and friends and brothers and sisters in Christ.

      Chuck Campbell, one of my old preaching professors, has written that preaching this kind of thing is tough, because every middle-class preacher in America is caught right up in this stuff, we’re all right there with our congregations, right in the middle of it all.  And that’s perhaps as it should be . . . after all, Jesus surely experienced what he preached as well, he surely experienced the glittering call of things, of little idols we buy and sell to replace God . . . and the question is – and this is the hard part – the question is, does this passage call us to do it?  Does it call us to give up everything we own, to divest ourselves of all but our clothes, all but the shoes on our feet?  Remember that Jesus was talking to disciples, who were on the road with him, who were to be stripped-down, lean-and-mean evangelism machines, who had to travel light . . . does it apply to us?

      Well, God may not be calling us to give up our televisions or our cars or DVDs – after all, recreation is not a bad thing in and of itself, we are expected to rest the mind and body, it’s essential to our well-being – but the trick is to not let our stuff rule our lives, ruin our relationships, or be substituted for God . . . and one way is to take our minds off our stuff, and put them on Christ instead.  There’s an old hymn that says Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full on his wonderful face, and the things of the Earth will go strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace” and of course, prayer is the way to do this . . . prayer develops an ever-deepening, on-going relationship with God through Christ, and an ever-decreasing distance between ourselves and God . . . through regular prayer we learn to keep our eyes on the prize, our eyes on the kingdom of God, where they belong.

      Oh, it’s not particularly easy, disciplined prayer never is, it’s not a happy-magic pill, one day we’re ruled by our stuff and the next by God, and there’ll be times when we are absolutely in thrall to the world, and our lives will feel desolate and magnificently messed up.  But Jesus promised it in the great commission – lo, I am with you always, always, and when we’re discouraged and weak, when we think we can’t do it anymore, that we’ll always be slaves to our desires, Jesus will look upon us with compassion – like he did the rich young man – he’ll look on us with sympathy and empathy and commiseration, and we will know we are loved.  Amen.