Twenty Third Sunday After Pentecost - Year B

Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost – Year B, Proper 27 (RCL) 2009
1 Kings 17: 8 – 16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9: 24 – 28; Mark 12: 38 – 44
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, November 8, 2009

OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS, OF GOSPEL AND GOOD NEWS

Let us pray: Holy God we are often tempted to use what we offer to you and to others as a way to impress ourselves or our neighbors with the magnanimity of our generosity. You see deep into our hearts and know the true value of our gifts. Help us to avoid the easy answers – to seek the root causes of hunger and poverty as we strive to feed the hungry and uplift the poor among us. Guide our hearts to do justice, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with you – our God. Amen.

(SUNG) GOD SENT ME TO BRING THE GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR
TELL PRISONERS THAT THEY ARE PRISONERS NO MORE
TELL BLIND PEOPLE THAT THEY CAN SEE – AND SET THE
DOWNTRODDEN FREE – AND GO TELL EVERYONE THE NEWS
NEWS THAT THE KINDOM OF GOD HAS COME. GO TELL
EVERYONE THE NEWS THAT GOD’S KINDOM HAS COME.

I have to admit to you that I do not like pennies. I find them to be useless and often leave them in those little penny boxes in front of cash registers at convenience stores and in the coin return drops that are becoming more and more common at super markets. I truly believe that the cost of items should be rounded up to the nearest nickel so that we didn’t have to deal with pennies. I have a large ceramic bowl on my dresser which I fill up with those pennies that do happen to get into my pocket, and then once a year or so give them to a friend who collects them for her two children’s educational fund. She has many people giving her their pennies – so I guess I’m not the only person who would rather not deal with them. Her children are now 13 and 12 and other people’s pennies have contributed approximately three thousand dollars to their educational fund. Not, by any means, the bulk of what is needed to pay for a college education. Rather it might help to defer the cost of textbooks for a few years of that education. The widow in the author of Mark’s Gospel story that we heard this morning is at the end of her resources. She might have been glad to have the pennies of which I am so disdainful. Yet even given the little which she has – she gives all back to God. In the patriarchal society of that time the widow found herself at the very bottom of the socio-economic scale. The widow had no resource on which she could ever hope to improve her station; consequently that was why the religious/spiritual community was called upon to provide some respite for the widows. Here, though, the author begins by having Jesus calling down upon the traditional protector of the widows and warn of their deception. Beware of the scribes Jesus says. The scribes are often paired in the Gospel accounts with the Pharisees and I must admit that when I would hear the Gospel narration I often thought the two to be synonymous. They were not. The scribes were members of an ancient profession, made up of people who could read and write (a rarity in the first century of the Common Era). Scribes originally acted as secretaries of state, but then, when the nation of Israel lost its independence, they turned their attention to matters of the law. In the time of Jesus, the scribes were allies of the Pharisees, who supplemented the ancient written law with their traditions. Beware of the scribes Jesus says, beware of the lawyers. Jesus certainly had a problem with the elite scribes of the time, men who liked to strut around town in long robes, enjoy places of honor at banquets, grab the best seats in the synagogues, and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces. They seem to care little about the truth of God, or the welfare of poorer members of the society, and Jesus condemns them for saying long prayers for the sake of appearance, and devouring “widow’s houses”. What exactly is meant by that last phrase is unclear – though it may be a reference to the practice of a kind of parasitic relationship with the rich widows of Jerusalem, offering guardianship or companionship in exchange for a life of wealth and power. At any rate, Jesus denounces these lawyers for such selfish and self-serving relationships. Jesus is condemning the scribes for turning away from their role as experts in religious law, and putting their energy into acquiring social power and influence.

A modern parable: There once was a man who lived in suburbia America with a great job, three kids, a wonderful wife and an income of $300,000 a year. He had investments in IRAs, CDs and mutual funds. He was considered a good man in his town and in his church. His Rector especially loved him because he gave $10,000 to the building fund and was one of the top tithers in the church. This man is on the vestry, teaches Sunday school (even though he is gone half the year on business) and his wife somehow manages to do special music once a month. There is also a single mother who goes to this same church and lives in the same town. She works nights as a janitor at Wal-Mart for minimum wage just to support her two kids, who are in elementary school. She’s a faithful every Sunday attendee at church and puts a donation in the offering plate every week at considerable personal sacrifice. After paying the bills and buying food there isn’t much to give, but she gives it. It’s not much, but it’s sure more than 10 percent of her paltry income. She is also involved heavily in her community. She participates in every outreach ministry the church has organized. One Sunday morning, the church decides to put up a huge plaque in the lobby to recognize the most generous and faithful givers. The man is number one on the list and the woman’s name appears nowhere.

(SUNG) GOD SENT ME TO BRING THE GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR
TELL PRISONERS THAT THEY ARE PRISONERS NO MORE
TELL BLIND PEOPLE THAT THEY CAN SEE – AND SET THE
DOWNTRODDEN FREE – AND GO TELL EVERYONE THE NEWS
NEWS THAT THE KINDOM OF GOD HAS COME. GO TELL
EVERYONE THE NEWS THAT GOD’S KINDOM HAS COME.

This sermon song is based on the text from the Prophet Isaiah’s 61st Chapter, which was one of the readings chosen by The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori for her service of investiture as the Twenty Sixth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and the first female primate in the history of the Anglican Communion. I was privileged to have been present at that service in Washington’s National Cathedral in 2006. I have many memories of that glorious chapter in our in our Church’s history. This morning I would like to share just a small piece of the sermon which the Presiding Bishop gave at that service:

“That vision of home-going and homecoming that underlies our deepest spiritual yearning is also the job assignment each one of us gets in Baptism – go home, and while you’re at it, help build a home for everyone else on earth. For none of us can truly find our rest in God until all of our brothers and sisters have also been welcomed home like the prodigal.

There’s a wonderful Hebrew word for that vision and work – shalom. It doesn’t just mean the sort of peace that comes when we’re no longer at war. It’s that rich and multihued vision of a world where no one goes hungry because everyone is invited to a seat at the groaning board, it’s a vision of a world where no one is sick or in prison because all sorts of disease have been healed, it’s a vision of a world where every human being has the capacity to use every good gift that God has given, it is a vision of a world where no one enjoys abundance at the expense of another, it’s a vision of a world where all enjoy Sabbath rest in the conscious presence of God. Shalom means that all human beings live together as siblings, at peace with one another and with God, and in right relationship with all of the rest of creation. It is that vision of the lion lying down with the lamb and the small child playing over the den of the adder, where the specter of death no longer holds sway. It is that vision to which Jesus points when he says, “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”. To say “shalom” is to know our own place and to invite and affirm the place of all of the rest of creation, once more at home in God.”

I am filled with such hope for the future of our Church, even in its struggles with that woman at the helm of it! I am certain that God’s Holy Spirit will send to us, to be consecrated by Presiding Bishop Katharine the shepherd who will lead us in this diocese in the years ahead so that we might spread the Good News of God’s promised Kindom in this place in the world.

Jesus is close to the end of public ministry when we reach the events which the Gospel narrates this morning – one final chapter of the author of Mark’s account remains for Jesus to leave one last teaching opportunity with the disciples before the events of holy week and death and resurrection will come to fulfillment in God’s Messiah. Jesus highlights for them the example of the widow who generously, graciously and quietly gives all that she has to God – trusting that God will provide all that she needs. I wish I had that kind of faith. With that kind of faith we could truly “Say Yes” to the vision of this place in God’s Kindom where we have chosen to live out our ministries. I wish I had that trust in the shalom of God.

God wants from us nothing less than everything. When we are wise enough to grasp that concept, then God can return to us all that we can ask or desire. It is the letting go, the leap of faith, the willingness to drop all that we have into the hands of our God who needs nothing from us – and offers everything to us if only we will surrender our hearts in service to God and to our neighbor.

(SUNG) AND GO TELL EVERYONE, THE NEWS THAT GOD’S KINDOM
HAS COME!

AMEN