The Good News of Judgment and Peace

Last week I mentioned the traditional and the newer themes for the four Sundays of Advent—Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell—and Hope, Peace, Joy, Love. So, is the theme for this Second Sunday of Advent Judgment or Hope? Yes. There are ways to see judgment, then repentance, that don’t leave us feeling like we need to make a bunch of New Year’s resolutions (Advent being the start of the liturgical year), many of which we know we won’t end up keeping. But this Advent, I invite you give up “judgment”—but not responsibility.

This world that our holy and gracious God created in their infinite love is not a court, with God as a combined prosecutor, judge and executioner waiting to ambush us. Judgment is the moment where we are surprised by an unexpected insight, perhaps caught up short, but also made aware of just how gracious our God is. If you were ever judged and felt no grace, that judgment was not about God.

So, to accept judgment and repent is not first and foremost to make a checklist of all the things we’ve done wrong and try not to repeat them, only to fail more often than succeed. It means to change your heart, your mind, your purpose; to look within yourself and ask where you need to trust God more and not turn to some emotional crutch. Then it means to trust God to take what you can change, and by God’s grace, do the rest of the changing for you. And if, as John the Baptist says today, “God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham,” then God can certainly change us.

Advent Endurance

The advent, or “coming,” that is referred to in the liturgical season of Advent is not the first coming of the Messiah, the one we celebrate on December 25th, but the apocalyptic second coming referred to in today’s Gospel. So, the traditional themes of the four Sundays of Advent are Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Perhaps not wanting to be seen as Advent grinches, many churches have instead emphasized Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.

In truth you can’t have one without the other. You can’t hope for what you already have. To hope for something assumes its absence. But at the same time, to speak only of the more final themes risks freezing us in a perpetual state of fear and inadequacy. The Good News of today’s Gospel is not of Jesus’s absence, but of his enduring presence with us, the Saved who remain, and with whom Jesus remains.

At first hearing, and with the imprint of “Left Behindism” on our brains, we might think that Jesus is describing the “Rapture:” The man taken from the field and the woman taken from grinding meal are the “saved” whom the Son of Man has come to take back with him, leaving the sinners behind. But Jesus compares this to the Flood story in Genesis, in which the “taken” were destroyed by the flood, with Noah and the righteous few kept safe in the Ark.

Reconciling the Powers

When we celebrate this Last Sunday after Pentecost, the end of our liturgical year, we recall that “at the end of all things,” Christ is King: But not a king in the same way as human beings have elevated, and sometimes brought down the kings and queens of this world. In truth He is the King, not of an empire with uneasy borders by means of intimidation and destruction, but of all powers and things and hearts.

In the ancient world, chieftains, monarchs, and emperors ruled through fear and awe, fear of their power of life and death over their subjects, and awe at the seemingly divine reach of their power.  The powers of Earth were seen as reflections of the powers in heaven. And when imperial decisions dominoed their way thousands of miles through the empire, people whose lives were upended saw their lives as under the sway of spiritual powers beyond their control.

Those were the kind of “powers” that Paul wrote about to the Colossians. Even if some of those powers were more down-to-earth than people realized, their fear and awe of powers beyond their control was “spiritual” in how those powers controlled not just their bodies but their minds as well. Even in our own time, “corporate cultures” that frustrate individual efforts to reform those institutions speak to the power of non-material, that is emotional interactions to control our lives. And collective ideas such as the myths of inevitable progress, or eternal blood and soil, can enthrall minds and hearts to such an extent that they become the kind of spiritual “power” that Paul wrote about. *

Crisis, Covenant, and Grace

            “So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict…You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

            There was a time in The Episcopal Church when Baptism mostly involved an infant being baptized at a private family service on Sunday afternoon. Today, the instructions, or rubrics in our 1979 prayer book state that “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body, the Church,” and therefore “is appropriately administered within the Eucharist as the chief service on a Sunday.” Of course, in those earlier days, the set readings for Baptism actually mentioned baptism. But when it takes place in the chief Sunday service, then you take the readings for that Sunday that are given to you. And even the more apocalyptic readings like today’s Gospel have more of a connection to Baptism than you might think.

There are transitional events in the cycle of life that are marked by some liturgy, some more religious than others: Birth (in this case, new birth), Graduation, Retirement, Burial. Then there are Crisis liturgies, which facilitate and mark a life-altering decision. And back when being a Christian could be a death sentence in the Roman Empire, Holy Baptism was one of those liturgies. Before their baptism, catechumens fasted from all eating on Good Friday and Holy Saturday into the predawn hours of Easter Sunday. When the time came for baptism, they stripped naked and walked into the water where the deacon or deaconess pushed them underwater three times. In that water they truly were buried with Christ in his death so that by that water they would share in his resurrection.

The End of History*

 “Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question.” Wait, no resurrection? Isn’t that pretty basic in Judeo-Christian belief. Not always. The Sadducees were the religious faction of priests and their supporters for whom right worship in the Jerusalem Temple was the highest priority of Judaism. Offer the sacrifices commanded by Moses and let the priests mediate between you and God until God decided to act decisively on behalf of the Jewish people. Worship and wait.

 Note that I said the sacrifices commanded by Moses, who was believed to have authored the first five books of theirs, and our, Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Sadducees considered only those five books of Moses to be authoritative for the people of Israel. And in those early books, there is no direct mention of an afterlife. The Pharisees come in for some criticism in the New Testament. But since they considered the later prophets to also be the revelation of God, and some of those prophets did speak of a resurrection, then they agreed with Jesus. But as far as the Sadducees were concerned, those writings didn’t count, only the Torah, therefore no afterlife, no resurrection.

            So they present Jesus with an absurd hypothetical, the custom of levirate marriage, which was almost certainly not practiced in Jesus’s time. But if anyone would remember something that Moses wrote, it would be the Sadducees. How absurd it would be to have a resurrected world in which this poor woman would be an adulteress six times over, especially after having been “given in marriage” seven times, never with her consent (only women were “given in marriage).

            But what if you believed that God had made us from the dust of the earth and then breathed life into us, and that once we stopped breathing that life went back to God, so that this one wild and precious life was God’s gift on loan? The children of one’s blood and name would be the one and only way that we could live on, not vicariously, as we wouldn’t be around to experience it, but at least as a hope as we went to sleep with our fathers and mothers, the way of all flesh.

Drops of Fullness

The family of God has been filling this world with the faith, hope, and love of Jesus Christ, and will continue to do so until God fills it up forever.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Q. What is the communion of saints?

A. The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise. (An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism, “The Christian Hope,” Book of Common Prayer, page 862)

As the whole family of God, the living and the dead, we can also say that the communion of saints is the whole family of God, past and present. Paul addressed his letter to the “saints who are in Ephesus,” and in today’s reading gives thanks for their “love toward all the saints,” of which he has heard. The saints of God were not just those who lived in the past and were now dead. Nor are the saints today just those who lived in the past and are now dead. So today I address the saints who are at Saint Monica and Saint James. And little more than a year after hearing of your love toward all the saints, I now know of your love toward all the saints. So, happy All Saints’ Sunday Saints of Saint Monica and Saint James.

Vindication and Reconciliation

Vindication was what the widow in last week’s parable was looking for. When we heard her nagging the disrespecting judge last week, “give me justice against my opponent,” the Greek word translated “justice” actually means “vindication” or even “revenge.”

In today’s Gospel reading, which comes right after last week’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, we are in a different court, this time with a member of the Pharisee party and a tax collector. The one and only Temple in Jerusalem was a court, where the one God of Israel dwelt and who judged God’s chosen people on the basis of the covenant God had made with them after liberating the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

The Temple was the court in which the Jewish people confessed their transgressions and made bloody sacrifices that they hoped would persuade God to “justify” them again. The Pharisee belonged to a party in Judaism that stressed total obedience to the Law of Moses. A tax collector working with the pagan Romans in their imperial system of oppression wouldn’t be considered “just” by human standards.

Mixed Motives

One group of Jesus’s parables are almost poetic in their use of vivid agricultural imagery, like mustard seeds and weeds among the wheat. Others are stories of human beings, which are also symbolic, but are also vivid depictions of real people with mixed motives in real-life dilemmas. Luke excels in the latter, including today’s parable, which he said was about praying, though the two characters in today’s story don’t actually do any praying.

It doesn’t help that translators too often water down the original Greek. For instance, it’s not so much “justice” that the widow keeps demanding from the judge. It’s more like “vindication,” or even “revenge.” And while widows could often find themselves cut off from family support, there are many examples of Jewish marriage contracts making provision in the case of widowhood that have been found. And Jesus tells us that this widow “kept coming” to the judge, a luxury of time that a poor woman working on her own for her survival wouldn’t have. And as the lawyers among us might have noticed, the widow is getting a lot of ex parte time with the judge, in which the other unnamed party in this lawsuit doesn’t have the chance to respond.

And the judge isn’t afraid of being worn out, as the NRSV weakly puts it. The Greek is literally, “give me a black eye.” We use that as an idiom for harming someone’s reputation. But it might well have been understood literally, that the widow would slap the judge around, or perhaps pay someone else to do it for her. None of this is meant to put a white hat on the judge, who says he has no “respect” whatsoever for God or for his fellow human beings. And for all we know in this alternate universe that Jesus has placed us in, the widow’s opponent has it coming. And in his quest for what he sees as “justice,” the widow’s opponent, being only human, probably has mixed motives like the widow and the judge.

You’re not here for the sermon. You are here for Richard and Elizabeth, to do all in your power to uphold them in their marriage. Richard and Elizabeth are here, in this holy and sacred space dedicated to God, because they recognize that the source of their love, of all our loves, is the one and only God whose love “is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned.”

That love is God’s greatest gift to those whom God made in God’s image: “And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”

There are many other things that often seem to be valued more highly in this world, but they all seem to boil down to power. There is the power to use words to one’s advantage. That’s what Paul is referring to at the beginning of the 13th chapter of his Letter to Church in Corinth when he talks about prophecy and knowledge without love. The blessings that Jesus says his disciples already have are the opposite of power: the power to buy whatever or whoever you want, the power to make others mourn, the power to shut others up, the power that is unbound by any responsibility to others, the power to punish others, the power to impose your will on others.

Strange Profit

It feels like it’s been an entire liturgical season of Strange Stories by Jesus Christ, with Luke as the ghost writer, the more proper name of the strange stories being parables. So, one more time for those who’ve heard this already: According to the British biblical scholar C.H. Dodd, a parable is, “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought.” Jesus’ metaphors today might feel like we’re being set up to fail, and in the story of slaves and masters, downright offensive. Keep in mind, first, that Jesus is speaking to his apostles as one group. Second, slavery was not a metaphor in Jesus’s time, it was a fact of life that he and his disciples would have been all too aware of, and one they couldn’t ignore.

So, when Jesus says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you,” I need to clarify what is meant by “if” and “you.” Greek has root words whose prefixes and/or suffixes tell you, in this instance, whether it’s the singular “you,” or the plural “you.” English doesn’t, which is why it’s not always clear whether it’s you or y’all, or as they say in the Diocese of Alabama, y’all or all y’all. And the “if” here is not conditional, as in “if I were you,” but a statement of fact, as in, “if you have the right.” So, Jesus is telling us that all y’all, as one, already have such faith that when you speak and act as one, in one faith, you can do amazing things together.

Of course, that means we can’t do these things on our own, without God. “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”* If we can revive that sense of total dependence on our Creator, that might give us a way to see ourselves in Jesus’s parable of the slave and master. It is extremely unlikely that any of Jesus’s apostles or disciples would have had the means to purchase a slave. They were more likely to have potentially been in the position of being taken into slavery for being unable to pay Roman taxes, having to sell themselves into slavery for failure to pay debts, or being so desperately poor that they had no other way to live. They may well have seen it happen to their neighbors.

Handing Each Other Along

Today’s parable – not allegory – is not about “Hell.” Notice that Jesus actually calls it “Hades,” as in the underworld kingdom of the Greek god of death. And while in his telling the rich man goes straight from his underground burial to the underworld of the dead, we can safely assume that the Son of God knows that there isn’t some underground place where the shades (not so much souls) of the dead go. So, while Jesus used the images that the people of his time imagined, he is not giving us a photographic description of at least one part of the afterlife.

Neither does Jesus specify how much we should give to the poor. The Law of Moses, and the prophets – Amos among them – was clear about the obligations of the wealthy to help the poor. As Abraham said of the rich man’s brothers, “They have Moses and the prophets. They must listen to them,” as the rich man himself could have done.

But all of us are at risk of building walls of indifference to the poor that we might be tempted not to see. The rich man’s “gate” was just part of a wall that allowed him to pretend that he didn’t know about Lazarus who would have been laid outside his gate, because in a subsistence economy, he would have been the obligatory safety net. But it turns out that the rich man does know Lazarus because he recognizes him in Hades.

BFFs

— And I your Lord and Savior tell you, children of the light: Use your money, tainted as it is, to help your eternal friends, so that when your tainted money is gone, they will welcome you into homes where the light never goes out. (Luke 16:9)

How’s that for a Stewardship statement? Do we really know where all our money has come from, or where it all goes? And can we decide not to take any tainted money? No, no, and no. The “dishonest wealth” you heard in the Gospel reading could also be translated “unjust wealth,” or “tainted money,” perhaps something we “children of light” can relate to more easily than dishonest wealth. But, even if we are all implicated in “tainted money,” we can decide what kind of friends to make with our tainted money? That is the Gospel, the Good News that Jesus gives us today. The very strange story he tells today is one with which his disciples could easily identify. And with a little imagination, so can we.

“There was a rich man who had a manager,” or “steward.” A steward was charged with managing the property, in this case, for an absent landowner. He would rent parcels of the land to sharecroppers, then take a percentage of their crops as income for his master, and a commission for himself. With the rich man absent, the steward had a great deal of power. But he didn't have security, because the land wasn't his. Managers in this position were caught between rich landlords who wanted more profits for themselves, and laborers who wanted more wages for themselves.

Celebrating the Cross

It was the Roman Emperor Constantine, first to legalize Christianity, who ordered the erection of a complex of buildings in Jerusalem “on a scale of imperial magnificence,” to set forth as “an object of attraction and veneration to all, the blessed place of our Savior’s resurrection.” He entrusted this project to his mother, Empress Helena. When she arrived at Jerusalem, she discovered that Calvary Hill, which had stood outside the city walls in Jesus’s time, was now inside the walls of a city which the Romans had built on top of the old city which they had destroyed.

Calvary Hill itself was buried under tons of fill. It took years of excavation to find it, the nearby tomb, or sepulchere, where Jesus had been buried — and from which he rose — then finally a relic believed to be the true cross.

Constantine’s shrine included two principal buildings: a large basilica, used for the Liturgy of the Word, and a circular church, known as “The Resurrection”—its altar placed on the site of the tomb — which was used for the Liturgy of the Table, and for the singing of the Daily Office. In the courtyard between the two buildings, the exposed top of Calvary Hill was visible. So, as the faithful passed from Word to Sacrament, they would see where Christ was crucified. And it was there that the solemn veneration of the Cross took place on Good Friday.

The Value of Loyalty

One of the most important phrases in the Old Testament is, as our New Revised Standard Version translates it, “steadfast love,” in Hebrew, hesed. That is how God’s love for God’s people is constantly described. This love is not just a feeling, but an act of loyalty to the people of Israel with whom God made an everlasting covenant.

The LORD God’s hesed is not explicitly referred to in today’s reading from Deuteronomy. But when Moses says to the Israelites in today’s reading that they are to “obey the commandments of the LORD your God…by loving the LORD your God, walking in his ways and observing his commandments,” he is asking the people of Israel to respond to the LORD’s loyal love with their own active loyalty.

And in today’s Gospel reading Jesus also asks for loyalty. Luke is usually clear when Jesus is giving “insider information” to his followers, or as in today’s reading, “great crowds” along for the ride or looking for a great show. So Jesus’s call for loyalty is out in the open, and at first hearing, harsh. His language about “hating” one’s relatives may have been hyperbole. The books of the New Testament were written in the common Greek that served as an international language in the Roman empire. But Jesus and his fellow Jews spoke Aramaic, similar to but still separate from Hebrew. And biblical scholars today believe that what Jesus actually said in Aramaic was that his followers must “love less,” not “hate” their family.

Whose Banquet?

To set the scene for today’s Gospel, imagine a large U-shaped table with attendees reclining forward, with the host and guest of honor at opposite corners so they don’t have to turn their necks sideways to speak to each other. Perhaps they’re already reclining, but the rest of the guests are jockeying with each other, in increasingly louder tones, for seating within earshot or eyesight of the host and guest of honor. Jesus apparently is still standing around observing the seating competition, but then raises his voice —

— When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,' and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

A Saint for the Rest of Us

All of us – lay persons, bishops, priests and deacons – “represent Christ and his Church,” according to our Outline of the Faith. To break it down by syllables, all of us are called to re-present the risen Christ, so that our words and actions point to him. When we celebrate the feasts of individual saints, we celebrate them because they were particularly memorable in re-presenting and pointing to Christ Jesus.

Except that Bartholomew isn’t all that memorable, compared to Peter, Paul, John, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or Mary Magdalene among others In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Bartholomew is listed as one of the Twelve Apostles, exclusive company to be sure. But “Bartholomew” just means, “Son of Tolmai,” “Son of…” being a common designation in 1st century Judaism. So by the time those Gospels were written, enough years had apparently passed for this apostle’s name to be unknown.

Peaceful Waters

We can’t say we weren’t warned: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division,” or occupation. Some baptized Christians have failed to see the irony in Jesus’s words and have taken them literally, as license for division by forceful means. But Jesus wasn’t calling for division. Fourteen times in this Gospel, Luke speaks of Jesus as a peace-giver. But as Jesus – by his words and actions – challenges peoples’ presumptions of a God they assume is on their side and in their pocket, then they will cause division by rejecting his peace for all, not just for some.

Those who seek the living God have always been tempted to think they have found God, and having found God, pocket God. So God has had to remind us that they are in nobody’s pocket: “Am I a God near by, says the LORD, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? Says the LORD.” Of course there is no part of God’s creation off limits to its creator. Yet, through the prophet Jeremiah, God begins with a question, “Am I a God near by?” Or have the king and the priests and the approved prophets taken God’s presence for granted, as near by as their dreams? “I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, "I have dreamed, I have dreamed!" In this case, those so-called prophecies were exactly what Sigmund Freud said that most dreams are, wish-fulfillments. Wish-casting isn’t new under the Sun either,

Truth Spoken and Hidden

A common misconception about the biblical prophets is to see them only as fortune tellers. First and foremost, they are called by God to be truth tellers to those who presume themselves to be all powerful. “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!” In the story that had been handed down to Isaiah, those two Canaanite cities were judged by God and destroyed. But now, the prophet speaks to the successors of King David in Jerusalem, and basically says your capital and the kingdom of Judah are no different from Sodom and Gomorrah in their oppression of the powerless, such as orphans and widows.

Today in the Church we have ordained bishops, priests and deacons. We don’t have ordained prophets, though the bishops, priests and deacons are sometimes implored to be “prophetic” in their preaching. Speaking truth to power is sometimes what we all might be called by God to do. But it can come with a price. According to Jewish tradition, Manasseh succeeded his father Hezekiah, the last king mentioned by Isaiah. He was such a terrible king that when Isaiah hid from him in a tree, Manasseh had the tree sawed in half.

Re-presenting Christ

All of us – lay persons, bishops, priests and deacons – “represent Christ and his Church,” according to our Outline of the Faith. To break it down by syllables, all of us are called to re-present the risen Christ, so that our words and actions point to him. When we celebrate the feasts of individual saints, we celebrate them because they were particularly memorable in re-presenting and pointing to Christ Jesus.

James the son of Zebedee didn’t always do a good job of representing Jesus. The nickname that Jesus gave him and his brother of John, “Sons of Thunder,” or in Greek Bonaerges, may not have been entirely complimentary. When Jesus wanted to travel through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem, the Samaritans who hated the Jews as much as the Jews hated them, refused to receive him. Whereupon James and John volunteered to call down fire on them, and Jesus had to rebuke them. And using their mother to gain influence with Jesus is hardly pointing to the same Jesus who replies that he has come to serve, not to demand service or dole out patronage.

Both

Martha and Mary of Bethany are not proxies for the perennial debate about whether the active or contemplative life, hospitality or spirituality, are more important in the Church. These were two sisters who loved each other, who loved Jesus, and whom Jesus loved. Both were faithful disciples of Jesus in their own ways, and both are equally valuable models for how we should faithfully follow Jesus today. At the risk of oversimplification, Mary exemplified listening to the word of God, while Martha exemplified doing the word of God. But you can’t do the word of God if you haven’t listened to it, and if you don’t do the word of God after listening to it then you haven’t heard it.

Both sisters assume roles in this story that would normally have been reserved for males. That it is Martha who “welcomed” Jesus into “her home,” indicates that Martha was the legal owner of the property, presumably a large enough household to entertain Jesus and at least twelve of his apostles, which would also indicate that she owned other land from which income could be generated. A woman could inherit property if there was no father or husband to inherit it. Of course in John’s Gospel, there is a brother, Lazarus, whom Luke doesn’t mention. Perhaps if Lazarus was the youngest, perhaps too young to administer the property, then it might have fallen to Martha to supervise a large household.