Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2018
1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44
In Mark, the scribes are the principal opponents of Jesus and they are frequently mentioned — twenty-two times in all, The present instance is the only recorded example of Jesus inveighing against the conduct of the scribes, as distinct from their teaching. Although the scribes and the Pharisees are linked in the condemnation of legalism in Matthew, it is important to draw a proper distinction.
Whereas the Pharisees had an established position, and an honorable one, as interpreters of the Law and its traditions, and were also regarded as highly patriotic, the scribes as “bookmen” were regarded mainly as recorders or collectors of opinions and less authoritative than the Pharisees. As is often the case with those of lesser status, they are represented in the New Testament as not only argumentative, but given to ostentation to magnify their public image — like a classmate of mine at the Webb School in Claremont, California who, having failed to win an athletic varsity letter — a large red capital E — from his previous school, purloined one and injudiciously wore it to breakfast the day after Webb’s football defeat by the Emerson School.
Beyond the issue of ostentation, Jesus condemned the scribes in that they are held responsible for the exactions which effectively destroyed widows’ estates, all on behalf of a temple still in building and soon to come to an end. One of the salient features of Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes in Mark is the connection made between them and the temple. Though one may protest that the costs of the upkeep of the temple and its round of sacrificial observances were the concern of the clergy, Mark’s gospel firmly lays responsibility for extravagance and excess at the door of the scribes, and they are the enemies of Jesus before the clergy enter the picture. The scribes in and around Jerusalem are quite regularly associated with the clergy. Any challenge by Jesus to the temple system and its clergy is accepted by the scribes as a challenge to their standing.
In this light, we are to understand the charge that the scribes offer long prayers. Not that they are responsible for the worship and the liturgies of the temple, but that they consistently urge upon people the fundamental necessity of keeping the interminable round of observances in being. Perhaps we ought to understand the phrase for appearances’ sake not as an indication of pretense, but as a judgment by Jesus that the observances themselves were but an outward show without substance.
The narrative of the poor widow’s offering is, among other things, a continuation of the previous attack on the scribes and their part, as Mark sees it, in the whole official establishment of Judaism in Jerusalem. The judgement of Jesus is that the scribes were like leeches on the Jewish faithful and not the least of their sins was their insistence on the support of the temple system, and all that it implied, even to the sacrificing of widows’ property. Jesus does not commend the widow at all for sacrificing all she had; rather, the story should be read as a lament for a system which could end in the destitution of a widow.
Part of us is attracted to system while another part harbors an expectation which cannot be satisfied by a system, as in Tagore’s aphorism “While God waits for the temple to be built of love, people bring stones.” This was brought home to me some years ago on a Saturday morning in Berkeley, California some years ago outside the Jesuit School of Theology. The previous evening Raymond Brown, renowned commentator on the Fourth Gospel, had flown in to give a public lecture, and I just happened to meet him that following morning. It also happened that I was to preach the Sunday sermon at a local church on John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand for which I had figured out what seemed to me a brilliant explanation which discounted the miraculous. On spying Professor Brown I thought, “What a perfect opportunity to get a verification of my theory.” Dr. Brown, to be sure, listened carefully, but when I had spoken he contradicted me very forcefully regarding the multiplication of loaves, “But they were expecting this!” “Well,” I thought, “back to rewrite.”
Such expectation is displayed by both widows in today’s readings, marginalized women driven to put all their eggs in the basket of God’s promise, persons acting out of the only abundance they had, an abundance of heart. As a matter of historical interest, by the way, the advertisements our Founder distributed for his mission talks often concluded with the exhortation “Expect Much.”
When operating at the margins of possibility, you are liable to be more ecstatic than cautious and it might land you in trouble. Like Harry James’ solo on “Life Goes to a Party” in Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert described by the liner notes as “like someone rushing out onto an icy pond and discovering they ain’t got skates.” By that point in the concert, the vibe was so hot that Harry James was possessed by it. This is what Raymond Brown meant: Five thousand people possessed by the vibe of Jesus presiding at Passover — for sure they were expecting this. Once upon a time the philosopher Nietzsche came up with the insight that creation takes place in the realms of music, and so I imagine the expectation of those in the presence of Jesus at Passover might have been a kind of creating musical event, a Passover light opera.
The only formula I can offer for reconciling system with expectation is that they must constantly be wrestled together.
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