Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Proper 28 B - Sunday, November 14, 2021
If that were not enough, most churches are facing the challenges of aging and decline. We are beginning to realize that it is too late for “going back to normal”. The way is blocked behind us, it is closed off. We can only move forward focused on the work of being faithful, loving communities in our stressed, divided, and violent world. From whence cometh our help? Do ancient biblical texts, so far removed from our culture and ways of being, have any relevance to our times? If so, what wisdom do they provide, what hope might we find in the promises of God?
Among the great gifts of sharing in the 3-year lectionary cycle of readings for the readings on the Lord’s Day is hearing afresh and being invited into Jesus’ life and teaching. We conclude our year of St. Mark today. Next Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King with a Gospel from St. John and then readings from St. Luke during Advent to begin Year C. So it is good to remember what St. Mark, as he has told the story of salvation, has so urgently pressed into our awareness over these many weeks. It is a Gospel for our time, for this time, that we do well to heed. He is honest, sometimes graphically honest, about the trials of discipleship.
The way of Jesus is a stormy sea that involves risk and loss, fear and faith, and the laying down of false power for the way of the cross. Yet Jesus is always present - teaching, modeling, showing the way. St. Mark’s community is the most persecuted of the four Evangelists. They are in crisis and tumult. Writing shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, the first hearers of Mark’s gospel are being treated as trouble-making heretics, estranged from family members, and seeing some of their brothers and sisters martyred. The urgent questions which inform the telling: Why does salvation involve such pain? What does this suffering mean? Why bother staying faithful if it costs us so much?
Is the way of Jesus really true, really worth it? So we come to this reading from chapter 13 with all of that in the background and with Jesus nigh upon his Passion. His final message is that when death and destruction and collapse seem to spread unchecked around you and you are tempted to give up and lose hope, do not be surprised, but be steadfast and clear-eyed about what time it is. The reading for today regrounds us in how to be in a time like ours. It has to do with the nature of the power of evil and the power of the cross.
What might this exchange between the disciples and Jesus sound like to us in our own ways of speaking?
“one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”
The disciples say, “Teacher, look how lucky Yahweh is to have us! We have the house for the Messiah, the law, the feasts, and sacrifices, and offerings - now all we need is Messiah himself! The stage is set, the people are ready, our liberation and freedom is surely coming soon! When the Messiah comes in power and great glory, the Romans will be struck down and we will finally be the people God has promised we will be. We will be free, mighty, and strong. Then Israel will be made great again!”
Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
Jesus says, “People raised these stones here and assembled these great walls. People can, and will, take down these same stones. Yes, you claim the law and sacrifices and offerings - and think that in these is your salvation, that God will protect you in your corruption and arrogance and neglect of the poor. This is not the worship God intended. This is performance. If you believe you can defeat the Romans, that God will fight on your side, then your arrogance is worse than I thought. All of it will be destroyed. All of it. The Messiah is here and you are doubting my way of self-giving love. The prophets of violence will have their moment, and they will be defeated. They are always defeated.”
In the baptismal liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, the candidates are asked, “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” To renounce is to forsake, repudiate, disown. The gospel requires the abandonment of the claims of the principalities and powers that violence and domination are the ways of God, is how the kingdom comes. When we are renouncing evil powers, we are tapping into the greatest power in the universe, which is nonviolent resistance. We do not ignore evil powers, dismiss them, seek to overcome them on our own - none of that is being awake. The whole of the gospel of Mark can be read as a response to the zealot movement. Jesus repeats for emphasis his refutation of this way of power and domination; if any of you want to be great, be servant of all; if you want to be first, be last of all; take up your cross, lay down your life, whoever gains life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for his sake will find it.
The earliest Christian creed was “Jesus is Lord”, which means Caesar, who called himself lord, is not. Jesus is facing the great fears of all the times. And the answer to fear is not domination of the other, but a journey into our own souls to the source of hope who is greater than fear and uncertainty: watch, keep alert, keep awake. Do good, love one another, and entrust the end of the age to God’s way and time. Do not believe false claims and plans of peace and safety. When all the fears of the day fall upon you, and the prophets of doom harass you with small facts which are either lies or false hopes, do not let them move you. Live as you have been shown. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment