PROPER 28 / 25 Pentecost — 18 November 2007
St. John’s, Keokuk —10:00
Mal 3:13-4:2a,5-6 Ps 98 2Thess 3:6-13 Luke 21:5-19
The days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.
Do you remember your first trip to the big city? (If you grew up in the big city you will just have to find your own way around this launching device!) There’s something memorable about that experience of being a tourist for the first time in some notable place. I grew up around cities; we lived in Evanston, Illinois, when I was a small child, so I’ve always known that wonderful Chicago vista looking up Michigan Avenue, with the Loop on one side and Grant Park and the lake on the other. During my teens I lived in Denver, Colorado (though Denver was still an overgrown small town in those days). But I went to college in Boston, with all its marvelous historical landmarks; and while I was in college I visited London (still my favorite city in the world) and Paris. But it was only later in college that for the first time I went to New York City. I tried to be very cool; after all, I was no hick, I’d been to Europe! but on the inside I was really wired! Times Square, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, Central Park, St. John’s Cathedral — all the places I’d always heard about—they seemed so real, so “there”! And by comparison I felt so transitory and unreal and small.
Some of Jesus’ followers are doing the tourist-in-the-big-city bit in Jerusalem in this morning’s Gospel. (It’s not quite as obvious in Luke’s account — Luke is very cosmopolitan — but in Mark’s older parallel the disciples are saying, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Eyes like saucers!) Although most Galilean Jews probably went up to Jerusalem a few times in their lives, and some of them many times, even annually (you had to walk for a couple of days from Galilee, but it wasn’t that big a deal), there were undoubtedly some of them who had never been to Jerusalem before, and the crowd that tagged after Jesus was probably predominantly young. So some of them were rubbernecking. This was Jerusalem! This was the Temple of the Lord God of Israel! The very heart of their identity as a people! The seat of God’s Presence, the Holiest Place, the most real place in the world! The very center of the created universe! And when the disciples share with Jesus their awe, he responds: “The day will come when all this will be leveled to the ground.” And forty years later, it happened.
There is something about the institutions of this world—historic places, landmark buildings, famous monuments, long-standing traditions, national allegiances, community values, social customs—which seem to us to have a deep and lasting reality. At this level, we assume that what is, must be; and we conform our lives to that.
Well, in fact many of these things often are signs of deep and lasting realities. Signs. Jesus says, don’t hold on to these things too tightly. But we do. Because our cities and temples are the heart of our identity, the assurance of our security, the guarantee of our control, the warrant for our power. (Precisely why buildings like the World Trade Center and the Pentagon became targets for terrorists.)
I’ve been thinking about power and authority and control lately. One of the issues behind the terrorist problems of our era is an attempt to misuse and pervert religious faith into an instrument of power. Nor is this limited to the Islamic world: often enough in our own Christian history, and by some yet today, there are those who would impose their own orthodoxies by force. Within our own Episcopal Church we continue to struggle with many divisive issues, and although some of them may actually have to do with such important concerns as sexual morality, theological orthodoxy and Scriptural authority, a lot of it, on the various sides, is really about power.
Power. The ability to compel other people to do certain things and to refrain from doing certain other things. And the fact that this may indeed very well truly be for people’s own good is sometimes beside the point. The secular world uses power that way, and it is not only legitimate but necessary that it should do so.
But Jesus says to his disciples: “You know that those who seem to rule the nations are masters over them, and their great ones exercise power over them. It is not that way among you, but let whoever wants to become great among you be your servant, and let whoever wants to be first among you be slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as ransom for many.”[1]
We’ve heard that many times, and it pleases us to think that Jesus means we shouldn’t be heavy-handed or arrogant in the exercise of authority. I don’t think that’s quite it.
Power. The power of the Gospel. Yes, I think the Gospel has power. I think God has power. But I think this power really isn’t anything at all like what we usually mean when we talk about “power” and seek to exercise power.
The Temple in Jerusalem represented the religious power of God’s People Israel (even under the constraints of the Roman occupation). It was inconceivable that the Temple of the Lord God should fall. But of course it did fall. In fact, the temple fell and was destroyed twice, once by the Babylonians (600-some years before Jesus) and once by the Romans (40 years or so after Jesus). Both times the Jewish People emerged with deeper faith and greater fidelity to God. The Reign of God works through, but does not rely upon, human institutions, not even ecclesiastical institutions. The Reign of God does not need, indeed is usually obstructed by, human power.
In the Gospel today Jesus promises his disciples nothing but powerlessness—persecution, betrayal, and death. Exactly what he himself would shortly face here in Jerusalem. We may sometimes be tempted to ask why Jesus did not use his power to save himself from the cross (Jesus himself remarked at the time that he could have twelve legions of angels for the asking[2]). We assume that because the cross was the necessary condition of our redemption, Jesus forbore the use of power. Ah, but Jesus did use his power.
Next Sunday we celebrate Christ the King; in the Gospel we will see Jesus hanging on the Cross. It’s a mark of how far we are from being fully converted to God’s Reign that we still find it so hard to understand that the Cross is what real power really is.
[1] Mark 10:42-45: Matthew 20:25-28; Luke 22:25-27.
[2] Matthew 26:53.
© William S. J. Moorhead 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Monday, November 12, 2007
Sermon -- 11 November 2007
Proper 27 / 24 Pentecost — 11 November 2007
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 8:00 & 10:15
RCL: Haggai 1:15b-2:9 Ps 145:1-5,18-22 2Thess 2:1-5,13-17 Luke 20:27-38
Those who are considered worthy of a place … in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
“Oh, no!…”
Or, there may be some who, for good reason or bad, would say, “Whew!…”
This is a difficult passage, and I think there are some Christians who are troubled by it; in fact, I know there are some Christians who are troubled by it, because some Christians have come to me and said, “I’m troubled by this passage”! It’s the kind of Sunday Gospel reading that this weekend, I’m quite sure, has caused countless clergy to say, “What’s the Epistle? Maybe I’ll preach on that this Sunday”! [Oh. Second Thessalonians. Mmm.] I, on the other hand, am fearless. That’s one of the advantages of being a supply priest; you can get away with almost anything, and not have to pick up the pieces afterward! So let’s take a look at this admittedly rather peculiar interaction between Jesus and the Sadducees, and try to see what it says; and perhaps also what it doesn’t say.
Jesus then goes on to respond to the challenge. What’s absurd is not the situation of this poor childless woman in the resurrection who now finds herself with seven husbands, but the Sadducees for thinking that the resurrection is simply a return to a life like our present life; that being raised from the dead is like retiring to Florida, only with better weather. What you don’t get, Jesus says, is that the resurrection is a whole new creation, in which the necessities and limitations of this world just don’t apply any more. Specifically, marriage will be no longer necessary, since there will be no more death and thus no need to beget children.
It’s at this point that we in our generation are likely to raise our hands and say, “Ahem, excuse me?” And what concerns us is that this might mean that in the resurrection we shall lose the most precious human relationship we have—for many of us, our relationship with our spouse (which means a lot more to us than just having children), and by extension other deep, loving, fulfilling relationships with family or friends. “You mean we won’t be together in heaven??!!”
Well, I don’t think that’s what Jesus is getting at. I don’t think that’s the issue he’s addressing; and I think we would be repeating the Sadducees’ error of “knowing neither the scriptures nor the power of God” if we were to take Jesus’ words out of their context in a very specific controversy and try to build a systematic theology of the afterlife on them. But before going on to any speculative remarks about the nature of the resurrection, let’s first finish this episode.
Having attacked the Sadducees’ simplistic caricature of the resurrection, Jesus then goes on to affirm that this earthly life is not all there is. The way he does it is a little odd and actually not very convincing to our ears, but for first century and later rabbinic Judaism, it was a fairly standard way of arguing from scripture (this kind of use of the Biblical text shows up elsewhere in the New Testament, in Paul and in the Letter to the Hebrews, for instance): Jesus refers to Exodus 3:6 (but, as you perhaps know, the Biblical text would not be divided into chapters for many centuries yet, nor into verses for even longer than that; so Jesus simply refers to “The Bush”—God’s self-revelation to Moses in the burning bush in the passage we enumerate as the third chapter of Exodus) where God is identified as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and God is the God of the living, not of the dead; therefore the holy patriarchs (and by extension all of God’s righteous ones) must not be dead, but still living unto God; Q.E.D. Doesn’t measure up to Western standards of logic very well, but in the event it successfully serves to stuff a sock in the Sadducees.
And the fundamental point that Jesus is making is absolutely valid: God is the Lord of life, of the whole of life; and the power of God is such that God’s purpose for humankind is not frustrated by death. In fact, we would want to say (and here we’re moving from explication of the Gospel text into constructive theology) that God’s ultimate purpose for humankind so far transcends life in this world that our physical death is the necessary condition of our transition into that larger purpose, of our resurrection, of our new creation. It is from this perspective that we can perhaps speculate on the state of marriage relationships in the resurrection (remembering, after all, that we never claim that marriage is meant to endure longer than “until we are parted by death”). In that fulfillment of our humanity as the image and likeness of God, as “children of God” as Jesus says today, “like angels” but notice, not “the same as angels,” freed from the ordinary limitations of space and time as we know them in this life (as the Risen Jesus, appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, was evidently not limited in the usual way by space and time) — in that new and risen humanity, total loving intimacy, with God, and in God in community with one another, will not require the mediation of the body of flesh. And further, the kind of total self-giving in love which we in our fallen condition can give only to one other at a time will in the resurrection become the goal of our relationship with each and every one of the whole of redeemed humanity, a community of love of which marriage is but the foretaste. The earthly marriage relationship is thus not something which in the resurrection we lose, but rather something we shall be given to surpass beyond any imagining, in eternal union with the One who is Love’s own very self.
But, as I said, we have moved into constructive, even speculative theology at this point, and away from the text of the Gospel, which recounts a particular debate of more limited scope. Nevertheless, I hope the move is not altogether illegitimate—and at least of some help in our understanding of our journey!
© 2007 William S. J. Moorhead
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 8:00 & 10:15
RCL: Haggai 1:15b-2:9 Ps 145:1-5,18-22 2Thess 2:1-5,13-17 Luke 20:27-38
Those who are considered worthy of a place … in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
“Oh, no!…”
Or, there may be some who, for good reason or bad, would say, “Whew!…”
This is a difficult passage, and I think there are some Christians who are troubled by it; in fact, I know there are some Christians who are troubled by it, because some Christians have come to me and said, “I’m troubled by this passage”! It’s the kind of Sunday Gospel reading that this weekend, I’m quite sure, has caused countless clergy to say, “What’s the Epistle? Maybe I’ll preach on that this Sunday”! [Oh. Second Thessalonians. Mmm.] I, on the other hand, am fearless. That’s one of the advantages of being a supply priest; you can get away with almost anything, and not have to pick up the pieces afterward! So let’s take a look at this admittedly rather peculiar interaction between Jesus and the Sadducees, and try to see what it says; and perhaps also what it doesn’t say.
[The Sadducees were a very conservative sect, holding only the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, to be canonical scripture; they rejected the traditions of the Pharisees as modernist, liberal innovations. (One of these newfangled doctrines that they rejected was the resurrection of the dead.) The Sadducees were few in number, but wealthy and powerful; their power base was among the priestly families in Jerusalem. They came to an end as a distinct sect when Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. They were rivals and competitors, if not enemies, of the Pharisees; one of the few things they apparently agreed with the Pharisees about was that Jesus of Nazareth was dangerous.]There’s a species of religious puzzling called “desert island theology”—in which one posits some very extreme situation and tries to draw some principle of religious faith or practice. So called because it often starts out, “Suppose you were stranded on a desert island …” It’s not a very good way to do theology, or legal theory (“Hard cases make bad law”) or much of anything else. But that doesn’t stop the Sadducees, who come to Jesus determined to trip him up with this somewhat far-fetched little hypothetical situation which they apparently think will demonstrate how the Law of Moses reduces to absurdity all this newfangled unbiblical Pharisaic speculation about the resurrection of the dead: This poor woman works her way through seven brothers without having any babies; in the resurrection whose wife is she?
[According to the Law of Moses (in Deuteronomy 25), if a man dies without an heir, his brother is to marry the widow and raise up a son to perpetuate the dead brother’s name. This was an ancient custom, certainly going back at least to the days of the patriarchs; it appears to be an exception, rather than a contradiction, to another Mosaic Law (in Leviticus 18) which forbids a man to marry his brother’s wife (that’s the one King Henry VIII got all tangled up with). But it’s not at all clear that the Jews of Jesus’ time still observed this law or custom of levirate marriage (from the Latin levir,In Mark’s version of this story, which is probably earlier and the source of Luke’s version that we hear today, Jesus begins by turning on the Sadducees: “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?” Jesus doesn’t mean, “You don’t know what the text of the scriptures says,” because the Sadducees could quote the Bible as well as anyone in town, and better than most. Jesus means, “You don’t know what the scriptures are about, you don’t have any idea what God is up to or wherein the Reign of God consists; you’re not ignorant (that would be excusable), you’re clueless!”
brother-in-law), as they don’t now (and Christians never have), and so it’s not at all clear that the Sadducees are acting in good faith when they propose this problem of the woman who outlived seven brothers.]
Jesus then goes on to respond to the challenge. What’s absurd is not the situation of this poor childless woman in the resurrection who now finds herself with seven husbands, but the Sadducees for thinking that the resurrection is simply a return to a life like our present life; that being raised from the dead is like retiring to Florida, only with better weather. What you don’t get, Jesus says, is that the resurrection is a whole new creation, in which the necessities and limitations of this world just don’t apply any more. Specifically, marriage will be no longer necessary, since there will be no more death and thus no need to beget children.
It’s at this point that we in our generation are likely to raise our hands and say, “Ahem, excuse me?” And what concerns us is that this might mean that in the resurrection we shall lose the most precious human relationship we have—for many of us, our relationship with our spouse (which means a lot more to us than just having children), and by extension other deep, loving, fulfilling relationships with family or friends. “You mean we won’t be together in heaven??!!”
Well, I don’t think that’s what Jesus is getting at. I don’t think that’s the issue he’s addressing; and I think we would be repeating the Sadducees’ error of “knowing neither the scriptures nor the power of God” if we were to take Jesus’ words out of their context in a very specific controversy and try to build a systematic theology of the afterlife on them. But before going on to any speculative remarks about the nature of the resurrection, let’s first finish this episode.
Having attacked the Sadducees’ simplistic caricature of the resurrection, Jesus then goes on to affirm that this earthly life is not all there is. The way he does it is a little odd and actually not very convincing to our ears, but for first century and later rabbinic Judaism, it was a fairly standard way of arguing from scripture (this kind of use of the Biblical text shows up elsewhere in the New Testament, in Paul and in the Letter to the Hebrews, for instance): Jesus refers to Exodus 3:6 (but, as you perhaps know, the Biblical text would not be divided into chapters for many centuries yet, nor into verses for even longer than that; so Jesus simply refers to “The Bush”—God’s self-revelation to Moses in the burning bush in the passage we enumerate as the third chapter of Exodus) where God is identified as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and God is the God of the living, not of the dead; therefore the holy patriarchs (and by extension all of God’s righteous ones) must not be dead, but still living unto God; Q.E.D. Doesn’t measure up to Western standards of logic very well, but in the event it successfully serves to stuff a sock in the Sadducees.
And the fundamental point that Jesus is making is absolutely valid: God is the Lord of life, of the whole of life; and the power of God is such that God’s purpose for humankind is not frustrated by death. In fact, we would want to say (and here we’re moving from explication of the Gospel text into constructive theology) that God’s ultimate purpose for humankind so far transcends life in this world that our physical death is the necessary condition of our transition into that larger purpose, of our resurrection, of our new creation. It is from this perspective that we can perhaps speculate on the state of marriage relationships in the resurrection (remembering, after all, that we never claim that marriage is meant to endure longer than “until we are parted by death”). In that fulfillment of our humanity as the image and likeness of God, as “children of God” as Jesus says today, “like angels” but notice, not “the same as angels,” freed from the ordinary limitations of space and time as we know them in this life (as the Risen Jesus, appearing to his disciples after his resurrection, was evidently not limited in the usual way by space and time) — in that new and risen humanity, total loving intimacy, with God, and in God in community with one another, will not require the mediation of the body of flesh. And further, the kind of total self-giving in love which we in our fallen condition can give only to one other at a time will in the resurrection become the goal of our relationship with each and every one of the whole of redeemed humanity, a community of love of which marriage is but the foretaste. The earthly marriage relationship is thus not something which in the resurrection we lose, but rather something we shall be given to surpass beyond any imagining, in eternal union with the One who is Love’s own very self.
But, as I said, we have moved into constructive, even speculative theology at this point, and away from the text of the Gospel, which recounts a particular debate of more limited scope. Nevertheless, I hope the move is not altogether illegitimate—and at least of some help in our understanding of our journey!
© 2007 William S. J. Moorhead
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Sermon -- 4 November 2007
Proper 26 / Pentecost 23 — 4 November 2007
Trinity, Iowa City — Evensong, 5:00 pm
Ps 24, 29 Nehemiah 5:1-19 Luke 12:22-31
Restore to them, this very day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the interest on money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.
One of the things that’s kind of nifty about Evensong is that we get to hear Scripture readings, especially from the Old Testament, that compared to the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary are really remarkably obscure.
Did any of you attend last Sunday’s Adult Forum, when Fr. Mel talked about “The Changing Lectionary”? Yeah, neither did I. (Sorry about that, Mel!) But if any of you were there, you’ll recall that one of the things I assume he talked about was that in the new Revised Common Lectionary, at least during the second half of the year, the first readings at the Sunday Eucharist are generally in a course sequence from the Old Testament, so we are given a more coherent survey of the Hebrew Scriptures over the three years. This as opposed to the Roman-based Prayer Book lectionary that we had been using for the previous thirty years, in which the Old Testament readings were generally, and sometimes rather vaguely, keyed to the Gospel reading for the day. But even the Revised Common Lectionary with its more coherent survey never gets quite as obscure as the Book of Nehemiah. Well, that’s not quite true. There is one Sunday, out of the three years, in which we hear a passage from Nehemiah, in which the priest Ezra reads the Book of the Law to the people in Jerusalem. (Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C — that was last January — so it’s over two more years before it comes around again. Only now the Revised Common Lectionary gnomes in their infinite wisdom have edited out all the really obscure and largely unpronounceable Hebrew names of all the Levites who were standing with Ezra while he read the Law. Well that’s just no fun at all! Those of you who have ever been a reader on that Sunday are doubtless deeply grateful to the Lectionary gnomes.)
That’s why we have Evensong!
The Book of Nehemiah, along with the Book of Ezra, which is related to it, recounts how the Jewish people were allowed to return to their homeland of Judah after several generations of exile in Babylonia following the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. Nehemiah was a Jew who had been cupbearer to King Artaxerxes of Persia (you’ll recall that the Persians had conquered the Babylonians or Chaldeans, and being somewhat more flexible in their imperial policy were willing to let the Jews go home if they wanted to; some did, some didn’t). Nehemiah asked to be allowed to return to Judah and oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem as governor of the province of Judah in the Persian empire. And that’s sort of where we pick up in the reading this evening.
Nehemiah was supervising the rebuilding of the city walls of Jerusalem; the work was being done largely on a volunteer basis by men who had returned to Judah from the Babylonian exile. There were other people, however — in some cases Israelites who had stayed behind when the Babylonians conquered the land and took the bulk of the people captive — they were probably people of no great significance with whom the Babylonians didn’t want to bother, but of course after the exile they were able to take over the abandoned lands and raise their social status significantly — and they were very much opposed to the rebuilding and refortifying of Jerusalem. Another group may have been those subsequently identified as the Samaritans, who had been imported into Israel following the conquest of the northern kingdom, and they also opposed the restoration of Jerusalem. So working on the walls of Jerusalem not only involved doing heavy construction with one hand but also holding a sword in the other, lest the anti-Jerusalemites attack them to stop the rebuilding.
Then on top of this, the men who were doing the work also had their own work to do on their own farms, raising crops, not only to produce food for themselves and their families and their neighbors, but also to earn enough money to be able to pay the Persian taxes. So a lot of these folks were in very tight circumstances, often deeply in debt, typically to the rich and well-born of their own people. They often had to sell their land, or send their children into apprenticeship or “service” or even slavery, just to eke out a living.
When this came to Nehemiah’s attention, he was seriously ticked, and he called an assembly, chewed out those who were exploiting their poorer fellow Jews, and put an end to it. I suspect that actually getting this reform accomplished was not as simple as the way Nehemiah tells it afterward! But that’s often the case.
Nehemiah himself makes a point of the fact that he did not draw the full usual salary for his position as governor, so as not to be a burden on the people. He does call God’s attention to this. Yeah, well…. Nehemiah was a very good and honest governor, if perhaps not the most modest man in town, and something of a hard-nose. But it was what the Jews needed at the time in order to get their nation reestablished. By his own example of caring for the welfare of the people, especially of the poor, and by calling to account those who would exploit them, Nehemiah was in his time a beacon and sign of God’s Kingdom.
© 2007 William S J Moorhead
Trinity, Iowa City — Evensong, 5:00 pm
Ps 24, 29 Nehemiah 5:1-19 Luke 12:22-31
Restore to them, this very day, their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the interest on money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.
One of the things that’s kind of nifty about Evensong is that we get to hear Scripture readings, especially from the Old Testament, that compared to the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary are really remarkably obscure.
Did any of you attend last Sunday’s Adult Forum, when Fr. Mel talked about “The Changing Lectionary”? Yeah, neither did I. (Sorry about that, Mel!) But if any of you were there, you’ll recall that one of the things I assume he talked about was that in the new Revised Common Lectionary, at least during the second half of the year, the first readings at the Sunday Eucharist are generally in a course sequence from the Old Testament, so we are given a more coherent survey of the Hebrew Scriptures over the three years. This as opposed to the Roman-based Prayer Book lectionary that we had been using for the previous thirty years, in which the Old Testament readings were generally, and sometimes rather vaguely, keyed to the Gospel reading for the day. But even the Revised Common Lectionary with its more coherent survey never gets quite as obscure as the Book of Nehemiah. Well, that’s not quite true. There is one Sunday, out of the three years, in which we hear a passage from Nehemiah, in which the priest Ezra reads the Book of the Law to the people in Jerusalem. (Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C — that was last January — so it’s over two more years before it comes around again. Only now the Revised Common Lectionary gnomes in their infinite wisdom have edited out all the really obscure and largely unpronounceable Hebrew names of all the Levites who were standing with Ezra while he read the Law. Well that’s just no fun at all! Those of you who have ever been a reader on that Sunday are doubtless deeply grateful to the Lectionary gnomes.)
That’s why we have Evensong!
The Book of Nehemiah, along with the Book of Ezra, which is related to it, recounts how the Jewish people were allowed to return to their homeland of Judah after several generations of exile in Babylonia following the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. Nehemiah was a Jew who had been cupbearer to King Artaxerxes of Persia (you’ll recall that the Persians had conquered the Babylonians or Chaldeans, and being somewhat more flexible in their imperial policy were willing to let the Jews go home if they wanted to; some did, some didn’t). Nehemiah asked to be allowed to return to Judah and oversee the rebuilding of Jerusalem as governor of the province of Judah in the Persian empire. And that’s sort of where we pick up in the reading this evening.
Nehemiah was supervising the rebuilding of the city walls of Jerusalem; the work was being done largely on a volunteer basis by men who had returned to Judah from the Babylonian exile. There were other people, however — in some cases Israelites who had stayed behind when the Babylonians conquered the land and took the bulk of the people captive — they were probably people of no great significance with whom the Babylonians didn’t want to bother, but of course after the exile they were able to take over the abandoned lands and raise their social status significantly — and they were very much opposed to the rebuilding and refortifying of Jerusalem. Another group may have been those subsequently identified as the Samaritans, who had been imported into Israel following the conquest of the northern kingdom, and they also opposed the restoration of Jerusalem. So working on the walls of Jerusalem not only involved doing heavy construction with one hand but also holding a sword in the other, lest the anti-Jerusalemites attack them to stop the rebuilding.
Then on top of this, the men who were doing the work also had their own work to do on their own farms, raising crops, not only to produce food for themselves and their families and their neighbors, but also to earn enough money to be able to pay the Persian taxes. So a lot of these folks were in very tight circumstances, often deeply in debt, typically to the rich and well-born of their own people. They often had to sell their land, or send their children into apprenticeship or “service” or even slavery, just to eke out a living.
When this came to Nehemiah’s attention, he was seriously ticked, and he called an assembly, chewed out those who were exploiting their poorer fellow Jews, and put an end to it. I suspect that actually getting this reform accomplished was not as simple as the way Nehemiah tells it afterward! But that’s often the case.
Nehemiah himself makes a point of the fact that he did not draw the full usual salary for his position as governor, so as not to be a burden on the people. He does call God’s attention to this. Yeah, well…. Nehemiah was a very good and honest governor, if perhaps not the most modest man in town, and something of a hard-nose. But it was what the Jews needed at the time in order to get their nation reestablished. By his own example of caring for the welfare of the people, especially of the poor, and by calling to account those who would exploit them, Nehemiah was in his time a beacon and sign of God’s Kingdom.
© 2007 William S J Moorhead
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sermon -- 28 October 2007
PROPER 25 / 22 PENTECOST — 28 October 2007
Trinity, Iowa City — 8:45 am
Joel 2:23-32 Ps 65 2Tim 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14
Trinity, Iowa City — 8:45 am
Joel 2:23-32 Ps 65 2Tim 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14
© 2007 William S. J. Moorhead
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is, I assume, one of Jesus’ more familiar stories. We have listened to it being read on Sundays every three years for the last thirty years in late October, and before that it was read every Sunday along about mid-August. So we know this story pretty well.
Which may not be the same thing has having really heard it.
I suspect that when we hear this story — at least if “we” are anything like “me” — we identify with the tax collector. (Excursus: the tax collector was a notorious sinner, not because he collected taxes, but because he collected taxes for the Romans, and furthermore did so dishonestly to his own personal profit. End of excursus.) We identify with the prayer of the tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner! But I thank you, God, that at least I am not like other people like that hypocritical Pharisee bragging about how devout he is.”
Oops.
Christians have often made the simple assumption that the problem with the Pharisees was that they were hypocrites — that is, they were phonies — they said one thing but actually did something else. Well, no doubt some of the Pharisees were hypocrites — on occasion Jesus really put it to them about their hypocrisy, although it was generally about more than just being phonies. But then, Christians can be phonies and hypocrites sometimes too. (This would include you, and me.) But in the case of the Pharisee in this story, there’s no reason to think he’s not telling the truth in his prayer. (Presumably a prayer to God, though it’s not entirely clear just who he’s talking to!) The Pharisee was a very good man. He really did tithe his income. He really did fast twice a week (and that meant no food until supper, not just giving up hamburgers).
Another excursus: In an early Christian writing called the Didache, or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, dating probably to a generation or so after the New Testament, it says to Christians: “Your fasts must not be identical to those of the hypocrites [i.e., the Jews, who by that time had become the spiritual descendents of the Pharisees]. They fast on Mondays and Thursdays; but you should fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.” Wonderful. Two generations into Christianity, and already the Church has acquired a “Doesn’t Get It” Society. End of second excursus.
The Pharisee thought he was religiously superior to other people. And he was. He was not a thief, or a rogue, or an adulterer (“greedy, unjust, adulterous” the text says). And especially he was not a betrayer of his own people, like the tax collector over in the corner. He really was better than others by all the usual religious standards; he obeyed the Law, he kept all the rules (and then some), and he thought this won him God’s special favor. Moral basket cases like the tax collector earned his contempt. And though he probably didn’t realize it, he was even contemptuous of God, or at least awfully arrogant. He thought God “owed him.”
Arrogant toward God; contemptuous toward his fellow human beings. Very “religious.”
The tax collector? All we know of him is that he cries to God for mercy. Does he then go home and give up his career of collaboration and extortion? We don’t know. We don’t know how or why he got into the tax-farming racket in the first place — and thereby incurring the hatred of his fellow Jews. Greed? Perhaps. Or despair? Maybe. We don’t know. (Why do people become drug dealers?) And what does Jesus say about this tax collector? “He went down to his home justified rather than the other.” He was the one declared righteous, the one in right relationship with God.
I suppose it has always been the case, but it seems to be especially the case these days, that “religious” people so-called, so-claimed, are highly vocal about “others.” This seems to be so among American Christians generally, but also within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church.
Do you suppose there are some aspects of what we consider “religion” that “just don’t get it” as far as what the Kingdom of God is really about? And who God really is, and what God really cares about?
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Sermon -- 21 October 2007
Proper 24 / 21 Pentecost — 21 October 2007
St. Michael’s Mount Pleasant — 9:00 am
BCP: Gen 32:3-8,22-30 Ps 121 2Tim 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8a
RCL: Jer 31:27-34 Ps 119:97-104 2Tim 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8
© William Moorhead 2007
Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?
As you may recall, about three months ago in the Sunday Gospel reading we heard a strange little story that Jesus told about a man whose neighbor came to him in the middle of the night to borrow some bread to set before a friend who had shown up unexpectedly. And after a bit of whining and moaning, the man gets up and gives his neighbor what he needs. And Jesus ends up by making the point that if we who are evil still will meet the needs of others, how much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.[1] (If you missed it back at the end of July, you can check it out on my sermon blog, “Have Stole, Will Travel.”[2] Just Google it, or me.)
Today we hear what seems like a very similar story. And like the earlier one, it’s probably not as simple as it may seem. Luke introduces this parable as being about the need of the disciples to pray always and not to lose heart. Well, that’s part of it, but I think there are some other things going on as well.
The first character in the story is a judge “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” That makes him problematic right from the start. In our society we like to assume that our judges fear God, or at least the law, and also have respect for other human beings, and on the whole I think we are justified in that assumption. In Israelite society the expectations for judges was just as high, if not higher. The task of the judge in Israel was not just the technical interpretation and administration of the law (Israelite law was a good bit less complicated than modern American law, but cases could still be very difficult), but the determination and dispensation of God’s justice and God’s shalom within the covenant community. By these standards the judge in this story is not a very good judge!
The second character in the story is a widow. Being a widow in any society in any age is always difficult for a variety of reasons, but in Israel as in most ancient societies, widows were in a particularly powerless and vulnerable position. They did not normally have any inheritance rights, and so if a woman’s husband died and she had no sons who could take care of her, she could be in a very bad way. A recurring theme both in the Old Testament and in the New is the great importance of providing care and justice for the widows and orphans. To abuse and exploit these powerless ones is to incur God’s wrath.
Apparently someone is taking some advantage of this widow in the story, and she appeals to the judge, who initially does not care. But she doesn’t give up; and the judge finally says, well, even though I don’t care about God and I don’t care about other people, this woman is driving me crazy, so I’ll give her the justice she demands or in the end she’ll come and smack me in the face (that’s the literal meaning of the Greek!), or (perhaps metaphorically) “give me a black eye,” or (even more metaphorically, and a bit wimpily as we usually now translate it) wear me out.
And Jesus goes on: See? Even a bad judge finally gives in to justice! All the more so will God give justice to his chosen people who cry out for vindication. And he concludes: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
This leads me to think, going back to the first verse, that “the need to pray always and not lose heart” is not primarily about “asking God to give us what we want,” though that may be an included dimension of what he is saying. Because the story Jesus tells is really about justice, and particularly justice for the powerless and oppressed.
During much of Christian history, we have had the notion that what Jesus was primarily about was teaching us a new religion. I’m not so sure about that — it depends on what you mean by “religion.” A lot of what passes for “religion” these days — not only among Christians but even among Episcopalians — doesn’t seem to me to have very much to do with Jesus. What Jesus was about was the Kingdom of God — the proclaiming and implementing and enacting of the Kingdom of God. God’s Kingdom beginning now, God’s Kingdom eternally. But beginning here and now.
And so when we pray always, not losing heart, in the first instance that is not about “give me what I want” but committing myself constantly and with determination to the cause of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus taught us to pray, he told us to begin with “Hallowed be thy Name: Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Only then do we go on to what we need (not just what we want) and then move directly to the grace to seek reconciliation and steadfastly to stand against the power of evil. This is the faith on earth for which the Son of Man seeks when he comes.
A century and a half ago, the English priest and theologian Frederick Denison Maurice noted that we are trying to fill people with “religion” when what they really need is the Living God. Christ did not come to establish a religious sect but God’s kingdom — a kingdom embracing all people, with no class distinctions, no rich and poor, no oppressor or oppressed — a kingdom of love and justice.
For this kingdom we must pray always, not lose heart in striving to serve it, and in our commitment to God’s Kingdom be found faithful by our Lord when he comes.
[1] Proper 12; Luke 11:1-13.
[2] http://havestole.blogspot.com
St. Michael’s Mount Pleasant — 9:00 am
BCP: Gen 32:3-8,22-30 Ps 121 2Tim 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8a
RCL: Jer 31:27-34 Ps 119:97-104 2Tim 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8
© William Moorhead 2007
Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?
As you may recall, about three months ago in the Sunday Gospel reading we heard a strange little story that Jesus told about a man whose neighbor came to him in the middle of the night to borrow some bread to set before a friend who had shown up unexpectedly. And after a bit of whining and moaning, the man gets up and gives his neighbor what he needs. And Jesus ends up by making the point that if we who are evil still will meet the needs of others, how much more will God give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.[1] (If you missed it back at the end of July, you can check it out on my sermon blog, “Have Stole, Will Travel.”[2] Just Google it, or me.)
Today we hear what seems like a very similar story. And like the earlier one, it’s probably not as simple as it may seem. Luke introduces this parable as being about the need of the disciples to pray always and not to lose heart. Well, that’s part of it, but I think there are some other things going on as well.
The first character in the story is a judge “who neither feared God nor had respect for people.” That makes him problematic right from the start. In our society we like to assume that our judges fear God, or at least the law, and also have respect for other human beings, and on the whole I think we are justified in that assumption. In Israelite society the expectations for judges was just as high, if not higher. The task of the judge in Israel was not just the technical interpretation and administration of the law (Israelite law was a good bit less complicated than modern American law, but cases could still be very difficult), but the determination and dispensation of God’s justice and God’s shalom within the covenant community. By these standards the judge in this story is not a very good judge!
The second character in the story is a widow. Being a widow in any society in any age is always difficult for a variety of reasons, but in Israel as in most ancient societies, widows were in a particularly powerless and vulnerable position. They did not normally have any inheritance rights, and so if a woman’s husband died and she had no sons who could take care of her, she could be in a very bad way. A recurring theme both in the Old Testament and in the New is the great importance of providing care and justice for the widows and orphans. To abuse and exploit these powerless ones is to incur God’s wrath.
Apparently someone is taking some advantage of this widow in the story, and she appeals to the judge, who initially does not care. But she doesn’t give up; and the judge finally says, well, even though I don’t care about God and I don’t care about other people, this woman is driving me crazy, so I’ll give her the justice she demands or in the end she’ll come and smack me in the face (that’s the literal meaning of the Greek!), or (perhaps metaphorically) “give me a black eye,” or (even more metaphorically, and a bit wimpily as we usually now translate it) wear me out.
And Jesus goes on: See? Even a bad judge finally gives in to justice! All the more so will God give justice to his chosen people who cry out for vindication. And he concludes: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
This leads me to think, going back to the first verse, that “the need to pray always and not lose heart” is not primarily about “asking God to give us what we want,” though that may be an included dimension of what he is saying. Because the story Jesus tells is really about justice, and particularly justice for the powerless and oppressed.
During much of Christian history, we have had the notion that what Jesus was primarily about was teaching us a new religion. I’m not so sure about that — it depends on what you mean by “religion.” A lot of what passes for “religion” these days — not only among Christians but even among Episcopalians — doesn’t seem to me to have very much to do with Jesus. What Jesus was about was the Kingdom of God — the proclaiming and implementing and enacting of the Kingdom of God. God’s Kingdom beginning now, God’s Kingdom eternally. But beginning here and now.
And so when we pray always, not losing heart, in the first instance that is not about “give me what I want” but committing myself constantly and with determination to the cause of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus taught us to pray, he told us to begin with “Hallowed be thy Name: Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Only then do we go on to what we need (not just what we want) and then move directly to the grace to seek reconciliation and steadfastly to stand against the power of evil. This is the faith on earth for which the Son of Man seeks when he comes.
A century and a half ago, the English priest and theologian Frederick Denison Maurice noted that we are trying to fill people with “religion” when what they really need is the Living God. Christ did not come to establish a religious sect but God’s kingdom — a kingdom embracing all people, with no class distinctions, no rich and poor, no oppressor or oppressed — a kingdom of love and justice.
For this kingdom we must pray always, not lose heart in striving to serve it, and in our commitment to God’s Kingdom be found faithful by our Lord when he comes.
[1] Proper 12; Luke 11:1-13.
[2] http://havestole.blogspot.com
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Sermon -- 16 September 2007
Proper 19 / 16th Pentecost — 16 September 2007
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 8:00 & 10:15
Jer 4:11-12,22-28 Ps 14 1Tim 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10
Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
If I were a little more Monty-Pythonesque, I might produce a script in which there are a couple of shepherds standing at the back of the crowd muttering, “Oh, will ye listen to the carpenter now! Never herded a sheep in his life, he hasn’t! You can’t just leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness! You’d come back with your little lost sheep and there would be only eighty-nine sheep, scattered all over South Galilee, and ten fat and happy wolves!”
Well, that shows how not to interpret the parables of Jesus! Jesus isn’t talking about sheep-herding, or about keeping track of your money, he’s talking about God’s joy at finding the lost. “Hey, everybody! I found my sheep! Hey, everybody! I found my coin!” The sheer delight at finding something that had been lost! We’ve all had that experience. Some of us are at the point where we have that experience all the time, because we lose things all the time! But it’s more than just, “Oh, there are my car keys!” Think of something, perhaps some old and precious keepsake that you were trying to find once, and you couldn’t find it, and you were sure it was just gone forever and you’d never see it again, and then one day you ran across it in some utterly unlikely place — “Hey, look what I found! look what I found!” That’s the joy, and that’s the joy God feels about us.
I am inclined to think — Matthew’s parallel version of the parable of the lost sheep gives me some warrant, but in any case I am inclined to think — that the lines about “there is more joy in heaven” and “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God” are editorial addition by St. Luke. I don’t doubt that there is joy among the angels over one sinner who repents, but that’s not really the point, and it seems to me that it piously diffuses Jesus’ point, that God rejoices. Moreover, God does not only rejoice, but bids us as well as the angels to share in the divine joy. We too are to rejoice that the lost is found. And not to be like Jonah outside Nineveh, sitting around grumping: “Yeah, well what would have happened if the wolves had come while he was out looking for that stupid little lost sheep? When is she going to learn to keep track of her money a little better?” (Jesus gets at this a little more pointedly in the next story, the Lost Son, which we actually heard last Lent: “I’ve been working for you all these years but you never even let me have a little party with my friends, but when my bro—when your son comes home…”)
God rejoices. And we are to rejoice with God.
This may seem fairly obvious to us.. I hope so. But I’m not sure it is as obvious as we may think.
There is a religious stance we can take, in which we say, “There is us, and there is them; and God loves us, but God hates them.” Often enough they are people who are not Christians, or not religious at all; or maybe they are purported Christians but are in some other way are not like us, because they worship differently, or are culturally or ethnically different, or interpret the Bible differently, or don’t have the same opinion about various moral or political issues. Lots of folks seem to have taken that stance, and are taking that stance today, and we ourselves have taken that stance often enough in our history, and in own lives; and even today it lies, sanitized and covert, at the heart of the longing —which we all share at least a little, if we will admit it — the craving for self-justification.
Or there is the other stance, that understands that “There is us, and that’s all — there is no them — and God loves us all and yearns to gather us all, the lost, the strayed, the misplaced, you, me, them — God loves us all, all, as Archbishop Tutu reminds us over and over again, not some, but all —God is a God who rejoices to find us, and invites us and expects us to rejoice with God when the lost is found and to share with God in the ministry of seeking the lost.
Here is the heart of Christianity: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him” — not "everyone who assents to certain doctrinal propositions about him" (however important those may be), but everyone who follows in faith and trust into the life of the Reign of God that Jesus proclaims and enacts — “so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep, I have found the coin, I have found my people who were lost.”
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 8:00 & 10:15
Jer 4:11-12,22-28 Ps 14 1Tim 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10
Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.
If I were a little more Monty-Pythonesque, I might produce a script in which there are a couple of shepherds standing at the back of the crowd muttering, “Oh, will ye listen to the carpenter now! Never herded a sheep in his life, he hasn’t! You can’t just leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness! You’d come back with your little lost sheep and there would be only eighty-nine sheep, scattered all over South Galilee, and ten fat and happy wolves!”
Well, that shows how not to interpret the parables of Jesus! Jesus isn’t talking about sheep-herding, or about keeping track of your money, he’s talking about God’s joy at finding the lost. “Hey, everybody! I found my sheep! Hey, everybody! I found my coin!” The sheer delight at finding something that had been lost! We’ve all had that experience. Some of us are at the point where we have that experience all the time, because we lose things all the time! But it’s more than just, “Oh, there are my car keys!” Think of something, perhaps some old and precious keepsake that you were trying to find once, and you couldn’t find it, and you were sure it was just gone forever and you’d never see it again, and then one day you ran across it in some utterly unlikely place — “Hey, look what I found! look what I found!” That’s the joy, and that’s the joy God feels about us.
I am inclined to think — Matthew’s parallel version of the parable of the lost sheep gives me some warrant, but in any case I am inclined to think — that the lines about “there is more joy in heaven” and “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God” are editorial addition by St. Luke. I don’t doubt that there is joy among the angels over one sinner who repents, but that’s not really the point, and it seems to me that it piously diffuses Jesus’ point, that God rejoices. Moreover, God does not only rejoice, but bids us as well as the angels to share in the divine joy. We too are to rejoice that the lost is found. And not to be like Jonah outside Nineveh, sitting around grumping: “Yeah, well what would have happened if the wolves had come while he was out looking for that stupid little lost sheep? When is she going to learn to keep track of her money a little better?” (Jesus gets at this a little more pointedly in the next story, the Lost Son, which we actually heard last Lent: “I’ve been working for you all these years but you never even let me have a little party with my friends, but when my bro—when your son comes home…”)
God rejoices. And we are to rejoice with God.
This may seem fairly obvious to us.. I hope so. But I’m not sure it is as obvious as we may think.
There is a religious stance we can take, in which we say, “There is us, and there is them; and God loves us, but God hates them.” Often enough they are people who are not Christians, or not religious at all; or maybe they are purported Christians but are in some other way are not like us, because they worship differently, or are culturally or ethnically different, or interpret the Bible differently, or don’t have the same opinion about various moral or political issues. Lots of folks seem to have taken that stance, and are taking that stance today, and we ourselves have taken that stance often enough in our history, and in own lives; and even today it lies, sanitized and covert, at the heart of the longing —which we all share at least a little, if we will admit it — the craving for self-justification.
Or there is the other stance, that understands that “There is us, and that’s all — there is no them — and God loves us all and yearns to gather us all, the lost, the strayed, the misplaced, you, me, them — God loves us all, all, as Archbishop Tutu reminds us over and over again, not some, but all —God is a God who rejoices to find us, and invites us and expects us to rejoice with God when the lost is found and to share with God in the ministry of seeking the lost.
Here is the heart of Christianity: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him” — not "everyone who assents to certain doctrinal propositions about him" (however important those may be), but everyone who follows in faith and trust into the life of the Reign of God that Jesus proclaims and enacts — “so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep, I have found the coin, I have found my people who were lost.”
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Sermon -- 5 August 2007
Proper 13 / 10 Pentecost — 5 August 2007
St. Luke’s, Cedar Falls — 9:00 am
Hosea 11:1-11 Psalm 107:1-9,43 Colossians 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21
(c) 2007 William S. J. Moorhead
“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
In the Scripture readings today we hear about greed. In some places the Bible calls it “covetousness.” You remember coveting. The Tenth Commandment says, “Thou shalt not do it.” A little boy in Sunday School was learning the Commandments and he asked his teacher, “What does this word ‘covet’ mean”? And the teacher answered, “Well, you know all the nice toys your friends have? You’re not supposed to wish that they were yours instead.” The little boy shook his head: “Boy, they don’t let you have any fun around here!” St. Paul says, “I should not have known what it is to covet if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” I didn’t realize it was wrong to do that! Most people understand that murder is wrong: a few of them do it, but they usually understand that it’s wrong. Most people understand that committing adultery is wrong: some people do say, “Well, yes, usually, for most people, but we’re different, we’re special, my spouse doesn’t understand my needs yada yada yada, but they still really understand that it’s wrong. Most people understand that stealing is wrong: some of them do it anyway, but they still understand that it’s wrong. Most people understand that bearing false witness against their neighbor is wrong: a lot of people do it and thoroughly enjoy it, but they still understand that it’s wrong. But coveting in our society is a major growth industry. Not only do people not understand that it’s wrong, they think it’s their patriotic duty. Covetousness is a leading economic indicator. Teaching covetousness it what children’s television does best; just watch the Saturday morning commercials. (Ads for laundry detergent are at least pitching something useful; but why does a child need a model robot that folds up and transforms itself into a toaster?)
In the Gospel today we hear Jesus say, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed: for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” And Jesus goes on to tell a story about a farmer whose land produces abundantly. And some aspects of this story may begin to sound very familiar. We are surrounded, in the Midwest, by people who if they don’t get some bigger bins this year may have to let some of their corn sit in the field and rot. Now, I’ve known a lot of farmers, and on the whole and as a class, farmers are not any more greedy or covetous than anyone else; as a matter of fact, if anything, rather less so. But look at what we have done in American agriculture (and I do mean we — we’re all part of this system): plant plant plant, produce produce produce, expand expand expand, grow grow grow, more ethanol more ethanol more ethanol, borrow borrow borrow. Oh, now you’re overextended? So trapped in debt service that you can’t afford to diversify, or conserve soil, or back off on chemicals or any of the other things you’d really like to do? Join the rat race…
Well, most of us, as far as I’ve noticed, are not flagrantly covetous or acquisitive or greedy sorts of people. Most of us look at the farmer in this parable and we agree, he’s a fool, and we say, “I’m not like that.” At least not too obviously. And we’re not. Not exactly. Most of us are, I think, reasonably content with fairly modest means. We may daydream about winning the lottery, but we don’t really take that kind of thing too seriously. We’re not greedy. We’re not miserly. Certainly not by the standards of the world around us.
But what kind of standards are those? Let’s not deceive ourselves. We are thoroughly programmed into a moderate covetousness, a politely restrained variety of greed, that drives us constantly to want a little bit more, a little bit bigger, a little bit better. Our society spends (and needs to spend) less of its resources on the necessities of life, and those more on “elective,” nonessential “luxuries” than any other society on earth. We brag about it, as if it were the badge of moral superiority. Our standard operating assumption is that one’s life consists precisely in the abundance of possessions! That’s why we call it “standard of living”! It is a wonderful gift and privilege that we are able to produce so far beyond our necessities. But we haven’t understood why that is, or what it entails, or what it’s meant for. We have made our luxuries into our necessities of life. And like two-year-olds, “we don’t share” very well.
It’s not my purpose to get us all off on a fruitless guilt-trip, and I do mean us all, because God knows I want all the same grownup toys and gadgets that you want, and I chafe at what I cannot afford. I, like you, have to face up to the whole question of the place and value of things in my life, and questions of what we can “afford” and “not afford,” and what that really means, and just what it is that all that stuff and clutter of our lives is really about. “”One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Do we really believe that? What’s the evidence that we do? St. Paul today bids us to put to death whatever in us is earthly, including greed (which is idolatry). As Jesus elsewhere puts it, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” We can’t have it both ways. We are entrusted with worldly resources by the God who made this world. We can use these resources in the service of God’s kingdom, for the common good of all humankind — examples might include the Millennium Development Goals, or the production and use of energy around the world, or how we care for animals and fish and birds and forests and prairies. Or we can keep our resources for ourselves, “us first.” But if we keep them for ourselves they will turn on us and master us and ultimately destroy us. And if we think that won’t happen, if we think that isn’t happening right now, then perhaps we are not paying very close attention.
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