« Baptism of Edward Douglas Lockton | Main

Sermon St. David's Nov. 8, 2009 Mark 12:38-44 and Ruth 3:1-5;4:13-17

Jesus did not endear himself to the scribes when he pointed out that they liked to walk around in long robes and be greeted with respect and have the best seats and places of honor but they were at the same time devouring widows' houses and for the sake of appearance saying long prayers. Then to top it off he pointed out that the poor widow who had dropped two small coins in the treasury had given more than all of them. No wonder they hated him and wanted to kill him.

To understand the full impact of this confrontation, you have to remember the place of widows at that time. They had no status. The story of Naomi and her daughter in law Ruth shows this. Naomi had to concoct a complicated scheme, so that Boaz would marry Ruth and then both Ruth and Naomi would have a place in society. So a widow was really insignificant. When Jesus said that this poor widow had contributed more than the scribes had, this was infuriating to these power brokers.

This is just one of many instances where Jesus confronted the leaders of the people, accusing them of hypocrisy, avarice and not living according to God's design. The prophets had been saying things like this for centuries, but the prophets were not well received. They were hated and sometimes killed. Jesus was worse than the prophets because he said the same things, but he also said that God's kingdom was even now among them and that it was centered in him.

Not only that, Jesus hung around with the riff-raff of society: sinners, outcasts, tax collectors, the poor. He went to dinner with them. Unlike the drab and dreary moralists of his time, Jesus was a party person. He liked feasts and he liked to party with folks at the low end of the social order

In our enlightened time and place, of course, we don't have leaders and powerful people who neglect and oppress the poor. Our political and corporate powers can't do enough for the poor and for us ordinary folk. They have our best interests at heart 24/7. Well not exactly. Maybe they don't wear long robes. But we do have what's called power clothes. A thousand dollar suit does trump something off the rack at Kohl's. And we also have people who are constantly spinning their ethical lapses and sins into virtue. So maybe things haven't changed all that much since that long ago day in the Temple.

All this would be enough to make one cynical except for the fact that the kingdom of God which Jesus was proclaiming is a kingdom of hope. In our weekly Bible study in the mission center we have been looking at a book which describes the kind of kingdom this is supposed to be.

The book correctly points out that we are called to be agents and instruments in that kingdom of love and mercy. Our mission is to work with God to bring it about. We must really mean it when we say Lord's Prayer: Thy kingdom come, they will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What is the spiritual equipment we need for this task? First we need courage to confront the leaders of our day; we need to remember always this poor widow in the Temple and the countless others like her in our own time. We need to do what the prophets and Jesus did. We need to be right in the face of the scribes and leaders of our own time. Second. We need to be people of profound prayer as Jesus was and as his first disciples came to be.

But we also need to avoid the sour-faced glum moralizing and the utter seriousness of those who think that they alone by their own efforts can bring about this kingdom. The best antidote to this is to be like Jesus a lover of feasts and we need to spend our time hanging out with our fellow riff-raff in that great community called the church, the Body of Christ.

Before he died Jesus gave us a special feast, one that we celebrate today. The Lord's Supper, a feast which makes present for us here and now his death and resurrection. This feast is a foretaste of that eternal celebration in heaven. It is a prelude to that banquet to which the poor widows and the outcasts and the people from the world's highways and byways are invited. In this sense we are truly party people. Because we live in hope, we cannot ever be cynical or fearful. Our faith engenders not utopian optimism, not a false happiness, but a joy which goes deeper than sadness and suffering and oppression. A joy that stares evil in the face and then transcends it. This is the peace that passes understanding. Though we always walk through the valley of the shadow of death we shall fear no evil

We are a community of poor widows and outcasts and yet also of the wealthy who care about them. We are not yet at that great and eternal feast, but we are pilgrims on the way. Our feast today is a reminder of where we are headed. As a great American preacher once said. "We're on the move now." As we limp along through history down through the centuries and into our own time, we keep on inviting others to join us until we become that biblical great cloud of witnesses. As we journey along we keep on walking and keep on singing our song. And what is that song?

In the early fifth century Rome was sacked and the tribes were invading and destroying civilization as it then existed all over Europe and North Africa. To the people who lived then it seemed that the world was coming to an end. Augustine, a great bishop in North Africa preached a remarkable sermon giving his people guidance in that terrible time. What he told them was: SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING.

That's really what the Body of Christ has always done. When the emperors came and butchered them and fed them to the lions and terrorized them, what did they do? SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING.

As time went on, they became aware of their own sin and corruption and did evil things and fought crusades and wars. And yet they also cared for the widows and orphans and built hospitals and freed slaves and they built a new civilization and kept on limping along. And all the while SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING.

So right now here we are mired down in two wars, a sinking economy, surrounded as always by oppression, by huge systems that want to use us up and spit us out, fearful of terrorism, plagued by environmental degradation, tempted to despair. We are corrupted ourselves and see no way out. And as always we have to call out our leaders--and ourselves--on our own hypocrisy. So what do we do in the face of such evil? SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

Aware that we are still in the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil for the divine rod and the staff comfort us and a table is prepared before us and our cup overflows and goodness and mercy shallow follow us all the days of our life and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord. We need nothing more so we can SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

And as we prepare the table for the Lord's Supper today, this interim feast on the way to the great banquet, we are aware as a parish of our own problems and failures and of the obstacles that face us. So what do we do? SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

And we shall find others to join us at our weekly feasts and we will deepen our community life and enter into deeper spiritual waters together and pray more profoundly and worship with joy. We shall invite others, among the widows and the outcasts and from the highways and byways to come along with us. And we shall fear no evil for we dwell in the house of the Lord.

And all the time we will SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

Once more SING ALLELUIA AND KEEP ON WALKING

Now Sing it: Sing Alleluia to the Lord, sing alleluia, sing alleluia Sing alleluia to the Lord.

And now KEEP ON WALKING. AMEN