Proper
27B; Mark 12:38-44; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 11/8/2015
Jim
Melnyk: “Plenty Good Room for All God’s Children!”
Well we're one week into November and it’s started already.
The Hallmark Channel began their Countdown to Christmas on November 1st,
All Saints Day – Christmas movies everyday for 55 days and then done the day
after. XM Radio began broadcasting two
Christmas stations on November 2nd with more to come in the
following weeks. Stores are already stocking their shelves with Christmas products
– have been for some time now, and their decorations are already up in many
places. Now I realize most of us won't
put any of our hardcore Christmas decorations up until at least the day after
Thanksgiving, but that hasn’t stopped the marketplace!
The lessons that we have coming up in the next few weeks will
begin to deal with the end times, and then we have two very important feasts,
both dealing with Christ as King – and as different as they at first sound from
one another – they are eerily similar in what they have to tell us.
The first feast comes near the end of November – the 22nd
to be exact – and the second feast comes just over a month later near the end
of December. On November 22 we will celebrate the Feast of Christ the King. In this year’s lesson from the Gospels we will
find Jesus standing before Pilate in Jerusalem – on trial for his life. Having come into that Holy City being
proclaimed as a king only days before, Jesus will come to the end of his ministry
and find out there is no room for him in Jerusalem, except on the hard wood of
one of Rome’s crosses.
Following Christ the King Sunday we will enter into the
season of Advent, and our lessons will point to the challenges we face of being
human beings who seek to live faithfully into God’s call for us to reflect the
image of God within. The world will be
talking about Christmas and we’ll find ourselves, at least for a short while,
talking about the end of the world.
By the time December 24th rolls around, the Holy
Family will have entered into Bethlehem, only to find out that there is no room
for them in any of the dwelling places of the city. We know the story, right? With Mary ready to give birth at any minute,
they will be shuttled off to a cave – to a rock-walled hole in the hillside –
where she will give birth to the Son of God in the midst of the farm animals
and feed stands. Glory to the newborn
King!
A king who is born in a stable and dies on a Roman cross –
how absurd our faith must have looked to outsiders in the first century – how strange
a faith for those of us willing to take that closer look in the twenty-first
century. The one we call Son of God –
born in poverty and soon fleeing to Egypt for his very life – is the one who
ends up crucified as a treasonous villain because there was no room in the
collective human heart to hear his words.
What, we might ask, do these feast days have to do with a
widow placing two small copper coins in the temple treasury? Not much if we
just stick to the time-worn Stewardship Sunday talks about the two copper coins
and the widow willingly giving out of what little she had. You know – even two copper coins are
important if that’s all you can give. Others
gave a little out of their abundance – she gave all that she had to live
on. What an incredible sacrifice. Imagine if we could all give with the
intensity of her faithfulness? Imagine
what a witness we could be in the world around us.
But I think Jesus is trying to tell us more than to
carefully consider our pledge cards for 2016. What if we see in the poor widow
God’s unwavering welcome to someone despite their class – despite their lack of
wealth – despite their inability to do a whole lot around the parish?
In Jesus’ day, wealth was a sign of God’s blessing on a
person – and there’s still a whole lot of that bad theology going around today. Poverty or disease was seen as God’s retribution
for sin – and there’s still too much of that theology around today as well. Rather than point out and celebrate those who
give out of their abundance, Jesus points out this poor widow who gives
probably more than she can – and he tells us, “To this woman – to this poor
widow – belongs the kingdom of God. That’s
turning some of his – and some of our – modern day theologies upside-down – or rather,
upside-right.
And we can think of others we see who put their meager
copper coins in the plate – perhaps the little child whose quarter or pennies
make too much clatter on the edge of the polished brass – yes, to that child
belongs the kingdom of God – and she – or he – belongs right there in the midst
of the congregation. Remember, it’s the children
that Jesus embraces and places in the midst of disciples as an example of
kingdom faith.
The widow’s act of giving pointed out by Jesus is a
sacramental sign of giving oneself to God.
Her sacramental act reminds us that by the time Jesus reaches Jerusalem
he will give the only thing he has left to give – and that gift is his life
for the life of this world.
Jesus’ act of recognizing the woman’s gift is a sacramental
act as well – as an outward and visible sign of God’s grace. Jesus calls us to the sacramental act of
welcoming folks into the midst of the congregation – no matter their stripe –
and we are called by God to extrapolate that sacramental act to anyone we would
deem not worthy or too much of a nuisance to be in our midst. We can knock our heads against the wall in
frustration, we can try to spiritualize it as best we can, or we can even try
to make believe the passages don’t exist – but today’s lesson from Mark
underscores what Jesus has told his disciples time and time again: whoever
wishes to be first and greatest of all must be a servant to all.
In some ways all our faith stories are all about making room. They are stories about God making room in the
whole of creation for us, and stories about a world that time and time again has
refused to make room for God – stories like the one about another widow, this
one living centuries before Jesus in the Gentile city of Zarephath. Facing the prospect of imminent death for
herself and her son, God sends the prophet Elijah to sojourn with her for a
while – God sends Elijah to a Gentile – and she welcomes Elijah. Trusting God’s word, she makes room for the
prophet in the midst of her poverty, and even feeds him from what she thought
would be her last meal.
The rest of the Old Testament is comprised of stories about
Moses and the prophets always calling us back to God – calling us to love God
with all our heart and to love our neighbor, and the stranger, as our own
selves. And they are stories about God’s
readiness and longing to receive us back.
The Gospels are stories about a God who becomes human flesh
to live among us and call us back into covenant relationship, and about how all
too often we can’t even make room for a little baby at an Inn. They are stories about God who comes among us
a loving, liberating, and reconciling king, and how the only room we make for
that king is on the hard wood of the cross.
Our faith stories tell us about a God who calls for us to care for the
lonely, the brokenhearted, and those who have been cast down, and how we all
too often desire those people to remain on the outskirts of our world, or even better,
out of sight.
But our stories are also stories that remind us that no
matter how many times we fail at God’s call to us – no matter how many times we
forget our Baptismal promises – no matter how many times we think of ourselves
first and others as an after-thought
– that no matter how many times we fail, God is there to
call us back into the center of God’s world – into the center of God’s heart –
and welcome us like long lost family.
God making room for us and calling us to make room for “the
other” is something we celebrate and give thanks for when we get it right –
which we so often do at St. Paul’s. And,
recalling our successes over the years, we also remember that we are challenged
to call others to that same spirit of openness and welcome.
Presiding Bishop Michael Curry loves to use the songs his
grandma sang to help illustrate the power of God’s love for us and the power of
the Gospel to be Good News for all. He
has often quoted a nineteenth century spiritual sung by slaves for whom
precious little room was made by the Church and by the world:
“Plenty good room, plenty good room,
Good room in my
Father’s kingdom;
Plenty good room,
plenty good room,
Just choose your
seat and sit down.”
There’s plenty good
room in the house!
No comments:
Post a Comment