December 8, 2024 -- 2nd Sunday of Advent

                                                       Biblical Words                                         [911]

Malachi 3:1-4;  Luke 1:68-79;  Philippians 1:3-11;  Luke 3:1-6.

 Advent knows of Messengers, who appear with world-encompassing warnings. 

Malachi 3:1-4. 

(This is the alternate reading; the primary is Baruch 5:1-9.)

Our prophetic reading for this Sunday is from the book of Malachi. 

The term “malachi” is not a name; it is the phrase “my messenger,” later taken up and used as if it were a proper name.  See Special Note below on Books, Scrolls, and Malachi. 

The Malachi prophecy itself comes from a time when the priestly establishment in Jerusalem was in sad condition (perhaps around 500 to 450 BCE).  Priestly duties were neglected and corrupt; morale was very low.  The anonymous prophet who speaks here announces that a radical change is coming.  God in person is about to come, and is sending a “messenger” to clean house in preparation.   

Messenger.  This word is usually translated, in other contexts, as “angel,” the Greek word for messenger.

The imagery behind the term is the heavenly court of God Most High, who is conceived as the mighty world sovereign presiding over his chief retainers. These retainers are powerful lords in their own right.  (These heavenly lords were later thought of as “angels,” each with a nation or province as his responsibility, as can be seen in Daniel 8-12.)

This emperor is going to make a “VISIT” – a grand assize of one of the provinces.  A member of the heavenly court – himself a powerful lord – will go ahead and put things in spit and polish order for the great royal visit.  This heavenly noble (with deliberate military connotations) is the awesome power announced in this prophecy: 

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord [a title, not Yahweh] whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.  The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming says the Lord [Yahweh] of hosts.  (Verse 1, NRSV.)

This, of course, is a very awesome thing. 

But who can endure the day of his coming,

and who can stand when he appears? 

 

For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap…

and he will purify the descendants of Levi [the priests] and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord [Yahweh] in righteousness (verses 2-3). 

The early Jesus followers soon recognized that this prophecy had been fulfilled in their own times:  John the Baptizer was in fact this Messenger! 

Luke 1:68-79.  

The psalm reading comes, not from the Psalms Scroll, but from Luke’s cycle of birth stories.  It is the psalm called the Benedictus, after its first word in the Latin translation, and it presents the first ecstatic speech of Zechariah after his nine months of silence.  Zechariah had been struck dumb for doubting that God could give him a son in his old age (1:18-20).  Now John, later to be the Baptist, has been born and named, as the heavenly messenger had instructed, and Zechariah can speak.  The Benedictus is what he says. 

This hymn anticipates a salvation and speaks of a redemption as if it has already happened. 

God is blessed because God has (already) “looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.”  A “horn of salvation” has been raised “in the house of his servant David.”  This “horn” cannot be a reference to John, because he was born to the house of Aaron.  The reference is to a Davidic messiah, and by Luke’s time that can only be Jesus, yet to be born and identified. 

This redemption through the house of David, however, will fulfill what was spoken by the “holy prophets” of old, meaning such prophecies as the shoot from the stump of Jesse (Isaiah 11:1-5).  There a spirit-empowered ruler “with righteousness … shall judge the poor,” and “shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth [in the process of delivering wise judgments].”  The fulfillment theme also extends back to the covenant with Abraham, which includes the past salvation (exodus) and the establishing of the people in holiness and righteousness. 

There is a sharp transition in the blessing at verse 76.  Now Zechariah is talking to the newly-born John and declares he will go before the Lord and prepare his ways.  The hymn does not require that “the Lord” here mean Jesus, though Luke’s audience probably understood it that way.  Read strictly in its own terms, this passage can refer to John preparing the way for God’s own coming, in judgment and salvation, as in Isaiah 40:9-11 and Malachi 3:1-5. 

Even in the Gospel as it stands, however, this hymn claims Israel’s inherited promises to David and to Abraham as the basis for John’s place in history as well as Jesus’. 

The Benedictus proclaims this modest priestly birth as a major event in the destiny of Israel. 

Philippians 1:3-11.  

The Epistle reading is almost a re-run of last Sunday’s reading from I Thessalonians, only this time with the church in Philippi.  The passage has the same climax, the confidence that the faithful in Philippi will hold their course of faith and love so that “in the day of Christ,” they will present “the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ” (verse 10, NRSV). 

The very strong ties of affection between the Apostle and his converts in the Roman colonial city are lifted up:  He can count on them “because you hold me in your heart,” and “God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus” (verses 7-8). 

These opening thanksgivings of Paul’s letters make it clear that for many, at least, Apostle and people were caught up in a great love affair. 

Luke 3:1-6.  

The appearance of John the Baptist is a traditional feature of Advent, this year given in the Gospel reading from Luke. 

Title:  The Macklin Bible – St. John (John the Baptist)

Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library

Luke’s presentation is distinctive because he sets John in the full context of world history.  Two verses are given to the names of emperors, governors, minor provinces, and high priests – names often hard to pronounce during readings in services. 

It cannot be emphasized too strongly, however, that these names and titles are very central to Luke’s Gospel.  This is the Gospel that is continued in the book of Acts, which traces the work of the Holy Spirit from John the Baptist to the preaching of the gospel by Paul in Rome.  For Luke above all, the gospel enters into history, and the power and meaning of that gospel are to be unfolded by relating its history. 

Thus the greatest of Roman emperors, Augustus, stands at the head of the chapter telling of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (2:1).  And the next emperor, Tiberius, stands at the head of the narrative of John’s appearance and preaching.  Besides Tiberius, of course, are Pontius Pilate, a couple of sons of Herod the Great, each ruling his own domain in John’s time, and two high priests, both of whom will appear when Jesus is in Jerusalem. 

John’s appearance is dated by Luke to the 15^th year of Tiberius’ reign, making it approximately the year 29 of the Christian Era. 

But while the location of John’s appearance in Roman history is important to Luke, even more important is the location of John in relation to prophecy.  That is what the rest of our reading is about.  God spoke to John and sent him to fulfill the great prophecy in Isaiah about the breaking out of good news for Zion: 

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord …

…

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’

(Verses 4-6, NRSV)

John’s preaching work is preparing the way; it is the message of judgment at hand, with repentance urgent now, before the axe falls.  Next Sunday we will hear John’s words of Judgment, which prepare for another more blessing word yet to come. 

 

Special Note on “Books,” Scrolls, and “Malachi.”

Modern Christians think of Malachi as the last book of the Old Testament, and so it is in printed Christian Bibles. 

In ancient times, however, there was no Bible – no single large “book” containing all, or major parts of, the scriptures.  The Jewish scriptures in Hebrew occupied 22 separate scrolls, and in Greek (known to New Testament writers) they occupied closer to 30 scrolls. 

“The scriptures,” therefore, consisted of one or more large cupboards with pigeonholes for the many scrolls.  The only order of the “books” was by content:  the Exodus narrative followed the Genesis narrative; therefore the Exodus scroll was next to the Genesis scroll.  Books like Psalms, Job, and Proverbs were shelved as the presiding scribe thought fit.  Prophetic books were grouped vaguely by historical period of the prophet mainly involved.  Fixed order of scrolls was established only after the invention of the codex, the “book.”  In Biblical times, there was no order of “books” in documents. 

Christians adopted the codex (quires of pages fastened at the side – our “book”) around 200 CE.  At first it was to put all four Gospels in one big “book.” (Each Gospel had previously been a separate scroll.)  The first complete Bibles, containing both Old and New Testaments in Greek – huge works, very expensive – were made by or for a few wealthy churches in Egypt and Syria in the late 4th century, a generation after Christianity became a legal religion in the Roman empire.  

(Jewish congregations kept using scrolls for their scriptures until sometime in the early Middle Ages – and still use scrolls today for their Torah readings in Synagogue.) 

How We Got Malachi. 

In both Hebrew and Greek there was a separate big scroll called “the Scroll of the Twelve [Prophets].”  This scroll, almost the size of the big Isaiah scroll (known from the Dead Sea Scrolls), contained mostly smaller collections of prophetic oracles from such as Hosea, Amos, Micah, etc., but also included a short story about a prophet – the story of Jonah. 

At the end of this scroll there were three prophetic pamphlets, all beginning, “A burden:  the word of Yahweh to/concerning...”  The Hebrew here uses a technical term massā’, translated “burden” in the King James Version.  Other modern translations are “oracle” (RSV, NRSV, ESV), “prophecy” (NIV 2011ed), “message” (NJB), or “pronouncement” (CEV).  The word literally means a load, something lifted, something picked up and carried, thus, metaphorically a message carried to someone else.  The word is so used many times in the scroll of Isaiah. 

These three pamphlets headed “burden” followed the original collection of Zechariah oracles at the end of the Scroll of the Twelve (Zechariah 1-8).  The first two pamphlets (now Zechariah 9-11 and Zechariah 12-14), each headed simply by “Oracle,” came to be treated as continuations of Zechariah, though they are very different in content from Zechariah’s original prophecies.  Modern scholars call these first two pamphlets Deutero-Zechariah, the second “book” of Zechariah. 

The third pamphlet had the heading, “Oracle:  the word of Yahweh to Israel by the hand of my messenger” (now Malachi 1:1).  “My messenger” in Hebrew is mal’ākî, which, after going through Greek and Latin, became “Malachi” in Modern English.  The Greek translation of the heading of this pamphlet is, “Burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel by the hand of his angel [Greek angelos means “messenger”].”  (Note that the Greek has “his messenger,” thus not quite a correct translation of the Hebrew.) 

The heading of the pamphlet, therefore, does not contain a proper name.  “My messenger” is a title, not a name – until later pious folks needed it to be a name.  It was then decided that this whole pamphlet was a separate prophecy by someone named Malachi.  

This process of turning the title into a name probably happened when it was decided that the big scroll should contain the writings of exactly TWELVE prophets.  The last pamphlet was peeled off to be the twelfth “book” of the scroll.  That would have happened sometime between 350 and 200 BCE.  

Thus the “book” of Malachi is actually an anonymous pamphlet that was added to the other “minor” (that is, “small”) prophetic scrolls to make up the “twelve” someone had decided was the number needed.  This pamphlet has its own character and historical setting (a century or so after the exile), addressing the problem of the degeneration of temple service, plus a couple of social evils (like divorce), before the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, which were carried out around 450 BCE. 

 

December 1, 2024 -- 1st Sunday of Advent

                                  Biblical Words                                             [910]

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; I Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36. 

Advent looks for a leader who, through great adversity, stands for hope and a just world to come. 

The traditional scripture readings during Advent proclaim alternately judgment and hope. 

The great judgment impending over all humans and their worldly enterprises is balanced by a special promise to the humble, poor, and exiled.   A great turning of salvation is already secretly at work for them, and it will soon be revealed to all eyes. 

Jeremiah 33:14-16. 

The prophetic reading is a brief promise to exiled Israel and desolate Jerusalem that a Ruler will appear for them, one called “the Branch of Righteousness.”  That One will execute justice and righteousness in the land. 

The symbolic term “Branch” (Hebrew sémach) is one of several images which use growth, sprouting, or new life from old roots to express the vitality of a new age beginning for an oppressed people.  Isaiah promises that a “shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, / and a branch [netzer] shall grow out of his roots” (Isaiah 11:1, NRSV). 

The term used in our passage (sémach) is also applied in the post-exilic period to the would-be king Zerubabel and to the high priest Joshua (Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12).  By that time, “Branch” is on its way to becoming a technical term for the messianic heir of David’s throne. 

Our passage occurs in a part of the book of Jeremiah dedicated to hope for the future (chapters 30-33).  This particular oracle represents a down-sizing of the hope that Jeremiah originally held out to the people.  Originally, Jeremiah had expected the reunion of the northern tribes of Israel with the house of Judah, all under the rule of a Davidic king, Josiah.  In those early days Jeremiah had put it this way. 

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.  And this is the name by which he will be called:  “The Lord is our righteousness.”  (Jeremiah 23:5-6) 

Thirty to forty years later, after the kingdom of Judah was destroyed in judgment, the same promise runs this way: 

In those days… I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.  And this is the name by which it [“she,” Jerusalem] will be called:  “The Lord is our righteousness.”  (Jeremiah 33:15-16)

In the later (exilic) period it is a large hope just to see a promising future of any kind for the little sub-province of Judah and the ruined city Jerusalem.  The days of large and muscle-flexing kingdoms have gone down the tubes in God’s judgment. 

The oracle of Hope has been redressed to a new time and a new scale. 

Psalm 25:1-10.  

The first ten verses of this originally acrostic psalm can well be understood as the speech of a “Branch.”  The one who speaks is among the remnant of people who wait for signs of divine favor and help. 

First he speaks for himself, if it’s the king, or for herself, if it’s the city:   

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul,

      O my God, in you I trust;

do not let me be put to shame; 

      do not let my enemies exult over me (verse 2, NRSV). 

Then he/she speaks of the people who are the followers, and of their foes: 

Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame;

      let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous (verse 3). 

These latter enemies are probably envious neighbors who do not want the struggling Judean community around Jerusalem to flourish. 

The speaker next prays for guidance as leader of the community: 

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; 

      teach me your paths. 

Lead me in your truth, and teach me,

      for you are the God of my salvation;

      for you I wait all day long (verses 4-5). 

Finally the leader prays for forgiveness of their sins, in harmony with God’s merciful character (verses 6-7). 

The reading portrays a community in need of forgiveness and of restored hope.  But the community has a leader who includes oneself in the prayer for forgiveness and who stands forward to present God’s ways to a humble and waiting world. 

I Thessalonians 3:9-13.  

Another glimpse of a devout – one could say passionate – leader and teacher is presented by the reading from the Epistle.  

In these verses we hear an outpouring of care and love by Paul for his humble but faithful church in Thessalonica.  He hopes desperately that God will make a way for him to visit them in person again, and – here the teacher comes out – restore anything lacking in their faith.  In any case, he prays that God will keep them in the holy way so they will be ready when the Lord Jesus comes with all his saints. 

In his missionary work, Paul created a community of faith, love, and hope (see 1:3).  That community now waits, following the instructions of its leader, for the fulfillment of God’s promise. 

Luke 21:25-36.  

With the beginning of Advent we enter a new year of Gospel readings, those for Year C, the Gospel According to Luke.  We will get reacquainted with this amazing work of Christian witness as the year advances. 

For now, we hear the traditional judgment on the world that stands as the first word of Advent. 

Luke keeps most of the content of Mark’s apocalyptic discourse (Mark 13), given now in Luke 21:5-36.  It is the last climactic paragraphs of this discourse that we hear this Sunday. 

What Luke shares with Mark and Matthew:  All three synoptic Gospels have this discourse on the end time.  Three features of the end-time scenario are common to all of them: 

First, it will be cosmic – or we might say galactic.  There will be signs among the sun, moon, and the stars (verse 25). 

Secondly, all three Synoptic Gospels present the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds as the climax of the apocalyptic drama (verse 27).  This comes straight from the book of Daniel (Daniel 7:13-14), the archetypal Son of Man passage in the Judean scriptures. 

Finally, all three Synoptic Gospels present the “parable” of the fig tree, whose leaves are a sure indicator of summer.  This is accompanied by Jesus’ pronouncement that all these things will come about before the present generation passes away (verses 29-33). 

What only Luke reports.  While Luke presents this common view of the coming Judgment, he also has his own personal touches, especially of heightened emotional coloring. 

·        When talking about the cosmic signs that will come, only Luke adds, “and on the earth [there will be] distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves” (verse 25, NRSV). 

·        And also, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world…” (verse 26). 

·        And after the Son of Man appears, Luke leaps forward like a cheerleader:  “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near [!!]” (verse 28). 

Finally, Luke has his own exhortation to conclude the scene, focusing also on the personal and individual elements of the awesome scenes that are forecast: 

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down …” – with reveling or over-anxiety about this world.  Do not let “that day” catch you unexpectedly, “like a trap” (verse 34). 

Pray that you will have the strength “to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man” (verse 36). 

In summary, Luke heightens the personal experience of world chaos and hysterical fears, but keeps his focus on the center of the drama. 

That center is each person standing before the great figure of the judgment, the Son of Man. 

 

November 24, 2024 -- 27th Sunday after Pentecost -- Reign of Christ

         Biblical Words                              [909]

II Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132:1-12, (13-18); Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37. 

At year’s end, Christian thoughts turn to words beyond our current trials, to words about the Reign of Christ. 

The last Sunday of the Christian year, the Sunday just before Advent, has been known traditionally as “Christ the King” Sunday, or nowadays, “Reign of Christ” Sunday.  The Church year ends looking toward a sovereignty bestowed by God on Jesus, making him the Messiah, the Christ, heir of King David. 

II Samuel 23:1-7.  

(The alternate reading is Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14, the empowering of one like a Son of Man by God on High.) 

The readings for this Sunday from the Prophets and from the Psalm present God’s promise to David of an “everlasting covenant” and a perpetual dynasty. 

The II Samuel reading presents what in Hebrew is a primitive-sounding song, the Last Words of David.  This poem has a good claim to be an actual composition of David the king.  The opening words, “The oracle of David, … oracle of the man whom God exalted,” is an early style, not common in later Israelite verse.  (See, for example, the oracle of Balaam in Numbers 24:3-4.)   

The ecstatic speaker declares what the deity has said to him.  In this case, God has said: 

He whose rule is upright on earth,

who rules in the fear of God,

is like the morning light at sunrise

(on a cloudless morning)

making the grass of the earth sparkle after rain. 

      (New Jerusalem Bible translation)

The one anointed by God rules justly and makes the world glisten with prosperity. 

The rest is David’s commentary, declaring to the world his own status with God, and then contrasting with it the fate of wicked ones. 

Yes, my House stands firm with God: 

he has made an eternal covenant with me,

all in order, well assured;

does he not bring to fruition my every victory and desire? 

But men of Belial he rejects like thorns,

for these are never taken up in the hand: 

no one touches them

except with a pitchfork or spear-shaft,

and then only to burn them to nothing! 

      (Verses 5-7, NJB translation.) 

Psalm 132:1-12, (13-18).  

The Psalm reading also refers directly to David and God’s promise to him of a perpetual reign (though here the perpetuity is conditional). 

The Lord swore to David a sure oath

      from which he will not turn back:

“One of the sons of your body

      I will set on your throne. 

If your sons keep my covenant

      and my decrees that I shall teach them,

their sons also, forevermore,

      shall sit on your throne.” 

      (verses 11-12, NRSV)

That divine promise is presented here as God’s response to David’s firm decision to find a true sanctuary, a “dwelling place,” for God.  David’s vow was: 

I will not give sleep to my eyes

      or slumber to my eyelids,

until I find a place for the Lord,

      a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.

      (verses 4-5) 

These two oaths, David’s and Yahweh’s, established Jerusalem (religiously known as Zion) as the central sanctuary of the world and David as the founder of the one supreme dynasty which would benefit all the nations of the world (see Psalm 72). 

In this view, Solomon may have built the later famous temple, but David had already made the critical decisions that established Jerusalem as the residence of Yahweh. 

The references to “Ephrathah” and “Jaar” (verse 6) recall the stories of the Ark of Yahweh being brought from the Judean countryside to the sanctuary in Jerusalem (II Samuel 6).  From that, all Israel was to know where Yahweh’s “dwelling place” was located, and therefore where access to the mightiest God could be found – namely, at David’s capital city. 

The optional part of the reading (verses 13-18) clinches this conclusion by repeating God’s own words sanctioning Zion and its religious services: 

For the Lord has chosen Zion;

      he has desired it for his habitation: 

“This is my resting place forever;

      here I will reside, for I have desired it….”

      (verses 13-14)

Revelation 1:4b-8.  

It is appropriate on the last Sunday of the Christian year to have an Epistle reading from the last book of the Christian Bible, the Book of Revelation. 

The passage is the beginning of the address to the seven churches.  It has the elevated speech of high liturgy and doxology, virtually a heavenly cantata, of which this book contains several later on. 

The greeting passage proceeds by triads.  It prays for peace from God “who is and who was and who is to come” (verse 4, NRSV).  Note, the third phrase is not “who is to be,” a more Greek ontological turn, but “who is to come,” the active perspective of salvation history. 

Peace is also asked from Jesus Christ, who is also characterized by a triad:  “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth” (verse 5).  The faithful witness was performed in the earthly ministry of Jesus, the firstborn of the dead is the victory over death signaled by the resurrection, and the rule over the kings of the earth is the assurance of Jesus’ heavenly rule, later to become more dramatically evident in this book. 

The drama continues with an exclamation.  Someone sees it: 

Look!  He is coming with the clouds;  

      every eye will see him,

      even those who pierced him (verse 7). 

The Son of Man, who in heaven received full authority over all powers, now descends to exercise it.  (The empowerment in the heavenly court portrayed in Daniel 7:13-14 is assumed here as the sequel to the resurrection of Jesus on earth.)  And over the scene of the one coming on the clouds the voice of God is heard:  “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (verse 8). 

This is the assurance that over and above all the struggle into which the Anointed One descended and in which he died, there is a greater ultimate (and kingly) power moving – even if often mysteriously – to bring deliverance and new life to God’s faithful. 

John 18:33-37.  

The Gospel reading is the dialogue between Pilate and Jesus as reported in the Gospel According to John. 

The question at the beginning is whether Jesus is the King of the Jews.  By the end it has become the question of truth about kingdoms that are – and are not – of this world. 

Let us conclude this church year by listening to the reflections on this passage by William Temple (Readings in St. John’s Gospel), written on the eve of the world conflagration initiated by Adolph Hitler (1939, opening of the Second World War). 

The kingdoms which are from this world rest in part upon falsehood – most conspicuously upon the necessary but false, false but necessary, supposition that the State really acts in the interest of the whole community, whereas in fact it always acts primarily in the interest of that section of the community which is able in practice to work its machinery.  It is a pretended community; this is far better than no community at all, which is the only actual alternative until the Kingdom of God is come.  But that Kingdom [God’s] rests on truth – on the real constitution of the universe wherein God the righteous Father is supreme.  To that truth, the real constitution of the universe, Christ came to bear witness; not to beautiful dreams but to bed-rock reality…

The acclamation of a heaven-sent king, bearing truth for God’s people, is an appropriate transition from the old year to a new, in the sacred pilgrimage of followers of Jesus the Christ. 

 

November 17, 2024 -- 26th Sunday after Pentecost

                                        Biblical Words                                               [908]

I Samuel 1:4-20;  I Samuel 2:1-10;  Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25;  Mark 13:1-8.

Prayers and songs of the faithful and Jesus’ sacrifice give hope for a world changed by God’s Anointed One. 

I Samuel 1:4-20.  

As this year of the Lectionary winds down, anticipations of Advent begin to appear.  The story of Ruth, told in the readings of the last two Sundays, is now followed by that of her younger contemporary Hannah, in the reading from I Samuel.  

The Hannah story tells of a nearly-miraculous birth and of joyful expectations concerning a coming king. 

Hannah is the much-loved but barren wife who is taunted and ridiculed by the less-loved but more fertile co-wife, Peninnah.  The focus of the reading is on Hannah’s desperate prayer to become a mother.  

At the time of the feast, when the family brings offerings to the temple sanctuary in Shiloh, Hannah prays to the Lord fervently but silently, leading the priest Eli to think she has had too much wine.  We hear both the words of Hannah’s prayer and the dialogue with Eli, in which Hannah convinces the priest that she is a faithful but grieving woman.  Eli adds the weight of his prayer to hers, and shortly after Hannah goes home she conceives and bears a son. 

In her prayer Hannah had vowed to dedicate her son to God as a “nazirite,” a kind of religious warrior who abstained from intoxicating drink and from cutting of hair (verse 11).  (The birth of the hero Samson was also announced to a barren woman and he too was required to be a nazirite, Judges 13:3-5.) 

Hannah’s vow prepares for the later dedication of the boy Samuel to the service of the priests at Shiloh (carried out in verses 24-28, beyond our reading).  This dedication of Samuel to God leads on, later in the book of Samuel, to Samuel’s role as king-maker in Israel. 

I Samuel 2:1-10.  

This Song of Hannah, sung when Hannah fulfilled her vow by depositing Samuel at the temple, is the psalm reading for this Sunday.  The reference to the barren woman (verse 5) is the only link to Hannah within the psalm, but the larger setting of Hannah’s story in the book of Samuel makes her a prophetess, one who speaks of great things yet far off. 

The Song as a whole is a hymn to the power of God who overthrows the old power relations of the social world. 

The mighty are defeated and the weak gain strength; the fat ones become day-laborers while the hungry gain great spoil; the barren woman has seven children, the mother of many is lonely.  God “raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap” (verse 8, NRSV).  

In the climax of the hymn (verse 10), the royal, even “messianic,” character of the Song is clear: 

The Lord!  His adversaries shall be shattered;

      the Most High will thunder in heaven. 

The Lord will judge the ends of the earth;

      he will give strength to his king,

      and exalt the power of his anointed [messiah].

This royal aspect of the Song anticipates the rest of I Samuel.  

In this book, the struggle against the Philistines is the ever-present background to the stories of Samuel, Saul, and the rise of David.  The Song is prophetic:  Ultimately God will put down the Philistines and bring the Israelites to independent power – through God’s Anointed One. 

Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25.  

The Epistle reading is the final selection this year from the Letter to the Hebrews, the final word about the great priestly work of Jesus before the Letter moves on to describe the Christian pilgrimage by faith. 

This reading emphasizes the once-for-all nature of Jesus’ sacrifice for sin.  Jesus’ work is in contrast to the everyday grunt work of an ordinary priest.  The privileged but routine work of the Aaronite priests in the Jerusalem temple is a repetitious daily activity, not very effective for sin because it has to be continuously repeated.  “Every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never [permanently] take away sins” (10:11, NRSV). 

By contrast to this routine of the earthly priesthood, Jesus as priest-king has been exalted to heaven, where he is also poised to exercise dominion over earthly destructive powers (his “enemies”) promised in Psalm 110:1.  (That is the psalm that speaks of the Messiah as “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek,” verse 4.)  In this reading too the triumph of God’s faithful people is anticipated, now in terms of the foreshadowing rituals of the Tabernacle of God rather than liberation from the Philistines by an Anointed One. 

This priestly form of triumph will cross the boundary between the earthly and the heavenly – and in the process give the chosen ones who belong to the Messiah access to God’s presence.  They will come before God “with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (verse 22). 

The accomplished heavenly sacrifice prepares for a whole new orientation to the world.  Given this new orientation, the Jesus follower is now called to make pilgrimage (the topic in the rest of Hebrews). 

Mark 13:1-8.  

The Gospel reading makes explicit what the Letter to the Hebrews only implies, that an End is coming to the earthly temple and its sacrificial practice in Jerusalem. 

At the moment of leaving the glorious Jerusalem temple for the last time, Jesus announces to the disciples the imminent total destruction of this great sanctuary.  Clearly the work of this priestly center for all of Judaism is going to be replaced by something else. 

The disciples – or at least the inner circle of the first four – are urgent to know what will follow.  This leads to Jesus’ longest discourse in the Gospel According to Mark, the so-called “Markan Apocalypse.”  Reading the opening of this discourse prepares for the first theme of the impending season of Advent – the anticipation of the Final Judgment. 

This discourse of Jesus is delivered as they sit on the Mount of Olives looking west across the Kidron Valley into the temple complex.  This is a dramatic place in the sacred stories of Israel as well as in the memories of early Jesus followers.  

This was the location of the solemn departure of David from the holy city when he was betrayed by his own son and plotted against by enemies (II Samuel 15:13-16:14).  This was also the site from which the triumphal entry began on Palm Sunday, moving from the Mount of Olives down through the valley and up into the temple (a route reflected in the great liturgical psalm quoted by the accompanying people, the “Hosanna” psalm, 118).  

And this was the location of the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus, like David before him, was betrayed and abandoned by his own followers. 

The early stages of the time of Judgment include the appearance of false messiahs, or of false Jesuses (verse 6).  How will the faithful waiting ones tell the difference?  How can false messiahs be recognized? 

Presumably one of the purposes of Mark’s Gospel is to make clear what Jesus is like, to enable followers to know the true returning Jesus when the great times of crisis arise.  All of Mark makes clear that it is easy to misunderstand who Jesus is and what is his work.  It is easy to misunderstand that message about the first being last, the wealthy becoming the poor, and the real leaders being those who serve.  When sitting on the Mount of Olives, contemplating the end of the world as we know it, such a message could seem really remote. 

Therefore, future followers of Jesus needed to be warned that not everyone who looks like a savior really is one.  This warning is the prologue to Advent! 

 

November 10, 2024 -- 25th Sunday after Pentecost

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17;  Psalm 127;  Hebrews 9:24-28;  Mark 12:38-44.

The widows – and others in need – find redeemers, in spite of the pride and prejudices of the great. 

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17.   

The story of Ruth moves through its complications and dramatic climax – though our reading includes only a couple of key scenes. 

The two widows, an older wise one and a younger attractive one, have devoted themselves to finding a livelihood and some future prospect in Bethlehem.  Ruth has worked hard in the grain fields, gleaning with the other poor women.  By chance – or otherwise – she works in the field of Boaz, the one well-to-do relative of Naomi in Bethlehem.  Attracting Boaz’s attention leads to more and more favorable working conditions (developed in chapter 2), and Ruth prospers until the end of the grain harvest.  That is where our reading picks up. 

Naomi devises a daring plan.  She sends Ruth, scrubbed and perfumed, to sneak into Boaz’s bed that night after the harvest-end carousing is over.  She tells Ruth, When he discovers you, “he will tell you what to do” – that is, everything will be up to him! 

Our text does not elaborate, but here are the three possible outcomes of Naomi’s plan:  (1) he may throw you out as a slut, (2) he may take advantage of you and send you away in shame, or (3) he may grasp the opportunity you are offering him.  May God make it this last! 

Our selected reading does not narrate the outcome.  However, the details given in chapter 3 show Ruth improving her chances by telling Boaz about his distant kinship obligation to Naomi’s family.  Chapter 4 then shows us that Boaz chose door three:  he was wise and took Ruth as his wife. 

When Ruth has born a son, she fades into the background as grandmother Naomi takes over.  Naomi is grandly congratulated by the neighbor ladies of Bethlehem, who knew her back when, and the word goes out, “A son has been born to Naomi!”  Not to Ruth! 

One trusts that Ruth will also have her day – when she too becomes a grandmother, the grandmother of Jesse, father of the king-to-be, David. 

Psalm 127.  

The Psalm reading is a short wisdom or instruction piece, said to belong to Solomon.  (Psalm 72 also belongs to Solomon.)  The links to the Ruth story are not strong, but the psalm is about building houses and producing large families, especially numerous sons. 

The strong affirmation of the first part of the psalm is that unless a human enterprise is in harmony with God’s will, it won’t succeed.  This part concludes, almost with a smile, that anxiety and overwork will not help – which God demonstrates by giving his beloved one a good night’s sleep.  (This is the more likely meaning of verse 2b.) 

The second part of the psalm is a paean to having many sons.  We hear the values here of a tribal society in which the rights and opportunities of a tribe or clan depend on how many adult males are available to back its disputes.  The head of a large clan “shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (verse 5, NRSV). 

This is the society the Ruth story presupposes, and the widows are struggling throughout to have strong male advocates in the city gate.  Ruth’s descendant David, and especially Solomon (as portrayed in Psalm 72), represents the strong man who champions the rights of the weak and the poor – in God’s name, and under God’s ultimate supervision. 

Hebrews 9:24-28.  

The Epistle reading continues the climax in the presentation of the high priestly work of Jesus.  The passage emphasizes two things, the heavenly location of the completed work of Christ, and its once-for-all character.  The latter topic will be reiterated in next week’s Epistle reading, so only the first topic will be discussed here. 

“For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (verse 24, NRSV). 

The writer follows the hermeneutics of that time among Judeans of the Greek-speaking Diaspora:  the sacred text, which seems to speak about religious duties in the earthly world, is read as a guide to the non-earthly realities that make up true religion, and particularly the salvation from sin that all people seek. 

On the level of earthly realities, the high priest carried out the Day of Atonement rituals every year in Jerusalem, as prescribed in the Law of Moses.  On the level of the newly-revealed true religion, when Jesus died at Jerusalem on Good Friday, the earthquake that took place was a truly divine one:  it shook up relations between heaven and earth! 

The death, and then supremely the resurrection, opened the heavens for human approach to God in a way never before possible.  This death and resurrection of Jesus subsumed the old mechanism for forgiveness of sin.  On the level of earthly realities, the old religious practices are no longer needed; there is now a new access to the presence of God, the supreme heavenly reality. 

But the last part of our passage indicates that this great change is not just a heavenly reality:  it is an eschatological reality:  “…as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” (verse 26).  There is still a stretch of time between this heavenly sacrifice of Jesus and the consummation of the age when Christ “will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (verse 28). 

From a much later perspective, we are very interested in that interval.  How do the followers of Christ live through their remaining earthly realities after the heavenly sacrifice and before the end of the age?  Soon this becomes the Age of the Church, of course, and a wide world spreads out for the faithful who still await that consummation.  The writer really addresses this matter in the homilies on faith and on the pilgrimage from the holy mountain to the holy city, homilies which are given in chapters 11-13 (which appear as Lectionary readings for this season next year). 

Here, at the conclusion of Jesus’ high priestly work, we are sent forth to discover a new way in the world “outside the camp” (13:13), that is, outside the old familiar traditions and rituals of the ancestors. 

Mark 12:38-44.  

The Gospel reading presents a contrast between the pride of the self-righteous and the devotion of the poverty-stricken. 

First there is a brief but fierce condemnation of the scribes (verses 38-40).  In Matthew this will become the much longer litany marked by the cry, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites…” (Matthew 23:1-36).  As short as is Mark’s version, it summarizes the ways of self-important religious leaders:  wearing elaborate vestments, assuring that their titles are properly printed and correct protocols are observed in public events, taking pains to assure that seating and precedence are correct in services, and that the right people are placed at head tables at banquets (verses 38-39). 

In Jesus’ indictment, those who are so scrupulous about the etiquette of their ranks and prestige, maintain themselves by devouring widows’ houses.  After the bank in which he has stock has foreclosed the mortgage of a single-parent family now driven into homelessness, our hypocrite makes a point of leading the congregation in a particularly long prayer (verse 40). 

These are the mighty who cherish the ceremony more than the mercy. 

Having declared this condemnation of religious hypocrites, Jesus lifts up the poor widow’s offering as a supreme act of devotion to God (verses 41-44).  Here is another hard saying about wealth – hard especially for folks faced with getting church budgets to come out right about this time of year. 

Jesus acknowledges that many rich people put in large sums of money, but of the widow with her two cents he says, she “has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury” (verse 43).  In the eyes of God it is more, but it poses a dilemma for those paying the bills.  Jesus, it seems, would have no more patience with such concerns than he did about how the lilies grow and who feeds the birds. 

Speaking of feeding the birds, for a long time this poor widow has reminded me of the scene and the song of the Bird Woman in the musical “Mary Poppins.”  Outside the magnificent old marble towers and domes of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, seen in nocturnal shades and blue tints, the old woman sits selling grain for the pigeons – as Julie Andrews sings, “Feed the birds, feed the birds…”  There is something sentimental but radically right about the Bird Woman against the backdrop of the Cathedral, as there is about Jesus’ lifting up of the widow’s two cents. 

This scene contrasting the hypocritical mighty with the faithful poor stands at the end of Jesus’ public ministry.  There remain only the apocalypse (Mark 13) and the Passion (Mark 14-15).