Everything She Had

Mark 12:38-44

November 11, 2012

            “I just heard something pop!”

            Remember those words for a minute while I share this story. 

I’m sure my children would be amazed to discover that once upon a time I rappelled down the side of a cliff.  It’s true.  In my early college days, I went with some friends out to a rural area in Tennessee and we rappelled down a cliff.  Let me make it clear that the people I did this with were actually knowledgeable about such things.  We didn’t just decide to throw ourselves off the side of a rock for the heck of it.  They did this on a regular basis.  They had all the proper equipment, ropes, tools, etc. for rappelling.  A day of rappelling wasn’t a surprise either.  I went with the full knowledge that this was what we were going to do.  I had never tried anything like this, and I wanted to. 

            They decided to let the newbie – me—go first.  They harnessed me in all the necessary ropes.  One person was down at the bottom of the cliff holding the main rope, belaying me from below.  And my other friends were standing at the top with me as I prepared to make my descent. 

            If you aren’t sure what rappelling is, it’s fairly simple.  You walk backwards off whatever high place that you’re rappelling from, and you bounce your way down to the bottom.  Now the people who were helping me, who knew what they were doing, had strapped me into this rope harness pretty well.  There were two caribeeners that held the ropes in place.  Caribeeners are a particular kind of hook.  One of them had this extra safety fastener and one didn’t.  According to my friends, that was the way it was supposed to be. 

            So I’m trussed up like a turkey, and I begin this backwards walk to the cliff’s edge.  Let me say that this wasn’t a Mt. Everest kind of cliff.  It was not insanely high, but certainly high enough that you wouldn’t want to fall off.   Back to the backwards walk.  I’m walking backwards, one step at a time towards the edge, the movement of my feet contradicting the voice in my head screaming, “You’re walking backwards off a cliff!  Cease and desist!”

            I took my first step off into air and something on my harness popped.  I stopped walking.  I very calmly said, “I just heard something pop.”  When my support system of friends didn’t respond immediately I said it again, this time with a little more intensity. 

            “I.  Just.  Heard.  Something.  Pop!” 

            My friends jumped into action then and rushed to my aid.  They pulled me back out of the air and began looking for the source of the pop.  It turned out that what had popped was the first caribeener, the one without the extra safety lock feature.  They showed me what had happened and how all the ropes were still tied the way they were supposed to be.  All good.  All fine.  Was I ready to go again?  Believe it or not, I said yes. 

I retook that backwards walk.  I made that first step into nothingness, then my feet found the side of the cliff and I rappelled all the way down.  Midway I started to hotdog it, bouncing as high as I could because I was having so much fun.  My first words when I finally reached the ground were, “Can I go again?” 

            This was an incredible experience and one that I’ve never fully had the chance to replicate since.  But I remember this moment in my life, not because of the thrill or the adrenaline rush that came along with it.  I remember it because it was the first that I truly understood what it meant to be terrified – literally shaking, cold sweat terrified – to do something and yet I did it anyway.  I was scared before I took that first step.  I was petrified when I heard that pop.  I was so scared I felt a little faint from fear.  Stepping off that cliff a second time went against every impulse I had, but I did it.  Because I knew that the people who were guiding me through this were good.  They weren’t reckless or careless.  They were trustworthy.  I trusted them so I walked backwards off a cliff and had a great time in the process.

            I trusted them.  That’s the critical factor in this story.  I trusted them.  I was still terrified, but I trusted them.  That idea of trust seems to be a recurring theme when it comes to talking about faith.  I know it’s a recurring theme, or maybe the better term is issue, for me.  Do we trust?  Whom do we trust?  How much do we trust? 

            But what does trust have to do with our story?  The widow in this story in Mark’s gospel is most often lifted up as a paragon of generosity.  Just in describing her as a widow says something about her status in that society.  Without a husband’s protection, she would have been one of the voiceless ones, one of the least ones.  Her status stands in stark contrast to the scribes that we see in the first verses of this passage. 

We meet her when Jesus and the disciples are seated outside of the treasury, watching the crowd of people putting in their money.  Wealthy person after wealthy person went and put in large amounts, but this widow came and put in only two small copper coins.  But those coins were all that she had.  Jesus, on seeing her gift, tells the disciples, “This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.  For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

I’ve read two different interpretations of this passage.  The first is the more traditional interpretation.  Jesus is commending this woman for her generous giving; her piety.  Even though she had the least to give, she ultimately gave the most, because she gave everything she had.  What she gave, the amount she gave, didn’t matter as much as the attitude in which she gave.  She gave generously of her first fruits, probably her only fruits, because she was giving to God.  This is the more traditional and widely-accepted version of this passage.

            But there is an alternative understanding as well.  Beginning with his teachings on the scribes in the earlier verses, Jesus is calling attention to a bankrupt and abusive religious system.

            The scribes have come to enjoy the honor and prestige that goes with their position.  In fact they enjoy the prestige and position a little too much.  It’s become more important than their religious calling.  In deference to their position, the scribes wore long linen robes with fringes, and they commanded the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets and parties.  The common people were expected to stand when the scribes passed them by on the streets.

            It’s important to note that the scribes did not take money for what they did.  There were no professional scribes, rabbis or priests at the time.  In fact, the scribes would probably be considered downright poor by their standards or ours.  They depended on the generosity of the common people to house them, feed them, etc.  When Jesus teaches that the scribes “devour widow’s houses,” the most recent interpreters feel that Jesus is actually commenting on the fact that the scribes and the religious system they represent prey on the people who can least afford it. When the widow puts her two coins into the treasury, she is unwittingly buying into this corrupt system.

            So which is it?  Which interpretation is the correct one?  It would be far easier just to ignore the latter and stick with the more familiar former, and in many ways, easier reading of this story.  But it seems to me that both interpretations have to be considered because I think that both are true.  We have to hold them in tension with one another, and we have to wrestle with that tension. 

            We may have officially observed our Stewardship Emphasis Sunday last week, but stewardship is ongoing.  Certainly it is not only about caring for what we have been given, but also being generous with what we have been given.  There aren’t too many better role models of this than the widow is there?  She is generous.  As I said earlier, even though what she gives is meager by comparison, it is her attitude of generosity that sets her apart.  And yet we cannot ignore the words that Jesus had for the scribes.  “They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” 

            Is this widow having her house devoured for a false religiosity?  Maybe.  And if so, what does it have to do with us?  Because that’s ultimately what we have to figure out from this passage.  What does it have to do with us?  Is it asking us to be generous; to adopt a spirit and attitude of generosity?  To give all that we can, even if what we can is small?  Or is it a warning to us in the institutional church to avoid preying on those who can least afford it?  Is it a warning to check our attitudes about our piety, to NOT be like the scribes who put on a good show, but their hearts aren’t in it?  Again, I think it’s both. 

            And what’s really hard about this passage is that it deals with that word we don’t like to deal with – money.  How do we deal with our money?  The church, this church, has to have money to stay open.  It takes money to run the heat and turn on the lights and operate the sound system.  It takes money to have the music and the preaching.  My internship supervisor was a gifted preacher and administrator, and he told me once that he dreaded the stewardship sermon he had to give every year because it felt like he was passing the hat.  But his livelihood depended on the giving of the church.  So does mine.  There’s not a professional clergy person out there who isn’t acutely aware of that fact.  So yes, when I call on us to be generous, I know that in some form or fashion that generosity supports my family. 

            One commentator summed up this passage in these terms.  It comes down to value.  What do we value?  The scribes valued prestige.  They valued personal honor.  They valued position.  The poor widow valued God.  I’m sure that duty and religious obligation were part and parcel of her giving, but in the end I think she valued God.  And she put her money, she put everything she had into what she valued. 

            That brings us back to where we started.  It takes trust to do what she did.  It takes trust to give wholeheartedly and unselfishly and generously to what we value.  She placed her value on God because she trusted God.  Placing every cent she had into that treasury took enormous trust in God.  She had to trust that she would be provided for, cared for, that she would be okay.  It took trust. 

            William Sloane Coffin once wrote that “faith is not believing in something that we cannot see; it’s trust without reservation.”  I think this widow had that kind of trust.  Do we? 

            Let us give all that we have, all that we are to the One who does not forsake or forget us.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”

Death No More

John 11:32-44

November 4, 2012

            My grandmother, or as I would sometimes call her in Swedish, my Mormor – which means mother’s mother – died three days after Phoebe was born.  My parents, following my dad’s hunch that this baby was on her way, rushed from Minnesota to Upstate New York and got to our house the day I went into labor.  Phoebe was born the next day.  Two days later we brought her home, made it through our first night, and the next morning the call came that Gramma was gone. 

            Within 45 minutes my parents had packed, loaded their van and were gone, heading back to Minnesota to help my uncle with final arrangements and the funeral.  In those moments as they were packing I remember sitting on the couch holding Phoebe, numb with shock, trying to process what was happening.  My thoughts were like a tape on a continuous loop circling and re-circling through my brain.  “I have a beautiful baby girl.  I’m a mommy.  Gramma is dead.  Mom and Dad are leaving.  I’m a mommy!” 

            Before they left, both of my parents held and kissed Phoebe, and they hugged and kissed me.  My dad told me that it was going to be all right.  I had a beautiful little daughter and I was going to be a good mom.  It would be okay.  But anyone who’s ever had a baby or lived with someone who’s just had a baby knows that your postnatal self is like one big hormonal pinball machine.  You’re happy.  You’re sad.  You’re elated.  You’re in the depths of despair.  All new parents are exhausted, but add in a measure of grief to this mix and you’ve got a roller coaster ride of crazy. 

            I was a mommy.  But I really wanted my mommy.  And my mommy wanted hers.  The one thing that helped get me through those first few days of learning how to care for my newborn daughter as well as grieve my grandmother, was when my mother called to tell me that that Gramma knew all about Phoebe.  Up until that phone call, it had haunted me to think that she had died and didn’t know that Phoebe had come into the world.  I think it was my sister-in-law who went and told her that Phoebe had been born.  Gramma was mentally sharp right until the minute she died, so she knew exactly what that meant.  Her 21^st great grandchild had come into the world.  She loved the name we’d chosen.  She was thrilled that we’d given Phoebe the middle name Hope because that is also my mother’s middle name.  She knew that Phoebe was well and that I was well, and then, as though she’d been given some sort of cosmic permission, she died, peacefully and quickly.  No suffering.  No lingering.  In fact one of the doctors who attended her hugged my dad afterward and told him that she’d died a good Swedish death.  Everything, every organ, every bodily system, just shut down at once. 

            Phoebe was born.  My grandmother died.  I understood then that the circle of life isn’t just a beloved Disney song.  It is real.  And as much as I missed and grieved my Mormor, I had this brand new little life in my arms that needed me.  So we went on. 

            But that time made me realize just how tenuous the line is between life and death.  We know intellectually that death is a part of life.  We recognize our mortality and the mortality of others.  It’s there.  It’s real.  But that knowledge doesn’t absolve us from grief, from loss, from the anguish that follows. 

            That’s where I think Mary and Martha are in this passage from John’s gospel.  Death would have been an even more intimate experience for them than for us.  There were no hospitals or life support machines.  Death, most often, would have occurred at home, in the midst of the family, in the midst of life.  Yet the grief and the loss and the sorrow were still there.  That anguish was as real for Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, as it was for me, for any of us. 

            Our passage today begins after Jesus has heard that Lazarus has died, after Martha meets him and tells him that his presence would have prevented Lazarus’ death.  Jesus gives Martha the words of assurance that death is not the final word, and Martha declares her belief.  Our part of the story begins with Mary.  Mary hears from Martha that Jesus, the teacher has come, and she goes quickly to meet him.  The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates many things well, but I think its language loses the force, the punch of what happens in this moment.  Where it says that Mary got up quickly, I think would be better translated as jumps up.  Mary hears Jesus has come, at last and apparently too late, and she jumps up.  She rushes out to meet him.  The NRSV states that she knelt at his feet.  But a more apt translation would be she threw herself at his feet.  This is no calm, collected greeting of a beloved teacher and friend.  This is a grieving, desperate, even angry woman who throws herself down in front of the one person she believed could have kept her brother from dying. 

            “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

            In other words, where were you?  Why didn’t you get here faster, sooner?  Why didn’t you do something? 

            We read that Jesus’ response to Mary’s tears and the tears of all the people around her is that he was “greatly disturbed in spirit.”  But what does that mean?  Most often I have heard this interpreted as Jesus was moved by compassion and remorse and his own grief for Lazarus.  But one commentator sees this disturbance of spirit as Jesus being frustrated, disappointed and even angry.  The people who should have had some glimmer, some grasping of what and who Jesus is still don’t fully understand.  They still live by an old model of how the world works.  We live and we die and we’re done.  But the coming of Jesus has irrevocably changed that model.  Something new has happened.  Through him we have a different kind of life, a new life.  Death is no more.  Why can’t they see it?

            So Jesus asks, “Where have you laid him?”  Then Jesus weeps.  And his display of emotion brings up mixed feelings in all those around him.  “Look, he’s crying.  He really loved Lazarus.  Yeah, but if he could open up the eyes of the blind man, why couldn’t he keep Lazarus from dying?”

            Jesus goes with Martha and Mary and the others to the tomb where they’d laid Lazarus.  There was a stone in front of it, foreshadowing the stone that would block the entrance to Jesus’ own tomb, and he tells Martha to take away the stone.  She says, and I paraphrase, “Lord, Lazarus has been dead four days.  It stinks.” 

            Learning that Lazarus has been dead for four days wasn’t just to give the reader an indication of passing time.  In Jewish tradition, it was believed that a person’s soul or shade hovered above the body for the first three days after death.  After the third day the soul would make its way to Sheol.  Perhaps this was John’s way of making it clear, to borrow from a beloved musical, that Lazarus was really and most sincerely dead. 

            When Martha tells Jesus that her brother has been dead four days and it really stinks, Jesus tells her once again, as he did in the verses preceding this passage, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

            When the stone is rolled away, Jesus prays.  And then he commands Lazarus to, “Come out!”  Then he does something wonderful, yet I think most of us miss it when we read this story.  Jesus raises Lazarus, but then he calls on the community to “Unbind him, let him go.” 

            Jesus gives new life to Lazarus.  But the community is called to share in that experience of new life. 

            On this day we participate in two important aspects of our life of faith.  Today we observe the tradition of All Saint’s Day.  We lift up in our worship the saints that have gone before us.  We remember our collective saints, men and women who have undergone persecution and torment, who have literally given their lives for the faith.  We number the women and men who have devoted themselves to lives of service and witness, who have shown through their words and their deeds the love of God to all people.  And we remember our personal saints, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our parents, our children, our friends, all of those people who in one way or another contributed to the depth and meaning of our lives. 

            Today we also recommit ourselves to stewardship, stewardship of our time and our resources and our gifts and talents.  We acknowledge that while Jesus creates the new life that is all around us, we are called to participate in that new life.  We are called to unbind one another from the cloths of death that are wrapped around us.  Not only do we celebrate the new thing that God is doing in our midst, we are called to be bearers of that new thing to others. 

            So how do these two aspects of our faith relate to one another?  What is the connection?  Believe me I’ve spent several weeks trying to figure this out.  And although I’m not really sure I’ll ever have a complete answer, I think that the connection lies somewhere in that line, that tenuous line between life and death.  In remembering our saints, we remember that life and death are never very far apart.  We remember that life is both precious and fleeting.  As stewards of God’s goodness, we also know that we are called to live fully in the time we have.  Life is both precious and fleeting so we need to make sure that as many people as possible know of God’s goodness and love and mercy.  Isn’t that the fundamental purpose of the Great Ends of the Church? 

            And both our saints and our stewardship remind us of our reason to hope.  The people who have gone before us had great hope that God in Christ would swallow up death.  Every tear of grief and sorrow would be wiped away.  Death would be no more. 

            Death will be no more.  That is why we remember our saints.  That is why we live and serve and give.  That is our hope.  That is our joy.  Death is no more!  In Christ we have new life.  In Christ we live, now and forevermore.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”

Last to First

Mark 10:35-45

October 21, 2012

There is a brilliant episode of The Vicar of Dibley.  Actually there are lots of brilliant episodes of this British sitcom about the first woman vicar to serve the small and slightly insane English village of Dibley.  But the one I’m thinking of in particular is about Geraldine, the vicar, and her sudden rise to fame. The show starts off with her being asked to fill in as the last minute guest on a radio show.  She accepts the invitation because she wants to talk about the importance of getting a nursery school started in the village; a worthwhile and important project.  The vicar is a success!  Geraldine is funny and wacky, much as she is every day, but this time a much larger group of people hear her.  From that appearance she’s asked to appear on all sorts of shows. 

Originally Geri promised herself and the church council that her media career would be temporary.  She knows that her place is with her church, not as the BBC’s newest rising star.  But the fame and the attention go to her head.  If you ever have the chance to watch this episode the montage of her photo shoot for British Vogue is absolutely hilarious!  It all culminates in an interview being done about her in one of the papers.  Geri tells the members of the council that a reporter will be coming to the village to interview them about her.  But it backfires.  The story about the vicar gets forgotten and it instead becomes a profile on the other characters in the show.  They are insulted, humiliated and just plain ridiculed. 

It’s horrible and embarrassing for the vicar and everyone else, and the rest of the episode is devoted to her willingness to make a public fool out of herself as an apology.  The vicar has a shot at personal glory and it doesn’t work out so well.  Geri doesn’t initially seek out glory.  It comes to her, but when she gets a taste of it she can’t let go. 

James and John, the sons of Zebedee we hear about when Jesus first calls his disciples, go to Jesus asking for glory.  One commentator describes the way they make their request of Jesus as being like a child to a parent.  “Dad I want you to do something for me.”  And Jesus, like any good parent responds with, “Tell me what is first.” 

“’Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’  And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’”  Their request is that they be allowed to sit at his right hand and his left when he is in his glory. There’s a sense of kingship and royalty to their request isn’t there?  You get the image in your head of a king on this throne, with his two most treasured and important advisors on either side of him.  I suspect that’s how James and John viewed Jesus’ glory – a great kingship.  I also suspect that Jesus recognized this too, because he says to them, “You do not know what you are asking.  Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  James and John reply with a resolute, “We are able.”  So Jesus says then you will drink this cup and you will be baptized with this baptism.  But I can’t tell you who will sit at my right or my left.  That’s not my privilege to grant.  And in a very roundabout way, Jesus reminds them that the privilege is God’s alone.

This would all sound, if not okay, perhaps understandable, if we just read this story by itself with no sense of what was happening all around it.  But immediately before these verses, Jesus tells the disciples his third passion prediction.  They were on the road to Jerusalem.  Whenever we hear about Jesus being on the road to Jerusalem, we know that this isn’t just a geographical destination.  On the road to Jerusalem means that Jesus is on the way to the cross.  Jesus knows that everything will come to a head once he reaches Jerusalem. 

So for the third time he pulls the disciples aside and tells them, point blank, I’m going to Jerusalem to die.  I’m going to be handed over to the religious authorities.  They’re going to condemn me to death.  I’m going to be mocked, spit on.  And I will die.  But after three days I’ll rise again.

Jesus didn’t mince words.  He didn’t try to soften the emotional impact of this truth.  He just told them.  And as I said, this is the third time he’s told them.  The first time he told them, Peter rebuked him for it, because the Messiah couldn’t be someone who was weak enough to die.  The second time Jesus made the prediction, the disciples got into an argument about who was the greatest and he pulls a child into his arms to demonstrate that you have to receive the kingdom of God like a child in order to fully get it.  And after this third time of trying to make them understand the death that he faces, James and John ask Jesus for seats of glory. 

I think this calls for a facepalm. 

Because they don’t get it. 

When the other ten hear about James and John’s request, they get angry with them.  But I don’t think it’s because the ten were upset that James and John don’t get it.  I think it’s because they were offended that James and John would go grabbing for glory, and what if that means they don’t get any?  How dare they try to push to the head of the pack?!  Maybe that glory should be theirs.

The reason I believe this is because Jesus then pulls them all aside, one more time, and tells them that with Gentiles, or others, there are lords and tyrants that have the power.  But that’s not true for them.  If one of them wants to be great, then they must become a servant to everyone.  If they want to be first, they must become a slave.  The Son of Man came to serve, not be served.  The Son of Man came to give his life as a ransom for many.

One commentator at WorkingPreacher said that folks get so caught up in this last line in verse 45 that the rest of the story tends to get glossed over.  It’s a powerful image, indeed, to think of Jesus giving his life as a ransom for ours; to understand that in the literal meaning of this, Jesus buys back our lives with his own. 

But what about that whole grasping for glory party at the beginning?  How does that relate to us?  How does that raise conflict in our understanding of what it means to be disciples versus what it means to be successful? 

I realize it may be a stretch to make glory and success synonyms, but I think in this case it works.  The disciples, especially as Mark portrays them, had to battle their cultural understanding of the way things should be in contrast to the way Jesus said they were.  A messiah was supposed to be strong, invincible, a warrior, someone who would come and, pardon my expression, kick the butt of the oppressors.  Following that, messiah meant greatness and it meant glory.  It should bring about accolades and victory.  But Jesus turns all of these cultural assumptions on their head.  The Messiah has come to die.  In his weakness, there will be strength.  There won’t be fighting back.  There won’t be a great uprising.  He has come to make the love of God and the kingdom of God visible.  But guess what?  That happens through suffering, through serving, through compassion, through death. 

And that whole bit about glory and greatness?  You want to truly be great?  Truly being great means being a servant, a slave.  You want to be first, you’ll have to be last. 

It wasn’t easy for the disciples to hear.  It wasn’t easy for them to comprehend.  It wasn’t easy for them to live out.  And even though our cultural contexts may be different, it’s no easier for us.  We are bombarded with the message that success and greatness comes from being stronger and tougher and even more ruthless than everybody else.  We are inundated with the idea that those who are famous, who are celebrities are the ones who are supposed to be on top.  Why is it that athletes and actors and actresses get paid so much money for what they do?  I’m not complaining about what they do.  There’s nothing I love more than going to a good movie.  I have my favorite television shows like everyone else.  I’m not a rabid sports fan, but I do have my favorites; favorite teams, favorite sports.  Ask my friends Ellen and Stuart about my choice of phrases at a hockey game we went to in seminary.  I have moments of being an intense fan. 

Yet why is it that the people in those professions get paid so much more than say, teachers, social workers, and yes, I’m going to say it, clergy? 

As a culture we reward our understanding of what it means to be successful.  Glory equates to fame and fortune.  Reality shows buy into this concept.  The earliest reality show phenomenon was Survivor.  A show where people were voted off the island and the winner was the one who had the grit and determination to survive, regardless of the cost to others.  That was the whole point of the show wasn’t it?

We reward our understanding of what it means to be successful, whether it’s through fame, fortune, ratings points.  Success, glory is something to be strived for.  So of course we seek a certain amount of glory.  I can’t deny that I have dreamed of fame.  I’d love to do something that would earn me an interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.  And it’s hard not to want some recognition for being here, in this place, isn’t it?  It’s hard not to want some acknowledgment for discipleship, for trying to live lives that have purpose and meaning. 

Whatever criticism I may level at the disciples for just not getting it over and over again, the truth is I also want a little of what they asked for.  I want a little glory.  I want to know that I’ll be rewarded for what I’ve done, for what I’ve sacrificed.  But I think what Jesus tells them is that the reward doesn’t come at some point down the road, at some future, far off moment in time, the reward comes from doing.  The reward comes from serving.  The reward comes from giving more than receiving.  The reward comes when we finally realize that when it seems like Jesus is turning everything upside down, he’s really making everything right.  Let all God’s children say, “Amen!”