"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Hebrews 13:8
It has been a week of many and varied feelings within us individually, and in this Trinity community. This short verse reminds us that, no matter what our feelings about the outcome of the many elections and initiatives this week, we set our gaze on Jesus and his ministry to guide our lives.
Going back to last week’s sermon for a moment, we are constantly scanning the headlines and the media, taking the emotional temperature of our surroundings, monitoring our own feelings. Wherever our scanning pauses and we focus on one thing, we give power to that thing. Power to influence our thinking about ourselves and who we are, our place in the world and society, and our relationship with our neighbors, God and creation. That’s a lot of power. We choose whether to give that power to fear, or gloating, or Jesus.
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From the time pre-humans organized into groups to cooperate for safety and rearing offspring and procuring food, there have been differing ideas about who is in charge, how to be in charge, what it is necessary for the group to do, and how to do it. Politics have been part of human life forever. Hello Abel and Cain, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers. All struggles for power.
Jesus and his friends lived in a highly political, oppressive, socially segregated society. Because they lived in it, they understood the dynamics of despotic power, particularly after Jesus’ trial and execution.
In hope, they chose to focus their gaze on Good News that the kingdom of God has come near. The Good News that we hear about in the Gospel of Mark. A kingdom Jesus shows us through grace and forgiveness, through patience, generosity, and healing so that all people, all creation can thrive together.
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Jesus shifts our focus from the political competitions that permeate our lives - at work, school, government, church, pretty much every human group. Jesus refocuses our attention to the human interdependence that pre-dates power struggles.
Humans are made for groups. We are not intended to live solitary lives, separated from one another, in competition with one another. We grow and thrive as our very best selves when we live in relationship with one other. When we share our lives, break bread together, find commonality in the things that are important to us. Like empathy, praying for one another, desiring joy and thriving for one another as much as we desire it for ourselves. We discover that kind of relationship, and the importance of it, when we give something of ourselves to the well-being of another person. In his final message to his disciples, after he said that we are to love one another as he loved us, Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for one another. To give our whole lives so that others may thrive and grow.
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The second half of our gospel lesson today is the story that is often called “the widow’s mite.” Mite, meaning something so small as to be insignificant. This woman, with no male figure in her household to give her status, to bring money in, to make her noticed. She is nothing. This time of year, when churches are often in the middle of our pledge campaign, she is often cited as the ultimate example of sacrificial giving.
We’ve been reading from the gospel of Mark for almost a year now. And we know that Mark is a very deliberate and crafty storyteller. It’s important to look at what comes before and after a story to fully understand the good news according to Mark.
We need to go back and look at the first part of the reading. We find Jesus in the temple, calling out the scribes who are quite taken with their own appearances. They like their beautiful robes, the attention of saying loud prayers, and the respect of the best seats at banquets. They go to the market place and people make way for them. They seem not to notice or care much about the invisible and powerless people in their community, like the poor widow. Jesus subtly suggests they may take advantage of those folks.
Jesus offers these observations as a critique of religion that used to camouflage or justify or, in today’s language, gaslight injustice and apathy borne of privilege and self-centeredness. The attention sought through prayers and obviously ostentatious sums of money hold no coin with God. Jesus’ critique of the scribes invites us to examine our own lives and community for places where our values and actions do not hold integrity with each other.
Jesus points out that the widow faithfully and humbly gives everything she has, literally translated it is “her whole life.” He calls us to courageously commit our time, talent, and treasure to more fully participate in God’s work of lifting up the lowly, caring for our neighbors, turning empty prayers and promises upside down.
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Jesus was not rewarded for speaking truth to power. His words and actions so engaged and moved peoples' hearts and minds that we are still talking about him today. We are still striving to follow the example he set, the lessons he taught us. The message of God’s reconciling love transcends all time, all social and political change.
At our baptisms and every time we renew our baptismal promises, as we did last Sunday, we fix our gaze again on God's vision, as Jesus’ followers have for the last 2,000 years.
We promise, covenant to look around and notice where God is already at work in our lives, in our community and our neighborhood. God IS already working a new thing in us, through us. And we pledge to wonder what part of ourselves God is inviting us to offer to God's vision. The world needs our witness, the witness of faithful followers of Jesus, to hope and justice and peace now more than ever.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen.
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