Pentecost 25: Justice, Fairness and Mercy

Daniel 12.1-3

Psalm 16

Hebrews 10.11-14, (15-18), 19-25

Mark 13.1-8

It may be difficult to admit, but we tend to find comfort in passages like the one in the Book of Daniel: “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12.2).  We find comfort in them because, at best, they appeal to what we like to term our sense of justice.  At worst, because they speak to our desire for vengeance; and more than that: to our desire to have our ways and purposes – even ourselves – cosmically justified over and against others and the ways and purposes of others.  They appeal to our sense of being right and righteous.  But perhaps most basically, when it comes right down it, we like them because they appeal to our sense of fairness.  Fairness demands that there be rewards for behaving well, playing according to the rules, and punishments for doing the opposite: everlasting life and everlasting contempt.

In this we are in company with the great philosophical tradition of the ancient Greeks.  Plato defined justice as the harmonious function of diverse elements of society.  Aristotle believed that justice existed in two forms: retributive and distributive.  The first held that anyone who caused injury to another should suffer exactly the same injury in return.  This is the Hebrew Scriptures’ “eye for an eye”, which the Book of Deuteronomy puts most graphically: “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Deuteronomy 19.21)  The second of Aristotle’s forms of justice – distributive justice – is concerned with the equitability or fairness in interpersonal relations.  Indeed, most modern understandings of justice are based on this, and the contemporary American political philosopher, John Rawls, said it quite succinctly when he defined justice simply as “fairness.”

But for Christians there is something more than merely justice, retributive, distributive or otherwise.  There is mercy.  And this is something, we are still trying to come to grips with.  It certainly was a very difficult concept for the ancient world to come to grips with as it first encountered Christianity.  It was one of the aspects of the Christian faith which set Christians apart so distinctively.  Because by its very definition mercy involves providing unearned help or relief, it was contrary to justice.  Remember, justice is about fairness; it is about what is owed to you and what you owe.  The pagan philosophers understood mercy as unreasonable, and an impulse which must be curbed.  Regarding mercy or pity in the ancient world, one historian of the early Church, E. A. Judge, wrote: “Pity was a defect of character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet grown up.  It was an impulsive response based on ignorance.”  It is characteristic of this that in the Republic, Plato’s treatise on the ideal state, the great philosopher says that the problem of begging be dealt with not through philanthropy, but rather simply by dumping beggars over the state’s borders.  Sound familiar?

In this climate, what did the early Christians preach?  They preached that mercy, far from being a weakness, was one of the primary virtues, that it was a chief attribute of God, and that a merciful God requires mercy of human beings: “love your enemies, [and] do good….for [your Father] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6.35-36)  Moreover, they preached that mercy in all cases must extend beyond the boundaries of family and tribe, that it must extend to “all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 1.2)  Indeed, mercy must even extend  beyond the Christian community. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” (Luke 6.37)

Yet still, apocalyptic literature and an apocalyptice outlook was and is popular.  Passages like that from the book of Daniel and, in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, speak to a base, and perhaps even basic, human need – the need for vengeance and justification.  This kind of apocalytic literature and outlook announces that God has given us alone a special and secret revelation about a cataclysmic divine intervention to bring about the end-time and thereby restore peace and justice to a disordered world.  The evil oppresors, the evil-doers, will be punished and banished forever.  The holy oppressed, the righteous, will be rewarded and be in charge under God.  No doubt, it is a comforting scenario, but in it there is little evidence of the divine attribute of  mercy, that unearned compassion of a compassionate God.  In fact, such scenarios say more about human beings and our fantasies of vegeance than they do about God, the Holy One, the Compassionate One, the Merciful One.

Is there then to be no judgement?  Is there then no justice?  Certainly not, but it does seem that we human beings are inclined to go very quickly first to judgement and justification, rather than to mercy or compassion.  And maybe, just maybe, we are called to compassion and mercy first, and judgement – if at all – only secondly.  We must begin to ask ourselves realistically how much of what passes as “God’s plan for the future” or “God’s justice” are actually literary and dramatized projections of our unwillingness to practice mercy; and more frighteningly, of our desire for vengeance.  In a cosmic economy why is it not enough for us to live well and do right,  without projecting onto God our need to see the punishment and destruction of our enemies, of those we have classified as wicked or unworthy?  I doubt not that there is to be a judgement, but it is not for us to decide what it will look like, far less to decide its outcome.  The judgement is not our business, it is God’s.

Our business is the imperative to imitate God in God’s mercy and compassion.  Our business is to rise above our petty and base instincts towards judgement and vengeance.  It is to think of mercy first and to approach the world in an attitude of forgiveness and compassion.  One of the great attractions of Christianity in the ancient world was precisely this life of lavish and indiscriminate mercy which the early Christians practiced.  For example, while pagans abandoned the cities and the sick in times of plague, Christians often remained to care for not only each other, but also for their non-Christian fellows, those who also were children of God, made in the image of God.  This witness to the merciful God brought many to faith.

The games of judgement, and perhaps even justice, can become very quickly a never-ending, self-justifying spiral – “I deserve this.”  “She did that to me.”  “He only wants his due.”  “I’m going to give him what is coming to him.” – a spiral which becomes a dark and vengeful game of tit-for-tat.  A game that – if we are honest – we aren’t very well equipped to play, our vision being too narrow and short-sighted; and yet, a game that we want to project even into the hereafter.  Only mercy can deliver us from that spiral, deliver us both as supposed victors and as victims.  Perhaps, it is time for us to leave the comfort of the apocalyptic vision, and enter into a less comfortable but certainly more whole-making vision of the merciful God which Jesus preached.  Perhaps, it is time to look beyond a simplistic sense of fairness and heed more closely Jesus’ absolute call to imitate that merciful God.  What would it mean to us and to the world if once again we Christians were known among all people for our inordinate compassion, our extraordinary and even unreasonable mercy?  What would it mean if today in our time people really could tell we were Christians simply by our love?  What would it mean indeed?

Pentecost 24: Being a Priestly People

1 Kings 17:8-16

Psalm 146 

Hebrews 9:24-28


Mark 12:38-44

It seems lately that I am always speaking about sacrifice, and yet again as we come to this Sunday’s lessons the themes of sacrifice loom large:  the widow in Zarepath who shares the little she has with the prophet Elijah, the widow in the Gospel who “out of her poverty has put in[to the Temple treasury] everything she had, all she had to live on,” (Mark 12:44), and Christ who, as the letter to the Hebrews highlights, “appeared…to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.” (Hebrews 9:26)  Sacrifice.  In the secular calendar today, we are also confronted with theme of sacrifice as we observe Veteran’s Day, Armistice Day, and call to mind all those who have served our country in the armed forces, and those who in so doing made the ultimate sacrifice.

The word “sacrifice” finds its origins in the Latin word sacrificium, “performing priestly functions”.  In the ancient world, including the world of Bible, it is the priest who intercedes to God for the community, and who as intermediary between God (or the gods) and the people offers sacrifices – usually  in the form of animal sacrifice – for the well-being of the people, and for the expiation of their sins.  Through the sacrificial rites the priest reconciles the people to God.  For these reasons, the early Christians understood the work of Jesus as that of a priest, Indeed, in the fourth chapter of the letter to Hebrews the writer calls Christ our “great high priest” (Hebrews 4:14)  Moreover, in his second letter to the Corinthians Paul writes that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.” (2 Corinthians 5:19)

There is another sense and context in which we use the word “sacrifice”; one which appears first in print in the late 16^th century, but which undoubtedly was in common usage before that.  It is sacrifice in the sense of “something given up for the sake of another.”  The Scriptures and the Tradition understand Christ’s work in this sense also.  We can hear it inchoately in the letter to the Philippians: Christ, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8).  Christ sacrifices his own divinity – even if only for a time – and his own well-being for sake of obedience to the Father and the world’s salvation.  The day’s collect also hints at this sort of sacrifice: “O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life.”   Again, Christ makes a sacrifice in living within the messiness of this world in order that he might restore the world according to God’s vision, and return to us our inheritance as children of God with all which that entails.  But perhaps this sort of sacrifice is most explicitly expressed in Jesus’ words recorded in the Gospel of John: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)

Christ the priest, Christ the reconciler, Christ the one who empties himself and lays his life down for the other – all these titles or offices of Christ are woven through with the themes of sacrifice; and because in our baptism our life our life has been “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3) sacrifice is woven into our lives too, and the Scriptures make that clear.  The first letter of Peter urges us to share in Christ’s priesthood: “Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5)   In the same place where Paul writes about the world being reconciled through Christ, he says, “all this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation..., entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.  So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20)  Equally, as Christ gave himself up for our well-being and that of the world so Paul says to the Christians in Rome – and to us – “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 5:12).  After which, he urges them – urges us – to humility, to ministry and to self-less compassion.  Yes, because sacrifice is woven into the nature and mission of Christ, sacrifice must be – for us who follow him and are called by his name – woven into our lives; indeed, must be a defining character of our lives, and a defining character of his body, the Church: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5)

For each of us and for each community, the nature of that sacrifice will be different, but the effect, the aim, must always be the same: the reconciling of the world to God and to God’s purposes, the opposition of evil in any and all of its forms – “the works of devil”, as the collect calls it – and the revealing of the glory of the children of God.  By our sacrifices in their myriad forms the world must know something of the truth of God, of the dignity inherent in creation and in every human being made in the image and likeness of God.  We make our various sacrifices that the world may reconciled to the reality of God, and for the sake of others.  Throughout history people have made these kinds of sacrifices – sacrificng their own resources, they have given to relieve the plight of the poor; sacrificing their own health and well-being, they have cared for and nursed the sick and the dying; sacrificing their good name and social position, they have stood alongside the marginalized; sacrificing their own lives, they have gone into battle to gain or to protect the freedoms of others.  Each of these sacrifices are an offering to God, each are part of this enterprise of reconciliation.  Today, the eleventh of November, is set aside to remember some of them.  Nevertheless, our readings direct us to remember others too.  And it is left to us by own lives and sacrifices that their sacrifices – whatever their sacrifices may have been – may not have been in vain.  Certainly, we pray that we will not be called to make sacrifices so large, but if we are faithful to our baptism – to our lives being “hidden with Christ in God”, then sacrifices must a part of our lives, part of the expression of our faith.  The invitation, the opportunity, will at some time or another be presented to us.  May God have mercy on us, and by his grace may we always respond with integrity, fulfilling our calling as a priestly people, a reconciling people, a sacrificial people and declaring the “mighty acts of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

All Saints' Sunday: Prophetic Witness, Prophetic Voice

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9

Psalm 24

Revelation 21:1-6a

John 11:32-44

 On 21 February this year five members of Pussy Riot, a Russian feminist punk-rock group staged an impromptu and clearly unwelcomed performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.  The piece performed was what they termed a “punk prayer”: “Mother of God, Chase Putin Away.”  They were stopped by security officials, and currently two of the members have begun harsh prison sentences for the crime of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.  I heard about the performance on BBC’s radio programme Beyond Belief, as well as an interview with Maria Baranova, a prominent social activist in Russia.  She voiced her concern as to the Church’s growing political influence in Russia, due in large part to its subservience to the  state; she voiced her concern that the Church was becoming simply another governmental office, an employee of the Kremlin.  This relationship with the state, she felt, handicapped the Church in furthering the work of the kingdom; in hearing the voices – not of those in power – but of the power-less.  She is not alone in her concern; some have opined that not since the 17^th century has the Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed so much political influence.  What we can detect in Baranova’s words, and in those of others, is a concern for the Church’s loss of a prophetic voice – that voice which stands from the outside and calls people to a greater vision of reality and which is beholden not to an earthly kingdom of power, but to God’s heavenly reign of justice and truth.

One of the recent initiatives of our Episcopal Church is the development of Holy Women, Holy Men as replacement for Lesser Feasts and Fasts, and which makes provision for the keeping of saints’ days in the Church.  One introduction made by the new book is including many saints considered to be “prophetic witnesses”.  Among these are people like William Wilberforce who worked tirelessly for the abolition of the slave trade in Britain and in British colonies; the women’s suffragist and feminist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Prudence Crandall who, in the mid-19^th century, went to prison in our own country for opening and running a school for African-American children.  In their cases, and in that of many others, they stood against not only the government, but also against the religious authorities and structures of their day – the Church of England herself was heavily invested financially in the slave trade, for example.  On account their stances and actions, they were often vilified and persecuted by their contemporaries – social and religious; and it is only in hindsight that the truth of their causes and arguments have become widely appreciated.  It is in hindsight that we have realized their claim to sanctity, and come to celebrate their lives and their witness to God’s purposes among us.

The voice of the prophetic witness will always speak from without, always speak from the margins, unsettling their times, pointing out and opposing not only individual injustices, but systems which foster and thrive on injustice.  As such the prophetic witness is considered dangerous, because the ones in power and who control those systems understand these people as de-stabilising their world-view, undermining their authority and hence their power to control.  For Christians this should have a particular resonance, because it is the pattern we see in the life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels.  Jesus comes with something radically new: he preached the blessedness of the most poor and most despised; he broke down the stringent divisions of table etiquette, and thereby of society generally;  he touched the sick and the dead and offered them the possibility of new life, spent time with women – prostitutes even, and called the religious authorities to task for their uncaring and demoralising attitudes towards their fellows.  In short, he de-stabilized the system which, while benefiting some, was far removed from God’s vision for humanity, what Jesus called the kingdom of God – and if you don’t think that language is inflammatory for its time, think again.  Today in the Gospel Jesus is the prophetic voice of life as he speaks those marvelous and definitive words: “Lazarus, come out” (John 11:43); and then, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (John 11:44)  Yet, it seems to be this event which finally makes the authorities decide to do away with him.  Listen to verses just following the account of Lazarus’ resurrection: “Many…who…had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.  But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.  So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, ‘What are we to do?  This man is performing many signs.  If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.’…So from that day on they planned to put him to death.”  (John 11:45-47, 53)  Jesus’ proclaiming life even to the dead was the final straw, or so it seems, and his actions threatened the status quo, the power balance brokered by the religious authorities with the the civil authorities – that is, the Romans – and which kept them firmly on top of things.

Jesus was dangerous, and we do not often care to admit it; neither do we care to admit that had we lived in his day we would more than likely have sided with those who worked to maintain the status quo and thus our own comfortable positions in society.  Yet, so many of those we call saints, whom we venerate and remember patterned their life and witness on this particular aspect of Jesus’ own life – the willingness to speak the truth to the power structures – social and religious – of his day, structures which in their wake minimised and marred the image of God in their fellows; and we know they often suffered in ways similar to Jesus.  But they too spoke up for the most vulnerable in their societies.  They decried the too close relationship between church and state, and religion’s collusion with status quo injustice.  They pointed the accusing finger and spoke the harsh word to the religious and political powers around them   For these reasons, they were sometimes called traitors and heretics, revolutionaries and even atheists.  And yet today we call them saints, and admire them for subverting what we now understand as the apparently unjust systems of their day.  We venerate them, we commemorate them, but do we imitate them?  No, we usually don’t; and worse, we all too often vilify those who speak the prophetic word among us now.  I am reminded of words spoken by Helder Camara, one-time Roman Catholic Archbishop of Olinda and Recife in Brazil.   He once said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”  Feeding the hungry is a corporal act of the mercy, but it does not challenge the powers that be; asking why there are hungry does.  This latter is the voice of the prophetic witness.  As Christians that is the voice we are called to listen to and the voice we called to be, because it is the voice of Jesus and of his saints.  And sometimes that voice is not nice, it is not pleasant, it is disturbing and may sound discordant.  It may shock, it may rattle our sensibilities.  Like the contemporaries of Jesus, we may be driven to scapegoat and persecute those who speak in it. 

As we celebrate and rejoice in the communion of the saints, let us bear in mind how many of them were conveyors of uncomfortable prophecy in their day, and let us pray that we may have the courage in our day to “follow [them] in all virtuous and godly living”, yes, but also in the prophetic stance of speaking truth to power – whether in society or the Church, of standing with the vulnerable even at the cost of ridicule and of our well-being, of being disturbers of the status quo for the sake of God’s justice and God’s kingdom.   

            

Pentecost 22: Seeing is Believing?

Jeremiah 31.7-9

Psalm 126

Hebrews 7.23-28

Mark 10.46b-52

“Seeing is believing” or so goes the old adage, but what Jesus’ disciples seem consistently to show is that seeing is not believing.  It is unfortunate that the reading from last week has been separated in the lectionary from today’s, because they are intimately connected.  They belong one to another and together reveal one of the central themes of the Gospel of Mark:  “things are not always as they seem.”  Seeing is not always believing.  Indeed, true faith in Jesus often requires of us that we see beyond our own narrow experiences and expectations.  It requires that we not allow our minds to be trapped or our hopes limited by the way we believe things are or want them to be.  While taking the present seriously it requires that our vision be able to see beyond the inherent limits and limitations of the present. 

The Christians to whom the Gospel of Mark is addressed are a community living under difficult conditions.  In Mark, the faith to which Jesus calls is not a calm, safe, self-evidently socially accepted faith, but a faith that has to struggle to maintain its existence amid opposition, incomprehension and sometimes persecution.  Written some forty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the Gospel begins to address the fact that Jesus’ return is not as imminent as had originally been expected.  Many who had known Jesus personally were getting old, some would have by now died.  Moreover, things weren’t even getting better, but instead were getting worse.  The Romans had even destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and still Jesus had not come to vindicate those who trusted in him.  It is from within this context that the author of Mark writes what is called the “little apocalypse” and says, “When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.  For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13.7-8)  For Mark’s community things had not only not turned out as planned or expected, but had actually turned from bad to worse; but the author’s message is, “Hold on.  Be faithful.  Things are not always what they seem.”

Seeing, perceiving, understanding then become central themes in the Gospel of Mark.  If you remember from last week, Jesus’ followers cannot bring themselves to see the point which Jesus is making about his passion and death.  All they want it the benefits of his glory: Teacher, “grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” (Mark 10.37)  While seeing, they are blind to the realities of life and what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah.  This morning, however, we have quite the reverse.  It is the blind who see, and who beg to see more clearly.  It is the blind who declare the glory of Jesus, even as they are rebuked for doing so.  It is the blind who having new eyes are able to follow Jesus on the way.  It is the blind Bartimaeus who is the true disciple, and Jesus’ followers the ones who are caught up in the blindness of their expectations.

In these figures, the writer of Mark presents to his community two images of those who seek to follow Jesus.  The first represented by James, John and the other “disciples”, the second represented by Bartimaeus.  The disciples represent that first wave of the earliest Christians who, so certain of Jesus’ quick return, were already counting on their places next to him in glory.  The other, represented by Bartimaeus, is a more recent Christian community; it is a more mature Christian community.  This community has learned to recognise Jesus within and through the darkness of their times, and the seeming hopelessness of their trials and difficulties, and therefore are still able to confess him as Lord and cry, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.” (cf Mark 10.47)  We so often think of the words “Lord, have mercy’” in a penitential sense, but the fact is that in contemporary secular usage it was an acclamation used at the approach of an Emperor, comparable perhaps to “God save the Queen” or “Hail to the Chief”.  Like Bartimaeus, Mark’s community is are not asking for pity or forgiveness, but rather affirming that Jesus is the Lord, the Son of David.  Tragedy may have darkened their lives, but it has not hampered their vision or destroyed their faith  Even in the midst of their difficult situations the Good News is still good news and like Bartimaeus they hold fast to it, following Jesus on “the way.”

I see us modern-day Christians very much as the inheritors of the traditions of that later Christianity, of the Christianity symbolised by the blind Bartimaeus.  We live in a world in which the old certainties no longer exist, and one which continually offers us new uncertainties.  Our world is one in which we constantly hear of “wars and rumors of wars.”; A world in which, if we are attuned to the television, radio, newspapers we too hear of earthquakes, famines, violence, devastations.  A world in which we are all too aware of the darkness.  And Jesus does not come.  What is to be our response?  I think that it is to be the same to which the writer of Mark calls his own community:  “Be faithful.  There is more to what we see.  Do not be misled by glory, or brought to despair by darkness.  Like blind Bartimaeus continue to cry out ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.’ ” This does not mean that we retreat from the world and let it carry on until the full revelation of Jesus.  Christianity is far more subtle than that.  Instead, it means that we can engage with the crises and darkness of our world creatively because we know that Jesus is Lord.  It means that we do not look away from the darkness to find the glory of God, but rather that we perceive the glory of God even in the darkness.  It means that we know that what we may believe to be our greatest defeats are the very places where are greatest strengths may be revealed.  Is that not, after all, the message of the cross and resurrection of Jesus?

There are none so blind as those who will not see, and even living in the presence of light is no guarantee that our eyes will be opened.  In fact, light can be as blinding as the dark, the disciples of Jesus are proof enough of that.  Thinking that they were living in the light and could clearly see, they did not look far enough or closely enough.  They had no understanding of rejection, the passion, the cross.  They were like those seeds that were sown on rocky ground, they received the Good News with joy, yet having no root, when trouble or persecution arose they immediately fell away.  They can perceive the glory of Jesus in the light, but only there.  The darkness overcomes them.  On the other hand, the community of Mark knew that if the message of God’s reconciling love and goodness was to bear fruit, they would need to perceive the glory of God and the truth of Jesus even within the darkness, even within the trials of their lives. They would need to hold on in hope and faith, and like blind Bartimaeus continually to cry “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.”  They must continue to confess Jesus even when told to shut up.  Thanks to be to God that they did.

We too must continue to cry out in hope, if not literally then practically.  Whenever, we offer hope in the darkness, whenever we look for the resolution in the conflict, whenever we honestly confront the difficult (instead of shying away from it),  whenever we engage with the world as it truly is and not go into flights of fancy,  then we too cry “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.”  The message of Mark’s gospel is for us today.  In the darkness, “Hold fast.”  In the uncertainty, “Be hopeful.”  In all conditions of life cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.”  That is the meaning of faith.  That is the meaning of living in the light which shines the darkness, and which the darkness does not overcome.