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Pentecost 18 - Proper 24-B, Oct 19, 2003
H o
m i l y G r i t s
The
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Year B
Proper 24 - October 19, 2003
(Oct 18 St Luke the Evangelist)
(© 2003 by Grant Gallup -
permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
Almighty and everlasting God, in Christ you have revealed your glory
among the nations: Preserve the works of your mercy, that your Church
throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession
of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with
you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Isaiah 53: 4-12 If he offers his life in atonement, he shall see his
heirs
Psalm 91 or 91:9-16 Qui habitat - Whoever dwells under the shelter of the
Most High
Hebrews 4: 12-16 It is not as if we had a high priest who was unable to
feel our weakness with us
Mark 10:35-45 Who wants to become great among you must be your servant.
¶ Revised Common Lectionary - 29th Sunday of the year
Job 38:1-7, (34-41) Where were you when all the stars of the morning were
singing with joy and the Heirs of God in chorus were chanting praise?
and Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c Benedic, anima mea - Bless the Lord, O my soul
or Isaiah 53:4-12 as above BCP
and Psalm 91:9-16 Because you have made the Lord your refuge
Hebrews 5:1-10 Though he was Son, he learned to obey through suffering
Mark 10:35-45 as above BCP
¶ Lutheran Book of Worship
Isaiah 53:4-12 as above, BCP
Psalm 91:9-16 as above BCP & RCL
You have made the Lord your refuge, and the Most High your habitation.
(Ps. 91:9)
Hebrews 5:1-10 as above RCL
Mark 10:35-45 as above BCP & RCL
Hymn of the Day: The Church of Christ, in every age (LBW 433)
Preface: Sundays after Pentecost
Color: Green
¶ Roman Catholic Lectionary - (29th Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Isaiah 53:10-11 as above BCP
Psalm 32 (Vulgate 31) Happy the one whose fault is forgiven
Hebrews 4:4-16 as above BCP
Mark 10: 35-45 as above, BCP, RCL & LBW
¶ Tao Te Ching, 78
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better; it has no
equal.
The weak can overcome the strong; the supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this, yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says: he who betakes upon himself the humiliation of
the people is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country's disasters deserves to be king of
the universe.
The truth often sounds paradoxical. (1)
¶ Service in the World: from George MacDonald (1824-1905)
Church or chapel is not the place for divine service. It is a place of
prayer, a place of praise, a place to feed upon good things, a place to
learn of God, as what place is not? It is a place to look in the eyes of
your neighbour, and love God along with him. But the world in which you
move, the place of your living and loving and labour, not the church you
go to on your holiday, is the place of divine service. Serve your
neighbour and you serve him
¶ from The Foolishness of God: by Kenneth Leech (3)
Christian preaching and testimony is rooted in the apparent absurdity,
the foolishness of God, the foolishness of the cross. This preaching is
not a controlled rational account of moral norms or theological
propositions so much as a dangerous attempt to convey something of an
experience of power and liberating grace flowing out of the heart of
desolation and darkness. It is a proclamation, a lifting up, of the
crucified Jesus as Saviour and conqueror. Its power is inseparable from
its paradoxical character. It is a mistake to try to eliminate, reduce,
or explain away the scandal and offensive character of the cross. In the
same way there is a paradoxical character about committed Christians, a
strange and attractive combination of calm and unpredictability, of
stability and surprise. Christan life is never a routine of foregone
conclusions but is always open to the strange and the unexpected. As the
fool disrupts the monotony of life, so the grace of God is subversive and
destabilizing in its strange work. Martin Luther King once described
Christian people as 'creatively maladjusted', transformed non
conformists. Our task as holy fools for Christ's sake, creatively
maladjusted to the wisdom of the world, is to hold fast to the folly of
the crucified one, knowing that it is in his foolishness that our
wholeness lies.
¶ Albert Schweitzer: On the Edge of the Primeval Forest. (4)
Ever since the world's far-off lands were discovered, what has been the
conduct of the white people to the coloured ones? What is the meaning of
the simple fact that this and that people has died out, that others are
dying out, and that the condition of others is getting worse and worse as
a result of heir discovery by those who professed to be followers of
Jesus? Who can describe the injustice and the cruelties that in the
course of centuries they have suffered at the hands of Europeans? Who
can measure the misery produced among them by the fiery drinks and the
hideous diseases that we have taken to them? If a record could be
compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured
races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages, referring to
recent as well as early times, which the reader would have to turn over
unread, because their contents would be too horrible. We and our
civilization are burdened, really, with a great debt. We are not free to
confer benefits on these people, or not, as we please; it is our duty.
Anything we give them is not benevolence but atonement. For every one
who scattered injury some one ought to go out and take help, and when we
have done all that is in our power, we shall not have atoned for the
thousandth part of our guilt.
¶ The Quranic Jesus: Surah 4:171-172 (5)
People of the Book, do not go to unwarranted lengths in your religion and
get involved in false utterances relating to God. Truly Jesus, Mary's
son, was the messenger of God and His word--the word which He imparted to
Mary--and a spirit from Him. Believe, then, in God and His messengers
and do not talk of three gods. You are well advised to abandon such
ideas. Truly God is one God. Glory be to Him and no 'son' to Him whose
are all things in the heavens and the earth, their one and only
guardian! That he should be servant to God will never be disdained by
the Messiah as beneath his dignity, nor indeed by the angels who dwell in
the divine presence. Servants of His who take on arrogant airs and think
themselves above serving -- well, God will have them all summoned to
answer for it.
¶ Dorothee Sölle: "Praise for my fatherland." (6)
Birds are nesting in parts of my country
that have long been deserted
this very summer a village was built in my country
with a fountain and a church square
before the bulldozers came
so the excavating could proceed undisturbed
some young men in my country feed hospital patients
and clean up old people rather than learn to shoot
there are women in my country who
without a thought for their own smooth skin
work to keep the skin of others
free of napalm cancer and military decorations
Of all these
birds villages young men doing alternative service and
women committed to resistance
there are not enough in my country
to prevent a third world war
of all these
there are not enough.
Saint Thomas Aquinas thought that it is permissible to pray for whatever
it is permissible to desire. But our intercession list at the Sunday
mass keeps itself pretty safe, as we ask to be healed, mostly, of our
physical infirmities in a general way--we do not usually mention gout,
invited by purines or port or sherry, or a severe case of hemorrhoids
that needs rubber bands or surgery, after decades of a diet devoid of
fibre, or the mid-life onset diabetes that has come upon one of us after
a fatso's life of carbohydrate addiction . We can pray publicly for
those with heart disease, but not those with venereal disease. We can
pray for those with alcoholism, or drug addiction, if we disguise the
diagnosis in our diptychs. We are even cagy about praying for the
mentally or emotionally distraught, for fear of divulging family
secrets. We pray for those who are travelling, but it never occurs to
us that they might have better travelled to succour the poor in the Two
Thirds world, instead of to divert themselves at Disney World. We pray
for those who are dying, even if they do it as soldiers of the Empire in
Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Syria, or Lebanon, or the West Bank, but we do
not like to pray for the victims of US militarism, or of its National
Security State. It is because illness, and travel--which is perilous
once again--and great change in our lives, all move us closer into the
presence of God, and we sense the danger and the need for protection, so
we urge divine attention to the ones in crisis or at risk. We also
pray for those who are celebrating, for birthdays, weddings,
anniversaries, are joyous times and perilous as well, when we are nudged
closer to the angels, and want God's attention to sing "Thanks" in our
prayers as well as "Please." So our lovely prayer at Evensong, from St
Augustine of Hippo, which asks "Keep watch dear Lord with those who
work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over
those who sleep," and to "tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the
weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield
the joyous; and all for your love's sake." Shielding the joyous is
especially poignant in this time when Jewish or Muslim terrorists slay
each other's children at play in "the Holy Land." .
Increasingly these days we hear prayers also for the unemployed, for in
the New World Order there are daily more and more unemployed and
underemployed, and Wendy, Colonel Sanders and Ronald MacDonald have not
solved the dilemmas and dangers of fast food capitalism's failures to
feed, clothe, house and heal our families. Rising unemployment is a
dangerous time for the workers, as it is a great time for the capitalist
project. No one in the world of savage capitalism has a human right to
food, shelter, medical care, clothing, holiday or recreation. These in
capitalism are considered privileges for the ruling class and its
minions, so we must pray for all who have no work, or no meaningful,
truly human work to do. At a parish where I went to mass when I was in
the USA, the Intercessions are adroitly manipulated so that not a
mumbling moment of silence was left wherein the faithful might articulate
particular petitions or without rudeness say aloud the name of an
acquaintance who had asked for the "Prayers of the People." There the
officiant prays by name for a member of the parish who is a soldier of
the Empire in Iraq, but his liturgical engineering leaves no opening for
a believer's prayer for the Iraqi people, brutalized by decades of US &
British bombs, for even a prayer for "our enemies" if we considered them
to be so, which they cannot be to faithful believers in a just God,
instead of the blasphemy of a "just war."
When we gather for public prayer, we look for divine intervention in our
perilous affairs. A parishioner once told me there was a tumor on her
husband's kidney and asked for our prayers at the Wednesday mass, at the
same hour he would be in surgery to take out his diseased kidney. She
said hundreds of people would be praying in a half dozen churches whose
parish offices she had phoned to ask them to do so. The surgery was a
success, and she was sure it was because of the great number of people
praying. I am sure of it, too, although I am not sure that the
quantity of prayer is so important as the quality. Jesus said that we
will not be heard for our much speaking, for the great volume, as for the
quality of our trust.
Yet I regularly rattle my beads, both my Dominican and my Muslim
rosaries, and rap and knock and scratch at Heaven's gate like my cat
wailing at breakfast time, when he comes home from a night on the
roof.. All the denominational christians I know, and those in solo
flight without churches, and pagans and wicca devotees, go to prayer or
other devotions, when they are in danger, or in distress or doubt. Or
"when sore bestead", wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "All men do so,
christian and unbelieving."
And there's a secret kind of prayer that goes on as well, there are
categories that don't appear in Sunday service folders, prayers that you
might hear expressed on a TV religion show, or in one of those seed-faith
letters I used to get from mail order miracle makers who send a cheap
blessed hankie or a paper prayer rug to kneel on and name your prize.
Members of our own churches, we think, don't pray that way. I remember
some years ago that a young man in the neighborhood of our Chicago parish
church asked me to bless a slip of paper he wanted to put in his shoe as
an amulet to make a particular young woman fall in love with him. I
blessed him and gave him a rosary to pass on to her as a gift. The
stodgy old Jewel supermarket across the alley had a shelf devoted to tall
votive candles whose wrappers promised to dispel illness, draw money,
enchant a prospective mate, or get you a leg up on the perfect job. The
Cuban religion of Santeria, a mix of old African religion and decadent
popular Roman Catholicism, abounded in those particular neighborhoods
that called themselves "barrios", where you could find shops that would
sell you High John the Conqueror candles, incense, botanicals, or even a
live chicken whose blood would do the trick to make you rich, as easily
as Wall Street. How superstitious is this compared to the prayers at the
National Cathedral after the revenge attack of September 11, 1981, on the
Twin Towers of market capitalism and militarism, asking God for vengeance
(we called it "justice").
And what about the little list you have in mind when you and Jesus are
alone in your secret place? The epistle reading tells us we don't have
in Jesus a high priest untouched by our infirmities, unable to sympathize
with our weaknesses. We don't have in Jesus a priest like the ones we
know, who would not always sympathize with what we ask Jesus to sign onto
at bedtime. I have gone confidently, as the Apostle urges, to the Throne
of Grace, to ask for what I could never say in church on Sunday
morning. A clerk at a bank told me one day what she was praying for
every night, and was sure that God would give it to her now because she
had done some things faithfully to keep her promesa to Him. She told me
in a whisper that she was praying for a big win in the national lottery,
and had bought what she was sure was the winning number. I have only
once or twice in my lifetime bought a lottery ticket from a poor peddlar
in Managua and was not surprised when I went away only with the knowledge
that I had helped to enrich the State, as well as the lucky winner.
When, before coming to Nicaragua to enlist in ministry here, I had for
some months been in the job market, or as we say in church, praying for
God's guidance in my vocation, I sympathize with anyone who has ever
lit a candle asking God for a recommendation. I know how depressed people
can get when they must go to look for new employment, as I did at the age
of sixty, because my annual stipend had begun to cost the diocese too
much in years-of-service increments. And I am sure that everyone in
church has prayed about their work, about a raise, or a better job, or a
complete change from what they're doing. But no one has ever asked me
to put a note in the Sunday bulletin that they were about to be found
redundant and were now about to jump into job-hunting without a
parachute. Imagine the biddings: "Pray for Clementine, seeking a
promotion at Atlas Buggy Parts Company. Pray for Harry, hoping to edge
out Frank for the foreman's job at Firestone." Thomas Aquinas did think
it was okay to pray for anything it was okay to want. Is it not okay to
want a better job, a fatter salary, more dignity in one's work, success
for our friends, wins for our party's candidate?
Two young fellows, upwardly mobile types, who had left their jobs in the
fishing business, to follow a charismatic leader up to the big city to
seek a magnificent future, came to Jesus one day on the way and said,
"We have something on our prayer lists that we want to ask of you."
"What is it you want me to do?", Jesus replied. "We would like to have
the two top jobs in your cabinet, we'd like to sit right next to you,
where we would have us some glory." Now that's the kind of petition I
have never actually signed or sent, although I've secretly asked the Lord
for some astonishing things: like salvation, or everlasting life, for
starters. "Are ye able," said the Master, "to be crucified with me?"
"Yea! the sturdy dreamers answered, "to the death we follow thee." Jesus
replies to them and to us, "You don't know what you're asking for if
you're asking to be close to me with big responsibilities." And in the
gospel of Thomas, Jesus declares, "Whoever is near me is near the fire,
and whoever is far from me is far from the Reign of God." Now it's not
just the Splash of churchfolks' christening that Jesus is referring to
when he asks if we are ready for the Baptism that he is to be immersed
in. Can we drink from the Cup that he offers, only hinted at in the Sip
we take from the Golden Goblet at Eucharist, or the Intincted wispy
wafer we safely swallow? The Way of Jesus Christ bids us to solidarity
with all the stricken, smitten by God and afflicted, the wounded, the
bruised and brutalized, the ones led astray, the oppressed, those herded
into Guantanamo as into a Stalag of the Third Reich. Were we able to
take the name "servant" and live with it? James and John, young and
full of confidence, say, "Oh yes, we are able."
Now word gets around to the Ten and they are indignant. Are they
indignant because James and John are impertinent, because they were so
much wiser and committed to Jesus' self-less mission than are James and
John? Or were they miffed that they didn't get in their job applications
before these two pushy ones did? Would anyone here be indignant if we
heard prayers like that in church? But Jesus wasn't indignant; he was
only compassionate and merciful. Only the Ten, Mark says, were
indignant. Jesus apparently sees that they all need some formation in
the politics of God, and he calls them all to sit still and listen up.
You apparently know quite well, he says, that the model of political
power and authority around us in the world is a vertical kind of set
up--hierarchical, a pyramid -- like the ones in Egypt or on your dollar
bills -- from an all-powerful imperial Pharoah at the top down to the
precinct captains peddling klout by the ounce. And those who are supposed
to, accounted to, rule over the people, throw their weight around, act
like bosses, pull rank over them. And their Big Shots do in fact play
power games with them. It's klout. The Greek word in Mark is megaloi,
Big Shots, Honchos. But, says Jesus, this arrangement is not the one
that's to operate among my friends. Whoever wants to be a megas, a Big
One, among you, must first of all be your Servant, your slave, your
flunky. The one who "does the windows". Because the Truly Human One,
this Child of Humankind, came to you not to be waited on, not to be a Big
Shot, but to be a servant to the human community, and to give rather than
to get; to give life, in the liberation of many other lives. And my
servants will be willing to work in whatever capacity they are called
upon to work in.
Babies scream at their baptisms sometimes, and little kids frown at the
taste of the wine of the sacrament. Perhaps they have some prescience,
some intuitive, secret understanding, of what these things mean, which we
grown ups do not grasp. I never heard a grown up scream in terror at the
Baptismal font, nor have I heard anyone get up and run away from the
altar rail when they were told "Body of Christ, Blood of Christ" as they
knelt or stood to receive them. The sacramental splash, the sacramental
sip, do not appall us any more, nor do they deter us from doing it again
and again, promising blithely each time we do, like James and John the
sons of Zebedee, that "to the death we follow thee." All those ready and
willing and able to embrace a life as slaves, or as illegal combatants
imprisoned in a camp for terrorists in Cuba, or willing to face fines for
taking medicine to Iraq in violation of the Empire's contravention of
your Baptismal vows to strive for justice and peace among all people.
All those willing to give up your participation in the world's
economic/political/social arrangements and try out for Jesus' project of
mutual service and community liberation, blow a kiss to the baptismal
font as you leave today. All those of us who are ready to abandon our
fantasies of being Big Shots, celebrities, of having the One Enormous
Chair and Wouldn't That Be Loverly, all of us who even in some modest
way have confidence to come to the Divine Service of Jesus after the
Liturgy is over, after "Ite, Missa Est", and to accept Jeus'invitation
after the Bread and the Cup, to "go forth into the world in peace,
rejoicing in the power of the Spirit." C. Day Lewis, poet laureate of
England from 1968 until his death in 1972, was one of the crop of
brilliant young poets of he 1930's, along with Auden, MacNiece and
Stephen Spender, who served English literature so brilliantly in the
1930's. His call to true worship is in his poem, "Final Instructions" is
meant to be a comment on the sacrificial life of the artist. It is
styled as a brief instruction given by an old pagan priest to a new
graduate of the priests' school, putting liturgical performance in its
context of significance. Read it as an analogy to our own thus far
bloodless sacrifices, our thus far painless sacrifices of Eucharistic
devotion and the life of common prayer, our prefaces to the active life
of social justice work.
"Final Instructions" (7)
For sacrifice, there are certain principles--
Few, but essential.
I do not mean your ritual. This you have learnt--
The garland, the salt, a correct use of the knife,
and what to do with the blood:
Though it is worth reminding you that no two
Sacrifices ever turn out alike--
Not where this god is concerned.
The celebrant's approach may be summed up
in three words -- patience, joy,
Disinterestedness. Remember, you do not sacrifice
For your own glory or peace of mind:
You are there to assist the clients and please the god.
It goes without saying
That only the best is good enough for the god.
But the best-- I must emphasize it -- even your best
Will by no means always be found acceptable.
Do not be discouraged:
Some lizard or passing cat may taste your sacrifice
and bless the god: it will not be entirely wasted.
But the crucial point is this:
You are called only to make the sacrifice:
Whether or not he enters into it
Is the god's affair: and whatever the handbooks say,
You can neither command his presence nor explain it--
All you can do is to make it possible.
If the sacrifice catches fire of its own accord
On the altar, well and good. But do not
Flatter yourself that discipline and devotion
Have wrought the miracle: they have only allowed it.
So luck is all I can wish you, or need wish you.
And every time you prepare to lay yourself
On the altar and offer again what you have to offer,
Remember, my son,
Those words-- patience, joy, disinterestedness.
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 3rd series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
(1) Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English, Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. Alfed A. Knopf
INc. copyright 1972. From "The Tao of Jesus: A Book of Days for the
Natural Year. Compiled by John Bewverley Butcher. HarperSan Francisco
1994.
(2) from "Unspoken Sermons", excerpted in The Wind from the Stars:
Through the Year with George MacDonald, edited by Gordon Reid.
HarperCollinsReligious 1992.
(3) from We Preach Christ Crucified, by Kenneth Leech. Cambridge &
Boston: Cowley, 1994.
(4) from Albert Schweitzere, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest,
Messers A. & C. Black, Ltd., collected in A Treasury of the Kingdom, E.
A. Blackburn & others, Geoffery Cumberledge, Oxford University Press,
1954.
(5) Surah 4:157-159, the Qurán, translated by (Bishop) Kenneth Cragg,
Jesus and the Muslim. Oxford, England: One World Publications.
Copyright Kenneth Cragg, 1985, 1999.
(6) Dorothee Sölle, "Praise for my fatherland," from Of War and Love,
translated from the German by Rita and Robert Kimber. Maryknoll New York:
Orbis Books, 10545. May 1984. First published as Im Hause des
Menschenfressers: Texte zum Frieden. Copyright 1981 by Rowohlt
Taschenbuch Verlag: GmH.Reinbek bei Hamburg, West Germany.
(7) C. Day Lewis, "Final Instructions", from The Complete Poems,
Stanford, California, the Stanford University Press, copyright in this
edition for the Estate of C. Day Lewis. (dedicated to his children
Tamasin and Daniel Day Lewis.)
During prostration a servant draws nearest to the Lord, so augment your
devotions.
-The Prophet Muhammad, as reported by Abu Hurairah
Hadith translated by Aneela Khalid Arshed. Copyright 1999. All rights
reserved. Used with permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company, New
York.