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Pentecost 20 Proper 26-B, Nov 2, 2003
H
o m i l y G r i t s
The Twentieth
Sunday after Pentecost
Year B
Proper 26- November 2, 2003
(or All Saints Day)
[see separate posting of Homily Grits]
(© 2003 by Grant
Gallup - permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation
)
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful
people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run
without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ
our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now
and for ever. Amen.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Let these words I urge on you today be written in your
heart.
Psalm 119: 1-16, or 1-8, Aleph, Beati immaculati - Happy are they whose
way is blameless
Hebrews 7: 23-28 This one, because he remains forever, cannot lose his
priesthood.
Mark 12: 28-34 "Which is the first of all the commandments?"
¶ Revised Common Lectionary - 31st Sunday of the Year
(or All Saints Sunday)
Ruth 1:1-18 They were from Bethlehem of Judea
and Psalm 146 Hymn to the God of help -
or Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Let these words I urge on you today be written on
your heart
and Psalm 119:1-8 As above, BCP
Hebrews 9:11-14 Christ has become the high priest of all the blessings
which were to come
Mark 12:28-34 As above, BCP
¶ Lutheran Book of Worship
Proper 26-B or All Saints Sunday
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 As above, BCP & RC:L
Psalm 119:1-8 Happy are they who seek the Lord with all their hearts.
(Ps. 119:2)
Hebrews 9:11-14 as above, RCL
Mark 12:28-34 as above, BCP & RCL
¶ Roman Catholic Lectionary - (31st Sunday in Ordinary Time)
Deut 6:2-6 as above, BCP, RCL, LBW
Ps 18:2-3a, 3b-4, 47+51 Yahweh is my rock and my bastion
Heb 7:23-28 This one, because he remains forever, can never lose his
priesthood.
Mark 12:28b-34 as above, BCP, RCL, LBW
¶ "Our Own Minds": Mark Epstein, M.D. (1)
"The psychiatrist R. D. Laing, at one of the first conferences on
Buddhism and psychotherapy that I attended, declared that we are all
afraid of three things: other people, our own minds, and death. His
statement was all the more powerful because it came shortly before his
own death. If bare attention is to be of any real use, it must be
applied in exactly these spheres.Physical illness usually provides us
with such an opportunity. When my father-in-law, an observant Jew, with
little overt interest in Eastern philosophy, was facing radical surgery
not so long ago, he sought my counsel because he knew of some work I was
engaged in about stress reduction. He wanted to know how he could manage
his thoughts while going into the surgery, and what he could do while
lying awake at night? I taught him bare attention to a simple Jewish
prayer; he was gradually able to expand the mental state that developed
around the prayer to encompass his thoughts, anxieties, and fears. Even
in the intensive care unit after surgery, when he could not tell day from
night, move, swallow, or talk, he was able to use bare attention to rest
in the moment, dissolving his fears in the meditative space of his own
mind. Several years later, after attending Yom Kippur services, he showed
me a particular passage in the prayer book that reminded him of what he
had learned through his ordeal. A more Buddhist verse he could not have
uncovered: 'A man's origin is from dust and his destiny is back to dust,
at risk of his life he earns his bread; he is likened to a broken shard,
withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a
blowing wind, flying dust, and a fleeting dream.' The fearlessness of
bare attention is necessary in the psychological venue as well, where the
practice of psychotherapy has revealed just how ingenious and
intransigent the ego's defenses can be. Even when they are in therapy,
people are afraid of discovering things about themselves that they do not
wish to know."
The Dhammapada: the Sayings of the Buddha. VIII. 111. (2)
And should one live a hundred years
Devoid of insight *, uncomposed;
Better still is one day lived
Of one possessed of insight, a mediator.
[ *insight: penetrative wisdom (panna) that brings liberation.]
Transcendental Humanism, Luc Ferry (3)
We are living today. . . at a moment where the two processes--the
humanization of the divine and the divinization of the human--intersect.
This intersection is a point, and this point is one of confusion--how
could it be otherwise? I am well aware that this lack of exactness will
upset some. The materialists, because the acknowledgement of
transcendence escapes the logic of science and of genealogy. Surely
Christians, because it constrains them to reformulate their beliefs in
terms that must be finally compatible with the rejection of all arguments
from authority. But if the divine is not of a material order, if its
'existence' is not in space and time, it is in the hearts of human beings
that it must henceforth be situated, as well as in those kinds of
transcendence that they perceive, in themselves, as both belonging to
them and always escaping them..
Christianity and Ancient Learning: The 'Liberal' View--'The Light that
lighteth every man'.
Justin, The Apology I.. xlvi.1-4 (4)
But lest any, to turn men from our teaching, should attack us with the
unreasonable argument that we say that Christ was born one hundred and
fifty years ago in the time of Cyrenius, and that he taught what we
affirm he taught thereafter in the time of Pontius Pilate, if, I say,
they should find fault with us for treating as irresponsible all men born
before him, let us solve this difficulty by anticipation. We are taught
that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have shown above that He is
the reason (Word) of whom the whole human race partake, and those who
live according to reason are Christians, even though they are accounted
atheists. Such were Socrates and Heraclitus among the Greeks, and those
like them. . . .
Years ago in Chicago I saw Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" at the
Goodman Theatre done in modern, but not contemporary, costumes--that is,
the setting was not Verona in Italy in the Italy of four hundred years
ago but Taylor Street in Chicago's Italian neighborhood in the 1920's.
Knives and pistols were used in the duels, and Juliet committed suicide
with a handgun. But the language of the play was all unchanged from
Shakespeare's own, and one of the things that got my attention was the
way the Bard used the word "learn." He used it the way I had done as a
child, when I would say to my elders, "Learn me how to tie my shoes" or
"Learn me how to milk the cow." I remember being corrected by my older
siblings when I said to the Sunday School teacher, "Learn me how to sing
Jesus Loves Me This I know." The dictionary says that this use of
"learn"as a synonym for "teach"is now "substandard English." I suppose
that means I shouldn't use it. I have been "taught" not to do so.
Teaching is what is done TO you by your teachers, and learning is what
you are expected to DO in response. And in the schooling of society,
never the twain shall meet.
I like the old usage better for it signifies more clearly the teaching
and learning are an exchange and not a unilateral transfer of
information, a mere dispensing of facts. The other day I saw in the
calle a hefty overweight momma learning her ten year old daughter who to
ride her new bike. She waddled alongside her, holding the bike firmly by
seat and handle-bars,
the youngster precariously but confidently perched upon it. This was
not university style "teaching" -- that would have put the instructor on
the sidewalk, yelling and pointing, "this way! not that!" and "Watch
out!" and "Faster, or you'll fall!" Now here the Mother was so
thoroughly involved in the process with daughter and bicycle that few
words were necessary, 'though effort, input, and impetus were
essential. She was learning her daughter to bicycle as a verb. I was
learned by my older brother how to tie a four-in-hand knot for a necktie,
when I was ten or eleven years old, and yesterday I learned Juan Carlos
how to do it, too, and in return he learned me how to tie a Windsor
knot, which he learned from a classmate Neckties are still not much used
in Nicaragua, but Juan Carlos is a rising star in the firmament of the
new Nicaragua that wears corbatas to their work in offices and he himself
learned it from an arriviste. Learning how to swim and how to dance and
how to make love are other activities where the Learned and the Learner
must get close. In churches today, it is hard to share the Peace of God
which passes all understanding without touching each other and learning
to do something at least half-way intimate at the Sign of Peace.
Who was teaching, and who learning, in the gospel lection today? Mark
has Jesus in Jerusalem, walking in the Temple, when some of the
establishment professionals confront him. They question his authority,
attempt to arrest him for heresy, they conspire to catch him in an act of
tax resistance, they argue with him about the resurrection of the dead.
All of these issues in the story illustrate the opposition that both
Jesus and the early Church received. But today we hear another side of
the story, one that we don't often hear and less frequently listen to:
One of the scribes--that is one of the theological scholars, who had
listened to all he debates Jesus had with the authorities, came and put a
public question to him: "Which is the first of all the commandments?"
It was a popular question for religious debaters, much like the present
day debaters who ask questions like, "What do you see as the main purpose
of religion? Is it for personal salvation? Personal development? Or
is it for societal change? Should it offer appropriate alternatives in
our New Age? What does your belief system say about such-and-such?"
Jesus instantly replies with the orthodox creed of Judaism. It is the
creed of Judaism to this day. It is called the Shema Israel. "Hear O
Israel". It is from the book Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter. "Listen,
Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you must love the Lord your
God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your
strength." Then Jesus adds something not in the Deuteronomy text at
all. "and with your mind." And now he goes further, and glosses onto
the text something else from the Book Leviticus, the nineteenth chapter:
"The second is like it," he says, "You must love your neighbor as
yourself." Now a fundamentalist would or should be upset with what Jesus
did. Jesus actually added to the Creed! He balanced the vertical
religion with the horizontal. Belief and faith in God are to involve the
use of the mind and not only the emotions and devotions and cleverness of
motions. Jesus added that Love of Neighbor is right up there in front
with the Love of God. Nothing in our religion, he says, is greater than
These Two. Love God with your mind. This is something Jesus expects of
all believers.
The well-schooled in our society, those who have had much formal
education, where it is a privilege of those with money or access to it,
and is denied to the poor, do not expect the uneducated to use their
minds at all. Their hands and arms and legs and backs, yes. Even their
hearts and souls and all their strength are to be devoted to the gods of
the educated society, but their minds, no. Their minds may be trained,
like that of a dog or a horse, and the poor may be schooled so they may
be servants, but they are not to be encouraged to dedicate themselves to
the love of God and the love of neighbor. For formal schooling must
never approach the dominion of the True God where it might be "learned"
in the Love of Neighbor.
How does the capitalist class keep that from happening? How do the false
gods of our epoch keep us all "schooled up" in their lessons, so that we
have no "mind" for the God of love, and the love of neighbor?
Which is the great commandment of the law? What's the biggie credo in
our public life today? "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United
States of America, and to the republic for which it sands. One nation,
indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all." Hand on
heart, standing, with head high, facing the national flag. No ceremony
like this is ever permitted in a public space, pledging allegiance to
anything else. Jehovah's Witnesses rightly refuse to perform this act of
idolatry. There is now an attempt to secularize the pledge by
challenging the constitutionality of mentioning God as being superior to
the State. It isn't the mention of God that is dangerous to the State,
for it is false creed in its turning the heart's allegiance to the State
and its ubiquitous Symbol. It is a false creed for a Bible believing
Christian, surely. But even Jesus, no Christian, would have flunked this
one. Peter and Paul would have gone to the cross and the chopping
block rather than sully their lips with it. In fact, they did so, for it
is what the Empire expected of them, and what they refused to do: give
ultimate allegiance to the State as its unitarian deity's unitarian
creature. Do we really believe that it is our nation which has the Unity
of the eternal and ever-blessed One? Do we really believe it is this
one tiny nation, a mere wart on the skin of a tiny recent planet in a
star spangled sky that bestows liberty and justice upon all?
Jesus instead saw that the Shema Israel put his nation in the position of
a listener to God, and not the position of a teacher to God. From the
verses immediately following our pericope (vv 36-37): "Later, while
teaching in the Temple, Jesus came back at them with this question, 'How
can the Doctors of the Law maintain that the Messiah is a Son of
David?" And he quotes Psalm 110, "For David himself [in this Psalm]
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, said, "The Lord said to my Lord,
'Sit at my right hand till I put your enemies under your feet.' So if
David himself calls him 'Lord', where do they get the idea that he is
David's son?" And the great throng of common people heard him with
delight!" This is the perfect paradigm for confounding the
fundamentalist, nationalist, jingoist, and yahoo of every age with their
own Bible banging. tricks. The common people were delighted because
someone outside the establishment, some one not in charge of the church
nor authorized to interpret its Bobble Babble Bible, was doing so, and
doing it right in the Temple, and by an "in your face" Act Up! to the
establishment, against the national interests. Jesus teaches here that
religion which looks to patriotic projects or thinks itself the liberator
for one's own nation over others is not the religion which the Holy
Spriit of God breathes into our common life. If David, moved by the Holy
Spirit, calls Messiah "Lord", then Messiah is more than one who insures
Israel's boundaries against the Palestinians. Messiah is more than
Messiah, indeed, for Messiah is a Christ for everybody. It is not "one
nation under God" that we believers pledge allegiance to, but One
Christ, Lord of all the worlds, liberator of all the peoples of the earth
that are our neighbors here. And you ought to love all these neighbors
as yourself.
I remember the 1988 convention of the diocese of Chicago when some of the
priests, and a scribe and a pharisee or two,
stood to oppose the resolution which would set up the companion
relationship between the diocese of Chicago and the diocese of Nicaragua,
which enabled Bishop Frank Tracy Griswold to appoint me as coordinator of
that relationship and send me here to Managua under the auspices of the
Church. . One of the opponents of the resolution said, "This is a
recognition of one of the most inhuman regimes in the world, the worst
violator of human rights" and so he slandered on. The word of the Lord
that came to me as I sat there and listened was "Thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbor." And I stood to say so, and I spoke
with authority, having been here, and not as the scribes. Ronald
Reagan, Elliot Abrams, George Schultz and George Papa Bush, the New York
Times, and most of the mass media in the USA had violated the
commandment, and Christians violated it when they listened to this lie
and left it unrebuked. Lies have been told in the media in USA for a
long time now and left unrebuked by the Church. They have poisoned
public discourse, and the lies are crimes against the God whom we have
pledged our allegiance to, and pledged our minds to love that God with.
It is ironic that we live in a time wherein what we were once schooled to
believe was the most totalitarian of all human creations and
institutions, the most godless of the nations, the Soviet Union, an evil
empire and its "Eastern bloc" of slave
states, has like an old garment come apart at its seams, and is being
reborn in a variety of independent, open societies, recovering their
languages and literature, their ancient religion, their hopes and
dreams, while in the USA our own blessed institutions, and in the West
our vaunted "democracies" and the Holy Roman and Apostolic Church, are
censoring and silencing, forbidding, obfuscating, covering their criminal
tracks, hiding their abuse of their own children, their murder of
nations, their war crimes and holocausts, while spinning and
propagandizing, brainwashing and blindfolding our minds, and "binding
with briars our loves and desires."
At the same diocesan convention I heard a suburban mission priest say
that his mission had spent thousands of dollars on direct mail
advertising to "selected market areas" chosen by professionals, and he
called this "evangelism."
Advertising, like that used to peddle peanut butter or detergent for
dishes, is styled "evangelism." The oracles of God have become consumer
items, along with political candidates. Packaging is all, the medium has
become not the message but the massage. In the face of this, Jesus
says, "Don't park your brains like that and walk away." Television,
alas, almost requires that you park your brains outside, and politics
demands it. Patriotism insists, "No brains here, buddy!" And the
electoral system is perverted to select Junior Bush as the wooden headed
puppet. Religion in the USA is quite capable of functioning entirely
without the use of brains, and Pat Robertson has amply proved that to the
masses. But Jesus says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor just as much.
."
Programming is not teaching, it's not learning, it's not education, but
that's what is offered now everywhere, and what believers must resist
with their minds and with all their strength. When the Lord Jesus spoke
the Summary of Torah to the lawyer who examined him, the lawyer
complimented his pupil: "Beautifully said, Master." (He called his pupil
"Master"!)
"God is one and there is no other. To love God with heart,
understanding, passion, gifts, abilities, strength, and to love neighbor
as self: this is more important than any feeding of sacrifices to an
addictive God, who is a Consumer of Sacrifices, a user himself of
products." And then, Jesus, "seeing how wisely he had spoken" said to
him, "You are not far from the Kingdom of God." Not all the way into the
Kingdom, mind you, but not far from it. What distance did the scribe
have to go, in that case, to get into the Reign of God? Jesus.in this
one instance in the New Testament has an agreeable dialogue with the
representative of the institutions of religion. They actually
compliment each other They are polite to each other and more than
polite. "Master," the lawyer says to him. "You're getting close" Jesus
replies.
The answers you've got in mind now, the answers that have been there all
along in the great wisdom of all the faiths, in the profundities of Torah
and Talmud, in the goodness of the Kingdom that's arriving right now in
our time, in the insights of the Bahagavad Gita and the brilliance and
balance of the Dhammapada, in the Analects and the Qur'an, in the
Mentors and Meteors and Mothers of the Desert, in the stories and poems
and songs of the Spirit, everything you have been learned from the
learning of the ages, --now put it to work in the service of your
neighbors. May the Maternal Spirit learn our hearts and minds to this
Wisdom day-by-day. "Now you're getting close," says Jesus.
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) from Thoughts without a Thinker. Psychotherapy from a Buddhist
Perspective. Mark Epstein, M.D. Basic Books, Persus Book Group,
copyright 1955 by Mark Epstein.
(2) The Dhammapada Sayings of the Buddha. Translated and with an
Introduction and notes by John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana.
Oxford University Press, 1987, Oxford World Classics paperback.copyright
2000.
(3) from Man Made God: The Meaning of Life, by Luc Ferry. Originally
published as L'Homme-Dieu, ou Le Sens de la vie (Paris: Grassset, 1996.
) Translated by David Pellauer Chicago & London: the University of
Chicago Press. Copyright 2002, Univ. of Chicago.
(4) Justin, Apology (c. A.D. 150). I. xlvi.1-4. From Documents of the
Christian Church, 2nd edition, selected and edited by Henry Bettenson.
Oxford University Press. 1963.