What is important to us? What are willing to do for it?

The Old Testament reading for today comes from Isa. 3:8-15.  The prophet speaks of those who grind the faces of the poor, who crush God's people.   Perhaps these oppressors do what they do for gain: the "spoil of the poor" is in their houses.  Perhaps they do what they do simply because they can, for the pleasure of exercising their own wills.

The Gospel reading for today comes from Luke 20:41-21:4. Jesus tells his listeners to beware the scribes who "devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers." He gives us some insight into what motivates these oppressors: they love being greeted with respect in the marketplace. Weirdly enough, some oppressors, at least, do what they do because they want people to like them. They want "validation" from other people. "See, he has plenty, people like him, he must be good," regardless of how this wealth was obtained and whether any apparent virtue is real or sincere.

The New Testament reading for today discusses how we ought to live. Paul writes, "But we exhort you . . . . to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you; so that you may command the respect of outsiders, and be dependent on nobody."  We should earn the respect of others, but the source of well-being should not be dependent on other people.  The source should be God's love for us, and our love for other people. 

What is important to us is God, his love, and our love for his creation: to get it, we should sacrifice the false sense of esteem that other people can give us. To get that esteem, those around us and we ourselves must pay too steep a price.   The greater blessing comes to us for free.

We live world that is hardly concerned with responding to God's grace.  How do we live in that world?

The Old Testament reading for today comes from Isa. 2:1-11.  The first part of that reading reminds us that God has in store for us a wonderful future: not just improvements on our present state, but salvation.  But the second part serves as an acknowledgement that we have to hold that promise in our hearts while we live in a world that is not merely indifferent, but hostile and displeasing to God.

The Gospel reading for today is from Luke 20:19-26. In it, some religious authorities confront Jesus to ask him a question: is it permissible to pay Roman taxes? It may have been a sincere question. After all, the Roman coin had an idolatrous image of the emperor, and a pious person may have had scruples about doing any task that required handling anything of that nature.  But Jesus called for a coin and said, whose image is this? The emperor's, they answered. Then give the emperor what belongs to him, and give God what belongs to God, Jesus answered.  We live not just with God's promise of salvation, but with the understanding that we belong to God. 

Living with this promise of salvation, in the knowledge that we belong to God, can give us courage to confront outright evil, not just worldly indifference. In the New Testament reading for today, 1 Thess. 2:13-20, Paul recounts how he wanted to come visit his readers, but that Satan had hindered him--again and again. In other words, there were times when the bad guys won the battle, but Paul kept trying.  But he was bereft of them only in person, not in heart, he wrote.   What evil managed to keep him from accomplishing in the world, God allowed him to accomplish in spirit.

As we go through the day, dealing with indifference and perhaps even outright evil, may we always remember the future that God promises us and the fact that we belong to him, so that evil may not overcome us as we serve the Lord we love.

The Gospel reading for today comes from Luke 20:9-18.  It's the story of the man who sends his servants to check out a vineyard he owns, only to have the workmen in the vineyard abuse the servants. After several tries, the man sends his own son, who the workmen kill in the hopes of claiming the vineyard for themselves.

God sends prophets, messages, and signs about what he expects us to do.  Over and over, we reject those efforts so that we can do what we want to do.   It's a very old problem. In the Old Testament reading for today, Isa. 1:21-31, the prophet describes a world in which judges take bribes, rulers rebel against God, and on one defends the orphan or the widow.   It's a call to repentance, then and now.

The New Testament reading for today comes from 1 Thess. 2:1-12. There, we are encouraged "to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory."  God reaches out to us: he does not expect us to accomplish great things on our own, but only to refrain from rebellion and to follow the path that he set for us. 

May we lead lives worthy of God.

When God asks a question, how do I answer?

The Gospel reading today comes from Luke 20:1-8.  Some bystanders asked Jesus where he got the authority to do the things he was doing.  Jesus replied by asking them a question: where did John get his authority to baptize? His listeners were unable to answer, but not because they lacked the resources to figure out the answer.  They could not reply because they could not figure out a response that would avoid diminishing their stature in the community.  If they said, God gave John that authority, then everyone would ask, why didn't you follow him? But if they said, John had no authority, then the community would hate them, even stone them.

Jesus asks us a question, perhaps several questions, every day. Do we answer honestly?

We may try to answer in a way that shows those around us how much devotion we have.  But the Old Testament reading for today, Isa. 1:10-20, shows what God thinks of those answers. There, the prophet tells us that God was sick of fancy rituals, slavishly followed. He wanted worship in the form of seeking after justice and resisting oppression, helping widows and defending the fatherless.

The New Testatment reading for today, 1 Thess. 1:1-10, teaches us that the Holy Spirit wants us to answer the questions that God puts to us by acting with conviction.  We are to turn from idols, away from our conceits and our desire for esteem, and toward God, whose coming we anticipate in Advent.

It's the first Sunday of Advent, and the Gospel reading comes from Matt. 25:1-13.  It's the parable of the 10 virgins who were waiting for a bridegroom to arrive late one night. Each had a lamp. Five brought extra oil, and the other five didn't.  As the oil burned low, the five foolish virgins who had no extra oil had to go out to the merchant. While they were away, the bridegroom arrived. By the time they got back, the feast had started and they were locked out. No one would let them in.

I've always had problems with this parable. Why couldn't the five wise virgins share some oil? Why couldn't the foolish virgins just send out one of their number for some oil? For that matter, why did they need oil? Couldn't they just wait in the dark?

It's not meant to be taken literally, this parable.  The point of this story is that time passes.   For practically everything, there comes moment when it's too late.  We have to be alert, aware, waiting for the moment, living in the moment, prepared and ready for the grace that God brings to us.   We must, as Jesus says at the end of the reading, "Watch, therefore." Otherwise, the moment comes and we are asleep, in the dark, our resources exhausted.  Things can pass us by, and they do.

The New Testament reading comes from 2 Pet. 3:1-10.  Peter teaches us in this passage to be patient: in the eyes of God, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day.  But that doesn't mean things are not happening.   

The Old Testament reading for today comes from Ecclus. 51:1-12.  The writer remembers how God saved him when he was in danger, when no one else would come to his aid.  The passage is a wonderful response from a person who knew first hand a lesson that is difficult to learn: it is in our time of need that God is most real to us, that his love for us is most evident. When we are down and out, God can be there for us in a way that we often fail to appreciate when we are prospering.

The Gospel reading comes from Luke 14:1-11. A man with dropsy (probably heart disease) comes to Jesus on the sabbath.  There is uncertainty among onlookers about whether Jesus will heal this man on the sabbath.  Jesus does so, reminding his listeners that their own understanding of the law allows them to save an ox who was in danger on the sabbath.  In other words, if the life of an animal is important enough to allow you to serve your own interests by working when work is otherwise forbidden, isn't the well being of this man important enough to allow the Messiah to do what he came to do (that is, to repair the world) even on a day when work is otherwise forbbiden. This man belongs to me, he is saying, stopping his suffering isn't merely good for him, it is what I do.

We are important to God, Jesus is saying. But what about our importance to ourselves? Jesus goes on to observe how his listeners choose the best places for themselves, the places for honor, when they sit down to dine. Choose the lowest place for yourself, he says. Let your self be unimportant to yourself. If someone wants you at the head of the table, they will tell you. You are important to God: let that be enough, let that substitute for your importance to yourself and others.

Where does self-importance and temporal glory end? The New Testament reading for today comes from Rev. 18:1-14.  It is a vision of the fall of Babylon, the most important place in the world, the most important city to the world. It is a literally apocalyptic collapse.  What amounts to glorious wonder in the eyes of the world ends in horrible collapse.  The moral of the story: it isn't worth it, and don't let it distract you.

We all need to feel important. May we satisfy that need by knowing that we are important to the creator of the universe and the Savior of mankind, so that we can face our times of need knowing that he cares for us, and so that we focus our energies on furthering his healing mission.

What do we want our lives to be like? And what are they like? And how do they reflect God's plan?

The Old Testament reading for today comes from Ecclus. 50:1,11-24.  The writer praises Simon, a great priest in the Temple, where he served God and was surrounded by what the writer recalls as a sort of perfection.  After recounting his fond recollection of Simon in his days, the writer concludes with this benediction:

"And now bless the God of all,who in every way does great things;who exalts our days from birth and deals with us according to his mercy. May he give us^[gladness of heart   and grant that peace may be in our days in Israel  as in the days of old. May he entrust to us his mercy And let him deliver us in our days!"

In other words, "Give us, God, the good old days, as we remember them, perhaps better than we were." 

The Gospel reading for today comes from Luke 13:31-35.  Some Pharisees warned Jesus that he should flee, because Herod wanted to kill him. It's unclear how these Pharisees otherwise related to Jesus: perhaps they were friends who were engaged by his teaching, perhaps they were enemies.  In any event, Jesus's situation had become such that even those who well may have been his enemies might take pity on him to warn him.  But Jesus disregards the warning. He came to Jerusalem to save Jerusalem: he came as a prophet, and saw Jerusalem as a place for prophets to die.  We might recall the glory days of Simon the Priest as a golden era of peace and perfection, but we are called to follow a Savior who traveled a hard path to which he was committed, even if it appeared to lead to disaster. 

The New Testament reading comes from Rev. 17:1-18.  Written years if not decades after the crucifixion, this passage records the vision of a man who had followed that Savior along a different, but still difficult path.  It was given to him to reveal the plan that God had for him and for salvation. It made sense to him: it may make no sense to us, unless we perhaps we analyze it to the point of reducing it of all meaning.  But the vision is there, and the plan is there, and we may be given to understand either or both, but perhaps only after a lifetime of longing for the good old days and dealing with the trouble at hand.

The New Testament reading for today comes from Rev. 16:12-21.  It is a terrible image of the end of the world, a great battle against enormous forces of evil.  Regardless whether you view this passage as a factual prophecy or an imaginative metaphor, it confronts us with a central fact of human existence: evil is an actual force, causing enormous suffering, now and in the future.

In the face of that suffering,  is a good life even possible?  The Old Testament reading for today comes from Ecclus. 44:1-15. It is a long poem in which the author remembers his ancestors.   Some of these people, it seems to him, managed to have great blessings in their lives. Some were famous, others anonymous. They were men of mercy, whose good deeds bless the generations that followed them. Yes, he seems to say, a good life may be possible, especially when we take the long view of what is good or bad.

But how are we to live such a life in the circumstances that we face and will face? The New Testament reading for today comes from Luke 13:18-30. In it, Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed. It is a tiny seed, but when it is planted, it grows to great heights, and the plant gives shelter to many birds.  The Kingdom of God (what Professor John Meier translates as the "kingly rule of God") is like that seed, he says. It is like leaven: a little bit leavens an entire loaf. 

In other words, with just a little bit of the Kingdom of God, the kingly rule of God, planted in our lives and nurtured by the Holy Spirit in our souls, we can have hopes of living a good life, though we may suffer now and know that even greater suffering may lie ahead.    In the day to day of existence, we may lose sight (in fact, we may never see at all) how good deeds may bless not only those around us, but generations to come.  But we can be sure that nurturing that kingdom within ourselves will one day yield blessings for those who follow us, as they struggle against evil that may not even be able to imagine.

The Old Testament reading for today comes from Ecclus. 43:1-22.  In it, the writer extols the greatness of God and the extraordinary wonders He has created.  There are marvelous things, he says, and there are things well beyond our imagination. When you praise God, he urges, praise Him with all your strength.   The reading is really a hymn to the awesome, if some what distant, character of God.

The New Testament reading for today further affirms the extraordinary struggle in which God is engaged.  At Rev. 14:14-15:8, the prophet foresees a time when great plagues come to the earth, and some men suffer terribly.   It is a strange world, whose suffering can seem distant and alien to us, even though the text firmly suggests that the prophecy is not merely metaphorical.

And then there is the Gospel reading for today, Luke 13:10-17. In our lives, where does Jesus stand in the middle of all this? Between the awesome character of God the Father and the terrible struggles of the apocalypse, where is the Messiah? In today's reading, he is at a temple, where is healing a woman who has suffered 18 years from an infirmity.   He does this on the sabbath, and his timing prompts some people to say (to her), could you not have waited one more day? Must you profane the sabbath, that most holy of times, here in the temple, that most holy of places, just to end almost two decades of suffering one single day earlier than otherwise?   After all, they might have said, there are other people here, many of whom have come to celebrate this day in this space in just the right way--how about a little consideration? Jesus reacts harshly to the critics.  Don't they save an ox on the sabbath when it needs rescue, he asks? Of course they did, because the law expressly allowed doing so under some circumstances.  The critics were ashamed.

Our lives are lived in the shadow of an awesome God on what may be the eve of the apocalypse, at least when viewed from the aspect of eternity.  Our daily existence ought to reflect these extraordinary facts. But that existence should also, and more emphatically, reflect the fact that our Savior came to do his work of healing, focused on real human beings, in the everyday lives of ordinary people, without any constraints imposed by convention (particularly religious convention), however well intentioned.  It is not merely that he humbled himself: it is also that he exalted God's love among us.  May we do likewise in our lives.

The Gospel reading for today comes from Luke 13:1-9.  Some people told Jesus about some Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  The gist of the conversation seems to have been, what could these people have done to deserve such suffering? Jesus asked his listeners, do you think they were worse than anybody else? He reminded them of 18 people killed when a tower collapsed in Siloam. Did his listeners really believe those people had done something wrong to deserve that? Jesus told them, unless you repent, something much worse will happen to you!

Jesus was not threatening to cause anyone's blood to be mingled with sacrifices. He wasn't warning about falling towers. He was warning that fates much worse than even ritually unclean death and sacrifice, something worse than tragic, sudden death, could follow if people ignore the real stakes in their lives.  He told them the parable of the barren fig tree: the parable illustrates that they were created and tended for a purpose, and they risk their own destruction, their own alienation from God if they ignore that purpose and fail to do what they were created to do.  This was the necessity for their repentance.

The Old Testament reading for today comes from Ecclus. 43:1-22. The writer reminds us of how God created the heavens and the world: the implication is that he created us, too, and that he did so for a purpose.   The New Testament reading comes from Rev. 14:14-15:8. It reminds us that our purpose is not some static state: we are part of a moving story, one that has an end just as it had a beginning.  We are moving now toward that end, and may we all be mindful of our purpose and do what we were created to do--in other words, may we all continually repent and move with salvation history toward the end that God has created us to serve.

The Old Testament Reading for today comes from Ecclus. 38:24-34.  The writer begins by describing the virtue of being a scribe: he has the time to acquire wisdom.  How can craftsmen pursue the same goal, he wonders, if they must devote all their time to their labors? But ultimately he acknowledges that the efforts of the plowman and the blacksmith and others hold the world together.  "But they keep stable the fabric of the world and their prayer is in the practice of their trade."

The Gospel reading comes from Luke 12:49-59.  There, Jesus emphasizes his purpose: not just to make everybody feel better, but to preach to the world a truth that will set it on edge.  What is happening and about to happen in the history of God's interaction ought to be plain enough to them, he tells his listeners.  If they can discern the weather by looking at the sky, then surely they can understand their spiritual climate in light of what they see happening before them.    He urges them to stay focused on the tasks at hand and not to be distracted by personal slights and conflicts, given the spiritual conflict at hand. 

The New Testament Reading for today comes from Rev. 14:1-13.  In it, there is a great, cosmic warning against falling away from the path that God would follow: there is a great exhortation to endurance.  At the end of the reading, the prophet writes, "And I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth. 'Blessed indeed,' says the Spirit, 'that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!'"

May we let our daily labors become our prayers, and may our focus be on the spiritual tasks at hand, with no distractions from less important, selfish things.   May we endure so that we die in the labors that God has set for us.

The Old Testament reading for today comes from Ecclus. 36:1-17. It reflects an enormously important milestone in ethical development, one that may have occurred in the writer's community long before he wrote the scriptures that we read today.  It is apparent that he resented other nations, that perhaps he even hated them. But he does not rant about his desire to harm them himself, to enjoy a sort of vengeful violence against those who harmed him and his community. Instead, he leaves that to God.

The Gospel reading comes from Matt. 18:21-35. It's a commandment about forgiveness, followed by the parable of the unforgiving servant.  The message is clear: we are not merely to leave vengeance to God--we are to abandon it altogether. Doing otherwise jeopardizes our relationship with God.

How are we to go from where we are (oriented towards vengeance, even to taking matters into our own hands) to leaving vengeance to God and then abandoning vengeance altogether.  The New Testament reading for today is 1 Cor. 12:27-13:13. It's the miraculous power of love: there is no other way. Without it, all of our other striving and achievement is meaningless. 

The Old Testament Reading for today comes from Ecclus. 35:1-17.  In it, the writer talks about what it means to be acceptable to the Lord.   We have to be mindful of the nature of God, who listens to the prayers of victims, the requests of the weak, and the stories of the grieving.  We must be prepared: "Do not appear before the Lord empty-handed." And we need to be cheerful.

This sounds like an awful burden. Who can be so perfect? The Gospel reading for today comes from 
Luke 12:32-48.  Jesus tells his listeners not to be afraid, but to sell their treasures and to give alms, because their Father has given them the kingdom. He then tells them a parable about slaves awaiting the happy return of their master from a marriage feast. If he finds them attentive and waiting, he will be happy. He will sit them down at his table and serve them.  But, Jesus warns, if they servants are slothful, the penalties are severe. 

Thus, Jesus teaches us, if you treasure what God gives you, if you look on God the Father as a master whom you love, then your love will inspire your diligent wakefulness: what God requires becomes what you would joyfully give. But there is no getting around that he also emphasizes that there are severe consequences of ignoring what God requires, whether we would love to do what God commands or not.  What God requires is not optional, even if our love for him makes fulfilling those requirements into something other than satisfying a demand.  Just as doing what our love for God would inspire us to do brings rich rewards, so does indifference bring suffering. 

The New Testament reading comes from Rev. 13:11-18.  It is a strange and wonderful vision from a long story about a great cosmic battle between good and evil.  Its inclusion in the reading today reminds us that our service to God is not only about quotidien practicalities: it is about our engagement in an eternal struggle.  The rewards of remaining awake to God's service are ultimately important not only to our own day to day lives, but to creation.

What is the distance between God and man?

The Old Testament Reading for Tuesday, Proper 9, Year Two comes from Num. 35:1-3,9-15,30-34.  There, the law describes the penalty for killing another human being. If the killing is intentional, the penalty is death: if unintentional, the killer could go to one of the six cities of refuge in ancient Israel and there live in a kind of internal exile. The land of Israel was holy. God dwelt there and could not allow its defilement. "You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

The Gospel Reading comes from Matt. 23:13-26.  There, Jesus says, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in."  The space where God dwelt and where man stood was not one that was defiled by egregious acts alone: according to Jesus's detractors, any number of conventions had to be observed to maintain a proper relationship with God. But Jesus rejected that teaching.

The New Testament reading comes from Rom. 8:31-39.  There, Paul writes, "For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  

Paul knew that Jesus bridged that distance between God and man.  Nothing can open that gap again.