For The Sake of Appearance

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Ordinary 32B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 12:38-44

³⁸As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, ³⁹and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! ⁴⁰They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

⁴¹He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. ⁴²A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. ⁴³Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. ⁴⁴For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

I think if I were to find some sort of biblical basis for it, THIS is where my aversion to being addressed as something other than simply ‘Kenny’ comes from. As your minister, my reluctance to use ‘Reverend’ or ‘Pastor’ in regular conversation is a conscious decision to try to avoid being treated differently simply because of that fact – or for people to behave differently around me because they know who I am or what I do.

Three or four years ago, I happened to be working in the concession stand during a little league game for one of the kids’ teams, and one of the other men told a joke to the rest of the group of men and the one woman who was there that was completely inappropriate and terribly crude. The woman and I had been talking earlier, and she knew I was a Pastor. When the laughing had died down, she looked at the man who told the joke and said ‘I can’t believe you told that in front of the PASTOR here!’ … The look he gave me was somewhere between “well, that’s who I am” and “I wish I hadn’t opened my mouth”. He said something apologetic, and I answered “don’t let my being a Pastor stop you” … it’s not that I enjoyed hearing the joke or watching the woman’s discomfort, but it has to do with not wanting to be shielded from the truth – whether that is someone’s crass behavior when they are NOT at church or hearing something from a lifelong member IN church that is totally opposite to the Gospel.

Last week, we had Jesus talking with a scribe who, at the end of their conversation, Jesus declared to be ‘not far from the Kingdom of God.’ Today, Jesus’ opening words are as we heard, ‘BEWARE of the scribes … [reread 38-40]’ … I wanted to stop on that for a minute and reiterate what is happening here and what was happening there. Jesus was not condemning an entire class of people simply because they happened to belong to that class, but he WAS condemning their BEHAVIOR.

He points out to his disciples that there were scribes – unlike the one he had been speaking to earlier – who were NOT really interested in the deeper matters of faith – those that truly impact and change how we act with each other and with our neighbors – and ultimately, with God. But that were more interested in being recognized, being respected, being the recipients of special treatment because of their position in the religious structure in which they functioned. They were more interested in what they APPEARED to be rather than in what they actually WERE. Jesus spells it out, “⁴⁰They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” And that, in a nutshell, is the beef that got the Pharisees, Sadducees, Priests and Scribes up in arms against him. Jesus called them on their hypocrisy. Called them on their twisting the redemptive power of the love of God in God’s adoption of the people of Israel and of his care for them through the centuries into what it had become – an oppressive, preferential, superficial, power-hungry THING that was about as far from what God had envisioned for them as it could be.

When he said ‘they devour widow’s houses’ he wasn’t speaking in metaphors. The widow who walked up to the treasury jar to drop her two copper coins in WAS giving all she had left, and we can talk about how that, yes, could reflect her faith in God, and we could also talk about how that could on some level represent the coming gift that Christ makes of his life for her, and for his disciples, as well as for those same Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees and Priests, as WELL as for all of us who have come and gone since then – for all the WORLD … and it would all make sense because we’ve heard some version of those interpretations before.

What might be less commonly understood, and less comfortable for us to hear, is the less metaphorical and more actual, practical, factual understanding of what is happening in the scene at the temple.

Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador has been attributed with making the statement: “If I feed a few hungry people I am called a Christian. If I ask why there ARE hungry people, I am called a communist.”

There are some things that Jesus said … some things that he did, that, when taken into consideration within the context in which he said or did them, were politically radical even by today’s standards. We’ve been over some of them in the past – his treatment of women, his interaction as a Jewish man with gentiles, especially Samaritans, his spending time with sinners, prostitutes, and tax-collectors. If you think about it, where did all the injunctions against that kind of behavior come from? The Religious Establishment. Those same men who had organized things to benefit themselves at the expense of the weak, the poor, the unprotected, the have-nots of their society, in this case, a widow – who, still being as faithful to the God of her faith as she knew how, was putting herself at the mercy of an establishment that had over the centuries become an institution that failed to treat her as a human being with dignity and worth, and was essentially merciless.

I read somewhere that the measure of the worth of a gift – of an offering – is not the amount of the offering itself, but rather what is left to the giver AFTER the offering is given.

This is, for us here today, sitting in Jerusalem Baptist Church in Emmerton, a fable of caution. For all intents and purposes, we belong to the Religious Establishment. It is for us to take to heart Jesus’ words as a warning to be more about the actual DOING of good deeds and merciful acts – randomly as well as among ourselves – REGARDLESS of whether or not we get the recognition for them – rather than to be concerned with the maintaining of appearances. Appearances are the least of our worries if what is on the inside is turning to dust.

One last thought, and it is in relation to the interpretation of the widow being a Christ figure, giving all she had left in faithful trust to God. The point in that analogy that causes some tension if you think about it is where we draw the parallels, and come to the point of the two copper coins – mostly worthless – but they are what was given – and the corresponding gift that was given by Jesus was what we would immediately rebel against calling worthless – his LIFE.

The second chapter of Philippians helps us put things into perspective, beginning in verse 5 –

“⁵Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, ⁷but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, ⁸he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”

To be something – someONE – to be … well … the creator of the universe, and to make yourself nothing … obedient, meek, silently fulfilling your responsibility, your role … making the necessary redemption possible through your own suffering. That is the model we have to follow. The one that calls us to give our all, to hold nothing back, to give ‘til it hurts.

May we all be so faithful, and so obedient.

Let’s pray.