Sermon for the Twentieth-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, November 17, 2024
1 Samuel 1:4-20+1 Samuel 2:1-10+Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25+Mark 13:1-8
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,
for he who has promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23)
The one who promised is faithful.
How many times have you heard that it's up to us to demonstrate faith so that what we pray for, or what our heart desires, will come to pass?
God has made promises to humankind, and God is faithful.
God was faithful to Hannah who, like so many of the iconic women of the bible, was unable to become pregnant. It is a sign, a signal to us, that God will do something big, so we need to pay attention. In a song later echoed in Mary's Magnificat, Hannah rejoices that God is a God who is faithful.
(God) will guard the feet of his faithful ones,
but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness;
for not by might does one prevail.
The Lord! His adversaries shall be shattered;
the Most High will thunder in heaven. (1 Samuel 2:9-10a)
Now, there may be wicked people that need to be cast into darkness or adversaries we'd like to shatter, and the temple might be dismantled stone by stone, and the signs of the end times may be out there, but we can no more make pronouncements or judgments on these things than the original listeners could. The original listeners didn't understand all this, and we know that "nations have risen against nations, and kingdoms against kingdoms; there have been earthquakes in various places; there have been famines, and if this was but the beginning of the birthpangs," (paraphrase Mark 13:8), when will it all come to pass? {shrug} All we can do is trust that God is faithful and do our part.
The temple in Jerusalem, the one where the widow offered her two coins, where prior to that Jesus had taken a whip to the moneychangers, this temple physically dominated Jerusalem just as it dominated Jewish life in the 1st century. When we read that Jesus is on the Mount of Olives "opposite the Temple" (13:3), he is looking across the Kidron Valley toward the temple mount from about a kilometer away. It dominated the skyline. In the absence or giant earthmovers and construction machinery or even dynamite, the disciples must have been baffled at how that temple could possibly be destroyed. But either shortly before or shortly after Mark's gospel was written, that is exactly what happened. This mighty temple, reconstructed by Herod the Great, was no more. The Romans tired of the Jewish uprisings and took their revenge. The worship center of Jewish life and practice was gone.
It's easy for us to imagine that God allowed this to happen because of the corruption of the religious leadership or because there was something inherently wrong about the temple system. These things are not the problem. The message of the gospel is that anything that does not serve the needs of the poor and the suffering need not survive. This is not just our Christian tradition. It is woven throughout the Hebrew scriptures, including in the Song of Hannah:
The bows of the mighty are broken... (1 Samuel 2:4)
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
he brings low, he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts the needy from the ash heap. (2:7-8)
God is faithful.
So, if God is taking care of all the business, does that mean we just sit around and wait? Of course not! "And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds..." (Hebrews 10:24) is how the author of the Letter to the Hebrews puts it. I stand up here every week trying to provoke you. It's a wonder you keep coming back. But this provocation is because Jesus commanded us to love God and love our neighbor, and we best show our love for God by loving our neighbor, not in some warm, fuzzy emotional way, but in treating love as a verb rather than a noun. It is active. It requires something of us.
This week, Hoboken said goodbye to our friend and neighbor, president of City Council Jen Giattino, who died on election day at the age of 53. The tributes to her consistently remarked on her sense of public service, of helping not just her constituents but all residents of this city, of quietly taking care of those who needed her help, and regularly visiting with those whom most of us overlook. These comments came from those politically aligned with her and those who generally jockeyed for position against her. I witnessed Jen in action personally. She did not do these acts of service to get elected or to draw attention to herself. She believed that "you can never go wrong by doing the right thing" (quoted by her council colleague and friend Tiffanie Fisher). Jen had a quiet faith and a heart for service.
As I have talked with those who knew her, I was reminded of Jesus's critique of the scribes and pharisees who like to pray loudly and strut around in their fancy robes and draw attention to themselves, more concerned with following the rules than showing loving-kindness to those around them. Jen certainly stood in contrast to that.
Our gospel readings take on an apocalyptic theme today and over the next weeks with portents of end times and, ultimately, John the Baptist calling us to repentance. There is much in our public discourse that feels a little apocalyptic, too. But remember, our neighbors - some of them sitting right here - need us. Our neighbors out there need us. Our neighbors across this country and around the world need us in whatever capacity we have to be of service.
God is faithful, so "let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith" (Hebrews 10:22) and show our love of God by showing an active love of our neighbors, not because it will make us feel good or make us look good, but because that is who we are. We will never go wrong by doing the right thing for our fellow travelers in this world.