Pentecost 23, Year B (2018)

Proper 25 :: Jeremiah 31: 7–9; Psalm 126; Hebrews 7: 23–28; Mark 10: 46-52

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, October 28, 2018.

 “INSIGNIFICANT, A BOTHER, AND PERHAPS A SINNER”

(Homily text: Mark 10: 46-52)

As the Church Year begins to wind down, we come at last to the final miracle which took place before Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the healing of the blind beggar Bartimaeus.

As He passed through the city of Jericho, Bartimaeus called out to Him, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Mark tells us that the crowd who were walking with Jesus told him to be quiet. But the more they tried to shut him up, the more he cried out, “Son of David, have mercy on me.”

Why would the crowd have wanted to ignore Bartimaeus? Why would they have tried to have him remain out-of-sight and out-of-mind?

We can only speculate about the exact reasons, but our guesses might be fairly accurate ones. Perhaps the crowd thought that Bartimaeus was a bother, Perhaps they thought that he was insignificant in the overall scheme of things….after all, they were all on a pilgrimage toward the holy city of Jerusalem so that they could keep the Passover. (Bartimaeus, because he was blind, couldn’t enter the Temple, so he could not participate in the festivities.) Or, perhaps the crowd thought that Bartimaeus had lost his sight because of some grievous sin.

Society and the world, down through the years, has had more than its share of outcasts, people who are a bothersome sight, those who are insignificant (and disposable) in the overall, grand scheme of things, people who are so unholy that nothing and no one could ever clean them up.   

It’s a sad commentary on the condition of the human heart, absent God’s intervention to remake and reorient the attitudes that can so easily shape our responses to those around us who are less-than-whole physically, mentally or spiritually.

Jesus’ response to Bartimaeus cuts through all of these attitudes and behaviors. As Bartimaeus cries out, Jesus responds by saying, “Call him.”

To our Lord, Bartimaeus wasn’t a bother. He wasn’t insignificant. He wasn’t someone to be ignored or silenced. And, perhaps most importantly, he wasn’t a sinner whose misdeeds were so bad that nothing and no one could forgive him.

Jesus’ healing action cuts right through all of these notions. Bartimaeus was, to our Lord, a child of God, someone who mattered to God, someone who should have mattered to others, as well.

Our Lord’s action is an object lesson for us to study, learn from, and emulate. For our Lord comes to us, seeking out the least and the lost, the outcast, the poor, the sickly, and the sinner.

May we, like the Lord we claim to follow, do likewise.

AMEN.

Pentecost 22, Year B (2018)

Proper 24 :: Isaiah 53: 4–12; Psalm 91: 9–16; Hebrews 5: 1–10; Mark 10: 35–45

This is a homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, October 21, 2018.

“WHAT DID THEY GET RIGHT, AND WHAT DID THEY MISS?”

(Homily texts: Mark 10: 35–45)

“When we come before God’s throne in heaven, we will have to ask Him to confirm what we got right, and what we missed.”  That statement came from my first Bishop, whom I have often characterized as being an “armchair theologian”, because he often made succinct statements about our Christian life, statements that were easy to remember, statements that summarized some key point or another.

So what did James and John get right in asking the Lord to grant them “whatever” they asked of Him, and what did they miss?

(Before we answer that question, we would do well to note that Matthew’s Gospel account [1] also records this incident. There, Matthew tells us, it is James and John’s mother who makes the request. Some commentators think, therefore, that members of the family, not just these two brothers, who were involved in making the request. Also, in Matthew’s telling of the conversation, the mother asks the Lord to grant her two sons these prominent positions when the Lord comes into His “kingdom.”)

Now, let’s examine the evidence of this request, first of all, to see what it was that James and John got right:

They were surely right that something wonderful and great was going on. After all, Jesus had been healing people, He had been caring for them, and so, as a result, His popularity was growing: The crowds were getting larger and larger. There had been some sentiment among those who had encountered the Lord that it would be a good thing to make Jesus king.[2]

And, of course, according to these two brothers’ reasoning, since this great movement had begun and had gathered more and more momentum, it was a prudent for their own career aspirations to ask that they be granted a prominent place in the glory, the kingdom, that was surely coming.

But, in asking for places in an earthly kingdom, there these two brothers had missed something. Jesus asks them if they could drink from the cup that he will drink from? They answer, “We are able.” I suspect they didn’t understand – at the time – just what Jesus was referring to. He was referring to His own coming suffering and death.

What James and John missed was the nature of this kingdom, which would come in the most unexpected of ways, through suffering and through death. This new kingdom would have as one of its prominent characteristics the fact that it is led by One who came not to “be served”, but to “serve”.

Now, let’s pose our opening question to ourselves, and to the Church generally: What is it that we – the Church – have gotten right? And, what is that we have missed?

The areas we might apply this question to are many. Let’s choose just a few of them.

God’s love and God’s righteousness:  When we individually and we the Church hold in a good and balanced tension God’s love with God’s holiness and God’s righteousness, we’ve managed to “get it right”. But when we adhere to one of these qualities of God to the neglect of the other, we’ve missed something. Unfortunately, Christians at many times in history have missed the boat, emphasizing Go’s judgment to the neglect of His love, and vice versa.

The Bible as God’s Word written:  When we hold the authority of Holy Scripture in high regard, recognizing that it is God’s expression of what He wants us human beings to know about Himself, then we’ve managed to “get it right”. But we err when we dismiss the Bible as being nothing more than a collection of an ancient people’s record of their experience of God, or when we elevate the Bible to the point of worshiping it (something called “Bibliolatry”). Holy Scripture is a tool, inspired by God, a tool which is meant to point beyond itself to the God who stands within and behind the words of it.

Christian living:  When we realize that all we do, say or think is being done in God’s sight, then we’ve managed to “get it right”. But when we think that our status as a Christian entitles us to behave in very un-Christ-like ways, then we’re behaving more like James and John than we are like the Christ who came to offer Himself out of love for our salvation and for the welfare of our souls. A phrase – perhaps you’ve heard or encountered it somewhere – that describes the misbehavior of those who claim the name of Christian is this:  “Christians behaving badly.”

We could name many other aspects of living the Christian life. But perhaps the mention of these three is sufficient to prompt our own reflection on our behavior and our attitudes. Perhaps we might be led to a critical examination of how it is that we’ve gotten something right, and to those things that we may have missed. For,  so long as we are in this life, the possibility exists that we may have managed to get things right, even as it’s also possible – no, almost certain – that we have missed something of the things that God wants us to know and to get right.

May the Holy Spirit enlighten us to see ourselves as clearly and objectively as it is possible for us to do so. May the Holy Spirit enable us by God’s power, to learn and to appropriate those things that we need to learn. May the Holy Spirit conform us to the image of Christ, that we may bring the light of the Gospel, the Good News, to the world around us.

AMEN.

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[1]   See Matthew 20: 20 and following.

[2]   See John 6: 15.

Pentecost 21, Year B (2018)

Proper 23 ::  Amos 5: 6–7, 10–15; Psalm 90: 12–17; Hebrews 4: 12–16; Mark 10: 17–31

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, October 14, 2018.

“IT’S ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIP”

(Homily texts:  Amos 5: 5–6, 10–15 & Mark 10: 17–31)

It’s all about relationship.

We live in a world of relationships.

Consider, for example, what goes into the making of a baked dish, or a good recipe….the various ingredients must be in a good and complimentary relationship with one another, each part of the recipe fulfilling a central and integrated role in the overall result.

Or, think about the engines in our cars (or any other piece of machinery, for that matter). The various parts of the engine must relate well to the other parts. The various types of metals involved, their machining and tolerances, all of these things go into the designing and fabricating of an engine or piece of machinery that will run well and will last a long time.

Or, how about railroad track (one of my favorite things!). The two rails in the track must be in a proper relationship with one another. If they are too close, or too far apart, the track will be unusable. And the relationship, the distance, between the two rails is dependent on their relationship to the crossties, the stone ballast, and the spikes and other fasteners, that enable them to maintain the proper and desired distance  from one another.

We live in a world of relationships.

That world that we inhabit is composed of the various relationships we have with the “stuff” in our lives, and it is composed of our relationships with others. (More on that in a moment.)

Our Old Testament reading, taken from the prophet Amos, and our Gospel text from Mark, chapter ten, are connected by their focus on relationships.

Amos, who lived and worked in the eighth century, B. C., went north from the Southern Kingdom of Judah to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, There, he pronounces God’s judgment on the wickedness of the ruling class in the kingdom. (I’m not sure I’d want to be Amos, or to have the call he received from God to be the call I would have to accept!). A foreigner by virtue of his having come from the Southern Kingdom into the Northern, Amos tells the people that their relationship to their wealth, and their relationship to the people they are taking advantage of, is all out-of-whack. The wealthy exploit the poor, using false weights. They exact heavy taxes in order to maintain their lavish lifestyle. Their relationship to what they possess is healthy, but their relationship to others is nonexistent. God’s judgment is coming, Amos says.

Our Gospel text is loosely connected to the Amos passage.

The incident recorded for us in Mark’s Gospel account, chapter ten, is also recorded in Matthew, chapter nineteen, and in Luke, chapter eighteen.

A wealthy young man (Luke calls him a “ruler) comes up to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. All well and good. The young man’s question is a question that each of us must ask ourselves, and a question we must answer.

Jesus responds, citing various commandments that are part of the Law of Moses.

In answer, the young man says, in effect, “I’m good…I’ve kept all of those my entire life.”

Then Jesus, who, Mark tells us, loved the young man, told him to sell all that he had and to give the proceeds to the poor. Then, Jesus said, “come, follow me.”

Here, the young man’s relationship to his possessions comes into view.

Mark tells us that he turned away from the Lord, grieving, because of all that he had.

We would do well, at this point, to recall some of the prevalent attitudes that were extant in the day of our Lord’s earthly ministry. For, back then, if a person was healthy, wealthy and had many children, the common belief was that all of these wonderful things were so because God’s favor had shone upon that person. Surely, the common thinking was back then, that person must be living a good and faithful life before God. Peter confirms this common belief, exclaiming that the disciples had left everything to follow the Lord.

We can also see this in the young man’s response to the Lord: “All these (commandments) I have kept from my youth.”

The root problem with the young man is his relationship to his “stuff”. When Jesus tells him to give up what he has, and to sell it, giving the proceeds to the poor, the cost is too high for the young man to come to grips with. In essence, the young man is more attached to his possessions than he is to following the Lord’s call to discipleship.

It is a matter of relationship.

At this point, we would do well to affirm the fact that having “stuff”, even a lot of it, isn’t a bad thing, in and of itself. It’s how we relate to what we have that makes a difference.

As a test, what would be our response if we were  to – God forbid – lose much or all of what we currently have to fire, flood or some other disaster? How would we react to such a turn of events.

The answer might be telling for us, shining God’s bright light on our deepest attitudes and perspectives.

We said at the outset of this homily that we live in a world which is filled with relationships.

Not only are we immersed in a world in which we relate to the “stuff” we have, but we are also immersed in a world in which we are in relationship with God and with one another.

How we relate to God, as our primary and formative relationship, will affect and color our relationship to other Christians, to non-believers, and to the things we own.

May God enable and enlighten our reflection on our relationships to Him, to others, and to the “stuff” of our lives.

AMEN.