No Heroes?

Mark 13:1-8; Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25

I’m getting very tired of the end of the world.

Weary, and heart-achy, and doubting my stamina for more alarm, and predictions of disaster and instability.

 

And, here it is again this week, just as it is every year about this time, in our cycle of reading the gospels and living the seasons of the church.

Every year in November we start hearing apocalyptic predictions from Jesus, as the church ramps us up toward the season of Advent. Ramps us up for practicing our expectation of the great day of Christ’s coming once for all to end the world and renew the universe.

 

Today, we hear Jesus warn of wars and rumors of wars. Natural disasters and famines and international conflict, and that’s all only the beginning.  

And – I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m even less ready for all of that today than I am most years around this time.

 

Not quite every year, but most years – and almost any time of year – the headlines of world news make a pretty decent case that we could be, now, in the moment Jesus is talking about. A world of international – and inside-the-nation – conflict. Of natural disasters, or famines, or plagues.

And sometimes I feel prepared to face it. To encounter the end of the world with courage and faith.

And sometimes I just don’t.

Sometimes I know I am not ready for the end of the world.

Often, in fact, I long for stability.

For the solidity and trustworthiness of the institutions I depend on – just like Jesus’ early disciples in today’s story, pointing out the substantial, solid stability of the Temple.

Only to hear Jesus announce it’s all going to fall apart.

[Sigh.]

 

And not only is the whole order of the world as we know it going to fall apart, but Jesus will go on to say he is expecting us to testify – to stand up to governments and councils and courts and proclaim good news and the presence and power of God, even while people hate or betray us.

 

And… I don’t want to be a hero.

 

I am willing to believe Jesus – to believe that the Holy Spirit will sustain us, that both God and the world need us – me, even – to proclaim good news, to proclaim God’s presence and power and love in the midst of danger and chaos and despair. But sometimes – often – I am not sure I’m capable of everything faith calls for, in those times of chaos and change.
And I don’t really want to be a hero.

At least, not since I realized that most heroes don’t actually fly.

 

But maybe I – we – don’t need to be heroes.

Whether you or I are eagerly anticipating the coming of Christ to end all familiar things,
or whether we’re dreading the chaos and danger of the end of the world as we know it,

we might in fact be able to be what Jesus is expecting of us without actually having to be heroic.

In fact, we might just need to be….irritating.

Provoking.

 

Because it’s not just the words of Jesus that tell us how to be when we’re waiting for the coming Day of Christ, or experiencing the end of all we know. 

We also heard, a few minutes ago, a little glimpse into another community where people were, well, not sure if the world as they knew it was ending, but who definitely knew that they were supposed to be – like us – anticipating the day of Christ coming to thoroughly change the world.

 

In what we traditionally call “the Letter to the Hebrews”, but was more probably a sermon, we heard that community being advised that in their waiting, in that possibly end-of-the-world day they lived in, they should be “provoking”.

 

Specifically, provoking one another to love and good deeds.

I always trip over that phrase, because “love and good deeds” sounds like it should be more sweetness and light than provocation and annoyance. (Right?)

But I suspect that that particular word choice was not an accident.

Because irritation can often move us more quickly to action than good intentions ever get us off the couch.

 

Sometimes, I admit, I donate or support an important resource or cause just because hearing about it all the time is so irritating. (Public radio, I’m looking at you.)

Maybe some of you are provoked to shop for our household goods pantry because it’s annoying when I make announcements about it every week.

Sometimes a friend or a family member interrupts and annoys me so much that I have to stop the irritant and I focus, and look, and listen – and suddenly discover all over again the reasons I love that aggravating, wonderful person. Suddenly find myself wanting to take action for their needs – to love as a verb, not just a feeling.

And sometimes little bits of provoked love and good like that are important bits of the way Jesus comes into the world, and God changes everything.

 

There are plenty of other ways to provoke good deeds: friendly competitions in service to others; telling your stories of loving success until someone else just has to try it for themselves; persistent invitations to join you at St. Paul’s breakfast or Cathedral Kitchen’s dinners for our hungry neighbors.
Or just being a community where it’s so obvious we will meet the needs around us, protect human dignity, serve anyone as Christ, love the …difficult to love, that we accidentally noodge others to be the same.
Or experiencing a gentle provocation to be generous because the people you like to be with are generous people.

(It works in civic communities, too, not just in church communities.)

 

That ancient preacher tells us that we “provoke” one another this way because we have confidence and hope; have trust in God’s faithful promise to bring us into, hold us in, the direct and loving and powerful presence of God. 

Because we know that God is bringing us into the world as God dreams it to be, even when the world as we know it is ending.

 

If you or I don’t know that from our own experience today, we can know it from the experience and faith of those around us and before us, through one end of the world after another.

 

It’s as true now as it was 1900 years ago or so when that preacher first spoke to a wary, hopeful, uncertain congregation:

Whether we are anticipating the glorious, transformative coming of God among us,

or dreading the end of the world as we know it,

we hold fast to our hope of God’s deep, loving promises.

So we must “provoke one another to love and good deeds.” We cannot neglect to meet together in communities of faith and trust; we push back – together – against the forces of isolation and fragmentation, division and loneliness. We give – and receive - courage and support, heart and hope and love, from and to one another.

 

Whatever end of the world you and I have to live through, we can go on quietly telling the good news of God’s constant, insistent presence and love to those near us, those like us – and even to those opposed to us in small and daily ways.
We can act with just a little bit of courage to do the small right or holy thing in front of you or me at one particular moment. We can come together and encourage – give heart to – one another.

 

And we may – just may – look back some day and find that we have been quiet heroes – God’s heroes – after all.

Not Enough

Mark 12:38-44

How many of us have been in a situation where nothing you could do seemed to matter?

Maybe a good friend from college has cancer, or a difficult pregnancy, and you live halfway across the continent and can’t offer rides to chemo, or babysitting the other kids, or homemade soup – or whatever you do best to care for a friend in need.
All you’ve got is calling or texting or maybe DoorDash, and it’s just not enough.

 

Maybe you’re watching someone you love tank a relationship over a misunderstanding, or get scapegoated by a system you and they have no leverage to change.

 

Maybe your garden, or your time sense, are really distressed by 80 degree days in November – but is reducing your home power use and driving less really going to matter enough to change the climate for the better?

 

Maybe you’ve spent four days, or four years, or more, wondering how the government and people of your nation can be so misguided, or neglectful of real people’s needs, or incompetent or dangerous – and frustrated with how little there seems to be for you or me to do to change that.

I strongly suspect many of us have felt that way at least once in the past few years, however we feel this week.

 

And how many of us have asked ourselves, at least once, why we should bother to pray, or to give, or to work, or to try, or even to hope – when nothing I, or you, can do could possibly make the difference?

 

If that’s never been you, God bless you.

I want to know your secret, and I have some challenging tasks I’d like your help with!

 

But when I – and maybe you – feel like we have no power to matter, well, those are the times when it might be helpful to notice what Jesus is noticing in the story we just read today.

 

When Jesus sat with his friends in the Temple, watched as folks came and went, presenting their offerings for the glory of God and the ministry of the Temple, and noticed the one person among them all whose offering could not possibly have made a difference.

 

Noticed the widow – a term which flags for us that this person was one of the least powerful and most vulnerable people to come into the Temple – the woman who offered two basically worthless coins.

 

No power; no visibility and influence; no possibility of making an impact.

And she gave everything she had.

 

Maybe there was someone in the Temple treasury or administration who knew this widow – knew her faithful commitment and dedication, paid attention over the years. Maybe there was a group of other worshipers who loved her, prayed with her and shared jokes, valued her in the community, like so many of our faithful people here at Trinity.

 

Maybe there wasn’t.

Maybe no one else would have ever realized she existed, if Jesus hadn’t called our attention to her.

 

Or maybe Jesus calling attention to her sparked a change in the scribes and other Temple leaders he was calling out just before this scene. Maybe some of the scribes and leaders listening heard Jesus comparing this widow to the people who care for their own ego and prestige instead of caring for the vulnerable, and changed their own behavior from “devouring widow’s houses” to supporting and sustaining widows and all the vulnerable people God has always told us to care for, and attend to as God’s beloved – even if they thought they couldn’t change the whole system.

Maybe not.

We don’t know.

 

We do know that Jesus noticed.

That God notices.

That the little, useless-feeling things we can do; things that couldn’t possibly make a difference to the world, or the system, are noticed by God.

Matter to God.

Perhaps mean everything, with God.

 

There’s nothing wrong – there’s much that is good – about “giving out of our abundance”.

When we have the money, or the time, or the influence, or enthusiasm – when we have the power to make a difference what we do absolutely matters.

When we give out of our abundance, we also get to enjoy the rewards of unstrained generosity, the fun of making something better – and perhaps even the public recognition of, and respect for, our contributions and efforts.

 

But when we give our “not enough to matter”, our “nothing” that costs all we have, God notices.

Jesus pays attention.

And God can make our nothing into everything.

Can make your not-enough, and my nothing-left-to-matter, into the thing necessary in that moment for God’s love to change the world.

 

Our abundance and poverty – our power to matter, or our lack of it – is not distributed evenly.

Some of us have abundance of money, but poverty of time.

Some of us are rich in time, but desperately in need of emotional resilience and hope.

Some of us are rich in resilience, and poor in health or physical strength.

Others have strength, and need relationships. Others have love and connection overflowing and no cash at all. Some of us are rich in all those areas, some of us are strapped for everything.

 

And what many of us need to hear - what I need to hear from Jesus – is that where we have nothing to give, and we give it anyway, God sees it. Jesus notices.

And God can make it everything.

 

The powerless private joke (or meme) that’s all you’ve got might become the silver bullet a friend needs against despair.
The lunch invitation you don’t know how to find the time for, or the phone call you can scarcely muster the resilience for, might become the conversation that turns a tide.

The one meal you can make, or serve, to feed a hungry neighbor;

the single day of shelter or the brief window of protection you can scrape together; the one letter you can barely write;

the one meeting you can squeeze out the time to attend;

or the last scrap of guts or hope you can muster to speak up or speak out –

any of these might be the tiny right thing at the right time to save a life or move a metaphorical mountain.

 

The last two half-pennies in your hand might be an inspiration of systemic change, or a pebble that helps turn some inert weight of others’ abundance into an avalanche of good.

 

And your noticing - my noticing - when someone else is giving all they can, might just magnify “nothing” into enough to heal a heart or spark a fire of hope.

I don’t know for sure.

I do know that Jesus notices.

That God cares.

And that when there is nothing we can do that matters, what we do still matters, with God.

Might be everything, with God.

Hardness of Heart

Mark 10:2-16

Does it ever frustrate you when the church seems to get caught up in political issues, and wind up getting involved in things that should be someone else’s business?

 

As often as not, it’s because people come – as they do in today’s gospel story – and demand an opinion on the issues of the day:

Tell us, Jesus, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?“Is the king’s marriage legal?” they are asking. “Is it holy?”

 

Herod Antipas, after all, was a divorced man married to a divorced woman (a woman who had been previously married to Herod’s brother).
Jesus’ cousin John has already gotten himself beheaded for his fierce criticism of this post-divorce marriage (among other things).

And now, we’re demanding that Jesus publicly wade into this mess.

 

There’s no good answer to this question. So Jesus, as he usually does, takes the intended trap as a starting place, and leads off into a wilderness no one was planning to have him get us into.

 

He starts with “well, what does the scripture say?”

He knows – and his questioners know perfectly well – that the Torah, the law of Moses, accepts divorce as a fact.
For as long as God’s people have had written law, written guidance on relationships acceptable to God, divorce has been a part of the fabric of society.

That’s the “don’t bother to try to trap me” part of Jesus’ response. And then he launches his real point.

 

It’s lawful; it always has been, because of your hardness of heart.

Marriage, in its right and holy state, is a lifetime unity. That’s the whole and perfect relationship God created to nurture and strengthen humanity. That’s what we dream of, what we intend, every time we come to God, to the church, to enter marriage these days, too.

 

But humanity is broken and imperfect. And God knows it.

Knows it, and creates a set of systems and holy law around our broken imperfection.

 

Jesus has not sought out an opportunity to shame people who have experienced divorce; or to scold those whose marriages are broken – or those who are broken by a marriage that’s not whole, not perfect.

Jesus responds to those who want to use divorce as a political trap, and chooses to remind us that none of us live up to the wholeness and perfection that God creates.

Because of our hardness of heart.

 

Our cardiosclerosis (almost literally, in the Greek).

The drying and hardening of the muscle of life and of love.

All the kinds of love that connect us in human relationship, not just in marriage.

 

For all that Jesus is laying down the law about divorce in the story we read today – and laying down new law, more egalitarian and more stringent about the possible injuries to others – I don’t think that divorce itself, or the institution of marriage, or the preservation of any particular marriage, is the point he’s focused on.

 

Instead, I think his focus – the focus he wants us to have – is on generosity of heart. Lively flexibility of heart. Like the heart of God.

The heart that flexes, grows, and strengthens in the face of humanity’s constant imperfections and failures and breakages, as well as in joy and in unity and completeness. The responsive and generous heart of God, that does not clog and dry up as our human hearts so often tend to do.

 

Our hearts – mine at least, and I suspect I’m not alone – our hearts do get broken.
In marriage and out of marriage, in all our human relationships.
And many of the injuries to our hearts – the little ones, the daily ones, often – scab up; harden. Clog up, just a little bit, our empathy, our generosity toward others.

It’s our self-protective instinct to not get hurt again.

 

Or we clog with just a garden variety solidifying of a resistance to irritations and annoyances. Because all these humans we live with and try to love are…full of annoying or irritating habits and needs.

 

Or there are times when the muscle of love for our siblings, our neighbors, feels overworked; when our compassion feels weakened because there are so many demands on our empathy and generosity.
So many devastating losses to the winds and waters in our news feeds and our family and friend stories.
So many illnesses and injuries and losses that come to friends and family members in waves and floods – that we want to support, to respond to with generous hearts, and are just too much at once, and our hearts feel stiffer and slower when the next one comes, or the first one drags on. And we ourselves get tired, and sore, and brittle and clogged.

 

And sometimes, honestly, our hearts get stiff and slow because we don’t take them out for exercise often enough. Just like my physical joints and heart and lungs, my emotional heart, or yours, can get slower because it’s more comfortable to sit still than to seek out the emotional exercise – the new relationships, the hard conversations, the actions of giving and caring, the sharing of joys – that keeps our muscles pumping and compassion flowing.

 

Jesus pushes us – today, all the time – to expect more from our hearts than we are used to. To expect and intend our hearts to be more and more like the heart of God.

That’s often not an easy thing to do. It requires attention and intention.

But we do not have to do it alone.

 

For many of us – not all, but many – marriage itself can be the relationship in which we renew, and heal, and strengthen our hearts, growing more generous and flexible in a working, living love that mirrors the generous heart of God.

 

For many of us – intentionally, for all of us – the community of disciples, the household of God should be a place of heart renewal. A place and a practice of softening and strengthening our muscles of compassion and trust and generosity, of love. Love for one another, and for God.

And of flexing that muscle of life inside us that receives love from God and one another.

 

I look for that, and I find that at Trinity.

At our practices of exercising our compassion and generosity together, seeking out ways to care for strangers, and for one another.

At our common prayer, meant to heal and stretch our scar-tissue and give us flexible hearts, more ready to love, and give, and receive.

I hear the strengthening beat of our shared heart, as we meet challenges together, adapt to changes together, welcome new friends, nurture our children together.

I hear the sound of God’s whole and generous heart in our shared song and praise in worship, and in the joys we share with one another.

 

I recognize myself, broken and imperfect, in the hardness of heart that Jesus calls out, today.

I recognize us, together, in the whole and generous heart of God that Jesus reminds us we are created to share.

The divine heart that doesn’t harden, but makes space for our broken imperfections. And still demands that we grow, no matter how often we break. Grow stronger, and truer, and more whole and perfect and holy, together.