Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17 Psalm 127
Hebrews 9:24-28 Mark 12:38-44
Today's lections present us with some significant losses and the various responses to these situations of loss.
We are presented the situations of two widows, Ruth and the unknown widow observed by Jesus and his disciples dropping her coins into the Temple treasury, and Jesus breaking the confidentiality of her giving by commenting about it to his disciples. Surely, evidence of a teaching story. How many of us tithers would like Jesus to observe what we were dropping into the offering plate and making remarks to others about the status of our giving?
Widows get their titles from having lost their husbands. Ruth was a Moabite who married someone from Judah living in her country. After her mother-in-law and sister also lost their husbands, they were left without the kind of family protection that was needed for widows. Ruth decided to go with Naomi to her Judah home, as a foreigner, and she was a fortunate widow in embracing the poverty as a gleaner of the leftover grains in the field of Boaz. Her scheme devised with Naomi attracted Boaz and he married Ruth and she became the mother of Obed, father of Jesse, father of David. For Ruth, the family rescue and advocacy system worked, but family and tribal systems do not always work to care for widows and vulnerable persons.
Institutions with their laws, arise to require an extra-family solutions to situation of care which don't get accomplished within a family. The laws and the institutional alms of the Temple addressed the situations of needs for orphans and widows in society.
Now fast-forward to the widow in the Temple giving her last two copper coins. This story is replete with ironies. One could highlight the character of the widow. She may be the epitome of the mysterious truth that generous people are never poor, at least they never see themselves that way. They always see themselves as having something to give. Another irony is that the person who is supposed to be taken care of by the institution is proportionately outperforming rich fat cats in her maintenance of the Temple, perhaps even their alms fund to help other widows.
In the writing context of the Gospel of Mark, within the Jesus Movement community, the presentation of this story had other meanings and messages. The writer of Mark knew that the Temple had been destroyed; the Temple institution was finished. The answer for the demise of the Temple and the priesthood was the belief that the institutions were under judgment. Sometimes we might over-simplify the notion of divine judgment treating such judgments as though God was in heaven micro-managing the sins and intervening with corresponding punishment. The Greek word word for judgment is the word that we get the English word "crisis" from. Judgment is crisis and crisis is judgment. The Temple community, the synagogue communities, the community of John the Baptist, and the Jesus Movement were all under crisis because they did not have advocacy within the Roman Empire. The status for "minority" religious and ethnic groups which were viewed as potential threats to the Emperor and his surrogates was always tenuous. One could say that living in the Jesus Movement during the time of the Roman Empire in the late first century could be defined as crisis living.
Crisis living requires adjustments.
How did the Jesus Movement interpret the demise of the Temple? What would the Jesus Movement do without a Temple and a Temple priesthood? The writer in the letter to the Hebrews understood that the earthly Temple, in a platonic-like philosophy of forms; the Temple was understood to be but a copy of the true heavenly one. And the eternal priesthood deriving from the mysterious Melchizedek, had a phase of being copied in the Levitical priesthood, but the Risen Christ assumes the fullness of the priesthood as the great heavenly High Priest. And the new Temple became dispersed within the bodies of people who were now inhabited by the Risen Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. As Paul declared, "your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And the High Priestly Christ makes the members of the church priestly in their perpetual intercessory ministry within this world.
Crisis requires adjustments for us today too. Our world empires and forms of political governance often make us live in and with crises. In times of crisis, it often happens that the most vulnerable do not adequately get taken care of. The institutions of governments do not always succeed at some basic care needs for many people who do not have advocacy, so the church as the new extended family needs to be present to help the vulnerable in the ways that the gathered church can help. A gathering for a meal in house churches within the Roman Empire gave the church members opportunity to assess the situation of vulnerability of each person gathered and respond by giving the needed care.
Today, as ever, we need to assess the current crises which face us in our various locations and situations. We need to accept our priestly intercessory roles in taking care the vulnerable in our midst.
May Christ our High Priest, given us wisdom in the crises which confront us today.
No comments:
Post a Comment