Proper 21B

Proper-21b

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp21_RCL.html

Almighty power in mercy & pity

If God is going to work with us about anything, God must first have our attention. Of course, God can do lots of things without me. Really an infinite number of things.

But if what we’re talking about is me cooperating with God — which on the whole seems like a good thing to do — we have to be, like, cooperating.

Right at the very beginning of our liturgy today, I claimed something that gets my attention. In the collect of the day I addressed God and claimed that:

“O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity:”

God’s power is found in mercy? Amazing!

When we show mercy and pity we are cooperating with God’s “almighty power” -- they become our super-powers 1.

Sometimes for sure God’s power is just power. Awesome power.

Creation. Making the heavens and the earth. Making the tiny creatures that crawl upon the earth. Making creatures like you and me.

Awesome power.

But we claim in today’s collect that the most powerful power — is mercy and pity — understood as “sympathetic sorrow for one suffering, distressed, or unhappy”, which is to say empathy for those who suffer.

Something of that power of mercy and pity is found in the words from the letter of James today:

  • Are any among you suffering? They should pray.
  • Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.
  • The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Prayer is a tool of the super powers of mercy and pity
  • Like the lamb who is lost, when we go out with mercy and comfort to bring that lost one home, we have shown the almighty power of God.

Protect the people

When we pay attention to the one who is lost and seek to bring them back, we are caring for the whole people, the whole community. When one is lost or suffering, the flock is not whole. The whole flock suffers. Mercy and pity oblige us to care for the health of the whole body.

The word that comes through to me today has to do with the ties that bind us. It is said:

if the ties that bind us together are stronger than the ones that tear us apart, all will be well

Mercy and pity lead us to focus on the ties that bind, to build up and nourish the ties that bind us, to resist what tears us apart. Then with Julian of Norwich we can say, "All shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well."

God seeks our attention so that we might be co-creators with God’s almighty power of mercy and pity.

Mercy and empathy with those who suffer implies our connection to one another. When one falls the whole body falls with it.

Esther

Today’s reading from Esther gives us a delightful and playful example of defending the ties, the connections, that bind individuals to the community.

Jewish feast of Purim

This is the only Sunday our lectionary allots to the book of Esther. It is a traditional reading for the feast of Purim in Judaism, occuring in the early months of the year. Purim celebrates the saving of the people from Haman who had been plotting to annihilate the Jewish people.

In the course of 3 years in seminary, praying the daily office every day, we got around to reading the book of Esther. We were somehow prepared for the intrigue and drama. Much like a melodrama, with hero and heroine battling the obvious enemy, there was a kind of quiet cheering when Haman dies on the gallows.

It seems to me that there are many movies and TV shows that are run with that basic model.

Mordecai and Esther are the good guys. Haman is the bad guy. Our reading today comes near the end of the book.

  • Haman: “on these gallows”
  • Mordecai and Esther the heroes

This adventure tale provides us with an entertaining account of those focusing on the ties that bind us. It is sobering as the adventure is gruesome in its violence. It is perhaps akin to a surgery that might be required to allow healing to take place.

“Hedge” of Torah (Pirke Aboth)

In the opening of a book from the early rabbis, written around the time of Jesus, we read about how the people collaborate with God to protect the people.

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Joshua. Joshua gave it over to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the Men of the Great Assembly. They [the Men of the Great Assembly] would always say these three things: Be cautious in judgment. Establish many pupils. And make a safety fence (a hedge) around the Torah.

Protecting the people by means of:

  • recognizing God has the (almighty) power
  • the people must be careful (cautious) in judging others
  • the people must be intentional about passing on the teaching to others
  • the people must keep a safety fence around what is sacred

In the book of Esther, through intrigue and plotting, Mordecai and Esther protect the people from persecution and death. They become co-creators with God in caring for the whole community at a time of threat.

Strengthening the system to fight what threatens the ties that bind

Many years ago I learned a concept that has been important to me ever since. It was explained to me that our bodies produce malformed cells all the time. This is caused by all sorts of things. But the wonder and miracle of our bodies is such that our natural anti-bodies know to cast out the malformed cells.

It’s when our natural defenses break down, when we forget or lose the ability to protect the whole body, that illness and disease results.

The hedge, the safety fence, the almighty power of God, mercy and pity, protects the whole body.

Today’s gospel passage

Today’s gospel passage shows us Jesus deliberately and dramatically teaching his disciples about the care for the whole body and not just a part of it. It illustrates focusing on the ties that bind us rather than those that pull us apart.

The disciples report:

We saw someone casting out demons in your name

The disciples wonder:

Who’s in and who’s out? Who’s not doing it the right way?

They announce:

We’re ready to cast them out.

But Jesus tells them

You must focus on the whole body; the tent is much bigger than you can see or imagine.

Failure to care for one another is a Stumbling block. Here the “little ones” may stand for children. Jesus often sees the people best illustrated in the children. Perhaps it means the quiet ones. The ones who don't stand out. The ones we barely notice or forget about.

If you don't expend your superpower, your mercy and pity, on them; then, Jesus says, you are working to tear down the body not build it up.

  • If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones
  • If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out
  • Better to commit suicide?

These are difficult things. Violent, like Esther was. Jesus sometimes uses that kind of language to get our attention. Like the words that began this homily. God's power in mercy and pity.

Unless the Lord has our attention we'll wander off.

“Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” ― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Jesus urges us to take off our shoes as we walk on holy ground. And it's all holy ground.

Jesus speaks in riddles that seem like enigmas. He uses paradox to get our attention? And once he has it, he begins the work of transforming us by his almighty power.

“For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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  1. cf. John 14:12-14: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”↩

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