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The Presentation  February 2, 2020

Posted on February 2, 2020 by Beth Crane

Malachi 3:1-4
Psalm 84
Hebrews 2:14-18
Luke 2:22-40

Today we celebrate the feast of the presentation of Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. Forty days after the birth of a first born son, the parents would take him to the temple to dedicate him to God. We don’t have the opportunity to celebrate this unless it falls on a Sunday, and this is one of those years.

Our first reading is from the prophet Malachi, We know almost nothing about this man. The name “Malachi” means “messenger, but scholars tell us it is not his real name. He is a messenger, so his book has been named “Messenger.” Scholars tell us that his ministry took place between 520 B.C.E. and 400 B.C.E.

God is calling this messenger to prepare the way for the time when the Lord will come to the temple. We hear the words which Handel has so beautifully set to music in the Messiah. “But who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears?”

The Lord will purify the people so that they can present offerings to the Lord as a people of compassion and justice, a people who love the Lord with all their heart and soul and mind and strength and who love their neighbors as they love themselves.

Psalm 84, our psalm for today, was a song that pilgrims sang as they entered the temple in Jerusalem. How dear are God’s holy places to us. How dear is Grace Church to us. We love to spend time with God and each other, and our strength is in God.

Our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Jesus came to be one of us so that he could destroy the power of death. As John Donne wrote, “Death  has no more dominion” over us. Jesus has become like us so that he can become “like his brothers and sisters (namely, us) in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God.” And then those words which are so reassuring and inspiring to us in times of great trial. “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” Our Lord has walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and he helps us when we have to walk   that valley. We know that he has gone before us, and his grace holds us up and even carries us.

Our gospel is a tender scene of celebration. It is forty days after the first Christmas, and Mary and Joseph bring the little Jesus to the temple to worship and to celebrate and to offer him to the Lord and ask God’s blessing.

In the temple is a faithful elderly man named Simeon. His song of praise, the Nunc Dimittis is in our prayer book on page 93.  Simeon realizes that he has seen the Savior, and he sings a song of thanks and praise, “Lord, you now have set your servant free/ to go in peace as you have promised;/ For these eyes of mine  have seen the Savior,/ whom you have prepared for all the world to see:/A Light to enlighten the nations,/ and the glory of your people Israel.”

Just think what it must have felt like to see this beautiful baby, only a little over a month old, and realize that this is your Savior. Simon blesses Mary and Joseph and tells then that because of what Jesus will have to suffer, a sword will pierce their own hearts too.

Another devout person, Anna, is there, She never leaves the temple. She “worships there with prayer and fasting night and day,” She, too, recognizes who Jesus is. She praises God and tells the people that Jesus is the Savior.

And then those final sentences, so filled with meaning: “When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord,  they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.

The next time we will see Jesus is when he is twelve years old and the family goes to the temple for the Passover. In those days, families traveled in large extended family groups. Mary and Joseph started on their way home in that large family group, thinking Jesus was with Uncle Amos and his family or perhaps Aunt Elizabeth and her family, and they finally realized he wasn’t with them. We recall that they rushed back to Jerusalem and found him teaching in the temple, astounding people with his learning.

 They had been so worried and they tried to tell him how upset they were that they had left him in the temple without even realizing it. We will never forget his answer. “Don’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business?” Even at age twelve, Jesus knew who he was.

He is our Savior, someone who understands all of what it means to be human, and, because he understands, we can go to him and tell him about the times when we fail to love God and our brothers and sisters or the times when we really put our foot in it and say something we regret or the times when we get angry because we are very tired, and why are we tired? Because we tried to do it ourselves instead of asking him for help. We can tell him the truth because we know that he understands. And because he love us. And forgives us. And gives us strength to go on.

These two very elderly people, Simeon and Anna, understand whom they are seeing, a Savior who loves and understands and forgives and strengthens us. May we know him, too, more and more deeply. May we see him more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly. Amen.

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Pentecost 20 Proper 22B RCL October 7, 2018

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Beth Crane

Job 1:1; 2:1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

In our opening reading this morning, we are looking in at a meeting of the heavenly beings. God points out a man named Job, who is faithful to God and chooses good over evil. Satan, who at that time in history was seen as a kind of prosecuting attorney, challenges God. Satan is certain that, if forced to endure all kinds of challenges and tragedies, Job will eventually curse God. So God gives Satan permission to visit these trials upon Job.

Our reading ends with the very sad picture of Job sitting in ashes with sores all over his body. Job’s wife tells him to give up his integrity, curse God, and die. Job refuses to do so. In the course of doing that, he insults his wife’s intelligence, revealing the sexist views of his time. Women were considered to be less intelligent than men. But we must remember that the book was written about twenty-five hundred years ago. Let’s hope that we have made some progress on that issue.

Back in those times and even now, there is a belief that, if we trust in God and do God’s will, we will be healthy, wealthy, and wise. If we are faithful, we will be prosperous. This belief can be summarized as good things happen to good people; bad things happen to bad people.

Such beliefs fall under what I call BT, Bad Theology. We have only to look at the life of our Lord to see that good people indeed suffer. Jesus endured the worst possible death and humiliation that anyone could suffer in his time.  Many of God’s most faithful servants have faced great difficulties. Yesterday in our calendar, we remembered William Tyndale, who was killed for translating the Bible into English!

Job loses all his many possessions; his family and friends desert him, except for some so-called friends who spout Bad Theology to him, adding to his suffering. People laugh at him. Where once he was sought out for advice and counsel, people avoid him. And still he will not curse God. He will not abandon his faith. He will not give up hope. The Book of Job does not solve the problem of evil, but it does assure us that bad things happen to good people and that just because someone has great riches and power does not mean that that person is following God.

We live in a fallen creation. This world us not operating in the way that God would want it to. At the center of our faith is a cross, and, as we look upon that cross, we realize how far this world is from what God would call it to be. On that cross, some very powerful humans tried to kill the love of God.

We had another clergy conference this week on racial reconciliation. One of the books we were asked to read was White Like Me by Tim Wise. Tim is the son of a Jewish father and a Christian mother. He is white. He grew up in Nashville, and, for some reason, he had more African-American friends in school than white friends, that is, up through middle school. In middle school, he noticed that the classes were supposedly arranged according to ability, but the white students ended up in the accelerated classes and the African-American children ended up in the slower classes, no matter how intelligent they were.

When he got to high school, the system became even more rigid. There were college-bound tracks and vocational tracks. No African-American young people ended up in the college-bound tracks. At one point, early in high school, one of Tim’s closest African-American friends tells Tim that he will no longer speak to him because they are in different worlds. Simply because he was white, Tim had opportunities that students of color did not have.  When it comes to issues of race and gender and class, we are not on a level playing field.

In our gospel for today, the Pharisees ask one of those questions that indicate that they are not trying to learn anything; they are trying to trick Jesus.  In Jesus’ time, it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for the most minor reason. He could divorce her if he didn’t like her cooking or if she didn’t keep house the way he wanted her to. The woman, on the other hand, did not have the same rights. She was his property. It was almost impossible for a woman to get a divorce for any reason.

In order to be responsible interpreters of the Bible, we must pause and say that when our Church barred divorced persons from receiving Communion, that was a misuse of Scripture. There are times when divorce or annulment of a marriage is warranted. Domestic violence is real, and it kills marriages. Also, some people can appear to be capable of holding up their end of a marriage commitment but, as time goes on, it becomes apparent that they do not possess that ability.

Jesus is telling us that marriage is a lifelong commitment, and he is also telling us not to treat any human beings as property. The reason we know this is that Jesus tells the disciples to let the children come to him. It is hard for us to believe, but in those days, children were chattel, possessions, and, worse, they were almost considered dispensable. 

A man of that time and culture would not spend time with children. He was too busy going about important business to waste his time with a little child. That was women’s work.

Yet our Lord takes these little ones and cherishes them. And he tells us that we need to receive his kingdom with childlike openness and wonder and trust and faith. As we read the Book of Job, we can see that Job has that almost childlike faith. He will not give up on God. He trusts God.

Our Lord is also calling us to treat the most vulnerable among us with the same love and respect with which he treated those children.  Amen.

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