Proper 23, Year B (RCL) notes

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[Amos 5:6-7,10-15]
http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB/Pentecost/BProp23.html
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Some themes & motifs:
1) "gate" image
2) "seeking"
3) Futility Curses on the unrighteous
4) persecution of the righteous

--> "GATE" IMAGE
1) "They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth"
2) "...You who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate"
3) "Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate"
- the "gate" of a city is an important public place in the OT
- public, social, gathering place, assembly-place
- in this passage: where justice will either be done or foiled
- where truth will be spoken, or truthtellers shunned
- as a public place, this is about the moral well-being of the whole city, the justice or injustice of the whole society: the "gate" is the open battlefield for the soul of the culture

--> SEEKING
- Parallelism:
- Seek the Lord & live.
- Seek good and not evil, that you may live,
- ...and the Lord will be with you.
- To seek Good is to seek God, and vice-versa.
- What do we want to go after? God, or Mammon?

--> FUTILITY CURSES
on those who seek wealth through injustice:
- built stone houses/ not live in them
- plant vineyards/ not drink their wine

--> PERSECUTION OF THE RIGHTEOUS
This passage speaks of how the unrighteous who "turn justice to wormwood" also "bring righteousness to the ground." This is in terms not only of their own misdeeds, but how they persecute those who are themselves righteous: they "hate the one who reproves... and the one who speaks the truth."
- "Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time."
- This verse warns that truth-telling, that godly reproof, will bring disapproval and persecution upon the righteous in a culture that does not want to know its own sin!
- Then again, we are to "Hate evil and love good, and establish justice at the gate." How can we establish justice if we are silent in the face of injustice? And the "gate" has already been established as the place where godly reproof will be given, where truth will be spoken. Perhaps it is better for us to be good than "prudent." However, let us not have any illusions: there will be resistance. There will be push-back. Those who do not want to hear the truth will not necessarily "play nice" when we tell it like it is.

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[Hebrews 3:1-6]
http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB/Pentecost/BProp23.html
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Here we see Hebrews' characteristic rhetoric of one-upsmanship in play:
As usual, Jesus is somehow more-than or greater-than the old dispensation or figure. This sort of rhetoric runs through the entire letter to the Hebrews.

- Moses was faithful in all of God's house as a servant
- Jesus was faithful over God's house as a son

Similarly, Jesus is more worthy of glory than Moses by way of this analogy:
-> Jesus:Moses
-> Builder:What-is-Built

Both comparisons convey that Jesus is greater,
and both use the image of a house,
but the two give Moses a slightly different "role" in the metaphor of the house:
1) Moses is like a servant set over a household, a seneschal.
2) Moses is like the house itself.
2a) Alternatively, the People of God is the house. Moses (as the one who gave the Law to Israel) could stand for all of Israel.

A servant or seneschal is faithful by executing the will of the householder-- by following orders. Moses was faithful in this way, following the commands given by God "to testify to the things that would be spoken later."

How is a house faithful? Perhaps just by standing firm, by being a good, structurally-sound house. The author tells us that "we are God's house if we hold firm to the confidence and the pride that belong to hope." A friend of mine, somewhat more adroit with Greek than I, tells me that this could read: "if we hold firm the boldness and boasting that belong to hope." That is, we are not prideful in ourselves, but boast in the hope that we have-- in God. If we are all bricks in this house, our confidence/hope in God is the mortar that glues us together into the House of God.

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[Mark 10:17-24(28-31)]
http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearB/Pentecost/BProp23.html
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I wonder if "Good teacher" doesn't evidence a certain desire on the part of the man to please Jesus, to be accepted. It sort of sounds like "teacher's pet" language. He seems to want Jesus to approve of him.

It's sort of unusual to describe "wealth" as a "lack!"

Jesus looks on the young man who has kept the commandments since his youth and loves him.
1- Jesus loves him even while he "lacks" something.
2- Although he is not "perfect" in his faith yet, this man is pretty good, modelling his life after the Law.
3- Let us remember to hear the echo of Jesus' love in the command that follows it. Jesus is not sternly rebuking the man, chastising him like a bad child. He loves him. This is a loving invitation.

Maybe, with this teaching, Jesus helps illustrate how "no one is good but God alone." This young man certainly is on the way to "good-ness" -- he keeps the commandments Jesus mentions, and he clearly wants to be good-- but he falls short. There is a certain point in his growth towards goodness which he cannot get past, at least not without God's help.

In 1st-century Palestine, wealth would be interpretted by many Jews as a sign of God's favor. So, Jesus' describing the man's possessions as a "lack" -- as an obstacle to be overcome as he further enters into God's favor-- is surprising.

Maybe the man just wants affirmation; we all want the approval of those we love and admire. We all want to hear those words, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." We want to know we've pleased God. Just like a child wants praise from its parents, like a dog wants a pat on the head from its owner, we want to know God is happy with us.

So, maybe the man just wants affirmation. After all, he's kept the law. Shouldn't Jesus just tell him, "Well, it looks like you've got eternal life pretty much in hand; keep it up." Instead he gets a challenge.

Be careful what you ask for:
If you ask God, "aren't I a good boy (or girl)?"
You may just receive a challenge:
"You're off to a good start,
but here's what you need to change."

What is holding us back? What is it that, no matter how "good" we are or how far we've come in our spiritual journey, is keeping us from following Jesus?

I love how this-worldly Jesus' response is: it is not just pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by, but the promise that those who give up "house, family, or fields" for the Gospel will recieve a hundredfold "now in this age." They will, however, be received "with persecutions." Jesus throws in the mention of eternal life-- what the rich man asked about in the first place -- almost as an afterthought, at the end of the list.

Is wealth the "hump" on the camel, that keeps it from fitting through the eye of the needle?

*******************HERE'S A LITTLE DOOZY FROM JAMES:
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. (James 5:1-6)

Hear that? The very wealth piled up "for the last days" will itself bear witness against us in the last days! Our gold will melt in our pockets. Our own fat will eat our flesh like fire. Oh, the irony.

Sounds like the hump that broke the camel's back to me.

*******************HERE'S A LITTLE GEM FROM THE SHEPHERD OF HERMAS,
an early Christian work. In a vision, Hermas is shown a great tower being built by angels, representing the Church. (See above for the Hebrews reading, also using the image of us being built into God's House.) Hermas asks his guide:
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“But who are these, Lady, that are white and round, and yet do not fit into the building of the tower?” She answered and said “How long will you be foolish and stupid, and continue every kind of question and understand nothing? These are those who have faith indeed, but they also have the riches of the world. When, therefore, tribulation comes, on account of their riches and business they deny the Lord.” I answered and said to her, “When, then, will they be useful to the building, Lady?” “When the riches that now seduce them have been circumscribed, then they will be of use to God. For as a round stone cannot become square unless portions are cut off and cast away, so also those who are rich cannot be useful to the Lord unless their riches be cut down.”

Again, sounds like that lump on that there camel's back is wealth.

* The camel's a pretty great metaphor for this, all things considered.
1) As a pack animal, it would be expected to carry "many possessions." It's the bearer of wealth, of carrier of "stuff."
2) That hump on its back? Fat. Gluttony and greed were pretty closely associated by the early Church. Until fairly recently, you had to be pretty wealthy to get fat. (You still can't get fat if you're poor most placed in the world, but it's easy as pie in the States.) Fat's sort of the physiological equivalent of hoarded wealth.

Anyway, what I'm hearing in all this is that something's gonna have to go. I'm going to have to give something up to follow Jesus-- probably a lot of things, actually-- and probably some things which I think of as part of who I am, or that I think of as benign-- even some things which I think are signs of God's favor. Am I overly proud of my own cleverness? Cut it off. Do I spend more time watching television than praying, by a factor of 10 to 1? Cut it off. Do I have "many possessions?" You heard what Jesus said.