Sermon, by Pastor Joel
26th Sunday after Pentecost
November 17, 2024
1 Samuel 1:4-20
Psalm 16
Hebrews 10:11-14 [15-18] 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
The context of this sermon is
100% written by a human
"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that’s how the light gets in."
Anthem, by Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen died eight years ago this month, and yet his words still speak to us today. Indeed, the lines I just spoke offer a modern take on our gospel this morning and a perfect interpretation of what Jesus wants us to learn from his words.
Jesus is being tough on us these says, calling out our flaws, and nobody likes that. Last week, we were flawed in our generosity – too selective in our giving. Our failing was in risking all for the good of others. This week, we are reminded by Jesus – even as he tries to assuage the fears of the disciples – of our other weaknesses. Our pattern of killing one another in war. Our helplessness in the face of earthquakes. Our willful blindness to famine even when we have more than enough food as a species. Do not be alarmed, Jesus tells the disciples – though of course they are. These things will happen. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs, he tells them. Painful, but inevitable. Part of the experience of being human.
Of course, history has proven Jesus more than accurate – though we are ashamed that this is true. But Jesus does this all the time: he is honest with us to a fault, as if he were marking the papers our university kids brought home this term: he would lay it all out on the line. All our pettiness; our laziness; our snobbery; our selfishness – and as he points out this week, our faithlessness. We are so easily swayed by better offers; so willingly distracted by shiny objects. “Beware no one leads you astray,” he warns. Beware that no one rises from the ashes of war, or the desolation of famine and tries to preach an easier way.
But isn’t that what happens over and over again? And not least of all in the very words we hear every Sunday from Jesus? It is always astonishing to me how anyone can read the gospel and think it is about making rules, when, in fact, it is about breaking them. Every rule that Jesus tries to teach us to break is quickly rebuilt again in society. Treat each other as equals, Jesus says, and yet we have our long history of slavery, racism, sexism, homophobia. Be humble before God, Jesus says. Don’t be quick to judge, forgive one another. And yet once again, we have a long history to teach us the damage and pain that comes with pride and judgment. All the time, as people of faith, we hear interpretations of these very gospels that warp the meaning into one that fuels the very qualities Jesus was trying to teach us to overcome. Or we hear that religion makes us sheep, baa-ing helplessly in the pasture.
But how wrong that is: to me, what makes the gospel so powerful is that there’s no pussyfooting around. The gospel says to me – Joel, you are not the greatest guy sometimes: you fail where you should succeed, you neglect what you should tend, you judge what you should accept. A lot of the time, in fact, you’re a jerk. But Jesus isn’t telling me this so he can cast me out; he wants me to own my flaws, to see them for what they are and live with them. If we don’t see the war for what it is, how do we stop it?
Look at the story of Hannah. She was failing in the most important job a woman could do back then - she couldn’t have a child. In her time, that was right at the top of the list of rules that mattered for women. By the standard of a judger, by a rule maker, she should have been cast out, tossed aside. We have Eli, the priest, who mocks her in the temple. He serves as the keen-eyed rule-keeper, just looking for someone a little different to cast them off. But Elkanah, Hannah’s husband, loves her, even though she cannot bear a child. He says the most beautiful thing to her: “Why is your heart sad? Am I not worth more to you than ten sons?” And what we really hear Elkanah saying is: You, Hannah, are worth more to me than ten sons.” Elkanah is the rule breaker; he loves his wife, and that is enough.
But whoa, there are those who will say, we can’t all be rule-breakers, or even rule- benders; we need rules to keep the peace and maintain society. Of course, they are right: but we’re not simpletons. We know the rules that are important; and we know the ones that mark a hard line in the ground and cast a long shadow to keep certain people in, or out, or down. Elkanah cast that latter kind of rule out – the one that said a wife had value only if she bore a child – because he knew it was foolish, and, what’s more, it spoke against his heart.
If all of us were like Elkanah - if Elkanah could even be like that all the time – well, we could whistle on our way. But even Jesus, as we see him in the gospel, wasn’t perfect. And we are not. What is masterful about what Jesus does is that he turns our mistakes and weaknesses into a moment of illumination. Our humanity is our strength. Once we pretend that it’s all about the other guy making mistakes over there, the gospels dissolve into the background.
Jesus tries to tell us over and over again that we are messed up in our own unique ways, and yet we are loved by God, and we have the strength inside us to do these amazing things – to save people and discover cures and create art and ease grief. And the reason he does this is so that we might understand that there is always grey within a rule, that the world is nuanced, that people are good and bad, messed up and marvelous. Once we know this about ourselves, we are free. Once we see this in others, we are just.
These are the birthing pangs that Jesus is speaking of: the journey of life. The history of humanity. And when we fail to see the many sides of it, when we assume that rules can never break or bend, we worship something other than the gospel. And then we are led astray. The rules that humans make not free of flaws. Just as human are not flawless. Our task is to live in a complex world where both are true.
When this task overwhelms you, don’t lose faith, remember the gospel. Remember how Leonard Cohen so beautifully put it into song: “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Amen.
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