NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 32 in Ordinary Time, Year B

The Homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our prescribed Gospel for the day jumps a small chunk from where we left it last time, so I'm going to fill us in on that bit before we move on. Remember that last time we ended with the scribe going away really quite happy with what Jesus had told him. It was the last of three major statements by Jesus in response to different groups concerning God. And all of this was happening in the Temple, immediately in the wake of Jesus having announced the end of the Temple, having performed the prophetic signs that showed that the Temple was being brought to an end, had been declared null and void, if you like. So that was the question in the air at the time. And you remember that the response of the Temple authorities to Jesus performing these signs had been to say to him, "By what authority do you do these things, and who gave you this authority?" All his answers given to them in the parables thereafter were answers to that question. Not saying directly, "I am," because that would lead to an immediate lynching, but explaining how he was going in fact to undo the Temple from within, bringing in a new Temple. He told that in the parable of the wine dressers and the parable of the wedding banquet. He was announcing his death, explaining how this would be the stone that the builders rejected to become the cornerstone. He was using Davidic elements throughout in order to bring out what the Son of David in fact was going to look like. So after those three major statements, it says that nobody dared to ask him anymore. So then we get three pieces of teaching by Jesus in which Jesus offers message off his own bat, not as a result of questioning. In fact, he puts the question to them in the first of these. So while Jesus was teaching in the Temple, he said, "How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the Son of David? David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.' David himself calls him lord, so how can he be his son?" The large crowd was listening to him with delight. So this, at the end if you like of the whole discussion about the Davidic fulfillment of the Temple, is Jesus putting the question back to them. Okay, you've questioned me about this. Now, how do you answer this? The scribes say this. How do you read this? It says the crowd delighted, because they can see that he's now putting the ball back in their court. They had tried to put the ball in his court. He's put the ball back in their court, having attempted himself to teach them who he was and what he was going to do. know this is about him, but they don't quite know how to answer. If they say, "Oh well, the son of David," it's you — then immediately the lynching starts. So they can tell the tension. The crowd listening to this knows what's going on here. They're really interested now. He's got them, as it were, eating out of his hand. He turns and he says, "Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." It's interesting: last week we had, as it were, a good scribe — one who was close to the kingdom. Jesus talks about how the scribes say the Messiah is the son of David, which was their verdict. They had said that that was what the literati thought, having read the text. And here is something: "Beware of the scribes." Well, what I'd like to suggest to you is that what we have here is Jesus giving a paraphrase, a talk, a lecture, an interpretation on a significant chunk of the book of the prophet Ezekiel, talking about the punishment that is to come, the Lord's indignation against his people. "Mortal, say to it" — that's to the people of Israel — "you are a land that is not cleansed, not rained upon in the day of indignation. Its leaders within it are like a roaring lion tearing the prey. They have devoured human lives. They have taken treasure and precious things. They have made many widows within it. Its priests have done violence to my teaching and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them." It goes on in that vein, but I hope you can see that that rhetoric is absolutely in the background to what Jesus is saying here, and in the longer version of it which we get in Matthew's Gospel. So the scribes here stand in for the generic leadership. But notice how Jesus talks about them. "Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes." Now that's an interesting thing. Long robes were proper to the Aaronic priesthood. There are proper descriptions in the Pentateuch concerning how the priesthood should dress on sacrificial occasions. There are quite detailed instructions on this. There are no instructions on anything else concerning how ordinary people should dress. So here we have Jesus criticizing something that was contemporary to him, and which should, as it were, cause a bit of a stir for us Christians. Because at the time, during the second Temple period — the latter part of the second Temple period — there was a movement, and this was the world of the scribes and the Pharisees and what later became rabbis, to to shift meaning from the temple, which they rightly associated with corrupt farmers who ran the place and all its riches, to shift the center of purity to domestic family life, and to acquire themselves the priestly functions and robes — because the word for robes in Hebrew refers to the priestly garments in the plural. It's the word which appears constantly in the Hebrew Scriptures referring to priestly garments. In other words, there's an attempt to take out authority from the temple and make it something to be borne by the people. Remember, Jesus has talked about getting rid of the temple. He appears also to be talking about getting rid of the bad things that went on in the temple in terms of turning it into a treasury, a rich people's house, and being run by priests who were devouring people — referring to the same thing happening in, as it were, the laicization of the temple priesthood, meaning people carry on with the same practices but now in a more lay form. So you have the scribes, the leaders who like to walk around in long robes and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets. In other words, how like us Christians — and how we have in one sense laicized the priesthood and allowed robes and garments and so on to be worn not only for liturgical services but particularly for respect-getting services, for dignification. And then it says: "They devour widows' houses, and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." Of course this links back to the widow — that is, the people of Israel, the widow in the first chapter of the book of Lamentations — who is all alone and who is having her goods devoured and how she's being abused and is sorely bereft. So the Lord is looking at this, and this is the threat of the new exile of Judah, because this is what's going to happen because of the abominations of the temple in the book of Lamentations. But now Jesus is applying the same language to what is shortly to happen to the temple. So he's saying: it's not only getting rid of the temple. You're going to have to be aware of how corrupt religious leadership will be in terms of shifting things away from the temple but becoming, as it were, as ravenous as the temple in your midst. You've got to undo that as well. You must not bow down before these people. Bowing down is what pagans do to pagan gods. There's no bowing down in the Israel that Jesus is bringing into being. So remember that this is a much sterner passage than it seems, and it is absolutely linked to the shift in the temple. Then he sits down opposite the treasury — so here the economic heart of the temple — and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. A little background note. The treasury of the temple was obviously central to its activities. It wasn't merely that people needed to put money in just to keep the sacrifices going, which they did. But the temple itself was, if not the richest, very close to the richest institution anywhere in the Roman Empire. It had incalculable wealth, and not only wealth in gold and silver, but in a huge number of title deeds, because any peasant farmers going into debt would give their title deeds to the temple and then would have to pay interest on loans that they got. In other words, it was a huge financial organization, and it was widely considered to be a very oppressive one, which is why, when it's destroyed in the book of Revelation, so many people rejoice and say, "Babylon the whore has fallen." There is rejoicing because a huge number of people knew perfectly well that, in addition to its cultic functions, it was actually a hugely oppressive financial institution. But Jesus is not particularly criticizing that, because from his point of view it's coming to an end anyhow. He knows that it's coming to an end. He's not particularly interested in complaining about it, because he knows that it's being brought to an end. He's already declared that. There is, in a sense, a marvellous indifference of his — a quality, his quality of presence at this point — which we'll see going forward into next week's Gospel. "Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them" — truly, I tell you, so this is clearly a solemn remark — "this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." Now, he doesn't say that she's being meritorious. It doesn't say that she's getting something of value for this. In fact — and this is a reading which I strongly urge you to consider — he says this with a certain sadness. It takes nothing away from her goodness, but what on earth is this poor woman doing contributing to this thing which is about to be swept away, which is about to go out of existence? She's wasting her money. It doesn't at all stop her having a beautiful heart. But the future disciple of Jesus will be like her in giving away — but not to the temple built with hands. Giving away to others: that will be the form of blessedness that's going on. Which is why the Church gives us the reading from Elijah today, with Elijah receiving the very little that the widow of Zarephath had to give him — not keeping the temple going, but recognizing a prophet and receiving a prophet's reward. That's going to be the shape going forward. of how we contribute to the Temple. Out of our nothing we contribute, and we will be given what enables us to survive. But once again, what's going on here is the Temple: how it's going to be destroyed, how all of this contribution to it is worthless. There's an amazing indifference by Jesus to this at this stage. He's already declared it's over. He's not angry with it. He's just looking in amazement as he sees both pointless goodness given out of abundance from those who are keeping the thing going, and maybe getting brownie points as you hear the big clunking and clinking of their coins as they go in, but also of the genuine devotion and generosity of someone who is giving all that she has, which is to be the sign of what it's going to be like when there is no Temple.