Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27)
Rev. Amy Welin:
My Irish grandmother had a wonderful way of showing her appreciation for generosity. She would smile and softly say Bless your heart. In her gentle brogue, it sounded very nice. It meant that you had done something really good, something that made you more like a saint, and that you were someone who deserved God’s blessing. I picked up that little phrase in my girlhood, and occasionally I still use it.
Imagine my surprise when I learned that in some places, the phrase Bless your heart is code language for You are an idiot. And now, especially if I am traveling south of Maryland, I find I need to explain that in my family, Bless your heart is a sincere compliment. It is the Irish context.
Context is everything. Much of what we understand derives from the tone of voice we hear, or the expression on someone’s face, or the setting in which communication occurs.
Without context, we are left to our own devices. We read meaning into the words, and construct our own interpretation, distinct from what a person may be trying to say. This is what happens when we listen to gossip or rumors – we hear a partial truth repeated out of context, and then we make up the rest of the story in our heads.
Context can be a very subtle – sometimes almost invisible to us – and still it is very powerful. This can be part of the difficulty with interpretation of the Scriptures, because not only are they many centuries old, they also were written in different languages, and their situational context is occasionally ambiguous. We hear a story, and we cannot take it at face value if it is going to teach us well. The context of our scripture lessons influences what they actually say to us. In each passage, God says something about the challenge of living a faithful life.
In a patriarchal context, women were vulnerable and had little power to determine the course of their own lives. Remember that Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi are both widows. There is no one to protect them or to provide for them. They work together because of their love for each other. Ruth is a Moabite, a gentile, so she is at a double disadvantage. Naomi encourages Ruth to offer herself to Boaz. Go and take off his blanket and do what he says to do. (The Bible is more scandalous than we assume it is). In our time, we would be more likely to send our family members to ask for a job, but eleven centuries before Christ, Ruth does not have that option. Boaz takes Ruth as his wife and she bears a son, who is the grandfather of King David of Israel and an ancestor of Jesus. Ruth, the widow, the outsider, is a branch in the family tree of eternal salvation. Can we use this lesson to teach us about using our options even when we feel powerless? Are we willing to work together out of love?
Jesus is teaching in the Temple, and he is very critical of the religious hierarchy of his era. The Temple requires enormous amounts of money to sustain its grandeur, devouring the income of the poor. We have often heard this story of the widow’s generosity as an encouragement to give everything that we have. That is certainly one way to interpret the parable. I wonder whether that fits well with the context, though. Jesus is critical of the Temple and he is not preaching a sermon on stewardship. Could it be that he has observed the enormous sacrifice of this poor woman and has questioned whether it serves God well? We admire her love and devotion. We can also question whether the gifts from the rich were as loving as hers. How do our gifts to God and to church measure up in terms of love?
Give to St. John’s ParishThe context of the Letter to the Hebrews ties it all together, but can feel a little obscure. The theology of the entire epistle illustrates the meaning of the death of Jesus Christ, using the Jewish concept of Temple sacrifice in a different context. It talks about the sacrificial work of Jesus, and it really is all about how this reveals the enormous love of God. As the Great High Priest, Jesus enacts the ultimate sacrifice and allows humanity to enter into the divine realm by his resurrection. Jesus took the cross for our sake. How can we respond to this profound gift of love that transformed human life?
In the end my friends, whatever we give to God must come from our hearts. For some of us, a gift of thousands of dollars is not really a sacrifice and requires no act of faith. For others, a few dollars feels like a huge sum and a large part of what little we can control. My spouse and I live by the discipline of the tithe because it gives us joy and it helps us be free. Each of us here has to open ourselves to what God is calling us to do. We have to follow the desire that God has placed in us. How has God challenged us to offer ourselves in love? What can we do to hear God say, in an Irish context, Bless your heart.