A Night Vision of Truth and Power

 A Night Vision of Truth and Power

Revelation 1: 4b-8,           John 18:33-37

 

As I watched in the night visions,

 

I saw one like a human being

coming with the clouds of heaven.

 

And he came to the Ancient One

and was presented before him.

 

To him was given dominion

and glory and kingship,

 

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him.

 

His dominion is an everlasting dominion

that shall not pass away,

 

and his kingship is one

that shall never be destroyed. (Daniel 7: 13-14)

 

For four years, I was part of a program called Education for Ministry, which was held weekly for nine months in the rector’s office. In his closet was the picture of a puppet, whose head was in a guillotine, and the words below it said, “The truth will set you free; but first it will make you miserable.” 

I don’t know about you, but transitions and holidays can stir up a lot of feelings in me. At times like these, we can easily get emotionally out of whack, lashing out at others with angry and resentful words, overreacting to people rather than responding to them, stuffing our feelings as well as our faces. Some of us refuse to talk about certain issues, or with certain people, or we just avoid them altogether. And yet, as a FaceBook post once related, “Of course your family pushes your buttons…..they installed them.” 

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, still on the heels of our recent presidential election, we continue to hear from certain professionals about how to deal with our feelings. If we voted for Trump, we’re cautioned not to “gloat.” If we voted for Kamala, we’re encouraged to process our feelings of grief and fear appropriately. One psychiatrist advised audiences to cancel their dinner invitations to certain family members for Thanksgiving. Food fights notwithstanding, there could be bloodshed. Black Friday could take on new meanings. 

My family is a 12 step family in which members can relate to issues of addiction, whether from an al-anon perspective or AA. In the program, there is a description of a certain personality type called King Baby. It describes someone who thinks he (or she) is the center of the universe and expects everyone to do as they want. Like a king, they rule with single authority. Like a baby, they are emotionally undeveloped. The world revolves around their opinions and actions. 

We’ve been hearing a lot about “truth” and “power” recently. These two words are rearranged, paired, or repeated so that the one who is speaking (that’s me right now) encourages certain types of behavior. For instance, one social media platform is called “Truth Social” although various people jump from one platform to another, searching for the truth. Tweets become X’s (not to be confused with Boston Celtic basketball star Xavier Tillman). Recently “BlueSky” has appeared as the new and preferred offering for some audiences. 

 Jesus was known as a prophet, priest, and king, who incarnated and modeled a person who would  “speak truth to power.” Neither afraid of his religious or political leaders, He represented the common person and child, and the people who felt powerless. While no one, we might argue, has a corner on the truth, and as some argue that “every politician lies”, with respect and dignity we can share our various beliefs and perspectives. Our power, however little or great, can be used or abused depending upon the person and the system. In the kingdom of God “It’s different here.” 

This year, at various presidential political rallies, certain faithful people had yelled “Jesus is King” much to the delight of some, and rejection by others; for kingship is a loaded and weighty word. As a democratic political system in our country and in the Episcopal Church, kingship can strike fear in the hearts of many people in our country today. We are a democracy, having fought a war for our own independence from the rule of kings and queens in England.Today, in our Church, we celebrate a feast day called “Christ the King Sunday.”

So why do we laud and honor Jesus as our King of kings? Perhaps because he was a human being unlike any others. He uses his power only to help and heal God’s people. Perhaps because He rules over all people, i.e., “to him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.” Perhaps because “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away. His kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” 

This King of ours, Jesus, began his life in this world as a baby. Unjustly accused, condemned, and crucified He “loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father.” And even still, as the ruler of all kings and all people, the fullness of His kingdom is “yet to come.” It is, indeed, out of this world. In today’s unsettled world, Now that’s a message of power, eternal truth, and everlasting hope.

Trust

The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling

Lord show us your love and mercy; for we put our trust in you.

Today, I want to write about something very fundamental in our relationships. Trust. Our relationships with God, people, and things are based upon trust. It is often taken for granted, until it is lost. It is often assumed, until it is broken. It is so important that we even put those words on our money. In God we trust.

       Recently, I’ve noticed that many people have lost trust in our institutions. On the heels of our recent presidential election, regardless of your choice, clearly the issue of trust in our political leaders, not to mention our media, is at play. As a country, we’ve lost confidence in our political, religious, legal, economic, health care and educational systems. Even our family systems raise questions about trust.

       Trust is broken when we experience empty promises, false words, and harmful actions. Whether intentional or not, when our actions repeatedly don’t match our words, when reality doesn’t reflect the rhetoric, when there is gaslighting, people become wary. When we suspect that people’s motives are self-serving, we lose trust in the integrity of our relationships and our systems. Once lost, trust is hard to get back. Today the psalmist reminds us. “Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them.” (Psalm 146)

Our bodies are like beautifully crafted vessels of water, jars of meal, and jugs of oil which have been filled with abundant gifts from our Creator. Throughout our lives, we offer the contents of these vessels by giving some of our time, talents, and treasure to others. Sometimes dramatically and sacrificially, we may empty them in intense moments of love. More realistically, we often make choices based upon our income and expenses. Unaware of the tiny cracks in our human vessels, we leak.

         This process of life, of giving ourselves away, involves some choices on our parts. What exactly are we willing to give up? We decide to whom, and to what, and for what we are willing to give our time, talents, and money. We raise our voices and cast our votes. We decide how much is too much, and when enough is enough.

Jesus is critical of people in power who use their positions of trust to benefit themselves and not to help those they are called to serve. Regularly, and at his peril, he criticized the religious and political leaders of his day. “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.” No wonder religious leaders don’t want to preach today! Not to mention the peril of commenting on recent politics, and the time of year for pledging and giving  in preparation for next year’s budget.

There’s been a lot of talk about women this year. In today’s passages from scripture, we hear about two widows who made sacrifices. One widow gave part of her last meal to a stranger; the other put “everything she had” into the Temple treasury. Harper’s Study Bible says that the “status of widows in ancient Israelite society was precarious. They often had no means of economic support, and if they were not sustained by the king or by the religious community, they were quickly reduced to poverty and forced to become scavengers and beggars. Having no inheritance rights and often in want of life’s necessities, they were exposed to harsh treatment and exploitation.” (p. 547 and 1132)

In today’s passage from the Old Testament, 1 Kings, the widow and her son were preparing to die when Elijah arrived. She had only a handful of meal left in a jar, and a little oil in a jug. She was gathering sticks so that she could prepare a final meal for her and her son, when Elijah arrived and basically said, “Give me your last supper.” Understandably, this widow initially demurred, explaining to Elijah that she really had nothing to give him except some meal in a jar and a little oil; but Elijah insisted. “Give me this anyway,” he said to her. Then “after you’ve made my cake, you can make one for yourself and your son.” Is he tone-deaf? Self-serving? Unable to “read the room”?

Apparently, both Elijah and this woman revealed some level of trust in God and each other. Elijah had believed the “word of the Lord” when he was told to go to Zarephath and live where a widow would feed him. This widow must have trusted the words of Elijah when he told her that the “jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.”

In the gospel passage from Mark, Jesus commends the widow who throws her two pennies into the Temple Treasury. It’s easy for the rich to give from their abundance, Jesus said, but here’s a woman who “out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” I imagine she must have trusted her religious community to care for her, if not protect her. I imagine she believed that it was her duty to support the Temple.

It appears to me that both widows gave freely and faithfully, indeed sacrificially. There was something almost reckless in their actions. Perhaps they thought that they were at the end of their lives and had nothing left to lose. Perhaps they had learned to submit to their leaders and the laws of their religion and they trusted that they would be helped. Despite their vulnerability and fragility, they were being dutiful, displaying trust in their leaders to protect them. Or maybe, just maybe, they were revealing a deep trust in God who had promised “justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger, their God who sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked.” (Psalm 146)

To love God with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself, does not mean to seek prominence and exaltation, but rather it is to be of service to others. Love is not about getting something, but rather it is about giving something. True giving, like unconditional love, is given freely, with no expectation of getting anything in return. There is almost something reckless, but deeply trusting, about sacrificial giving. It is a little scary, a little risky; indeed it is even liberating.

In Meditations for Women Who do Too Much, the author suggests that there is a direct correlation between trust and control. The less trust we have, the more we will try to control the people and events in our lives. The less trust we have in God, the more we will look to ourselves for self-sufficiency. Paradoxically, indeed counter-intuitively, the more we give, the more we get. The more we give, the more we grow. The more we give, the more we trust God to provide.

There is a great deal of mistrust, harsh treatment, and entitlement in our country these days. How is it then that we can regain the trust that we’ve lost in some of our leaders and our systems?

I believe that we begin once again through prayer. Like the widow, who gave her very last meal to Elijah, and the widow who threw her two coins into the treasury box, we can trust God to fill our empty jars, and provide our daily bread. We can ask God to repair our breaches and restore our systems. We can trust God to preserve our lives.

Do not be afraid, Elijah said. For with God, the jar never empties; indeed it is often re-filled to overflowing. And despite the promises of our religious and political leaders, ultimately, in the end, it is in God that we must trust; for God kept God’s promise of new life in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

 1 Kings 17:8-16            Psalm 146          Mark 12:38-44