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What are we doing here today? In particular, Gethsemane Lutheran Church—what does this church exist for?
The stewardship team did not ask questions quite this big when discerning a theme for this year’s campaign, but I’ve never been more glad for the presence and repetition of these words: A Future With Hope—Investing in People.
That is what we’re here for: to invest in people, to invest in our neighbors by feeding them and caring for the most vulnerable, as Leah Morrell said last week, that it was new for her as a longtime Christian to belong to a congregation like Gethsemane where it was so clear that service to neighbor is part of worshipping God.
We invest in people by investing time and energy in good health for church staff, as Amy Crousore, our organist, said. We’re given the space to be human, to reject “grind culture,” to invest time in collaboration and cooperative work.
All of this activity makes space for God’s grace in our lives—that’s where hope can bloom, that’s how a hopeful future can even look possible. We’re not, as a congregation, raising money for buildings or property projects in a capital campaign at the moment, and in the fundraising world, those projects tend to raise the most money, because people see the outcome and have pride and can say “We built that.”
There’s nothing wrong with capital campaigns, nothing wrong with buildings or property, but that is not a mission. Building stuff is not the mission. Besides, as people of faith, we’re drifting away from humility to suggest that we alone built anything. We didn’t build that; GOD built that. God gets the credit, to God be the glory, but God doesn’t invest in buildings, either. God invests in people, and which people especially? The most vulnerable people.
This is not new, not an innovation in Christianity. The prophets of ancient Israel called God’s people to faithfulness through their care to the most vulnerable members in society. The prophet Jeremiah delivered a sermon in the temple, bringing this message from God: “If you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow…then I will dwell with you in this place.”[1]
God’s love may be limitless and unconditional, but in these words, it seems God’s presence has some very clear conditions: do not oppress people who are vulnerable. That sounds like such a low bar to clear—like, make sure everyone has food to eat. How hard is that? And yet humanity continues to struggle with this concept.
Jesus quotes from Jeremiah’s temple sermon, calling the temple a “den of robbers,”[2] when Jesus enters the temple in Jerusalem, his first stop in the city after entering on a donkey—the story we read on Palm Sunday.
The temple itself was not wrong—it was a holy space, dedicated to God, sacred in worship. The Jewish historian Josephus described the Jerusalem temple this way:
“Now the outward face of the temple in its front…was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a very fiery splendour, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays.”[3]
And it wasn’t just the golden temple walls—Josephus also wrote that in the temple treasury there were “vast sums of money, vast piles of raiment, and other valuables; for this, in short, was the general repository of Jewish wealth.”[4] There was a whole system supporting all this wealth, and that’s the scribes, the religious leaders, the clergy, who Jesus called out.
Biblical scholar Ched Myers says that the gospel-writer Mark “unsparingly caricatures the scribe as one
who at every stage of social life wishes to be endowed with special privilege and status—the most important commodities in the attainment of social power in Mediterranean honor culture. These attitudes are of course antithetical to Jesus’ instructions to his own community concerning being ‘last’ and ‘servant.’
“…Scribal affluence is a product of their ‘devouring the estates of widows under the pretext of saying long prayers.’” …Mark could be “alluding to the practice of scribal trusteeship of the estates of widows (who as women could not be entrusted to manage their deceased husbands’ affairs!). Through their public reputation for piety and trustworthiness…scribes would earn the legal right to administrate estates. As compensation they would usually get a percentage of the assets; the practice was notorious for embezzlement and abuse. …The vocation of Torah Judaism is to ‘protect widows and orphans,’ yet in the name of piety these socially vulnerable classes are being exploited while the scribal class is further endowed…a thin veil for economic opportunism and exploitation.”[5]
Beware of the scribes, and beware of the people who use their image to elevate their image so they exploit poor people.
Biblical scholar Sung Soo Hong writes this:
“I feel that the Gospel of Mark is asking the following question here: When does a temple of God hit the rock bottom and lose its reason to exist? Is it when merchants do business in the temple (11:15–16)? Is it when the religious leaders challenge the authority of the Son of God in the temple (11:27–28)? Is it when they seek to trap the Messiah politically (12:13–15)? Is it when they misunderstand the Scriptures (12:24, 35)? Is it when they say long prayers for the sake of appearance (12:39)?
Jesus was sitting down at the Court of the Women in the temple, looking at the “exceedingly beautiful and lofty columns” there. He turned his eyes to the temple treasury, knowing that the temple had already accumulated immense wealth. He saw “many rich people” (12:41) offer large sums of money. Perhaps it was when a widow put in her last coins that the temple hit the rock bottom. The presence of one destitute widow questions the reason for the temple’s existence.”[6]
So many times we look at this Gospel story and praise the widow—oh, she gave away everything! But when did God ask people who are poor to give everything they have? That’s the request made of people with wealth, who have something to give. Jesus points out this widow not for praise but for lament for those who would devour widows’ houses. This is when Jesus leaves the temple for the last time. A religious system that cannot care for its most vulnerable doesn’t need to exist. This is why it is so important that we talk about investing in people. This is our future of hope.
I didn’t know what to say this week, after a national election. What is hope? Where is God in all of this?
What I am certain about is this: we know the God we proclaim, not a God of Christian nationalism. We may feel fearful. We may feel under-resourced. But we are people of faith and we will not stop investing in people. Because God has not stopped investing in each one of us.
Beloved, God has invested in YOU: the breath of life, a deep love for neighbors, and a heart of service. This congregation is filled with talented people whose vocations serve the most vulnerable people in our community and even around the world. God invested in you the talent and skills and creativity and persistence and resilience and most of all, love. That love will sustain us tomorrow and beyond.
And because widows are not merely one-dimensional victims of predatory economic systems, I’ve gotta mention the widow of Zarephath, recognized for her courageous hospitality to the prophet Elijah. Her message is powerful, and these words gave me hope, from Raj Nadella’s lectionary commentary titled “Hope Over Cynicism.” Raj Nadella writes this:
“Imagine living in the throes of an unprecedented recession and having only a few dollars to your name. A total stranger shows up asking for money. You explain your predicament, but he still tries to talk you out of your last pennies. That’s the scene unfolding in Zarephath between the widow and Elijah. The text highlights some reasons for the widow’s extreme poverty—natural calamities have prompted famine, but also incompetent and oppressive leaders have built dehumanizing economic structures. The larger context of this story is that rulers were too busy fighting for power to attend legislatively to the poor. The widow was justified in losing faith in the systems around her. She also had every reason to be suspicious of Elijah. He was a stranger, a foreigner, and he worshipped a different god. First, he asks for water, and then slides in a request for food; then he insists on eating first while promising her a miraculous abundance. She was justified in assuming Elijah was a con artist trying to swindle her out of the last crumbs available for her and her child.
“Desperate as she was, the widow appeared to take comfort in Elijah’s words, ‘Do not be afraid.’ Whether intentional or not, her choice placed hope ahead of cynical determinism. She made calculations toward preserving life and took a step toward hope. The ancient biblical narrative shows that human beings have a propensity to over-consolidate power and property in ways that perpetuate economic and political uncertainty. As Christians, we place our trust in God, not in ‘princes,’ wealth, or weapons that ‘cannot save.’ Yet we do not have the luxury of closing off prophetic possibilities. We never know who may knock at our door.”[7]
Beloved, the thing we cannot afford to do is to close ourselves off from God’s blessings which are delivered by our neighbors. We cannot afford not to invest in people. This is our future with hope.
Amen.
Pastor Cheryl
[1] Jeremiah 7:6
[2] Jeremiah 7:11
[3] Josephus, War, V, v, 6; quoted in Ched Myers’ “Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of the Gospel of Mark,” page 322.
[4] Josephus, Jewish War 6.282; LCL 3:459; cf. Culpepper, Mark, 428; quoted by Sung Soo Hong in https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-32-2/commentary-on-mark-1238-44-7
[5] Myers 320-321.
[6] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-32-2/commentary-on-mark-1238-44-7
[7] Raj Nadella, Living the Word, Sojourners magazine, November 2024, page 49.
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