Friday • 10/4/2024 •
Friday of Proper 21
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 102; Hosea 10:1-15; Acts 21:37–22:16; Luke 6:12-26
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 10 (“The Second Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 55:6-11; BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 18 (“A Song to the Lamb,” Revelation 4:11; 5:9-10, 13, BCP, p. 93)
Today’s readings — from Hosea, Luke, and Acts — are a study in the difference between reality and appearance—what German crisply calls the difference between “Sein und Schein.”
Reality & appearance: Hosea. To all appearances, Israel is flourishing like the “vine” God planted her to be (Hosea 10:1; and see Isaiah 5:1-5; Jeremiah 2:21; Psalm 80:8-11). Since the Garden of Eden, the earth has been devoid of spiritual life. Israel is God’s greenhouse, anticipating the return of Eden. Indeed, to outward appearances, life in the Northern Kingdom is good. Prosperity reigns. Good times roll. Altars (to false gods) and palaces abound. But the royal pomp and religious display in the Northern Kingdom is all show, no go! Because of the rot beneath the surface, God’s garden there is filled with “poisonous weeds” and “thorn and thistle” (Hosea 10:4,8). Words from the courts do not promote God’s justice, and so litigation flourishes “like poisonous weeds.” Worship focuses around golden calves at altars established in northern cities to rival Jerusalem’s temple in the south. And so, ritual there is empty—I think of a phrase that Paul will use centuries later: “having a form of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). The golden calves will be carried away as tribute to “the great king” of Assyria:
The inhabitants of Samaria tremble
for the calf of Beth-aven [literally, “house of worthlessness,” a mocking pun on Bethel, “house of God”].
Its people shall mourn for it,
and its idolatrous priests shall wail over it,
over its glory that has departed from it.
The thing itself [i.e., the golden calf] shall be carried to Assyria
as tribute to the great king.
Ephraim shall be put to shame,
and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol. — Hosea 10:5-6
And where the golden calves once stood, supposedly emblematic of Israel’s identity of abundant life, there will grow “thorn and thistle.” Phony religiosity and sham spirituality will be unmasked.
Even so, though the exile is inevitable, the call to forsake the illusion always comes: “Sow righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12). It is always time to seek the Lord! There is always, insists Hosea, time to give up appearance for reality.
Image: Pixabay
Reality & appearance: Luke. To all appearances, the “good life” consists in having money to burn, an ample palate, boundless fun … with everybody thinking you’re amazing. Jesus says otherwise:
Woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you…. — Luke 6:24-25
To Jesus “the good life” involves poverty, hunger, weeping … with everybody thinking you’re a “nothing”:
Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy…. — Luke 6:20-22
The reality is that the “good life” consists in a full reckoning with how upside down everything has become since the Garden. Pardon me for putting it this way, but it’s the good news of sin — the way things are isn’t the way things are supposed to be. We saw this truth being expressed over and over again in Ecclesiastes: it isn’t always the case that hard work is rewarded, that good guys always win. The real world isn’t “garbage in, garbage out.” Sometimes the boogerheads get put in charge. Sometimes there’s no adult on the playground. Sometimes we are living the world of The Lord of the Flies. Despite what parents and teachers tell us as kids, people don’t always play by the rules, and cheaters can prosper. “Haves” don’t necessarily deserve what they have; and “have nots” aren’t necessarily at fault for their not having.
Jesus has come to raise the lowly and bring down the exalted: “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low” (Isaiah 40:4). He has come to humble the proud and ennoble the humiliated. The Kingdom of God puts the upside-down right side up again. Thus, Jesus calls his people to sacrifice for the impoverished, to share the hunger of the famished, to weep with those who weep…. and, in doing so, to be regarded as “fools for Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:10).
Reality & appearance: Acts. In today’s passage in Acts, Luke provides the second of three accounts of Paul’s call to follow and serve Christ (Acts 9:1-29; 22:1-21; 26:9-20). In this account, the voice is Paul’s. He wants his fellow Jews to know that his acceptance of Christ is not the renunciation of his Judaism, but a deeper acceptance of it. That’s why Paul addresses his Jerusalem audience not in the Greek of his letters to the Gentile churches but in Hebrew (probably actually Aramaic). Here Paul embraces the privilege of his birth in Tarsus, “no mean city,” his upbringing in Jerusalem, and his education “at the feet of Gamaliel” (one of the premier teachers of Pharisaic Judaism of the first century). Paul shares his audience’s zeal for God, a zeal that their tradition has taught them. And although he uses his social privilege to identify himself and connect with his fellow Jews, he will later explain (Philippians 3) it is not his fancy background, but knowing Christ, which is the source of his worth.
Paul’s point is that he has been found by the “Righteous One” who fulfills and embodies that tradition, and for whom that tradition has prepared him and his ministry. Christ has revealed himself to Paul as bringing a holy call from “the God of our ancestors” (Acts 22:14). God is sending Paul on a mission to fulfill the promise to Abraham that Israel would bring blessing to the nations: “for you will be his witness to all the world of what you have seen and heard” (Acts 22:15).
It’s pretty easy to fool the world with the slick shiny stuff. Golden calves. Riches. Social privilege. Yes, yes, we know that God is not fooled. But, sadly, we ourselves are often fooled. Sometimes we need clear reminders from God’s perspective about the true nature of what lies beneath appearances: his very real anger at injustice and false worship, his true ordering of what constitutes a good life, the true source of a person’s worth.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+