Text: Luke 17:11-19
A visitor to Faith Kitchen last week asked how we preserve faith in humanity. It was an odd question, since it seems to me that Faith Kitchen is a good example of human activity. People were feeding people. People who might otherwise be crabby with one another were getting along just fine. People who might have crossed to the other side of the road to avoid one another were sitting down to share a meal. This is loving your neighbor and also loving your enemy. It builds faith in humanity. So that’s what I told the visitor.
But that’s not what he meant. He wasn’t talking about the people at Faith Kitchen. Not about the people eating or the people cooking or the people who had brought food or the people serving food and cleaning up and organizing the meal. He wasn’t talking about the people who didn’t have much but were generous with their time.
He was talking about some other people. People who have a lot but who fail to share it with people who don’t. People who don’t even see hungry people, or don’t see people who live in substandard housing, or no houses, or who are sick and cannot get medical care. He was talking, as Mary mother of Jesus calls them, about people who are proud in the imagination of their hearts. Or, as another person translates it, people who are arrogant in attitude.
Don’t the events these days, he asked, make you despair about the world? How can so many people be so self-centered? How can they spare so little for others? How can fear or greed so consume them that they would let people go hungry and sick? In their personal and political decisions and in the words they speak, people have abandoned their neighbors. Why do you buy that which is not bread? asks the prophet Isaiah. I always thought he meant bread for ourselves. But maybe he means also bread for others. Why, the visitor asked, are people not buying bread for others? (And we are buying a lot of not-bread.) This is not a new question. The visitor knows that. Isaiah wrote a long time ago, and so did Luke, who quotes Mary’s song. Will things always be this way? Is there no hope for the world and its people?
There are lots of answers to this question. Like: many people are generous. Or like: that’s the way it always has been. Or like: we should be more giving. Or like: poor people are a lot better off now than in the time of Jesus.
But today I’d like to talk about whether there is a particular answer that Christians might give, based on their faith.
The passage in Luke’s Gospel is commonly called the Magnificat, after the Latin word translated “it magnifies,” which is what Mary says in the first verse. Mary was poor. She was young. She was a member of an oppressed people, the Jews in Palestine who were subject to Roman occupiers. When Mary hears that God has planned for her child to be a king, she figures that is pretty terrific. Kings are rarely born from peasants, then as now. God must have something really amazing planned. She sings a song, as others in the Bible sing when confronted with good news. She sings a song praising God’s intervention in the world.
At first, her song is all about Mary. God is good, but God is good to and for Mary. I am the God-magnifier, she says. God is doing great things for me, Mary. God is favoring me, Mary, just a lowly servant. The actor is God, but the beneficiary is Mary.
But gradually the song changes. Surely God is working through Mary, but the purpose of this work is to change the world. It is not just Mary, but Mary’s people that God cares about, she realizes. Those who are powerful, rich, and proud will be brought down, scattered, sent away with nothing. The arrogant of heart will lose their control over every thing. The hungry will finally be fed. The impoverished will finally share in the abundance that God provides. All of Israel will be saved. And even more than that, all of descendants of Abraham. And even more than that, all people.
What a great hymn. But when we read or hear verses like this, what are we supposed to do with them? Do they change the world for us in some way? Are we different after knowing them? Or are they just sentimental supports that make us feel good about God?
These are powerful words. Do the proud and greedy tremble when they hear them? Do the poor take heart? Or is it a false promise to the poor, who after all have heard words like this for at least 2000 years. Are they cheap comfort to the comfortable, who are thankful that God will take care of things and has let them off the hook? Do they mean anything at all? To us, they do.
The Christian life is a quest. Much of what we do, in worship, prayer and meditation, service, and study prepares us for this quest. It takes continuous and faithful practice and training to equip us, as many quests do. The quest has two parts. Two goals. Both goals are hard to achieve in the face of the world. The quest’s goals are not the same as the world’s goals. But they are in the world. They have to do with the world.
The first part of the quest is the quest for hopefulness. In this quest, we search for the conviction to say to the Faith Kitchen visitor that things will not always be bleak. We read in the Bible about resurrection, about a new Jerusalem, about a re-balancing of fortunes, about the spread of compassion to all people. And our quest is to believe that with all our hearts and to reflect that belief in all our actions. One thing we might mean when we say we believe in Jesus is that we believe with hope in the picture of the world that Jesus paints. When Mary sings so enthusiastically, she is overflowing with hopefulness. God is good.
And the second part of the quest is the quest for selflessness. In this quest, we search for a way of being that takes us out of the center of our own concern. We read in the Bible about humility and obedience, and we practice thanksgiving. We act as if, and sometimes it is true, to care for others more than ourselves, or at least as much as ourselves. Our quest is to put the community of humanity first. Be as a servant, Jesus says. Feed my sheep, Jesus says. Forgive those who harm you, Jesus says, seventy times seven times.
These two quests are connected. They are connected in the way that Mary connects them. The hoped-for world is about all people, but it is also about each of us in particular. The messed-up state of things is not good for anyone. Everyone will benefit from the world that we hope for. And, as Mary saw instantly, each person is a part of the world getting there. But our part hinges on selflessness. It does not work if each of us grabs all we can and ignores others.
Our quest as Christians is not to be better people. Or maybe it is sometimes, but that is not what Mary is talking about. This magnificent passage is not about what we should do. It is not a chore. It is not law. It is not commandments. It is instead about what we should hope for.
Our quest is not an easy one. That’s because hopefulness that is not sentimental and humility that is not cynical are things the world mocks.
Hopefulness and humility are Christian virtues. They are not worldly virtues. That’s the reason we who live in the world have to practice them. But they are not the cause of our faith but a result of it.
Mary sings not because people are so great, but because God is. To answer the visitor: yes, we have faith in humanity. Not because we trust in the goodness of people, but because we trust in God’s desire.
No comments:
Post a Comment