The Way We Lived Then

I preached on these texts (Track 1) yesterday at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Conway. What a lovely correspondence they had to my gender and religious belief class this semester, to my work with older women in prayer shawl ministries over the past few years, to my obsession with the category of "widow" in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and to the raging war over the moral statuses of the poor and of women in our culture. I think the sermon turned out rather well.

Sermon for November 8, Proper 27 Year B

A few years ago someone recommended that I read Anthony Trollope, a prolific and very popular British novelist of the nineteenth century. His Victorian-era fiction turned out to be right up my alley, like a mix of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Most of his characters are marginal members of the aristocracy -- clergy with a parish granted by the local lord, baronets who gamble at London clubs and play at Parliament, widows with money besieged by suitors with none. The rules were different at that time and place, and among those people. A young man with a title was not supposed to stoop to earn money with a regular job, but at least if they lost all possibility of living off inherited wealth, they could go into law or finance, shameful as such a fate might be.

Trollope’s women, however, are in an altogether more desperate situation. Every now and then some spirited young lady will take it upon herself to explain to a male character that while he might not like his options, at least he has them. She has none. Her choices are: (1) marry, and acquire some share of her husband’s property and independence, (2) live with family members as a spinster until she dies, (3) become a live-in companion to a widow or a tutor to someone else’s children. Getting a job, much less a profession, simply isn’t a path that’s open to her. So when an offer of marriage evaporates because the man changed his mind, or a parent can’t afford to outfit a daughter for the social scene where potential husbands roam, these women stare into the maw of impending doom. It’s not just that they will fall off the approved track of their culture and into some disreputable state. It’s that their very lives have become insecure. Who will take care of them? How will they live?

Those women came immediately to mind when I read the passage from Ruth. “My daughter, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you,” Naomi tells Ruth, before outlining exactly what that security means: a wealthy husband, a landowner. And how does one get such security? By “uncovering his feet” when he lies down to sleep. I have to keep this sermon G-rated, so I’ll just say that in this biblical euphemism, feet does not mean feet. You can find other examples of this delicate language in Exodus, regarding the circumcision of Moses’ son, and in Isaiah’s vision of the seraphim covering themselves with their three pairs of wings. I’ve seen some Bible commentaries that try to sanitize this story by claiming that Ruth was trying to wake up Boaz by making his feet cold. But Naomi specifies that Ruth is to wait until Boaz finishes partying at the threshing floor, put him in a state of undress, and lay down next to him. It’s clear that she is bent on creating a situation in which Boaz believes he is obligated to Ruth, and indeed, in the next chapter, Boaz takes it upon himself to make sure that Ruth has a husband -- a “guardian-redeemer” as the text puts it -- whether it be himself or another relative who has a claim on Naomi’s property. That is the only way a woman can find security. Faced with no way to fend for herself, her only option is -- by hook or by crook -- to get a man to accept her upkeep as an obligation.

The readings for today are unified by the theme of widows. Perhaps we gloss over that word without too much thought in our ordinary reading. Widows are women whose husbands have died; it’s a simple designation of marital status. But it’s anything but simple for women in the ancient near east. In both Hebrew and Hellenistic law and custom, a woman has no independent legal status as an individual. She can only be represented in society by a male guardian -- first her father, then her husband, and finally perhaps, her son. A woman without any of those people to protect and speak for her is the most vulnerable member of the community, with the exception of slaves. She literally has no standing -- no way to acquire a secure footing from which to lead a life that deserves respect and contributes to the community.

So when Jesus praises the widow who gives her mite at the synagogue, he was noting not just her financial contribution relative to her economic wealth. He points out that she is relinquishing the only thing that stands between her and nothingness. How is she to get something to live on? There is no one to procure it for her, and she has no respectable avenue of procuring it for herself. She is giving up the possibility, slender and temporary as it might be, of the pretense of membership in the community. And she does it, Jesus says, for the sake of a greater community in which she hopes to find a place.

I would like to think that those who heard Jesus’ words didn’t just watch the widow walk out of the synagogue with the vague thought that God would reward her bye and bye. Perhaps one of them ran after her and said, “My mother,” or “My aunt, I need to seek some security for you, so that it may be well with you.” After all, that’s what the community of apostles did, the author of Luke and Acts tells us, organizing a system of contributions and support for the widows and orphans among them -- a welfare system, a social safety net, if you will. They did not wait for the coming kingdom of God to make things right. They took responsibility for creating that reality in the here and now.

Too often the message “give sacrificially and trust that the Lord will provide” gets preached disproportionately to those for whom any giving is a risk. For these, a finger pointed to the Lord as provider is a finger pointed very deliberately away from those of us right here and quite able to provide for more than ourselves. I hope women have more and better options for finding security these days than tricking men into marrying them. (I’m terribly afraid that many do not.) But what I really see in these passages is a reminder that we are responsible for each other -- that when one of us casts off their last mite and throws herself on providence, they should find that God’s sheltering hands look a lot like my own.

From the pulpit

I had the privilege of preaching at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Conway this morning.  Our vicar is generous about sharing her pulpit, and I'm glad I can help out in the week-to-week grind of presiding, celebrating, and preaching that is the vicar's lot.  I preach three or four times a year.  It's a healthy exercise for me to speaking to theological, cultural, and biblical topics from the perspective of a member of the church community rather than from the stance of academia.

But it's not always easy, depending on the texts, and today was a doozy -- the parable of the talents; the beginning of the story of Deborah, Jael, and Sisera in Judges; and Psalm 123, which speaks (in the Book of Common Prayer version) of the "indolent rich."  Anybody would think of Occupy Wall Street in that context, and although I was careful not to endorse that movement, I did have a visitor to the church comment that I am apparently "not afraid of controversy" for implying that the concentration of power and freedom in the hands of the rich is something that, biblically, we should be concerned about.

You can judge for yourself; the sermon is here.  When and if a podcast becomes available, I'll update with that information.  Your comments are welcome!

Preach it

A few times a year, I have the privilege of preaching at my church. Tomorrow is one of those days. One of the reasons my vicar asks me is because there are some congregants in this college town who appreciate an academic approach to the material; they'll show up whenever I teach a class for adult Christian education, or when I preach. When the vicar is out of town, we can actually draw a slightly larger crowd by having me preach than we would be having morning prayer with a prepared sermon read by one of the liturgical ministers. Or that's the theory, anyway.

Tomorrow marks the second time in a year that my theme is more about what's missing in the lectionary than what's there -- what the excerpts skip over. I'm not sure if it's a blessing or a curse that the Old Testament text for this Sunday is 2 Samuel 6, which includes the story of Uzzah being struck down after taking hold of the Ark of the Covenant when it was jostled on an oxcart. That's a fascinating story, one that's hard to extract a simple moral lesson from -- which is, of course, what makes it interesting.

By bringing up what's missing, what's hard to fit in, naturally I'm running a risk. It doesn't necessarily make for the neatest, most uplifting sermon. I think that the people who go out of their way to hear me preach appreciate that I talk about the problems that the text presents. But in case I'm wrong, I'll leave a copy of my sermon for the vicar. She invited me back after the last time I concentrated on the ellipsis in the lectionary, so my hope is that this approach isn't taboo. Next time, Teri, I promise that you'll hear more about the content of the readings than the verses that got skipped over.

Despised and rejected

The remarkable thing about the Bible is that over and over again, it tells the story of how God chose people completely upside-down from how their societies viewed them. The childless man becomes the ancestor of two great nations. The youngest son prevails over his brothers. The shepherd boy, so insignificant as to be left out in the fields when the prophet summoned the clan, becomes the king. The exiled remnant become the foundation of new prosperity. The crazy hermit is closer to the truth than the mighty warrior. Prostitutes and collaborators get to sup with God's chosen one, while the righteous and the rich are ignored.

According to the Bible, then, who are God's chosen people -- who are the elect? It seems to me that there's a consistent strain in the Biblical narratives that says that the elect are those despised by their societies. The elect are the people that the comfortable, well-off, well-positioned, upper middle class of any particular community don't want to associate with. (For it's precisely the middle class, you know, who are most concerned about who they associate with -- they have the most to gain by playing the game of class and morality correctly, and the most to lose by hanging with the wrong crowd.) The Bible says that to find out whom God values, look to see whom people value -- and then go to the other end of the spectrum.

I'm that middle class person. I've got a comfortable life, a good education, a high-status job. I've been outwardly blessed with a devoted husband, beautiful children, the respect of my peers, good friends and a good living.

It's pretty clear to me that according to the Bible, I'm not God's elect.

That's important because all of us look for God in the signs and signifiers of our societies. Who is it that has God's favor? Who should we follow here on earth? Where is the image of God most clearly to be seen?

Throughout history, human beings have always looked for God in the mainstream of their societies -- in mainstream morality, majority values, high-status lifestyles. But the Bible says that God deliberately chooses to be found as far away from that as possible.

My temptation is to look for God inside myself. Where in my life is God working? What am I doing that Jesus would do?

But the Bible says that my neighborhood, my class, my upbringing, my values, my religion are not where God is likely to be found. "Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me." According to the Bible, I'll find God amongst the people I shun, in the lifestyles my society disparages, in the classes and age groups and values that threaten people like me, and against which people like me spend so much of our energy working and lobbying and bringing ballot initiatives and proposing zoning ordinances.

The least of these. We middle-class Christians work hard to put ourselves into that category by talking about the blackness of our sin and the wonder of grace. But the Bible talks about the least of these in pretty concrete, publicly-available terms -- economic power, job status, demographic desirability, affiliation with favored or patriotic groups, religious majority, moral purity in practice.

I'm not the least -- not in America, not in Arkansas, not in Conway. I'm not the most, either, but I'm a lot closer to that end. If I'm looking for God, and I'm taking the Bible seriously, I'd better be looking in the neighborhoods where people like me don't go.

Eternally revising

Today I got a book in the mail that I've had on order at Amazon for weeks. It's How To Read The Bible: A Guide To Scripture, Then And Now by James Kugel. This massive volume attempts to tell two simultaneous stories: the discovery by modern scholarship of the Bible's composition, authorship, and historical background; and the formation of standard interpretations of the Bible in the centuries around the beginning of the common era, by scholars under intense pressure to find relevance in these ancient texts that would make sense of their turbulent times.

I wish I could start my sophomore class over and install this book as the central text. We're using Kugel's The Bible As It Was, a book I've admired and consulted for years. It compiles scores of interpretive strands from the ancient literature, showing how they tried to make sense of texts they found cryptic yet absolutely crucial. But Kugel's new book not only shows how the interpreted-Bible, the one that all of us grew up with as the "plain meaning" of the text, came to be, but it also juxtaposes that familiar (yet utterly odd) book with the unfamiliar (yet distinctly human) mosaic revealed by scientific investigations of various kinds. It's the synthesis I've been groping toward in my class, and here it is in one magisterial package. I gulped down the introduction and part of chapter one before dinner, and I just want to take the rest of the semester off and savor it.

Next semester I'm reprising my class on pop culture criticism. I've learned a little bit about the balance between reading and writing assignments, and about how to manage in-class experiences with pop culture. I'm happy with two of my central texts -- Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Understanding Comics. But I feel like I need a book on the special properties of electronic media, so we can see how it matters that pop culture is mass culture. (Maybe those are two separate topics.) Last time I used a book called Digital McLuhan by Paul Levinson, and it was okay -- a little academic, a little theoretical. So I'm taking suggestions for another book that will help my students get some distance on this all-consuming deluge of media, maybe let them see how it developed, let them poke at the gears to see how it works. Any ideas?

I know for sure that I want to start the class with the title essay from George Saunders' new collection, The Braindead Megaphone. As he describes the overwhelming and despair-inducing power of poorly-thought-out ideas, soundbites, talking points, short attention span theater, simplistic propaganda, and meaningless tabloid sleaze in our culture, he calls for small acts of resistance. Every sentence revised, he says, is a blow against the massing hordes. Every paragraph carefully crafted is a light kindled against the rising dark. Amen, brother George.