Proper 26 (31)

INTRODUCTION TO THE SCRIPTURE

Year C - PROPER 26

HABAKKUK 1:1-4; 2:1-4. Very little is known about most of the twelve Minor Prophets, especially Habakkuk. Even the identity of the enemy threatening the violent destruction of Israel is uncertain. Probably the background of the book was related to the Babylonian invasion of 609-598 BC. The prophet's message typically warned of disaster to come as result of national apostasy. But he proclaimed his hope just as clearly in 2:4 "The righteous live by their faith."

PSALM 119:137-144. Echoing the prophet's message, this selection of the longest of the psalms affirms the righteousness and justice of God and the reward of living by God's commandments.

ISAIAH 1:10-18. (Alternate) This thunderous rebuke of ritualistic piety without genuine justice for all remains one of the great prophetic proclamations of God’s will for all nations. It quickly evolves into a sincere plea from God for Israel to accept God’s forgiveness.

PSALM 32:1-7. (Alternate) The joy of forgiveness comes from free confession of sinfulness, and brings the promise of protection and deliverance from evil.

2 THESSALONIANS 1:1-4, 11-12. Faithfulness in difficult times is the central message of this brief letter, one of Paul's earliest. The congregation to which Paul wrote had grown in faith and in love for each other under considerable persecution. So Paul could boast of their faithfulness and mutual love in other congregations. He prayed for them to continue in their witness to Christ as they had been doing so well.

LUKE 19:1-10. Jesus continually challenged the traditional view of who is faithful. In Roman times, tax collecting was rented out to the highest bidder who then could extort whatever he could from the general populace. As a Roman lackey and a greedy profiteer, Zaccheus was a much despised man as well as too short to see over the crowds gathered to see Jesus enter Jericho. Yet Jesus sought him out and invited himself to his home to dine. When Zaccheus promised to be generous to the poor and repay what he had taken by fraud, Jesus praised him as a son of Abraham, the Jewish ideal of a faithful servant of God.

Whose values apply today? Do we always do whatever gains most for us or does faith help us stand out from the crowd?

Unlike most of his predecessors, Habakkuk addresses his words not to his fellow citizens of Judah, the southern Israelite kingdom, but to Yahweh. He demands to know when Yahweh will fulfill his purpose to bring in a reign of justice, righteousness and peace on the earth. When is the kingdom of Yahweh going to come? In total, the book is a conversation between the prophet and Yahweh with a concluding psalm confirming what the prophet had come to believe as a result of this exchange.

This reading consists of two oracles. The first is Habakkuk’s initial lament as he witnesses only destruction and violence. This results in a breakdown of law and order in which evil and injustice triumph over established social values. Habakkuk’s complaint is that Yahweh appears to ignore all the misery and wrongdoing.

The prophet gets Yahweh’s answer in 2:1-3. As he stands in a watch-tower, he has an epiphany. The reminder of the chapter (2:4-20) elaborates the prophet’s vision of the woes to come. Typically the message warns that the pending disaster is the result of national apostasy. But he proclaims his hope just as clearly in 2:4 "The righteous man will live by his faithfulness." Centuries later, of course, this became the theme of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

In what sort of behaviour is faithfulness attained? To begin with, the prophet is instructed to be patient (vs. 3) for Yahweh’s purpose is accomplished according to Yahweh’s own timing and not by our need. That is a potent message for this very day. It is all but impossible to see God’s purpose in the events of September 11, 2001 and the devastating assaults on terrorist havens which followed. Despite continual warning that the struggle against terrorism will be long and costly, we clamour for immediate victory, not justice. Once again, we need to be reminded by this prophetic scripture that God is Lord of History. Great empires, military alliances, political negotiations, even disastrous wars may become agents of divine purpose, but they do not determine the ultimate result. Justice, righteousness and peace remain forever in God’s control. Our response is to work toward these ultimate goals as best we can in contemporary circumstances.

PSALM 119:137-144. Continuing the acrostic model of this selection of the longest of the psalms, each line begins with the eighteenth Hebrew letter tzaddi. This letter simulates the sound of a soft c (as in census) not commonly symbolized in English but designated in French as ç ( leçon - c with a subscript s pronounced c – cedilla).

Exhibiting many characteristics of Wisdom literature with many synonyms for the Torah, the psalm dates from the late post-exilic period after the time of Ezra (c. 450 BCE). It appears to owe much to the influence of the Chronicler responsible for the final editing of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah. Thus, it may be dated in the early Greek period (after 330 BCE) although drawing from much earlier liturgical sources.

Echoing the prophet Habakkuk's message, this part of the poem affirms the righteousness and justice of Yahweh and the reward of living by Yahweh's commandments. The psalmist feels marginalized (vs. 141), but still clings faithfully to divine precepts.

Particularly appropriate to our time is the contrast between the temporary nature of present troubles and the everlasting justice of Yahweh’s truth expressed in the law (vss. 142-143). This gave the psalmist something (Someone ?) to trust in when all else is causing him extreme anguish and uncertainty.

Julian of Norwich provided a helpful antidote to the anxiety and depression so many of us are experiencing as a result of too much involvement in recent traumatic events. That 14^th century mystic wrote: “.... our Lord God does not want the soul to be frightened by this ugly sight.”

Julian could make such a comment even after experiencing two onslaughts of the Black Death in which most if not all of her family died from bubonic plague. She lived as an anchorite alone in a cell in Norwich where the Lollards led by John Wycliffe were brutally suppressed for wanting the scriptures in English. Could we not also look on the events of our time with similar faith in God’s constant love? Why has this not been our foremost means of security in the years since September 11, 2001?

The late Professor R.B.Y. Scott, of McGill University, Montreal, and Princeton University, has a memorable paragraph in his exegesis of this passage in The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 6, 170. Abingdon, 1956). His comment begins: “One of most the notable and original features of the teachings of the Hebrew prophets is their repeated insistence that the Lord is more concerned with men’s (sic) behavior in their social relationships than with the formal worship offered to him.... It is not that formal worship has no place; rather, it must be the expression and symbol of reverence for the moral character of God and the corresponding moral standards which should characterize God’s people. Otherwise, worship and sacrifice become meaningless, or even a positive evil, since men may thereby deceive themselves and falsify the meaning of true religion, exhausting their religious impulse without real commitment of themselves to the service of God.”

The likely occasion for Isaiah’s outburst could have been the temple precincts during a religious festival. We cannot discover any specific date, but the early period of the prophet’s ministry prior to the threat of Assyrian invasion when Israel enjoyed both peace and prosperity seems most probable. This message bears considerable similarity to the messages of Amos at the same general period during the third quarter of 8^th century BCE. As is often the case in times of prosperity, the people were not conscious of their hypocrisy.

PSALM 32:1-7. (Alternate) The joy of forgiveness comes from free confession of sinfulness and brings the promise of protection and deliverance from evil. Anyone who has felt the weight of sinful guilt lifted from the conscience knows full well how meaningful the words of this psalm can be.

These few verses offer no hint of the nature of the sin for which forgiveness has been granted. They merely exult with joy and commit the sinner to a different path. Accordingly, they could be used by anyone who sincerely seeks the mercy of God, not merely to ease a burdened conscience, but to place one in a right relationship with God. For God does not hold our sins against us, as if keeping an account book of our failures and transgressions. Such a view of forgiveness is a romantic myth which denigrates the grace that true repentance brings to the troubled soul exemplified by this psalm.

We have only slight data on the exact nature of the Thessalonians struggle. In his first letter and his earlier ministry among them Paul had taught them the gospel clearly. There appears to have been an attack on them by some unidentified exterior force. The object of the attack may well have been Paul himself or his teaching. It has been suggested that the Thessalonians were suffering from the initiatives by the emperor Claudius (41-54 CE) to revive Roman religious traditions in 47 CE. Others have held that Jewish misinterpretation of the Christian gospel concerning the coming of the Messiah had confused them about the return of Christ. Scholarly debate about the apocalyptic figure of the Antichrist includes discussion of Paul’s Thessalonian correspondence.

The contemporary situation in which we were thrust by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 was interpreted by some Christian preachers as a sign that the second coming of Christ is at hand. While Paul may have believed and taught that this was imminent in his time, we cannot extrapolate a similar hypothesis from our present circumstances. On the other hand, Paul sought only to encourage the Thessalonians to continue their strong witness. He praised them for their steadfast perseverance under persecution (vs. 4). He prayed for them to be worthy of their call to be God’s people in their community and to have the spiritual strength to fulfill God’s purpose. He asked that their every act might be motivated by faith and so show by their daily living in him that Jesus really is Lord (vss. 11-12).

I have previously mentioned a growing contemplative movement, the World Community for Christian Meditation. It has set a similar goal advocating that participants engage in two half-hour meditations daily in small groups or as individuals linked as a global network by means of the Internet (www.wccm.org). To the founder of this movement, the late Benedictine monk, Fr. John Main, “living in Christ” means to share the consciousness Jesus’ had of his unity with God who is love. In his Community of Love, Main quoted from the Prologue to the Benedictine Rule about the establishing of a monastic community in the 12^th century. It too seems to echo what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians.

“Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in the way of life and in faith we shall run on the path of God’ commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love, never swerving from his instructions then, but faithfully observing his teaching until death, we shall through patience in the sufferings of Christ deserve to share also in his Kingdom.”

For many, quiet contemplation and prayer may well be an effective means of dealing with the turbulence in which Christians and all people of faith find themselves. Like the Thessalonians we are confronting a significant spiritual enemy who claims to have the only true faith and is determined to destroy all who differ with them as apostates or infidels.

One of the most hated men in town praised as a son of Abraham? He would have been pelted with stones had he tried to approach the crowd accompanying Jesus into Jericho. No one would have believed him if he had begun to make restitution of his own accord, even though the law required that he repay what he had stolen with interest (Leviticus 6:5; Numbers 5:7). The irony of it was that Zaccheus expressed no desire whatsoever to escape from his social ostracism. He just climbed the tree so he could have a better vantage point to see Jesus as he passed by. Or was he becoming vaguely conscious of the deep loneliness his profession had created? Did he have even the faintest beginnings of a guilty conscience?

Jesus saw only a man waiting to be redeemed. Although he risked being ostracized himself, Jesus sought him out. Breaking all the barriers of social custom, Jesus invited himself to the man’s house for a meal. No one is beyond the reach of divine love. The experience changed Zaccheus into a grace-filled man. In the excitement of what had happened to him, he promised to be more than generous to the poor and repay many times over whatever he had taken by fraud. Jesus praised him as a son of Abraham, the Jewish ideal of a faithful servant of God.

There is an ancient sycamore tree still standing in Jericho surrounded by a fence and reputed to be the very tree from which Jesus called Jericho. Every tourist bus stops there for people to be photographed beneath it. It had special meaning for me when I had the chance to photograph a very short man there. I recalled my father, a lifetime elder of The United Church of Canada who occasionally conducted worship in my tiny home church when our minister was not available. One sermon has stayed with me over the years. It dealt with Zaccheus, the little man who was up a tree, and what happened when Jesus found him. Dad’s point was that we are often up a tree for a multitude of reasons and need to be found by Jesus too.

Whose values apply today? Do we always do whatever gains most for us or does faith that motivates genuine, generous, forgiving love help us stand out from the crowd?

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