Week of Proper 4: Saturday, Year 2

Above:  The Apostle Paul, by Rembrandt van Rijn

Sacrifices

JUNE 8, 2024

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Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada.  I invite you to follow it with me.

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2 Timothy 4:1-8 (Revised English Bible):

Before God, and before Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, I charge you solemnly by his coming appearance and his reign, proclaim the message, press it home in season and out of season, use argument, reproof, and appeal, with all the patience that teaching requires.  For the time will come when people will not stand sound teaching, but each will follow his own whim and gather a crowd of teachers to tickle his fancy.  They will stop their ears to the truth and turn to fables.  But you must keep your head whatever happens; put up with hardship, work to spread the gospel, discharge all the duties of your calling.

As for me, my life is already being poured out on the altar, and the hour for my departure is upon me.  I have run the great race, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.  And now there awaits me the garland of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on the great day, and not to me alone, but to all who have set their hearts on his coming appearance.

Psalm 71:8-17 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

8  Let my mouth be full of your praise

and your glory all the day long.

9  Do not cast me off in my old age;

forsake me not when my strength fails.

10  For my enemies are talking against me,

and those who lie in wait for my life take counsel together.

11  They say, “God has forsaken him;

go after him and seize him;

because there is none who will save.”

12  O God, be not far from me;

come quickly to help me, O my God.

13  Let those who set themselves against me to put to shame and be disgraced;

let those who seek to do me evil be covered with scorn and reproach.

14  But I shall always wait in patience,

and shall praise you more and more.

15  My mouth shall recount your mighty acts

and saving deeds all the day long;

though I cannot know the number of them.

16  I will begin with the mighty works of the Lord GOD;

I will recall your righteousness, yours alone.

17  O God, you have taught me since I was young,

and to this day I tell of your wonderful works.

Mark 12:38-44 (Revised English Bible):

There was a large crowd listening eagerly.  As he taught them, he said,

Beware of the scribes, who love to walk up and down in long robes and be greeted respectfully in the street, and to have the chief seats  in synagogues and places of honour at feasts.  Those who eat up the property of widows, while for appearance’s sake they say long prayers, will receive a sentence all the more severe.

As he was sitting opposite the temple treasury, he watched the people dropping their money into the chest.  Many rich people were putting in large amounts.  Presently there came a poor widow who dropped in two tiny coins, together worth a penny.  He called his disciples to him and said,

Truly I tell you:  this poor widow has given more than all those giving to the treasury; for the others who have given had more than enough, but she, with less than enough, has given all that she had to live on.

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The Collect:

O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth:  Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

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Some Related Posts:

Week of Proper 4:  Saturday, Year 1:

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/week-of-proper-4-saturday-year-1/

 Luke 21 (Parallel to Mark 12): 

https://ordinarytimedevotions.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/week-of-proper-29-monday-year-1/

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross:

http://gatheredprayers.wordpress.com/2011/04/17/when-i-survey-the-wondrous-cross/

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Paul could have had a comfortable life until the end.  He had that kind of life when he persecuted the nascent Jesus movement.  But, when he changed the direction of his life after God intervened, he embarked on a path which entailed spending time in and out of various jails and prisons.   The end came via beheading.

The widow made a great sacrifice of a different sort.  Was her sacrifice necessary?  No.  Did Jesus praise or lament her offering?  As I discuss in the post on the Lukan parallel, I think that he lamented it.  But at least the widow was faithful.

Out of faithfulness people make sacrifices.  So those who tell them to do so have the obligation not to exploit the less fortunate and the the less educated.  Yet the piety of those who make these sacrifices is at least honest, which is more than I can say about the motivation of those who tell them that these sacrifices are necessary and proper.

As for martyrdom, this is the logical result of the combination of certain circumstances and faithful people.  Given the Roman imperial politics of the 60s C.E., Paul’s life could not have ended any other way.  Nero was seeking scapegoats, which he found in the form of Christians.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Father (now Saint) Maximilian Kolbe, by virtue of their active faith , were bound to run afoul of the Nazis in the 1940s.  Jonathan Myrick Daniels, an Episcopal seminarian taking a break from his studies to work for civil rights in Alabama in 1965, took a bullet and gave his life for an African-American young woman he did not know.  His love of God and his neighbors dictated nothing less in that circumstance.

Then there is the example of Jesus, who died on a cross.  “Take up your cross and follow me,” he said.  That was what Paul, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Father (Saint) Maximilian Kolbe, and Jonathan Myrick Daniels did.  It is what God calls us to do, each in the way(s) appropriate to our circumstances, to do.  Grace is free to us, but not cheap.

KRT

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