Readings: 2 Samuel 23:1-7, True Christianity #439, #440 (see below)
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So today we hear a text centered in the final period of King David’s life. Several weeks back we spent time with the book of Ruth, the story of a loyal Moabite woman who followed her mother-in-law to Israel, and became David’s great-grandmother, establishing kindness rather than purity as central to the linage of a great king.

Now we fast forward past a couple of generations, past the great prophet Samuel and the tragic King Saul, to the end of King David’s reign. And we hear in our text what are called his “Last Words.” Now, if you keep reading in 2 Samuel, and I Kings, you’ll see that David doesn’t actually die quite yet. He continues long enough to establish his son, Solomon on the throne, and in truth, his actual final words are to Solomon, giving him advice for his future reign.

The text in 2 Samuel is David’s final public words, his final prophetic utterance as God’s anointed, and as author of many psalms, his final work of art and praise. For we remember, David was once a young boy who played the harp so beautifully that it calmed the troubled King Saul.

However, as we read the text, we certainly might pause in puzzlement. We might wonder, how can David say that the spirit of Lord spoke through him, how can David speak of ruling over people in righteousness and in the fear of God, and having a house right with God, when David himself undertook gross abuses of his power, the consequences of which played out in the bloody disarray of his family in the final years of his reign? There is a real tension that exists in the Hebrew scriptures around the exultation of King David, who was a terribly imperfect person and ruler. In fact, throughout the bible as a whole, there are many more imperfect characters than there are model ones, and as we learned through our study of the book of Ruth, even the stories of the model characters are more complicated than they might first seem.

David said: “If my house were not right with God, surely he would not have with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part; surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation…”  It might chafe to hear David speak so, the first part being such an obvious glossing over of the disarray we will only need to turn the page to find. This is a truth filtered through the ego of a king, through the fuzzy lens of nostalgia and royal deference.

But what is it trying to communicate at its core? That the existence of God’s covenant with us, God’s promise of continued presence with us, really doesn’t have anything to do with how good we are. Now, the efficacy of the covenant certainly does, but not its existence. Can you imagine what would happen if the covenant depended on our perfection? It quite simply would not exist at all. The everlasting covenant is not centered in human power or will in any way, it is centered in God’s. And God is steadfast, period. The covenant will remain, and God promised that way back with Noah and the rainbow. Thank goodness, for we will all continue to screw up in ways both new and exciting as well as habitual and everyday.  Is our house right with God? I’m sure there are many ways we can all convict ourselves, large and small.

David’s house was certainly not right with God, in the sense that nothing needed to be improved. But it was right enough in spirit, even if there was much to be desired in execution. David was not unrepentant on the whole; he had learned many things along the way. And what he had learned was this:

The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: *When* one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.

What does this communicate? That while the existence of the covenant is never in question, that the chance to live into the covenant is never in question, the efficacy of the covenant, what it produces, is not guaranteed. *When* we consciously align ourselves with God’s purposes and intention, clarity and generativity are brought forth. David uses nature metaphors to express what the quality of ideal Godly rule looks like, and by extension, what it looks like when we *all* live into the covenant. He is trying to say: That dawn light filled with color that seems to hold infinite possibility within it; it’s like that. The way the earth glistens and smells alive after a rain, the way green shoots respond and push upward; it’s like that. Who wouldn’t want to live their life within that kind of moment?

But a couple of notes: first, the *fear* of God. I think we can safely read that as a reverence or an awe of God, rather than actual fear. God doesn’t not wish to evoke fear from us, even if that were to mean we stayed in line. A reverence though, a holy awe, that kind of stance puts us in our place but in a good way, it keeps us open rather than closed and cramped, and naturally invites gratitude rather than grievance. 

And second, notice that we are not promised that we will get what we want. Living into the covenant, aligning ourselves with God - the text tells us what that is like, not what it will get us. It is like the quality of being in the dawn of a day, it is like being able to see clearly, it is like feeling nourished and ready to burst into growth. Those are all qualities of life that are very different to the sense of “life going well” or having success in earthly terms or getting what we desire, even if we what we desire is good and reasonable.

David misunderstood many things, but he understood the most important thing. He needed to keep returning to God, he needed to keep God at the center of his rule and his life. David was trying. Not always succeeding, but trying. Many of the kings that would come after him would not even have that barest quality. They would nakedly, plainly, chase after their own self-interest time and again.

The key, the only key, to living into the covenant, is the quality of openness that de-centers our selfhood and centers God instead. This is not so much an act of submission as it is an act of inoculation. There is such a thing as a healthy selfhood; God has given us that gift. But, it only comes if are willing to give it up, if we refuse to cling to it. Habitual self-centering, instead, little by little builds a precarious and desperate type of success; it will never be enough, it can never countenance it’s own limit, and so it turns into something that David likens to thorns, something that in the words of one of my commentaries, “chokes life and causes pain.”(1) We heard similar language in our Swedenborg reading: that a focus on self leads to “a stifling and an extinction of love for the Lord and love for our neighbor.” These are our options, in essence. Do we want to be the ground that lets life arise, or the thorn that chokes it?

We find ourselves now in the week before Thanksgiving, where we intentionally practice gratitude in community with each other. What I like about where this text is placed in the lectionary calendar is that it identifies not only what we can be grateful for, but how gratitude naturally arises. For it is one thing to make a list and say thank you; this act of gratitude de-centers the self for a moment, and that is good. But the ongoing spiritual work of Thanksgiving is to the de-center the self first and proactively so that gratitude can flow in every moment, so that our natural inclination is always to look away from our ego and give thanks.

So we say thank you to our steadfast God, who has covenanted with us to always be present and open and ready. We are about to enter into Advent which makes much of the phrase “Do not be afraid.” We need not fear that our God is capricious, we need not fear that our shortcomings, or our history of shortcomings, will chase God away. They never can and never will, for God keeps God’s promises.

And also, we receive a personal invitation, for the shape and form and quality of the covenant, like any agreement between parties, depends upon our partnership. What do we want it to be like? Perhaps in the spirit of Thanksgiving, it can be like a bounty brought in by people who work the earth with love, like a feast born from cooperation between guests, like a table with one more chair squeezed in, like a quiet and contemplative sufficiency. Or, perhaps, as David suggests, like a clear sunrise, like morning, like the brightness after rain, like the grass that rises from the earth. All of that sounds pretty good to me.
Amen.

(1) New Interpreters' Bible, Volume II, p620


Readings:

2 Samuel 23:1-7
1 These are the last words of David: “The inspired utterance of David son of Jesse, the utterance of the man exalted by the Most High, the man anointed by the God of Jacob, the hero of Israel’s songs: 2 “The Spirit of the LORD spoke through me; his word was on my tongue. 3 The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: ‘When one rules over people in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, 4 he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings grass from the earth.’ 5 “If my house were not right with God, surely he would not have made with me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part; surely he would not bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire. 6 But evil men are all to be cast aside like thorns, which are not gathered with the hand. 7 Whoever touches thorns uses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear; they are burned up where they lie.”

True Christianity 439

As Long as We Believe That Everything Good Comes from the Lord, We Do Not Take Credit for the Things We Do As We Practice Goodwill 

It is damaging for us to take credit for things we do for the sake of our salvation. Hidden within our credit-taking there are evil attitudes of which we are unaware at the time: denial that God flows in and works in us; confidence in our own power in regard to salvation; faith in ourselves and not in God; [the delusion that] we justify and save ourselves by our own strength; contempt for divine grace and mercy; rejection of reformation and regeneration by divine means; and especially disregard for the merit and justice of the Lord God our Savior, which we then claim as our own. In our taking credit there is also a continual focus on our own reward and perception of it as our first and last goal, a stifling and an extinction of love for the Lord and love for our neighbor, and total ignorance and unawareness of the pleasure involved in heavenly love (which takes no credit), while all we feel is our love for ourselves. 

True Christianity 440 
The pleasure of doing good to their neighbor is their reward. The angels in heaven feel this pleasure. It is a spiritual pleasure that is eternal. It immeasurably surpasses every earthly pleasure. People who have this pleasure do not want to hear about getting credit - they love doing good and feel joy in it.

Readings: Daniel 12:1-3, Mark 13:1-8, Divine Providence 27:1-2 (see below)
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Today’s text is often called Mark’s little apocalypse. The way Jesus is talking in it seems foreboding, even as we understand it to be metaphorical in our own time. But while he doesn’t use the actual word, what I think Jesus is actually talking about in this text is hope. And so that’s what we are going to talk about today: what hope is and why it is important. 

In the aftermath of a national election with very high stakes, some of us might be struggling to hang on to hope. For those who welcomed the outcome, perhaps you can apply these teachings to another time in your life. For many others, this is a very hard time. I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to rush anyone into having hope. It is important to take time to grieve as well, to take whatever time is needed. And, here are some thoughts on hope for whenever we might be ready.

If we recall from the gospel narrative, Jesus had been teaching in the temple. This is where, last week, we received both his warning about the abuses of those in power, and the lifting up of those outside of such power, like the widow who gave her last two coins.  It seems though, that the lesson has not really settled in for some of the disciples yet.  As they leave the temple, one disciple comments on the magnificence of the temple building.  An innocent enough comment it might seem, but in the context of their recent conversation, somewhat tone deaf. So, Jesus doubles down on his point: these massive buildings, insofar as they prop up illegitimate and abusive power structures, must be thrown down so that God’s kingdom can rise up, and be re-built in a way that supports the thriving of all people. From a Swedenborgian point of view, we would make a parallel point about our own ways of thinking. For Swedenborg, stones correspond to truths or ideas, and hewn stones to truths or ideas that arise from our own self-intelligence, which naturally attempts to serve the self. So likewise, these massive stones, these massive and far-reaching ideologies of self that we carry around inside us, these must be torn down so that we can be receptive to genuine spiritual truth, the kind of truth that serves God and neighbor. (1)

The historical context of this gospel however, is that it was most likely written around the same time as the first Jewish-Roman War. Also known as The Great Revolt, it was the first of three major rebellions of the Jews against the Romans, and it culminated in the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD. While we can’t be sure if Mark’s gospel was written before or after the temple destruction, it *was* written during a time when such destruction was certainly foreseeable or imminent. These early Jewish Christian communities were grappling with the prospect of figuring out what it meant to live faithfully in uncertain and dangerous times, times when what little safety and consistency they had was falling down around them. While immediately after Jesus death and resurrection, his followers seemed sure he would return very quickly, by 70AD it was clear the wait would be significantly longer. They were hungry for instruction about how to live in the in-between space, live in the world in which the kingdom of God was near but not yet fully realized. 

So the disciples ask Jesus, what will be the sign that all is about to be fulfilled?  At the heart, this question asks: how will be know that everything will really be okay? And Jesus tells them, uncertainty is just part of it. Turmoil is just part of it. The human drive toward control and domination will always be with us, inside of us and outside of us. Perhaps this is something we can relate to right now. In our country, the existence of dark sentiments might feel like they are being revealed over these last several years, though to many they have been clear all along: racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, misogyny, to name just a few. Some of these forces have been creeping out from their hiding places because they are being given permission and encouragement by our leaders, some have been dragged into the light by investigative journalism. Either way, it burdens the heart to see such hatred, callousness and self-interest. So too, in Marks time, chaos seemed to reign, the reach of empire seemed ascendent and absolute. These new Jewish Christians were discouraged. Who wouldn’t be? So, the Jesus of Mark’s gospel puts it all in context: “These are the beginnings of birth pains.” This is a pain that is going somewhere. The end goal is the birthing of something new.
Our Swedenborg reading for today tells us about God’s end goal for creation; which is not obedience or veneration but a heaven from the human race, our heavenly happiness. God’s divine providence looks towards this goal in every single thing it does. I quote: “God cannot help doing this, because God’s image and likeness is in us from creation.” God’s ultimate goal, the vision of creation, is embedded in our very being, and the operative question of our spiritual life is: are we open to it? We will all find ourselves, to varying degrees, in times when the world around us appears unstable, when relationships, institutions, rituals that we relied upon seem to quiver and maybe even fall. And so we ask the most important and difficult question of the Christian life, now as then: how do people of faith live with integrity in troubled times, social, political and personal?

The answer that I have today is: we practice hope. But first I have to be clear: as written by author Brene Brown(2), based on work by C.R. Snyder, hope is not an emotion, it is a cognitive-behavioral process. The answer is not to just be hopeful. The answer is to practice hope. Hope is a positive cognitive state that is created by having goals and planning to meet them. It is a state anchored in action. Swedenborg perhaps was intuiting this when he spoke of hope being a function of our understanding and trust being a function of our heart. (3)

And let me tell you, I hate this answer. I hate everything about it. Because, what I really want hope to be is a function of the heart, something that flows into me and holds me up, that makes me feel better when I feel bad, something that lets me know everything will be okay. Something that is a gift that I don’t have to work for. But what I’m actually describing there is comfort or trust. And though comfort or trust might have some relationship to hope, they are not the same thing. Hope is something that we create, hope is something that we grow through our choices of how to interact with the world.

This is exactly why Jesus uses the metaphor of birth pains, of contractions, because hope is something that we have to actively birth into being. It can be large hope or small hope, that doesn’t matter, it is about daring to envision a worthy goal, creating a pathway that we can use to walk toward it, and then walking it. That goal can be about the person right beside us, or about humanity as a whole, it can realistic in focus, or more utopian and far-reaching. They key is that it is grounded in doing, rather than being. Like in pregnancy and labor, we grow a vision and we grow a pathway inside of us by the choices we make and the actions we take. That process is precious but it is also painful, it is also labor. It won’t always feel clear that everything will work out. Birthing is a natural human process but also deeply unpredictable. And just like the children that we might birth into being, hope is a complicated blessing.

Just like our children or other loved ones we nurture, we cherish our hope, it makes us smile, even laugh. We look forward on its behalf. We make plans. We put our shoulder to the wheel and we work, we try to make the world better.
But hope done right will also challenge us. It will make us question what we thought we knew. It will make us cry. It will make us re-evaluate and pivot and begin again. It will exhaust us. It will definitely spit out that dinner that we slaved over. It might well grow up to be something we never could have dreamed of. And as we labor, there will always be that moment when we feel like we can’t go on. 
Because, when the things we have hoped for do not come to pass, it can be tempting to think that it is naive to hope. The disappointment can fool us into thinking that we have done something wrong by hoping. But the moral weight of hope is not measured by the effectiveness of its calculations or strategies. Effectiveness is a different type of work, important but different. Hope is a product of empathy and imagination, where we see what needs to change and we envision that change happening, where we see something that is missing and we envision it coming into being. Whether the change actually happens or not is no judgment upon the impulse itself, upon the audacity, to hope. Hope is a holy impulse, sacred exactly because it is not bounded or limited by human outcomes.

So here’s the good news: that baby is getting born, one way or another. God will not and cannot do anything else other than work for heavenly outcomes for all of us. And so we have been made for this work. We have been created in the image and likeness of God, for the purpose of sharing love. For the days that we cannot bear the labor, we share the load; some days we will work, some days we will midwife, some days we will rest. There have always been in this world those who have cared for each other, who have cared enough to create systems that support dignity and humanity and equality, who worked to birth justice and restoration into this world. And guess what? It’s me and you.

So, how do we live in divided, uncertain times? We speak the truth, we act with love, and we practice hope. We speak the truth, not out of self-interest, but because truth connects us to God’s vision for the whole of humanity. We enact love, not out of self-aggrandizement, but because a fierce commitment to compassion will bring God’s vision to pass. We practice hope, we practice the discipline of hoping, the discipline of imagining goals, seeing pathways towards them, and walking those paths. No matter how small. No matter how inconsequential. No matter how unreasonable or unattainable. We practice hope because that is what we have been made for, to imagine love being birthed into the world, and to pursue that goal as wisely and as determinedly as we can. 

I still hate this answer, by the way. It’s not what I wanted to hear. I still want to wake up in the morning and just feel hopeful. But, how just like God, to make hope be something we are given an invitation to choose, something we are invited to be in relationship with. I don’t like it, but I believe it. And I believe it's the only way. So, I’ll try my best to practice hope everyday, and I hope you will too.

Amen.

1. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #8941
2. Brene Brown, Facebook Post, November 8th, 2024
3. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven #6578

Readings: 

Daniel 12:1-3
1 “At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered. 2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.
Mark 13:1-8
1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” 2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” 3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” 5 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.
Divine Providence 27:1-2
I have explained elsewhere that heaven did not originate in angels who were created angels at the beginning, and that hell did not originate in a devil who was created an angel of light and was cast down from heaven. Rather, both heaven and hell are from the human race. Heaven is made up of people who are involved in a love for what is good and a consequent discernment of what is true, and hell of people who are involved in a love for what is evil and a discernment of what is false…
[2] Since heaven comes from the human race, then, and since heaven is living with the Lord forever, it follows that this was the Lord's goal for creation. Further, since this was the goal of creation, it is the goal of the Lord's divine providence. 
The Lord did not create the universe for his own sake but for the sake of people he would be with in heaven. By its very nature, spiritual love wants to share what it has with others, and to the extent that it can do so, it is totally present, experiencing its peace and bliss. Spiritual love gets this quality from the Lord's divine love, which is like this in infinite measure. 
It then follows that divine love (and therefore divine providence) has the goal of a heaven made up of people who have become angels and are becoming angels, people with whom it can share all the bliss and joy of love and wisdom, giving them these blessings from the Lord's own presence within them. He cannot help doing this, because his image and likeness is in us from creation.

Readings: I Kings 17:8-16, Mark 12:38-44, Secrets of Heaven #10122:2 (see below)
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You’ve probably noticed that I often preach about God’s presence with us. One of religion’s most powerful constructs is that of a loving deity who honors and values each individual, and who is present with everyone of us, who stands for the radical inclusion and worthiness of all. But of course, the comfort of steadfast companionship is not the only thing God does for us. While present, God is not a divine wingman, working to validate our every self-conception, or bring to pass our every whim. God is intimately present with us, yes, but God is also, importantly, apart from us and beyond us. Thankfully and blessedly, God transcends us, and our salvation and growth depend upon this fact.

Our two texts today are linked because they both mention widows, widows giving much when they had little to give. Because of their generosity, these texts are often preached around the topic of stewardship, and these widows lifted up as examples of selfless giving. While I believe that can be, and is, a worthwhile interpretation, I also feel uncomfortable focusing on the generosity of the widows and not the oppressive circumstances which fueled their destitution in the first place. When they are placed within context, I believe that we find something even more extraordinary than a simple model for generosity. We find a clue about where God is to be found and who God wants us to see.  As I just hinted, God is not only reliably found close to us, but is also found consistently outside of our assumptions and perspectives. 

So, in our Old Testament reading, we encounter the widow of Zarephath and Elijah.  First, some background.  This episode occurs during the 9th century, when Israel and Judah are divided kingdoms.  Ahab is the king of Israel and he has married Jezebel, a Sidonian princess from a kingdom to the north. The Sidonians worship a god called Baal, and Jezebel has brought this worship of Baal with her to Israel. Ahab is all over it, and builds a whole temple to Baal and other monuments to Sidonian gods besides. Then he and Jezebel start killing off the Lord’s prophets who object. The Bible tells us that Ahab “…did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God is Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.” (I Kings 16:33)

So of course, Elijah the great prophet shows up to speak the word of the Lord and to turn the hearts of Israel back to the one and only God. He begins by announcing a great drought, establishing God’s power.

As the drought ravages the land, Elijah hides in a ravine and is fed by ravens sent by the Lord. But later, when the nearby brook dries up, he is then sent by the Lord to a widow at Zarephath, as we hear in our text for today. It is important to note is that Zarephath is in Sidon. This widow is Sidonian, as is Jezebel. Now, the whole context of Elijah’s prophetic struggle here is to reestablish the power and efficacy of Israel’s (real) God over and against the Sidonian’s (not-real) God, Baal. In such a struggle, the temptation is always toward classic us-vs-them thinking. History tells us that, “my God is better than your God” quickly devolves into bloodshed. So, what does God do here? Elijah needs help, and God sends him to the other side. God sends him to a generous and trusting widow who restores him to life though the giving of her last morsel of food. We recognize that as an individual, this widow is caught in the cross hairs of forces beyond her control. As noted, she is Sidonian, so not necessarily subject the Israelite commandment to care for widows—perhaps no one is caring for her. And this drought, not her personal battle, has exacerbated her already dire circumstances. No one sees her. But God sees her. God wishes to bring Israel back into the fold, but not at her expense. God wishes for Israel to return to their covenantal identity but not in a way that causes them to despise their neighbors.

So then, this brings us to the widow in the gospel. Jesus was at the temple, and he was teaching and observing. He saw those who commanded attention and respect, the scribes, those who attached themselves to power, and who trampled upon the vulnerable to do so. The accumulation and abuse of power is a universally human tendency. We see this kind of jockeying for power abounding today as much as then, in all countries and societies, particularly in celebrity, business, and political realms. But as caught up as some people might be in the trappings of power and privilege, Jesus instead sees and lifts up one on the outside, one not seen and valued in the ordinary course of things. The widow, giving all she had, the very smallest of Roman coins, a pittance compared to what was given by the rich. This widow too, was vulnerable by forces outside of her control. Jesus had just warned of those seeking religious and political dominance by “devouring widow’s houses.” The religious leaders likely encouraged, even demanded such temple piety from the poor, even when they could barely afford it. That scribe from the text certainly didn’t see this widow, or think of her, except for his own gain. But Jesus saw her.

One widow outside of our expectations of tribe and nation, another widow outside of our expectations of power and privilege. Both seen and lifted up by God, over and above what might normally command our attention. Whenever we are tempted to turn our gaze inward, toward self-justification and control, God attempts to turn our gaze outward, always.

Our Swedenborg reading today talks about the new self and the old self. We are all born earthly with a natural focus on self-preservation, both physical and psychological. From the inside of this worldview, where everything serves self-preservation, that which is good and true for the self is called good and true in general and what is bad for the self called evil and false in general. The self is the center of the universe and the standard by which all is judged.  But this is small and cramped way to live. God wants more for us. God wants us to take the burden of ego away from us. There is a common saying: “God loves you just as you are, but loves you too much to let you stay that way.” God wants to give us the gift of self-forgetfulness, the gift of relinquishing preservation of the ego. We don’t need to take on the job of preserving our selfhood. When we open ourselves up, God will give and give and give. So God stretches us, nudges us, away from self-preoccupation, and in that stretching, creates a space in which the Lord’s own goodness and truth can flow into us. This space is called the new will and the new intellect, a space that entertains ideas about the good of all people not just ourselves, a space that practices love for all people not just ourselves. And the larger this new space is, the more we allow for the expanding, the more we are transformed, and the more we know heavenly peace. This is, as we Swedenborgians call it, the process of regeneration.

And if God is the “Grand Nudger,” what do these nudges look like? In the Word, they look like the camera panning away from the action, away from the shiny thing, away from the excitement, and showing the reality of who we are not seeing. In these texts for today, the camera pans away from the main action and reveals the collateral damage, reveals the real danger and pain of oppressive systems, reveals the dignity and the generosity of the vulnerable. 

In widening our gaze, God stretches us, pulls our attention towards something or someone outside of our expectations and assumptions. Jezebel, the Sidonian princess was such a reviled figure, so much so that her very name evokes betrayal and corruption in even secular contexts; yet God lifts up a Sidonian widow, and demonstrates how valued, redeemable, and generous she was. If we were tempted to cast all Sidonians in Jezebel’s light, we are shown how wrong that is, how opposed to God’s intention.

Likewise, when we are drawn into playing the game of power, accumulation and domination, venerating the scribes among us, simply because they have managed to attach themselves to those in influence, God lifts up the vulnerable, finding value in small, generous, authentic works, and showing us the real effects that the obsessive accumulation of power has on the world around us.

We probably would not have seen or noticed these widows otherwise. Our eyes would have been glued to the great standoff between The Lord and Baal, or the fancy scribe waltzing by leaving a trail of mystery behind him. And this is because our old will likes to be safe, right and superior. Our old will is tribal, our old will is avaricious, our old will is fearful. We see this writ large and small all around us; in politics around fears about changing demographics and immigration, in business in a reverence for the so-called “moral selfishness” that wants to call greed good, in our personal lives as we try to exercise domination or enact superiority in our relationships. God is indeed present with us as we grapple with our old will.  God has empathy for our childlike need to feel comfortable, certain, special. But God wants us to be able to have those things in ways that do not disadvantage and oppress other people.

The seeming benefits of the old will can never measure up to the gifts of the heavenly will, of the comfort, certainty and individual worthiness that is derived from the love of God. The benefits of the world and the ego are necessarily finite, self-consuming. The blessings of the divine are infinite, in an ever-increasing variety. And so our God, out of great love, draws us toward that infinite giftedness and abundance. God draws us ever out of ourselves, not because God regards us as essentially sinful or evil, but because God has dared to dream a future for us that we could never imagine for ourselves. Amen.


Readings:

I Kings 17:8-16

8 Then the word of the LORD came to him: 9 “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” 10 So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” 11 As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.” 12 “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.” 13 Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. 14 For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the LORD sends rain on the land.’ ” 15 She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. 16 For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.

Mark 12:38-44

38 As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 40 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”

41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

Secrets of Heaven 10122:2

…All the things with a person that come from heaven have connection with good and truth, and all those that come from hell have connection with evil and falsity. Or what amounts to the same thing, all things with a person which originate in the Lord have connection with good and truth, but all that originate in the person themselves has connection with evil and falsity. Since good and truth or falsity and evil are what everything throughout creation has connection with, and the human being is the place where they are received, a person has two mental powers to receive them. One is called the will and the other the understanding, the will being what receives good or evil, and the understanding what receives truth or falsity. The will formed by the Lord, also called the new will, receives good, while the understanding formed by the Lord, also called the new understanding, receives truth. But the will properly a person's own, also called the old will, receives evil, and the understanding properly a person's own, also called the old understanding, receives falsity. A person possesses the old will and understanding through being born from their parents, but they come to have the new will and understanding through being born from the Lord, which happens when they are being regenerated. For when being regenerated a person is conceived anew and is born anew.