The Christian calendar, like the Hebrew calendar, follows the sun and the moon. The traditional calendars of the indigenous peoples of southern Arizona show us the seasons of growth and of waiting. (As I recall from a visit to the Arizona Historical Museum, in some traditions we hereabouts have six, based on not only heat and cold, rain and drought, but the fruition times of various local food plants.) And later the arrival of Spanish and Mexican cultivators meant these two calendars were integrated into such festivals as the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist, which is the time of harvest for wheat and also marks the beginning of the monsoon.
We know where we are in time also and that we are in the in-between time of hope.
Psalm 126
6 Those who sowed with tears *
will reap with songs of joy.
7 Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, *
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.
Between the sowing and the reaping,
In between now and then, between what was and what is to come, between the seed time and the harvest, the apparently infertile soil is the place of hope.
Of faith in things not seen, as yet, but believed.
This is about much more than simply the turn of the agricultural calendar, between the sowing and the reaping. In our lives we may experience times of nascency, of no apparent growth, indeed some times of sorrow and bereavement, when things are yet happening below the surface.
One time I encountered the then- archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, and as a conversation opener remarked to him that he had had great success as bishop of Bath and Wells, a time of great revival in the churches there. And he replied, that another had sown, and another tended, and he had merely been in at the harvest. He might have been quoting Saint Paul, “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:7)
We may, as Canon Anita reminded the congregation during the diocesan convention, see about us a desolate apparently barren place, as the Israelites returning from the Babylonian Captivity perceived when they arrived back in the land of their ancestors. Return from exile did not mean easy street. They were confronted with choices that tested their faith.
She gave the example of a householder holding a handful of grain. This could be the seed corn for the harvest to come, or she could use it to feed her family. Consuming the seed grain is a short-sighted move, but understandable in a time of desperation. The farmer would have to hold onto faith that the family would be sustained through the growing season, but as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, one plants, another waters, but God gives the growth. (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:6)
A time of waiting. Sleeping seeds: when shall they wake? When will the harvest come?
Hope is the bridge between faith that is theory and belief, and love that is practice and action.
At a time like that faced by the farmer, faith in theory is challenged to become love in action. And in between is the time of hope.
I do everything I can as if it all depends on me, said Mother Teresa; then I leave the rest to God. (to Malcolm Muggeridge, in ‘Something Beautiful for God,’ documentary film)
[And yet even she said, "I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness." Mother Teresa (https://www.catholic.org/clife/teresa/quotes.php)]
The story of Bartimaeus helps us to begin to make real this distinction between ideal and action, between potential and fulfillment. As he waits by the side of the road blind beggar Bartimaeus can only imagine a healing to physical sight. This in itself is a powerful sign of the hand of God at work through the one that Bartimaeus cries out to as ‘son of David’, which is pretty much equivalent to hailing him as Messiah. (Mark 10:46-52)
(The Greek is helpful here: he cries out, ‘anaboaō’ – that he might see again, ‘anablepsō’.)
Calling Jesus Teacher, ‘Rabbouni’, (as Mary Magdalene will address him at the Empty Tomb, in John 20:16) begins to reveal that the blind man’s insight goes beyond physical appearances.
A more-than-physical health is for us to enjoy, too, as we perceive the full extent of the gift of vision that Jesus gives us and Bartimaeus. The gift is beyond his expectation, and ours, for this is the gift not simply of seeing things that are visible but the gift of Jesus himself : and of the arrival in his person of the coming reign of God.
When Bartimaeus casts aside his begging-cloak he begins this journey, a journey that will take him from supplicant to disciple and will take him and Jesus to their next stop: Jerusalem. Jerusalem, where the fulfillment of Jesus’ purpose as the Son of David, the anointed one of God, will be revealed.
The days and years and seasons illuminated for us by sun and moon and stars tell us where we are in time - chronometer time. The life that is the light of humankind, that is Jesus, lights our way as we follow him into a greater sense of time - holy time - and a greater truth than simple sight. There is more than the marking of time passing at work here: in the kingdom of God, from Genesis through Revelation, God is at work in Christ, healing and reconciling us to himself. And we, thus enlightened, are called to live out our new insight in receiving, embodying, and carrying forth the gifts of faith, hope, and love, that make the kingdom of heaven real in our lives.
Things we begin to make real, to realize, by acting into them: we begin living into the kingdom, the reign of God.
The reality of the kingdom in our lives does not depend on or equate to anything less than the reign of God.
Present, social order or economic situation may change, but what continues is the story of the people of God, the story from creation through the life of Christ to resurrection, the story which is enacted sacramentally in water and oil in wine and bread, and in our fellowship with each other, and, in the spirit, becomes active in our care for each other, for all people, and for the created world.
Faith we have and we work toward love as we hold onto what we know that is true: God’s love and the work to make it actively present in our lives in society and world.
In a sense more evident for us than for many people of the past, we are aware of the world society that is both a mission field, encompassing the globe, and also our common home.
Hope is the bridge between faith that is theory and belief, and love that is practice and action.
May the kingdom come on earth, as we act in love, as it is, as we know in faith, in heaven.
Genesis 1:
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Jeremiah 31:7-9. Psalm 126. Hebrews 7:23-28. Mark 10:46-52.
Sermon for October 27, 2024 [Proper 25. Year B]
JRL+
