Sunday
November 10
Faith and Freedom
By Marsh Chapel
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Faith and Freedom
Mark 12: 38-44
November 10, 2024
Marsh Chapel
Robert Allan Hill
Scripture
Beloved, in this cool harsh season and week, a season and week of troubled culture and national division, a season for many and perhaps for most of nettled disappointment if not surprise, let us draw up together, and warm our hands and feet and selves at the fire of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the giver of faith and freedom. And as his disciples, let us offer ourselves to one another in presence and prayer. Presence to be present with care. Prayer to keep our religious muscles toned, and our religious lives in tune. This Sunday, the Lord’s Day, a symbol that every day, and every hour therein is his. We are not alone–thanks be to God.
Our exemplars from Scripture this morning are heroines of the Bible, both women. This is always good to remember, but particularly in this season of denigration of women’s rights and voices, even at the hands of other women. Ruth’s complex, multi-valent story, a series of sermons in itself, which as you remember began last week with the courage to leave the familiar, continues today in her grasp of security for the future. Naomi reminds her, and she reminds us, that we need not fear to state our needs. Say what you need, name what you need, so that, as Naomi says, it may be well with you. Then in our Gospel, the famous widow of Mark 12 makes her appearance, as she does every third autumn, in our lectionary round of readings. The ordinary perception of her, as a pillar of generous giving, which she is, misses the admonishment of those of us of means. There is a poignant recollection here, in the comparison of one who gives much, we might read too much (everything she had, all she had to live on), in contrast to those who give little, we might read too little (out of their abundance). Remember the gospel that those who have much might not have too much, and those who have little might not have too little (2 Cor 8).
The widow’s voice is an alto, second level, voice. Not that of Jesus—not soprano. Not written only by Mark—not tenor. Not absorbed in the history of interpretation—not bass.
She may have been included just here, simply by connection with the earlier teaching about disregard for widows. These admonitions are like others from the gospels: woes for the cities of Galilee, woes for the rich, criticisms of the current generation, threats to this generation, threats to Jerusalem, woes to the daughters of Jerusalem, woes to those who say ‘lord, lord’, rejection of false disciples, warnings about the parousia, and others (RB, HST, 49). Warnings also to us, let us say, in our season, this very one, when truth and its telling, character and its affirmation, compassion and its necessity, are steadily waning, even washing away. Well, the good news in part, for you, and for me, is that we shall not be spiritually unemployed going forward. We have plenty of work to do, plenty to keep us busy, plenty for which to labor, to bring salt and light, well on into the next decade.
Now this unnamed widow came to life in the experience of the early church. This narrative itself may have originated in a sermon. A sermon meant perhaps ‘to present the Master as a living contemporary, and to comfort and admonish the Church in her hope’ (RB, HST, 60)
Later, Matthew has deleted the story of the widow–it is unclear why–while Luke keeps her, in keeping with his own emphases on generosity (think of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son). Mark apparently puts her in, just here, because of the use of the word ‘widow’ in the sentence before.
Beloved, no matter how hard the wind is blowing, hold fast to the good.
In the widow’s more ordinary conscription to exemplify giving with generosity, one finds a harbinger of goodness waiting to be discovered again by another generation of women and men who will enter the ministry. There they will find her, salt and light, out in the life of ministry, endless in its labors but also precious in its gifts. Are you feeling a call to the ministry? Her story in the Bible would not mean very much alone, if we had not also known her, in experience, in our own life and ministry. I call her out in her modern incarnations, this giving, generous widow. What a privilege it is be be in ministry.
Here is Bernice Danks, whose husband ran the Cornell Veterinary School, she an Ithaca Nurse, later widow, and a teacher of nurses, whose favorite word was the word ‘routine’: ‘I tell my students to protect what is routine. We call the most important things the routine things because the most important things are the routine’. Singing with joy in the choir, attending countless, endless meetings with a good humor, greeting the day with its losses and its gains with a steady, real smile, here she is, an exemplar of goodness.
Here is Setta Moe, a North Country widow, living alone for years on a small pension, reading at dusk in the cold tundra twilight. On her own, years earlier, she had gone from house to house to raise money for some beautiful stained glass in an otherwise modest church. ‘I felt I could do something for the church. We need more beauty here, more beautiful things around here, to keep us going’. Here she is, an exemplar of goodness.
Here is Mickey Murray, a Syracuse widow, whose husband died at 40, She raised her three children alone. Every Wednesday in those years she went to the church after work and cooked a full meal for her own kids and twenty or so others, then had them play, sing, read the Bible and do their homework together. She had every reason to complain about the cards life dealt her. Instead, she practiced a communal generosity, and made a difference in her city neighborhood. Here she is, an exemplar of goodness.
Here is Ruth Lippitt, a Rochester widow, who all her life gave voice to the longing for peace and justice she had learned as a graduate student in Chicago, under the influence of Ernest Freemont Tittle. She gathered ten elderly friends for dinner in her home to meet the new minister, a year before she died, and, before the meal said bluntly, ‘tell him who you are, one by one, you have two minutes, and I will ring this bell if you go longer’. Yes, the ministry has its rigors. But it also has its own sheer joys. Here you will meet faith lived in freedom. Here she is, an exemplar of goodness.
Here is Glenice Kelly, a Boston widow for one day only, who sat with her husband Gaylen, right here in this sanctuary every Sunday. They died within hours of each other inf February 2021. She gave her life out in so many directions, to husband and family and neighbors and young people. She taught high school young people her students about human sexuality, with joy and happiness and honesty. Gaylen and Glenice went to heaven a day apart in the middle of Covid. And with so many others—like C Faith Richardson—we as a community have had no full chance to grieve her, to grieve there loss. Then along comes Mark 12 and the poor widow, to remind us of the woman of salt and light who have charmed our paths.
Hold fast to what is good!
Fromm
Freedom, the freedom of the person of faith, surely is a great or the great blessed happy victory of the modern era. Or is it?
In a time when suddenly and unhappily we witness a broad willingness to taste test authoritarianism, a dark willingness to give over personal freedom for the sake of a putative security, or a rage for order, or a minimization of the more complex forms of self-government, just how precious is freedom, and at what cost? How much of the saintly widow of Mark 12, generously sharing in faith and freedom her two copper coins, stays with us?
In 1941 the philosopher Erich Fromm wrote a striking, seminal book on this question, ‘just how precious is freedom, and at what cost?’. Its English title is Escape From Freedom. Fromm explores the dark side of freedom, religious, cultural, economic and political. As an expatriate German, watching the events in Europe at the time, Fromm was trying to understand, from the perspective of social psychology, the rise of authoritarianism in his native land, but also, and more broadly and in a general way, to understand how people and groups of people become enthralled with, enamored of, and committed to authoritarianism. His argument is direct and simple: real freedom is real difficult to handle, and, when pressed, people move to escape from the demands of freedom by investment in authority. Freedom is scary. Freedom is demanding. Freedom is dangerous. Freedom is difficult. Better to hide underneath the apparently sturdy voice of an authoritarian leader, preferably one who denies all responsibility for wrong or hurt, and the rock-solid social identity of a mass of people, the commitment, itself often quite costly, to a cause that sets aside personal freedom, so lonely and hard and uncertain, for group support under authoritarian wings.
Fromm saw and spoke, in and of his time. Freedom has a dark side. Our own current national dilemma, in this unfolding decade of humiliation, presses us and makes us present to the question of freedom. It is more than issues of political liberalism—gay rights, women’s rights—that besets us. It is more than issues of economic socialism—ample education and abundant health care—that concern us. It is more than cultural practices—unflagging Sunday worship and vigorous voluntary associations– that beckon us. As important as all these are. It is more than a highjacked national narrative, more than a collapse of moral conscience and compass, more than the protections of civil society, the customs and ceremonies of courtesy meant to protect us from the unbridled, unhinged rhetoric, that beset, concern and beckon us. As important as all these are. It goes deeper, this our current malaise. It goes down deep into the caverns and caves of freedom. How will we live, in hope, with both faith and freedom? Do we have the faith to live with freedom, in freedom—in freedom to cast our coins into the kettle?
Erich Fromm warned us, way back in 1941.
He warned us about the dread of freedom
He showed us the historical origins and outcomes of freedom.
He traced the effects of the lack of hope in faith and freedom.
He unveiled, out of his own experience, and touching too our own, the consequent appeal of authoritarianism.
He pointed to daily consequences—which sound familiar: …to lose the sense of discrimination between a decent person and a scoundrel (245)…
Beloved. Be alert, on the qui vive, watchful, be sober, be watchful for nascent authoritarianism. In the daily denigration and disfigurement of facts, of truth. In the weekly demonization of ‘others’, of those other, in religion, in race, in nation, in orientation. In the dishonoring of other seats of power, like the judiciary, like the press, like the churches and other religious communities. In the steady denial of fact and responsibility.
Yet Fromm offered a word of hope in faith and freedom, what he called positive freedom: positive freedom consists in the spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality (257)…there is only one meaning of life, the act of living itself, for In positive freedom (one)) can relate (one)self spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of (one’s) emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities (139)..
Freedom and faith. Faith and freedom.
Spontaneity. Comraderie. Emotion. Intellect. Where you come alongside these there we might say is hope faith and freedom.
Coda
There are some weeks when good news seems hard to come by, and this week is one such. Yet these serial reminders of dark days past are meant, as you rightly surmise, to recall that we did make it through them, and we will get through this, too. We did make it through them, and we will get through this, too. Not unscathed, and hopefully not unchanged, but together, we will make it through.
The church’s role, yours and mine together, is to announce the gospel in interpretation of and accord with the Scriptures. Scripture gives us the chance for the long view. Scripture gives us a deep grounding, with heaven a little higher and earth a little wider. Thank goodness we have the Holy Scripture to which to turn, from which to learn, with which to listen, pray and prepare. Silver and gold have I none, but that which I have I give thee. (Acts 3:6). Listen. Pray. Prepare.
Beloved! Let us draw ourselves together to live in freedom and affirm our faith!
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Where there is freedom, there is promise. There is a self-correcting Spirit of Truth loose in the universe. There is a self-correcting Spirit of Truth loose in the universe.
We follow the trail of that Spirit by walking in the dark with our Transforming Friend, the Transcript in Time of who God is in eternity, the gift of the Father’s unfailing grace, our beacon not our boundary, the presence of the absence of God, Jesus Christ our Kyrios, our Lord.
