Insights with Seitz Chris Seitz

We come to the end of our Lectionary Year. Every symphony has its crescendo and finale and the Sunday of Christ the King is that for the lectionary year.

All our readings look toward the end of things brought to completion by the King of Kings. David’s final words. Daniel’s final vision. Revelation’s NT version of that, much of it a recycling of OT apocalyptic visions and figures. We leave Mark for John and Jesus’ own final words to Pilate.

We begin with the last words of David. A man like other men, and a king like those who would follow him, in the steps of God’s Anointed. But also a king inside a special providential place, which in time will be occupied by the King of Kings. And so he is given to see this when, like Moses looking across into the Promised Land, he comes to the end of his days. The Holy Spirit has gifted him quite concretely – a feature Luther paid close attention to in his lectures on the psalms of David, where David is given to see the beloved exchanges between God the Son and God the Father. “He said to me you are my son, today I have begotten you.” “The Lord said to my Lord.” The line he paid attention to we find at verse 3: “The spirit of the LORD speaks through me, his word is upon my tongue.” And so David speaks of things pertaining to the house of God’s making in him. “Is not my house like this with God—like the sun rising on a cloudless morning—for he has made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and secure.”

The Psalm allows another to reflect on David, one of the few psalms where David is mentioned as the subject of the psalmist’s discourse and not his own. “Lord, remember David and all he endured.” David is himself but he also betokens all of God’s promises through time in him and leading to the King of Kings. “For your servant David’s sake, do not turn away the face of your Anointed.” He continues, “The Lord swore an oath to David; in truth he will not break it,” even in the face of seeming abandonment – in David’s day, so Psalm 89 – nor in the day of God’s Son the Christ. “A son, the fruit of your body will I set upon your throne.” And “I have prepared a lamp for my Anointed.” Mashiach. Messiah. Christ.

Daniel’s vision as recorded in chapter 7 uses the language of Son of Man for the kingship of his conception. The Ancient of Days is on this account the LORD God almighty seated at court, with attendants without number. A royal scene of final judgment, at which time the books recording all deeds done are opened. The Son of Man appears and enters the celestial courtroom. He is presented to the LORD God, and from his hand he receives a kingdom that has no end. In this dramatic depiction we have the OT’s equivalent of the creed’s “of one substance with the Father.” The identity of God and the identity of the Son of Man is both different but profoundly shared. To “sit at the right hand” is to share the selfsame identity of God Almighty. We see a kingship that is never destroyed for just this reason.

The apparel the LORD puts on, as the psalmist depicts it, is indeed, in the fullness of time, the flesh of the Son of Man. In so doing we see an enthronement that in fact has its origins from everlasting, from before the world’s beginning. Eschatology and eternal generation: two sides of the same divine identity and purpose before and through all time.

Revelation speaks of “the one who is and who was and who is to come”, the “I am who will be good on my promises through time,” the LORD, solemnly revealed to Moses. The grace and peace that come from God the LORD come in the same manner from Jesus Christ, who is the firstborn of the dead and the ruler as such of all the kings of the earth. Now the author turns his attention to this same Jesus as he comes a final time, not from the emptied tomb but from the eternal throne. Using the language of Daniel he comes on the clouds. And now we se

We are approaching the end of the lectionary year B, and as noted, we have this Sunday a reading from the apocalyptic portion of Mark, which in its entirety runs for some 37 verses. Our selection is but the brief, opening portion of that.

Also as noted, the focus on the end times, at the end of the lectionary year, which has its correlates in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, continues into the first Sundays of Advent – Advent in this sense, meaning the Second Coming of Christ and not the First Coming alone. So Luke’s apocalyptic material picks up in Year C where Mark’s 8 verses give but a small summary, on the First Sunday of Advent next lectionary year. And Matthew returns the favor in his lectionary year, providing a summary from his Gospel that in turns sends us to Mark chapter 13’s longer account for Advent 1 of Year B, when it comes around again.

Both Luke and Mark situate the long, final, apocalyptic—end of days—speech of Jesus after the story of the widow’s mite, where it fits naturally enough. Jesus is leaving the sanctuary he has cleansed and where he has confronted religious leaders, the scene of the extended action after his entry from Jericho and the Mt of Olives until this, his final farewell. A sanctuary not made with human hands, as Hebrews puts it, will be and is now his present place of intercession, having laid down his life in the manner Hebrews and Mark know is once for all, for all.

The departure from the temple evokes scenes reminiscent from the prophetic witnesses, Ezekiel most especially, where it amounts to an ominous withdrawal of the Lord God himself for a season of judgment. This withdrawal by the Lord, this time, is permanent, the culmination of judgment against human sin and rebellion for one final time and forever, with Jesus the Lord and Jesus himself the sacrificial offering of God’s love for the world he has made.

Upon leaving the temple the disciples, awed at its massive size and seeming permanence – it had stones of huge girth, some weighing up to three hundred tons, and would have been by far the largest structure ever seen by them – they give voice to their astonishment. Imagine the contrast, from a tiny mite in a widow’s palm to the top of the Twin Towers. “All will be thrown down” Jesus says in response to their awe and “not one stone will be left on another.” All standards of measurement will be recast by a single wooden cross about the size the man standing before them.

Whatever one makes of the astonishing details of the end time, about to be spelled out, and their timing–details that have vexed interpreters, including the actual destruction of the temple not long off and how that correlates with the end time, given that it happened now over 2000 years ago and the end time has not come—details our 8 verse section mercifully spares us—one thing is certain. Before going to his death Jesus spoke of a final judgment, and of the end of the temple as it had previously belonged to God’s precious plans. And his own death on a cross is surrounded by just these same apocalyptic features, supplied most clearly by Matthew, and with Mark satisfied to report the dramatic rending of the temple curtain at the hour of his death. With the death of Jesus a new reign of God begins which will take us to the end of time in its significance. The beginning of birth pains, but the conception and the bringing to term are accomplished in this man Jesus and this sets in motion a temporal horizon encompassing all future time, including our own, placing us for the most part gentile outsiders, right alongside Peter and James and John and Andrew.

The Track One reading continues with the roll call of famous women of integrity, following Esther, Dame Wisdom and Ruth. Hannah’s position in the first chapter of Samuel also picks up the Davidic theme at the close of Ruth, where the birth of Obed to Ruth, Boaz and Naomi we learn is in fact the grandfather of David.

In our lessons for this Sunday, the conclusion from the book of Ruth wraps up Track One’s brief summary of that marvelous brief work, and joins to it an equally uplifting psalm 127. In Track Two the reading from 1 Kings 17, Elijah and the widow from Zarephath, has been chosen to come alongside Jesus’ bold commendation of the widow, who “out of poverty has put in everything she had” into the temple treasury. Mark has aligned this brief account with Jesus’ condemnation of those scribes who love their finery, but have fleeced widows contemptuously. The Epistle reading continues our selections from Hebrews, now at the 9th chapter. As Jesus has entered the sanctuary of the Temple and cleansed it, he confronts likewise the uncleanness of religious leaders in their manifold roles, contrasting it severely with the fragrant offering of a poor widow. Through his death he has entered a heavenly sanctuary and the author of Hebrews explains the permanent significance of that. To which in a moment.

Let’s start with Track One.

Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, we recall, had indicated how perilous the decision to come with her would be. Ruth is a widow, as is Naomi, but also now without inheritance or support, alone in a foreign country through her decision to cling to Naomi. Naomi’s husband Elimelech had a wealthy kinsman named Boaz. So Naomi conspires to put Ruth in his path. The poor may glean in fields, Deuteronomy tells us, even as in this case it is also risky, given the festivities which mark the final days of the occasion.

Boaz has already taken note of her, we learn earlier in the story, gleaning with the others, and he commends her for her kind treatment of her mother in law, which has been made known to him. So the situation is auspicious. When Ruth tells her of this, Naomi sees it as a kindness of the Lord and concocts her plan. Ruth complies.

Boaz is indeed an honorable choice, though we learn he is not the closest kin and so the plot thickens. But the unnamed kinsman relinquishes his claim and Boaz takes on the role of perpetuating the name of the deceased husband. When a child is born to the happy couple, the women of the village speak of the resolution of Ruth’s and Naomi’s losses both. “A son has been born to Naomi.” Indeed, he is the grandfather of David. The path paved by Ruth, we learn in the final verses of the book, had its forerunners going back in time, strong and bold gentile women all of them.

“Children are a heritage from the Lord and the fruit of the womb is a gift” the psalmist says – surprising even Naomi, who had cautioned Ruth—do I have sons still in my womb?– but who now finds a son laid on her own nursing breast.

Having these two widows provided by the Track One reading we are given a helpful entry onto the Gospel story of the widow’s mite. She has thrown herself and all she has onto the mercy of God though her gift of two lepta, the smallest coins there are, but all she has.

Our Track Two OT reading has been chosen from the 17th chapter of Kings to also provide a widow, from yet another episode in God’s plans with his people. In Luke’s Gospel the episode is referred to in this way, underscoring the point from another angle:

“In truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow.”

Well-known and repeated often are the solemn injunctions in the OT to care for widows, whose fate is especially precarious. Neglecting this or abusing own’s power in probate are to be severely punished.

In our story from Kings we have a famine like unto that of Ruth. God commands Elijah to go to Sidon and be fed there. On its face one might assume that the idea makes sense if the famine does not reach that far.

I want to stop and take stock of where we are in the lectionary year. November provides the final four segments of Year B, years that typically end with the dramatic Second Coming readings from each of the three synoptic Gospels, this year represented by Mark 13. The lectionary obviously has us heading toward Jerusalem and Jesus teaching along the way, but it is in Lent that the Passion story itself is told. We have selections of readings from Mark, then, that come from chapters 11 and 12. Jesus has reached Jerusalem and triumphally entered before adoring crowds. He then turns to address in turns the religious leadership whose opposition to him has already been narrated and anticipated by Mark.

This focus on the Second Coming at the close of the year is not accidental. It is significant for its own sake and it also serves to anticipate Advent of the ensuing Christian year. The first Sundays of Advent also speak directly of the second Advent – hard sometimes to hear given the busyness of Christmas in the Cultural Year of Commerce. The one who comes in the cradle at Christmas is the King who will come again and whose coming is the very goal of history itself. Christ is our times and seasons, from his beginning and ending, gathering up our own, in Israel and in all nations under his reign. Before he goes up to Jerusalem to give his life as a ransom he draws attention to where this final death reaches out to gather up all time and space.

Year B consists of 52 Sundays of reading, tracking the narrative-line of Mark’s Gospel this year, and providing a rich symphony of readings drawn from every corner of the Old Testament. Including from those psalms whose ancient word resonates in accompaniment with the readings, giving us a seat in the symphony hall before and alongside Jesus, Ruth, David, Elijah and Elisha, Esther, Job, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Eldad and Medad and on the list goes. The accomplishment of the lectionary includes continuous readings from Acts and the letters of Paul, as well as the catholic epistles and Hebrews, our reading at this juncture of the year. In addition, for a great bulk of the year one can hear an effort to provide a continuous reading from the Old Testament, though its size makes for the necessity of a selection. For this Sunday, following the notes set forth in the final chapter of Proverbs, concerning the woman of valor, we move to Ruth. She joins Esther and Lady Wisdom from Proverbs and Hannah, whose song comes at the final Sunday of this lectionary year.

We are in that section of Mark’s Gospel where the conflict and tensions are heightening, and from various directions. After the triumphal entry Jesus cleanses the temple. He curses a fig tree in what is an ominous gesture. In the temple, he is confronted by the chief priests and scribes and elders and questioned about his authority to act as he does. The parable of the vineyard is delivered and received as a direct accusation, including their murderous intentions, and his arrest is considered and then rejected as potentially too inflammatory. Pharisees seek to trap him into seditious talk vis-a-vis the Roman authorities, a trap he parries with ease. Then the Sadducees engage in a ridiculous resurrection scenario, given that they do not believe in it; it is their chief identity marker. This sets off a dispute amongst themselves, to which today’s Gospel reading makes reference. A lone scribe, “seeing that he answered them well” poses a question of his own.

The passage is remarkable for several reasons, which should be clear given all we have witnessed about the way Jesus has responded all along his way to this point, with those he encounters. Luke and Matthew go a slightly different way, and make the questioner, consistent with other exchanges, negative. But on Mark’s landscape the encounter is positive, and a welcome sign that there is hope for all, and that belonging to a hostile grouping need not prevent one from seeing the ...

We have reached a major turning point in Mark’s Gospel. Indeed the major turning point. Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem to face the fate he has been promising will be his, and whose details have been given most recently down to specifics. The disciples persist in various forms of blindness and half-blindness, but doggedly he instructs them and they follow. Their fate too has been described, and it is to their credit they do not turn and head in the other direction. Not yet.

We now enter the frame passage matching the one that opened this middle section of Mark, whose counterpart of healing a blind man is back in chapter 8 at Bethsaida. Centering on three passion predictions. A section, as we noted last week, devoid of specific geographical orientation so the focus can fall on his teaching of disciples in the final days before reaching the fateful arena of God’s action in him.

Jericho is now the named locale, the city but 12 miles east of Jerusalem itself. The city conquered first by Joshua, now conquered in its own way by the Son of David. The geographical notice is odd: he enters and immediately leaves, a point usually put down to redaction or some other explanation. But Mark likely wants the echo from Joshua to register. This also helps underscore, one can imagine, the urgency of the blind beggar. Last chance. Sitting by the road of his hometown exit, Jesus is setting his face toward the capital, the twelve in tow. Now or never.

And he is up to it. He cries aloud, to the point of disturbing a faceless crowd gathered around Jesus. Their rebuke only intensifies his blind urgency. Rumor has reached his ears that this is Jesus of Nazareth and he wants to see again. Presumably he has lost his sight. Many note this matches the reality of the disciples who had seen and been witnesses to Jesus dramatic work, and then begin to falter as the light grows dimmer and they need to find renewed sight to move forward into Jesus dark night. If so, the healing is a good harbinger. Things need not spiral down at this fateful hour. Cry out for the Son of David. You are right to persist with all your strength. With this messianic cry he further serves as a forerunner of the Palm Sunday crowds upon his entry into the city from the Mount of Olives.

The throwing off of his cloak has lots of resonance with baptism, and the declaration of the baptizand that she or he want to see, find their new life in Jesus. Justin, Gregory Nazianzus, Clement all speak of baptism as a kind of sight receiving illumination. Jesus asks the question “what do you want me to do?” no matter how obvious the ailment or need, as we have seen previously. We must articulate our needs and not just box the air, if true healing and relationship with the healer are to be ours.

The following on the way is redolent of Isaiah’s second exodus language, and appropriate for one depicted as enrolled behind Jesus on his ultimate Way. Perhaps no bad model for the twelve themselves struggling for sight and insight both.

Our OT reading in Track Two’s pairing comes from Jeremiah, who has his own version of exodus language. We see this admixture in Isaiah as well, where second exodus is joined with pilgrimage, and the return to Zion is from all corners of the earth. There, further, we find the blind and the lame in their midst, a great company. They walk a straight path all the same, throwing off their cloaks of whatever weaving, because called by the one who is Father and Lord. The psalm for the day reinforces the praise called for by the prophet Jeremiah.

1 When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, *

then were we like those who dream.

2 Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *

and our tongue with shouts of joy.

3 Then they said among the nations, *

“The LORD has done great things for them.”

4 The LORD has done great things for us, *

and we are glad indeed.

Six Sundays ago, our reading was the first passion prediction, and this Sunday’s reading follows the third and final one of the set. We also noted that this particular section of Mark is framed by two healing stories involving blindness, in 8:22-26 and following our reading for this Sunday, in 10:46-52, the healing of blind Bartimaeus. Prior to this framed section Mark has given frequent geographical notice of Jesus’ movements, as he crisscrosses Galilee and his synagogue ministry there, and begins to move outward into Gentile regions, Tyre, Sidon, the cities of the Decapolis.

Over the last six Sundays we have been in more indeterminant space. Clearly Jesus is headed toward Jerusalem—his announcements say this—but the geographical notices and specifics of his movement thin out. The focus is on the teaching of the twelve, and dealing with their blindness, exhibited in various ways. Mention is made of Judea at the start of chapter 10. Jerusalem Pharisees next make an appearance to test Jesus about divorce. The third passion prediction locates itself quite clearly in proximity to Jerusalem, and after our reading for today, Jericho is the location of the healing of Bartimaeus. Caesarea Philippi and Galilee, where the first two announcements took place, are now fully in the rear view mirror. The third prediction makes it clear. “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem.” “We are going up to Jerusalem,” Jesus says, “and the son of man will be delivered to chief priests, condemned, delivered to Gentiles, mocked, spit upon, scourged, killed and on the third day rise.” This is a much more specific and detailed account of what is in store, suitable, one might say, for the final and most proximate announcement. Jerusalem is just around the corner, just over the horizon. The Greek passives (delivered, handed over) are of course the same terms translated elsewhere ‘betrayed.’ Isaiah 53 has the same word in its Greek translation. The Lord handed him over as a sin offering.

Almost in reverse proportion to previous announcements, where the fate Jesus declared was to come was rebuked, or reacted to with silence, and the third day rising ignored, this time the detailed account of death, terrible in its stages, is apparently accepted by James and John, and instead their ear picks up the third-day rising as decisive. So taking Jesus aside they say, “Grant us to sit on your right and on your left in your glory.”

Our Old Testament reading is the final servant song, and its language has clearly found its way into Mark’s account for today. The servant is handed over—delivered—and he is mocked and scourged, and killed. He gives his life as a ransom—God makes his life an offering for sin (Isa 53). His final destiny is however vindication and some form of new life – “he shall see his offspring”—the servants of the servant, in Isaiah’s depiction, and “shall prolong his days. Out of his anguish he shall see light. The righteous one my servant shall make many righteous. He has born the sin of many, he has borne their iniquities.”

This is the cup that Jesus says to James and John is his to drink. It is the baptism with which he is to be baptized. Mark doubtless has this scenario in view, and Jesus in his understanding does as well quite explicitly. Less clear is why James and John ask that Jesus do whatever they ask, a blank-check as it were, at just this moment. Jesus does not comply with this lofty request but, in his usual way, presses the question back to them. Just what do you have in mind? Are we to imagine that after three announcements texts like Isaiah 53 or Daniel 7 have begun to shape how they are hearing these announcements in the final analysis, and so embolden two of them to take Jesus aside and ask for something like the righteous fate of those God gives a share: the righteous one my servant shall make many righteous? He shall divide the spoil with the strong. Or Daniel 7,