Awards Season

The Rev. Denise Giardina
Sunday, March 21, 2010

Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; Philippians 3:4b-14; John 12:1-8

IN THE NAME OF GOD, CREATOR, REDEEMER, INSPIRER

This is the awards season. We’ve had the Golden Globes and the Oscars, and in the literary world we’re anticipating the Pulitzers, the National Book Awards, and others. In that spirit I have decided to announce the Giardina Literary Awards for books of the Bible. Who will judge this competition? I will. What gives me the authority? Only the fact that I’m occupying this pulpit for the next ten minutes. They don’t call them bully pulpits for nothing.

So, with all due respect to the many fine contributors to the Bible, here are the winners. First, for Best Poetry, the award goes to the Book of Job. I am not alone in giving this award. The 19th century English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson called Job “the greatest poem of ancient and modern times.” Which I guess means all time. And not just in the Bible.

For Best Libretto, or lyrics for a musical score, the award goes to Isaiah for the providing the words to Handel’s Messiah. There are so many wonderful lines, from “Comfort ye my people” to “the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” Classic stuff.

For the Award in Rhetoric I can think of nothing greater than Paul’s magnificent eighth chapter of Romans. “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is among the most moving passages ever put down on paper.

The Giardina Fiction Award goes to the Book of Genesis. Love that talking snake! And it’s pretty cool that in Genesis, God had not just one, but a bunch of sons, who mated with the daughters of earth and produced a race of giants or troglodytes or whatever they were, maybe Terminators, or the blue guys in Avatar. And that ark that held two each of the 1.8 million species on earth, and Noah and his family feeding them all and shoveling the equivalent amount of waste product. It’s certainly a great achievement in fiction writing to convince people to believe that.

But for overall body of work, the best, most multitalented writer in the Bible? I reserve this award for John, author of the fourth gospel. No one has the range and versatility of John. John can produce high drama – “Lazarus, come out” – that rivals Shakespeare. John can take philosophical ideas and yet write passages about them that are as stirring as any thriller – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Today’s Gospel is a prime example of John’s talent. In modern literary terms, this is called flash writing, and John is clearly a master of flash writing. In only eight verses, he gives us a full, complete short story with complicated character studies. Lazarus has recently been raised from the dead, he is now back home, and Jesus is visiting. Though a dinner is being given in honor of that visit, it also must have been a typical feast to celebrate someone being raised from the dead.

Then we have the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. The sisters have appeared in John before; Martha who goes about her duties as a server of hospitality with great vigor, Mary the dreamer who ignores everyday duties to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn. They stay in character here. Martha, being Martha, is still serving the food and drink. Mary, being Mary, does something odd. She anoints the feet of Jesus with what was apparently expensive and fragrant perfume, and wipes his feet with her hair.

I won’t remark upon the sensuousness of this act, except to say that it flies in the face of the puritanical attitudes of many Christians who would divorce our faith from the pleasures of the world. Fine, fragrant perfume, a light loving touch. And perhaps that is what offended Judas, who is also present. Judas chastises Mary for spending money upon this fine perfume, money that could have gone to help the poor instead. But John also tells us that Judas is not sincere in his protest. Judas did not in fact care about the poor; he was an embezzler who had been stealing from the common purse that was meant for the poor. In just two verses, John the extremely talented writer gives us a character description of Judas that is absolutely clear. Many of us lesser writers need entire novels to create characters so nuanced.

But despite the clarity of John’s writing, this passage is one of the most misinterpreted in scripture. Time and again it is cited to convince Christians that in fact we should not be concerned about the poor and should do little or nothing to help them, especially when it comes to challenging the structures that keep people poor. Jesus said You always have the poor with you. So there’s nothing to be done. Don’t worry about them. Just worry about getting yourself to heaven. It is the supreme plea of selfishness.

Never mind that John has pointed out the real motivation for Judas’s advice – theft and greed. Never mind that Jesus nowhere says to ignore the poor: he merely notes their ongoing presence which one presumes, given his other teachings, will require an ongoing response. His only caveat seems to be to say that now and then, especially at special times, it is OK to enjoy the pleasures of the world. It is not necessary to become an ascetic and deny all pleasures of the flesh. A good meal, a thoughtful touch, the fragrance of a thing of beauty, well made and lovingly bestowed – that is also fine. But that by no means requires that Christians turn our backs upon the poor. The call throughout the Bible, Old Testament and New, is to concern ourselves about those less fortunate and to challenge whatever harms those who are weak, who are alone, who are unfortunate, who are oppressed, who are poor. That is what social justice, Christian social justice, is all about.

Notice that I emphasized that term, social justice. I do so because last week the television and radio commentator Glenn Beck issued an admonition to you all. He said, “I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.” And what are social justice and economic justice code words for? Socialism and Communism. Oh, and Nazism too. Which are, of course, all the same thing. According to Glenn Beck.

Mr. Beck went on to say, “Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!" Churches, that is, that talk about social justice. Now, I have looked at the St. John’s web site. I didn’t find the term “social justice.” But I did see plenty of examples of it, from feeding poor people to birthing a clinic that provides health care for low income people to starting a community organization that runs a variety of programs for poor people who fall through the cracks of our system. And the history of St. John’s over the past fifty years demonstrates a willingness by clergy and parishioners to advocate for social justice and civil liberties, to speak out against poverty, racism, and unnecessary war.

So. Glenn Beck is obviously not in attendance here today; at least I don’t see him out there anywhere. But if he were here, I would feel obliged to say to him, “Mr. Beck, the state fire marshal requires I tell you that the exits are there – (POINT) -- there – and there!”

You always have the poor with you. That is not a call for dereliction of duty; it is a call to commitment. The Glenn Becks of the world want to polarize, to exclude, to demonize, in order to blunt that Christian call to commitment. Let me be very clear here. The Church’s call to social justice is not a partisan one. We can and will disagree on how is the best way to achieve social justice. Can the poor best be helped by government action, by the workings of free enterprise, by private philanthropy, or a combination of all three? Our answers are what make us Democrats or Republicans; that is what makes us liberals or moderates or conservatives.

But the call to social justice remains. However we do it, that is one thing that has always marked us as Christians, from the early church whose members shared their goods in common, to the medieval followers of St. Francis, to the Methodist social reformers of John Wesley’s day to the abolitionism of William Wilberforce and the 20th century social consciences of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King and Archbishop Oscar Romero and countless others. And that does not mean we cannot have wonderful music, lovely stained glass, silver chalices, beautiful buildings, fragrant perfume. All these praise God. But the poor are with us, even now. They will be eating a meal in our building in an hour or so. And as Christians we stand on their side. That is social justice, and I hope Glenn Beck will be lucky enough to experience it.