single persons, people
of all races and families
of every kind.
Sunday
Service:
Holy Eucharist
at 9:30 am
Child care is available
Church of Our
Saviour
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Tel: 201-863-1449
Fax: 201-863-1474
Mark A. Lewis,
Vicar
MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
Pastoral Associate
This page revised 17
Sep 00
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
The Church of
Our Saviour
in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey
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The Son of
Man
and Stewardship
Reflections on the
lessons for the 14th Sunday after Pentecost
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Isaiah 50:4-9 / Psalm116:1-8
James 2:1-5, 8-10, 14-18 / Mark
8:27-38
The people Jesus knew, and the church that follows along after them still, have always had a tendency to give Jesus titles and attributes. They just can't call him "Jesus" and let that be that. No, he's gotta be the Messiah or the Christ or the Lord or the Savior or the Light of the World.
Christians may not always like to think about their answers to some of the questions Jesus puts to those who listen to him, but one question that has been answered to death is his "Who do you say I am?".
Interestingly, Jesus seems to have had a personal preference about what kind of title might sum up his ministry pretty well -- might "fit" him. In the Bible he never calls himself what the people around him are calling him. But he repeatedly, in all the gospels, keeps calling himself something odd, something we don't ever say in conversation now. Jesus wants people to think of him as the Son of Man.
It's a mysterious kind of title. What does it mean? I can remember many years wondering that. And then just gliding right by the phrase. I figured there were plenty of other things I didn't understand either and that I'd just take them first and not bother about the Son of Man stuff. I remember asking people once or twice over the years. Nobody I spoke to knew anything about it either. Including when I was in seminary.
So I was glad to read an essay [Joseph Fitzmyer's A wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays in The Semitic Background] a few years back that finally helped me get a grip on what it was that -- after all -- Jesus made a pointed effort to get people to see in him.
Now, it's as good as impossible to interpret that title as Jesus might have meant it and as the early Christians might have understood it. As with so many Biblical things, archaeological discoveries in this century have shed light on the phrase. Light that just wasn't available to the people who were constructing Christianity in the Middle Ages and later. (This is another perfect illustration of why it's not a very good thing to do to cling to "that old time" - read: Victorian - "religion", it just doesn't have all the facts we now have behind it.)
Now we know (from texts discovered at Qumran in Israel -- think Dead Sea Scrolls) that "Son of Man" was a pretty common term in Jesus' day. It meant something like "a human being" who is part of a larger collective "Humankind". The closest thing we have to it in contemporary English is "someone" as in "I am someone" or "Someone will come along and help". But Jesus seems to have used it in a quirky way. He used it in place of "I". And that was remarkable enough that people noticed it, remembered it, thought about it, and talked about it for years afterwards until, finally, everyone who wrote out a version of the gospel included the phrase -- lots. When you think about it, that's remarkable.
Scholars think that Jesus was using the phrase purposefully to compare himself individually with the ideals of the human race. In some texts, it sounds like Jesus is comparing himself with the ideal person or even the whole congregation of the righteous ones of God. It seems that Jesus wouldn't summarize his message and ministry in the word "Chosen One" or "Mighty One" but something more like "One Who Holds Up a High Standard for Himself". Sounds like someone from an old cowboy-and-Indian movie. "One-Who-Measures-With-A-Tall-Yardstick".
Jesus, it seems, put a very high value on people who think about what they do. Make decisions about their lives. And who are consciously aware of how well or how poorly they are sticking with them. Which brings us around to stewardship.
I want to spend the rest of the time I have today saying a few things about the way we give here at the Church of Our Saviour. And what meaning, I believe, lies behind what some might think of as a simple cash flow chart.
1. Our program is the mirror opposite of making a budget and persuading you to fund it. We take your considered estimate of your willful offering and build from there. Message: We assume that you have really put the thought into your decision.
2. We do not ask you to sign your estimates of giving. So we cannot and we therefore do not track your giving and bill you for any shortfall.
We trust that you will do what you say -- or, barring that -- what you are able to do. It's about being spiritual and material adults. It's about respecting people.
As a congregation, we try to be -- and to treat people -- as Sons and Daughters of Man. As people who -- while indisputably individuals -- are also intentionally part of the larger community of humankind and who, additionally, aspire to compare with the very best of humanity. It's a tall order, but that's what we aim for. And that's just one more example of how stewardship is so much more than just chipping in on the light bill.
The essential thing, to Jesus and to this Church, really is about what happens to the giver. We could help others without money. We might even be able to maintain a worship community without a building or without a priest.
And if we weren't able, Secaucus still wouldn't turn into a decadent and desperate wasteland of suffering. But what is certain is that without committed laity who see themselves standing in the footsteps of the righteous ones who have gone before and respond by investing something significant in the work of this place there would be no church here at all.
I can't tell you how very often people who are here all the time for years on end speak of "not belonging" to this church. Investing in a place is belonging to it. The amount of the financial fraction of your investment has next to nothing to do with the transformation of human spirits that is our goal here. We have among our extended group of this congregation's family and friends people who give thousands annually and don't invest themselves here. We have many more people who give hundreds over the course of a year and stand at the center of our communal service to God and the People of God. If I had to trade them one for one I'd take the latter ones every single time. They are Daughters and Sons of Man. They have a have a vision of our church that creates among us something no bankbook ever could.
-- Mark Lewis
Links for further reading:
The Semitic Background of the
New Testament: Combined Edition of Essays on the Semitic
Background of the New Testament and a Wandering Aramean
by Joseph A. Fitzmyer /
Paperback / September 1997
By purchase from Amazon.com
The Dead Sea Scrolls and
Christian Origins (Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls &
Related Literature)
by Joseph A. Fitzmyer /
Paperback / April 2000
By purchase from Amazon.com
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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