St. Andrew Presbyterian Church
  • Home
  • New Here?
    • Belonging Here
    • Contact Us
    • Directions
  • Who We Are
    • Stories
    • About Our Ministries
    • Leadership
    • Staff
    • Manantial de Vida Congregation
  • Worship
    • Worship in Absentia
    • Sermons
    • Get Involved >
      • Choirs and Music
      • Social Groups
      • Community Service
      • Missions >
        • NICHE
        • Gulfport Mississippi 2008
        • Honduras 2012
        • Honduras 2015
        • Honduras 2018 >
          • NPH 2018 photos
      • Christian Formation
      • Sustainable Living
      • Youth Group
    • Aftertalk
  • Happenings
    • Calendar
    • Newsletter
    • News >
      • News
  • Give
  • File Cabinet
    • Donations - Electronic
    • Clerks Drawer
    • Elder/Deacon Resources
    • Policies and Procedures
    • Personnel and Budget Drawer
    • Media
    • Members & Metrics
    • Sunday Roles
    • Directory & Deacons' Lists

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Proper 27), Year B

11/7/2021

0 Comments

 

Scott Anderson

Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17 † Psalm 127 † Hebrews 9:24-28 † Mark 12:38-44
You can view a video of the service and sermon here.

Robin Wall Kimmerer tells of an ancient ceremonial tradition among the indigenous coastal people in the Northwest. It always happened about this time of the year. If you’ve been out and about on the rivers in the past month or so, paying attention to what’s been happening in our waters, it may not surprise you.

Kimmerer spotlights the story this way:
Far out beyond the surf they felt it. Beyond the reach of any canoe, half a sea away, something stirred inside them, an ancient clock of bone and blood that said, “It’s time.” Silver-scaled body its own sort of compass needle spinning in the sea, the floating arrow turned toward home. From all directions they came, the sea a funnel of fish, narrowing their path as they gathered closer and closer, until their silver bodies lit up the water, redd-mates sent to sea, prodigal salmon coming home.[i]
Picture
​The return of the salmon, the yearly salmon runs was a foundation for life among the First Nations. Around this time of the year, they would camp along the coasts, gather at the mouths of the rivers, waiting and watching. 
Picture
​The numbers were astonishing. Rivers filled with silver flashes as thousands upon thousands of Chinook, Chum, Pink and Coho returned after years at sea for their final act.
I remember first being enthralled by stories and old pictures of the precarious fishing platforms above the wild waters of Celilo Falls on the Columbia River near The Dalles, Oregon. For 15,000 years, it became an annual gathering place of the First Nations when the salmon ran. Some 15 to 20 million salmon passed through those falls every year. Celilo was a site for treaty-making and feasting and celebration in this wild context of abundance—nation-building, you could say, in the very best sense of the term. They would come from all over to celebrate the abundance of the earth, to outdo one another with generosity in potlatches, to trade and make treaties and secure peace among their people.
Celilo was the oldest continuously inhabited community on the North American continent,[ii] that is, until March 10th, 1957,
when, within hours after the massive steel and concrete flood gates of the newly constructed Dalles Dam were closed and, 13 miles upstream, Celilo Falls and the settlement disappeared forever.[i]

​Kimmerer tells the story of the coastal people not too many miles to the west of Celilo “standing along the river singing a welcome, a song of praise as the food swims up the river, fin to fin.” But what doesn’t happen is equally telling:
The nets stay on the shore; the spears still hang in the houses. The hook-jawed leaders are allowed to pass, to guide the others and to carry the message to their upriver relatives that the people are grateful and full of respect.[iv]

Only after four days of safe passage is the First Salmon taken by the most honored fisher and prepared for a ritual feast. Kimmerer tells us, it is presented on a cedar plank in a bed of ferns, along with venison, roots, and berries, in sequence “for their places in the watershed.”[v]

Only then are the nets set out. Everyone has a task, including the elders who remind the young, spear in hand: “Take only what you need and let the rest go by and the fish will last forever.” And they mean it. When the drying racks are full with the food they need for winter, they stop fishing.
Picture
There is a fundamental understanding of reciprocity at play in these ancient stories and ceremonies. Kimmerer, understands this not only as a grateful recipient of these indigenous traditions, but also as a scientist. She notes that these runs of salmon fed not only her people, but the forests as well. The spent carcasses of spawned-out salmon, dragged into the woods by bears and eagles and people brought much-need nitrogen from the oceans to the forests. 

Using stable isotope analysis, scientists traced the source of nitrogen in the wood of ancient forests all the way back to the ocean. Salmon fed everyone.[vi]
 
I wonder if it’s not the loss of this culture of reciprocity that Jesus laments the most as he sits near the temple treasury seemingly just wasting time, paying attention.

As Mark often does, we have two stories that are placed beside each other for comparison.

The first finds Jesus warning his disciples: “Beware of the scribes.” This would certainly have caught the attention of Mark’s first century audience, for the scribes were the honorable and upstanding citizens of the day. They were the lawyers and teachers and professionals—the respected and the privileged. Yet there was something about them—in them—that revealed a polite society that had so lost its way that they were devouring widow’s houses—leaving people to the streets—and had ceased to care or even notice.

Listen to how Jesus describes these upstanding citizens: they want to walk around in long robes; they want greetings in the marketplaces; they want the first seats in the synagogues; they want the first places at the dinners. The scribes are known by their wanting, they are consumed by consuming, they are kept up by keeping up appearances.
Picture
Now, we should note the scribes don’t always get a bad rap in Mark. Only a few verses before today’s text Jesus is impressed by one of them.[vii] 
Picture
This tendency to paint any group too broadly or any individuals too absolutely is perhaps another symptom of our current sickness unto death. There is a warning here, I think, that a broken inner life leads to a broken life in the world that leads to widow’s houses being devoured, that leads to tent camps in our parks, that takes from those who need it most.
Picture
But then look at the second story in this pair. Like the scribes, the widow also drops a gift to the temple treasury. By all appearances, she ought to go unnoticed. She tosses a couple of coins in the plate that amount to nothing while some of Jerusalem’s finest make notable donations. This woman’s paltry sum wouldn’t have made a dent as far as heating the temple or running the lights goes. But Jesus saw it for what it was. An act of pure generosity, a jaw-dropping act of faith, and a revelation that exposed the fault lines of injustice. Here, for anyone with eyes to see was a sign that the path they were on was robbing the people of their future.

There is a deep structural problem revealed here in this temple of worship that needs fixing, a profane political reality that allows for the rich to walk care-free, basking in the glow of an admiring community while more and more widows’ houses are being devoured. And Jesus sees the writing on the wall. Houses such as these cannot stand. And in fact, this temple won’t. But that’s a story for next week.
If we have ears to ear, Kimmerer and the long wisdom tradition that was here on this continent long before European colonists arrived wanting, helps us to distinguish between a culture of reciprocity and a culture of domination and consumption that is already devouring the future of our children and our children’s children.

These women—at the treasury, facing a last meal—gave everything. These were astonishing acts of agency and wholeness, that fed everyone.

Kimmerer notes that the First Salmon Ceremonies were, likewise, not conducted for the people. They were for the Salmon themselves, and for all the glittering realms of Creation, for the renewal of the world. People understood that when lives are given on their behalf, they have received something precious.[viii] And so, as an act of gratitude, they gave something precious in return. A lamp is lit. A table is set. Loaves and fishes may yet abound.
Picture
Notes:
[i] Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass (p. 241). Milkweed Editions. Kindle Edition.
​[
ii] See “Celilo Falls” entry in Wikipedia. Retrieved on November 5, 2021 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celilo_Falls. 
[ii
i] For more information, see John Caldbick. “Celilo Falls disappears in hours after The Dalles Dam floodgates are closed on March 10, 1957”, February 10, 2012. Retrieved on November 5, 2021 from: https://www.historylink.org/file/10010. 
​[iv] Kimmerer, Robin Wall
. Braiding Sweetgrass (p. 243). Milkweed Editions. Kindle Edition.
​[v
] Ibid.
​
[vi] Ibid., p. 244.
​[vi
i] Mark 12:34.
​[vii
i] Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass (p. 252-53). Milkweed Editions. Kindle Edition.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    St. Andrew Sermons

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Advent
    Advocacy
    Allegory
    All Saints
    Annie Dillard
    Anti Racism
    Anti-Racism
    Ash Wednesday
    Auden
    Authority
    Baptism
    Beatitudes
    #BlackLivesMatter
    Bones
    Catechumenate
    Center Of Hope
    Christian Formation
    Christian Hope
    Christmas
    Clarity
    Climate Change
    Communion
    Compassion
    Confession
    Courage
    Creation Care
    Creative Process
    CS Lewis
    Dance
    Deacons
    Dealing With Death
    Desmond Tutu
    Despair
    Discernment
    Easter
    Economics
    Fairy Tales
    Faith
    Faithfulness
    Fecundity
    Footwashing
    Forgiveness
    Frederich Buechner
    Fred Rogers
    Generosity
    Godspell
    Good Friday
    Grace
    Gratitude
    Greatness
    Guns
    Hans Rosling
    Home
    Honduras
    Hope
    Housing
    Hulie Wigmen
    Incarnation
    Jan Dittmar
    Jimmy Nelson
    Judgment
    Julie Kae Sigars
    Justice
    Leadership
    Leigh Weber
    Lent
    Life In Christ
    Linda Ferguson
    Living In The Light
    Longing
    Love
    Maggie Breen
    Maundy Thursday
    Memory
    #MeToo
    Miracles
    Moral Injury
    Neighborliness
    New Life
    Newness Of Life
    Nicodemus
    NPH
    Palm Sunday
    Parables
    Peacemaking
    Pentecost
    People's Campaign
    Photography
    Poetry
    Pope Francis
    PTSD
    Rainer Maria Rilke
    REACH
    Reformation (New)
    Reign Of Christ
    Resilience
    Richard Powers
    Righteousness
    Robin Wall Kimmerer
    Role Of The Church
    Scott Anderson
    Security
    Sermon On The Mount
    Sermon On The Plain
    Sin
    Singing
    Social Media
    Solidarity
    Spiritual Formation
    Steadfast Love
    Temptation
    The Church
    Timothy Egan
    Transfiguration
    Trinity
    Tse-whit-zen
    Wendell Berry
    White Supremacy
    Wonder



​WORSHIP

Sunday 10am

PHONE:
425-272-5836


​OFFICE HOURS
Wednesday and Thursday
10AM-12PM 
                                        

  • Home
  • New Here?
    • Belonging Here
    • Contact Us
    • Directions
  • Who We Are
    • Stories
    • About Our Ministries
    • Leadership
    • Staff
    • Manantial de Vida Congregation
  • Worship
    • Worship in Absentia
    • Sermons
    • Get Involved >
      • Choirs and Music
      • Social Groups
      • Community Service
      • Missions >
        • NICHE
        • Gulfport Mississippi 2008
        • Honduras 2012
        • Honduras 2015
        • Honduras 2018 >
          • NPH 2018 photos
      • Christian Formation
      • Sustainable Living
      • Youth Group
    • Aftertalk
  • Happenings
    • Calendar
    • Newsletter
    • News >
      • News
  • Give
  • File Cabinet
    • Donations - Electronic
    • Clerks Drawer
    • Elder/Deacon Resources
    • Policies and Procedures
    • Personnel and Budget Drawer
    • Media
    • Members & Metrics
    • Sunday Roles
    • Directory & Deacons' Lists