Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Twenty-Second after Trinity

First Samuel 1:4-20: This is the story of the birth of Samuel. Samuel is one of the key figures in the life of Israel, and this birth-story is told in detail.

Elkanah is the husband of a family that includes two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. "Hannah" means "charming," "attractive." She is the wife whom Elkanah loves. But Hannah has no children, so Elkanah marries another woman. "Peninnah" means "fertile" or "prolific," indicating her identity as child bearer, and she bears many children for her husband. As often happens in polygamy, there is a bitter rivalry between the two wives for the affection of their husband, and Peninnah provokes Hannah with her remarks about Hannah's inability to have children.

On one of the family's annual pilgrimages to the shrine at Shiloh, Hannah prayed to the Lord about her condition. Shiloh was an important sanctuary in Israel; at this time it housed the Ark of Yahweh. Hannah was deeply distressed, and she wept bitterly. She vowed a vow to the Lord: "If you will give your maidservant a son, I will give him to the Lord, and no razor will touch his head."

Eli the priest saw her at prayer. Her lips moved, but he heard no words, so he assumed she was drunk. Hannah replied that she was not drunk but was instead sorely troubled. Compassionately, Eli offered her his blessing: "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant the petition you have made." On their return home, Hannah conceived, and bore a son, and called his name Samuel.

The last line of the story of the birth of Samuel is virtually repeated in the story of the birth of Jesus. This tells why this story is placed at this point in the lectionary: it points forward to Advent and Christmas, the birth of the Messiah. Yet the story of Samuel is important in itself, for Samuel was a pivotal figure in the life of Israel. Samuel was to play a huge role in the triumph of Mosaic ideals and in the successful transition from confederation to centralized monarchy. He was considered a nazir, a person vowed to lifelong service of God, who pledged never to shave hair or beard nor drink alcoholic beverages. As a nazir he performed Levitic obligations and may have been considered a Levitical priest. He was also a judge who arbitrated between tribes and clans, a diviner who read the sacred dice, and a prophet specially called by God. The most important part of his career was his break with the priesthood of the family of Eli and its replacement by the ecstatic prophets. He was also the person in Israel who had enough authority to appoint as king first Saul and then David. (This information is found in Albright, Biblical Period, 42-46.) With the birth of Samuel, God has brought one more significant person into the life of Israel.

First Samuel 2:1-10: Instead of a psalm from the psalter, this week we have a psalm from the First Book of Samuel. It is called "The Song of Hannah," and it purports to be the song that Hannah sang when she gave birth to her first-born son. Coming from a woman as deeply distressed as she was in chapter one of the book, this song gives her a new voice, a new power, and a new dignity.

The song sings of the transformation that comes into human life when God acts within it. The military might of the powerful is broken, while the feeble gird themselves with strength. Those who are full hire themselves out to earn bread, while the hungry have ceased to hunger. Barren women bear children, while those who have many children are forlorn. The Lord raises up the poor from the dust and the needy from the ash-heap. The Lord guards the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked are cut off in darkness. God turns the social structures around, so that the first becomes last and the last becomes first.

The song ends on an odd note. "The Lord will give strength to his king and exalt the power of his anointed." Nowhere else in the poem had it talked of a king. Is this verse added to the story by a scribe of David's or Solomon's to put in a good word for the king? It is highly likely. Samuel anointed two kings over Israel. The one, Saul, failed miserably at his job. The other was remembered as a just and faithful king, but his reign, also, ended in turmoil. Did these kings bring low the rich and exalt the poor, gird the feeble with strength? If they did not, they were working at cross purposes with the God they claimed to worship. From the biblical and prophetic point of view, the only question to ask of any administration - king or president, governor or mayor - is this: in administrating their office did they exalt the poor and bring justice to the oppressed? Any other evaluation of political power is contrary to biblical faith in God.

Hebrews 10:11-14, 15-18, 19-25: This passage is especially important to Hebrews because it ends the first section of the letter and begins the second. The first section deals with theological matters, the way the Christian should think. It declares that the Christian Church has one priest only, namely, Jesus who was both priest and sacrifice. Its major emphasis is upon the personal relationship which Christ has with God and which Christians have with Christ. The second deals with ethical matters, the way the Christian should live. We are to stay close to our fellow Christians, and we are to encourage each other to love and to do good deeds, as the Day of the coming of Jesus Christ is drawing near.

The passage begins with a restatement of the announcement of the coming of a new covenant. Jeremiah announced this, 31:31-34. Jesus has brought the new covenant into being.

In this new covenant there is forgiveness of sins. There is no longer any need for a sin offering, because our sins have been forgiven through the death of Christ.

Through Christ we have free access to God; therefore, we should draw near to Christ. "The flesh of Jesus Christ" is the point at which the heavenly and earthly worlds meet. As a human being, Jesus was subject to temptation, suffering and death, but as the only High Priest of the new covenant, his sacrificial death was on behalf of the people of the covenant, the Christian church, and opened the way to God for them.

In verses 22 ff we have our description of what it means to be members of the new covenant. We enter the covenant through baptism, by which the hearts of the people are sprinkled clean, as the people at Sinai were said to have been sprinkled in a ritual bath. We need to note the intimate connection between crucifixion and baptism. The sprinkling of the hearts is identical with the sanctification by the blood of Jesus and is the effect of his sacrifice upon the cross. Because of this, we are freed from an evil conscience and can encourage one another to love and to do good deeds.

We continue in the covenant as we join in the prayers and worship of the Christian fellowship, and especially in the supper of the Lord, where all Christian hope and trust meet. We come together to encourage each other to live in the reflection of Christ's love and to join with each other in the hope that Jesus Christ will soon come.

Mark 13:1-8: Chapter 13 in Mark is one of the most difficult passages in the New Testament to evaluate. The chapter serves as a bridge between Jesus' ministry in Galilee and his passion and death. Scholars call this chapter "The Little Apocalypse." That makes it a visionary writing like that of the Book of Revelation. In this chapter the speaker is Jesus. He talks about events and experiences that will happen in the future. Some of these seem to correspond to events known to Mark by the time he wrote this gospel. Some of them are prophesies and predictions of Jesus himself. The best way to evaluate this chapter is to go over it verse by verse, and let each reader decide on the significance of what Jesus says here.

1: And as Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!"

The Temple at Jerusalem was in process of being rebuilt when Jesus sat in it in the year 29 or 30 A.D. King Herod, called "The Great," had ordered its rebuilding shortly after he began his reign in 37 B.C. and had begun to marshal the resources to do that. By the time it was finished, it was probably the most magnificent building in the ancient world.

Herod first extended the Temple Mount. The First Temple had been set upon a square platform. This platform, along with the Temple, was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army in 586 BC. When the Jews returned from the Babylonian Exile, they rebuilt this square Temple Mount. In 186 BC, a large fortress was built at the southern end of the Temple Mount platform by the Seleucids. The Seleucids, successors to Alexander the Great, ruled Jerusalem from their base in Assyria. This fortress gave the Seleucids a clear view of the entire Temple Mount. It was later destroyed by the Hasmoneans.

In 141 BC, the Hasmoneans extended the Temple Mount platform to the south, building over the area where the Seleucid fortress had been. In the eastern wall of the Temple Mount, facing the Mount of Olives, a vertical 'joint" is clearly discernable, marking the place where the original wall ended and Hasmonean construction began. In the northwestern corner of the Temple Mount, the Hasmoneans built a fortress, known as the Baris. This fortress would later be expanded by Herod the Great. The Hasmoneans also built two tunnels which led from the area south of the Temple Mount to the Temple Mount platform. These tunnels would later be known as the Double and Triple Gates.

The most dramatic expansion of the Temple Mount took place under the rule of Herod (37- 4 BC). The platform created by Herod, rising as much as 100 feet from the floor of the city, still defines the Temple Mount borders today. The Mount and its Temple absolutely dominated the city skyline of Jerusalem in those days.

Herod built four retaining walls around the Temple Mount. Then, he filled in the area between the walls with dirt, nearly doubling the area of the Temple Mount plaza. When he was finished, the Mount contained 35.5 acres. By way of comparison, this Mount itself was three times the size of the Jerusalem from which King David ruled.

In order to make the "fill" for the Mount, Herod used stones as large as 50 tons; imagine moving stones of that size with the primitive equipment at hand. One of these supporting walls, the Western Wall, is largely intact today. It is the spot to which Orthodox Jews today go daily to pray.

Herod created magnificent entrance ways to his Temple Mount. Robinson's Arc, in the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, once supported a huge staircase that led from the plaza down to the valley below. Further to the north, Wilson's Arch marks the site of a bridge that once connected the Temple of the Hasmonean Baris.

At the north end of the Temple Mount, Herod built the Tower of Antonia. This housed Roman soldiers and Roman authorities. Tradition has it that Jesus was tried and convicted by Pontius Pilate in this Tower.

On the Temple's South End was the Royal Portico. This was a huge, basilica-style structure which extended along the entire southern end of the Temple Mount. Josephus called the Royal Portico "more deserving of mention than any under the sun" (Antiquities 15:430). It was here that the Sanhedrin met, and it was here that the money-changers had their tables. Other shops and stalls were built into the Portico, and it was usually a place of teeming business. It was this part of the Temple that Jesus had in mind when he charged temple officials with turning "his father's house into a house of merchandising" (Jn 2:16).

The temple itself was a building of fabulous beauty. In order not to defile the temple while it was being built, Herod had trained 1,000 priests in the various skills that would be needed in its construction. Only these priests were permitted to work on the Temple itself.

The exterior of the Second Temple was constructed of yellow and white marble (or, according to another opinion, yellow, white and blue marble). The Temple's eastern facade, which faced the morning sun, was plated in pure gold. The remaining walls were gold-plated only on their lower halves. The marble on the upper surface of the walls was whitewashed once a year, and shone so brightly that from a distance, the Temple resembled a snow-covered mountain (Mishnah, tractate Middot, 3: 4).

Like the First Temple, the Second Temple was composed of three main sections: the Ulam, or porch; the hechal, or sanctuary; and the kodesh ha-kodeshim, or Holy of holies.

The porch, on the eastern side of the Temple facing the Mount of Olives, was the Temple's main entrance. Its gold-plated expanse was breached by a huge portal, 70 feet high. This portal was topped by a massive lintel constructed from oak beams.

The interior of the porch was a shallow anteroom, 19 feet in depth. On both sides it extended beyond the width of the rest of the Temple, creating two rooms known as the Chambers of the Slaughter Knives, where the priests kept knives used in the sacrificial cult.

Unlike the porch, the facade of the sanctuary was ornately decorated. A double set of doors controlled entrance to the sanctuary. The doors, as well as the sanctuary facade wall, were covered in gold. Huge freestanding columns stood on either side of the doorway. Above the entrance to the sanctuary, Herod placed an ornamental grape vine from which were suspended, according to the Mishnah (Middot 3:8), solid gold grape-clusters "as tall as a man."

The walls of the sanctuary were panelled in gold sheets. These square sheets were removed from the sanctuary three times a year at the pilgrimage festivals and displayed outside the Temple. The Sanctuary contained the lampstand, ormenorah, the shewbread table and the incense altar.

Two pieces of stone have been found which belonged to it. One was discovered in 1871 in a cemetery and a portion of another came to light in 1935 near St. Stephen's Gate. They were once set in the gates leading to the Temple's inner court, and they bear a notice in Greek which reads: "No alien may enter within the barrier and wall around the temple. Whoever is caught (violating this) is alone responsible for the death (penalty) which follows." (Wright Biblical Archaeology 224)

Beyond a double set of curtains at the western end of the sanctuary was the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies, which had held the Ark of the Covenant in Solomon's Temple, was an empty room during the time of Herod the Great. On the floor of the Holy of Holies was the Foundation Stone, the bedrock of the Temple Mount. It was on this stone that the High Priest made his annual incense offerings on the Day of Atonement.

The sanctuary and Holy of Holies were surrounded on the north and south sides by small cells, or chambers, probably used for the storage of ritual vessels and implements.

Between the northern cells and the external wall of the Temple was a stairway known as the misibbah. Parallel to the misibbah on the southern side of the building was a sloping channel, through which water was drained from the roof of the Temple.

The misibbah led to the Temple's Upper Chamber, which stood directly above the sanctuary and the Holy of Holies. In the western part of the Upper Chamber, holes were cut into the floor through which workmen could be lowered into the Holy of Holies. To ensure that no one but the High Priest would see the sacred space, workmen would be lowered in boxes, closed on all sides except the direction which faced the wall.

(This information is taken largely from a CD Rom entitled "Pathways Through Jerusalem" <eJ 1995 FVM Inc.)

Let's pick up the story again. 1: And as Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!" 2: And Jesus said to him, "Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down."

Jesus was right. Within forty years this magnificent building was destroyed in the revolt against Rome led by Zealot revolutionaries from about 66 AD to 70. Harold Schonfield, in The Passover Plot, 193-194, describes this destruction graphically:

"The messianic conviction behind the revolt is stressed by the Jewish historian Josephus writing under the patronage of the Roman victors: 'What more than all else incited them [the Jews] to the war was an ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred scriptures, to the effect that at that time one from their country would become ruler of the world. This they understood to mean someone of their own race, and many of their wise men went astray in their interpretation of it. The oracle, however, in reality signified the sovereignty of Vespasian, who was proclaimed emperor on Jewish soil.'

"With messianic fervour inspiring it, the struggle with the far superior Roman forces was a terrible one, in which terrorism, fanaticism and burning patriotism all played a part. The tragic climax was reached with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD. 70. As the writer has stated in an earlier work:

'The loss of life in the war was appalling. Josephus estimated that one million one hundred thousand perished in the siege of Jerusalem alone. Before this many thousands had died or been killed in Jerusalem and in other parts of the country. The total of captives taken throughout the war numbered only ninety-seven thousand. Of those who survived the siege, the combatants, the aged and feeble were killed. Eleven thousand prisoners died of starvation before their fate could be determined, and the tale of death was to continue to mount with those sent to the mines, or dispatched to the various provinces to be killed in the theatres by the sword or torn limb from limb by wild beasts.' The casualties at Jerusalem were so heavy because the population of the city was swollen with refugees who had sought safety there, and with pilgrims, coming to worship in the Temple, who were caught by the Roman encirclement.

"The followers of Jesus, the Nazoreans, had had their headquarters at Jerusalem. There James, the brother of Jesus, had presided over their affairs until his judicial murder c. AD. 62, reported by Josephus and others. When the war threatened the capital, the Nazorean community in obedience to a revelation as tradition declares, abandoned the city and fled across the Jordan. We do not know how far this story is correct; but it appears that some of the leaders escaped. In any case they were only a fraction of the 'Nazoreans of Palestine,' who were numerous in other parts of the country, and we may believe that not a few took refuge in Jerusalem and perished there. Their fate would probably have been the same if they stayed in their own homes, as we can see from what Josephus reports regarding places they inhabited such as Caesarea, Lydda and Joppa, mentioned in the Acts, and of course Galilee down to the lakeside.

"'At the beginning of the revolt the Gentiles of Caesarea massacred the Jews who resided in their city; within one hour more than twenty thousand were slaughtered, and Caesarea was completely emptied of Jews, for the fugitives were arrested by order of Florus and conducted in chains to the dockyards.' Reaching Lydda, Gallus found the town deserted, because the inhabitants had gone to Jerusalem, but fifty persons discovered were killed and the town burnt.9

"Galilee, where Jesus had lived and taught and which was the home of the Jewish resistance movement, suffered particularly. The Romans never ceased, night or day, to devastate the plains and to pillage the property of the country-folk, invariably killing all capable of bearing arms and reducing the inefficient to servitude. Galilee from end to end became a scene of fire and blood; from no misery, no calamity was it exempt. Later in the war there was heavy slaughter along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. One could see the whole lake red with blood and covered with corpses, for not a man escaped. During the following days the district reeked with a dreadful stench and presented a spectacle."

3: And as he sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, 4: "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished?"

It is important to notice what Minear calls the strategic location of this body of teachings. Jesus sat - the usual posture of the Jewish teacher - on the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives was the hill opposite the temple to the east and the place where the Messiah was supposed to appear. Jesus and the disciples looked across the steep ravine cut by the Brook Kidron and down upon the Temple itself.

Beautiful as the temple was, it represented the most ominous and powerful obstacle to Jesus' ministry. It housed the high priests and the purification systems that had held devout worshipper in bondage to the priests. It caused the denigration of women, who had very little part in its systems. It housed the animals and the sacrifices made there. Day and night the fires of sacrifice burned, and a pilgrim could smell the stench arising from this long before he could see the city. Every sacrifice increased the wealth and power of the priestly class. It was in the temple that the plot was laid to arrest and kill Jesus. Jesus had every reason to look upon this building and what it represented as his enemy and as the enemy of God.

True watching, according to Jesus, is accomplished when each servant performs his assigned work. To sleep is to forget that the work has been assigned by the Lord and to delay its completion.

5: And Jesus began to say to them, "Take heed that no one leads you astray. 6: Many will come in my name, saying, `I am he!' and they will lead many astray. 7: And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is not yet. 8: For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom..

Brandon reminds us that by the year 71 AD the inhabitants of Rome could look back on many "wars and rumors of wars." There had been the internal struggles following the death of Nero in 68 AD, in which Galva, Ortha, Vitalius, and Vespasian had successively contended for imperial power. The external security of the empire had been threatened by dangerous revolts in Gaul in 68, on the Rhine in 69, and in Judea from 66 to 70. There had been earthquakes in Laodicaea in 60 and at Pompeii in 63, and with these earthquakes there was undoubtedly much economic and social distress. The Emperor Gaius had attempted to desecrate the temple in 39. These were just a few of the wars that took place in this era of the Pax Romana, "The Peace of Rome." The discourse goes on to tell of persecution which would remind the Roman Christians of their own sufferings under Nero in 64. The author of Mark leads his readers through a survey of recent events and experiences, showing their significance in terms of the "birth pangs of the Messiah."

there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines; this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs.

Minear reminds us that while there were frequent earthquakes throughout this region (as there have been in recent years as well), an earthquake in the Bible did not need to refer to the actual event. "According to biblical accounts," Minear wrote in his commentary, "the most significant earth-quakes took place on three types of occasions: Revelation, Revolution, and Restoration. Of the first kind the revelation of God's covenant at Sinai afforded the best example. The second type of earthquake registered the revolutions which God's judgment brought to earth's citizens and kings. Here the restoration coming through Jesus is also heralded by earthquakes."

"What will be the sign of the end?" the disciples asked Jesus. Jesus replied, "There is no one 'sign of the end.' There are many: wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, the rise and fall of false messiahs." Jesus tells them that concern for dating the end must be replaced by concern for enduring to the end. "When will these things be?" his disciples asked. Jesus replies, "True watching is not anxiety over heavenly cataclysm but a deep obedience to the person who has assigned the task of watching."

We who watch for Advent and the coming of the Lord need to take Jesus' instruction to heart.