Weekly Lectionary takes a look (sometimes brief, sometimes longer, sometimes odd) at one of the lectionary passages for the upcoming Sunday. This week: Mark 12:38-44.
As with the other Sundays in November, I wrote a sermon for this week which appears on the NextSunday Worship. You can read that here. One of the things that struck me as I was writing about this passage is how easy it was for me to point fingers at those who would use their faith to make themselves look better. Yet I was less hesitant to consider the ways in which I did the same. So this is part of the conclusion that I came to about my religious pride.
Do not get me wrong, it is good to not be a jerk. It is good to be nice. It is good to not assault people with scripture. The trouble is we often let those attributes exist in the purely hypothetical. If someone was poor or marginalized or a minority or gay or whatnot, came into our church then of course we wouldn’t treat them poorly. But then again, we do not exactly make a concerted effort to build relationships with the people who are different from us. I unfortunately must include myself in that category of the hypothetically loving and it pains me to realize that my hypothetical love does not truly do anything.