Sanctified or Santa-fied

Then he said to them, ‘How can they say that the Messiah is David’s son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms,

“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at my right hand,
    until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

David thus calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?’

In the hearing of all the people he said to the disciples, ‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’

Luke 20:41-21:4

“David thus calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?” It’s one of my favorite of all of Jesus’ sayings because it feels so delightfully obscure. The first response most people have to it is, “Huh?”

Jesus is challenging how we see what God is up to and how our expectations and desires can limit our vision. David’s actual son and heir was Solomon, the one who built the Temple in Jerusalem. But Jesus points to an odd phrasing in one of the Psalms to suggest, “Maybe there is more going on here than you think.” You look forward to Messiah expecting to see David’s ultimate son, but maybe he’s more than that.

Jesus says this while he and his disciples are loitering in the Temple in Jerusalem, an enormous edifice whose constant improvement and expansion had been bankrolled by King Herod in a failed bid to win the love of his Jewish subjects (it didn’t help much). Everyone else is impressed by the scale of it but Jesus is having none of it. He caustically points out that those who run the Temple are no better than Herod, seeking to impress others through their own conspicuous consumption, a lifestyle funded as they ‘devour widow’s houses’ to pay for it. And then we watch in horror as a poor widow’s house is plundered in real time.

The Sunday School version of this story taught me to see the poor widow as a model, an example of how I should also live my life with sacrificial generosity. Missing from that narrative was the brutal truth that the woman had been defrauded, her faith manipulated by the scribes and Temple authorities. Her deep piety had been weaponized against her to undergird a system of abuse and greed.

If we take Jesus and his teachings seriously then the kingdom of God is good news for the poor. If the Temple had truly been an outpost of heaven that poor woman would have left with her arms filled with groceries and her ears filled with expressions of concern about her wellbeing. The kingdom of heaven gives rather than takes. It feeds people rather than devouring them. Little wonder, then, that while others are admiring the Temple, Jesus dismissively prophesies its ultimate destruction (see Luke 21:5-6). It exists only for the self-aggrandizement of men so the Lord pronounces judgment upon it. Jesus is not merely David’s son, the builder of the Temple, but David’s Lord, establishing a kingdom where poor widows will not be devoured.

By a curious quirk of the calendar, today is December 6th, the day we remember Nicholas of Myra. If that name doesn’t ring any bells for you then almost certainly you will recognize him as the superhero character he has morphed into over the centuries: Santa Claus. Yes, ol’ Saint Nick is an actual saint, or at least he started off as one. Time and effort have transformed the fiery bishop best known for anonymously giving money to the poor into a safe and inoffensive brand image for marketing to consumers.

The history of this metamorphosis, how a 4th century bishop ends up as the face of Amazon and Coca Cola, is too long to rehearse here but that it happened at all demonstrates how easy it is to lose sight of the sacred and become fixated on the material. Holy days become mere holidays when penitential preparation gives way to secularized celebration. It is the same impulse to capitalize on others that Jesus saw in the scribes. What is sanctified too easily becomes Santa-fied and we become prey to those who would devour our faith, our hope, our heartfelt longings for their own profit.

Advent is a time to take heed of how we handle holy things. It forces us to examine how easily we are wooed by nostalgia and commercialism into trying to buy our way into the soul of the season. We can’t be trusted to come to the manger if all we have is a consumer piety. We will see a sentimental Christ child but miss the Coming King.

The Rev. J. Michael Matkin, Rector, St. Andrew’s, Stillwater, OK