19 Pentecost A
In the name of Jesus the Messiah, who was and is and is to come. Amen.
I saw him there. I was a very young man. Women married to the prosperous merchants of Jerusalem wanted it for their finery.
My father made a good living and he was a good Jew.
And so on that morning I was allowed to walk the bustling city alone while my father was busy with the buyers. I came to the steps of our great temple recently reconstructed by Herod, the steps made of blocks of light-colored stone so huge that you couldn’t imagine how they quarried it and put it all in place. Each stone was as long as a horse, as wide as a donkey, as high as a lamb.
Jesus must have been a good 20 years older than I was. But he had a still-youthful vigor about him. He actually appeared to relish his exchange with the Pharisees. And that exchange was hard for me to watch as I stood back-- they were grilling him so intently, and they seemed so disrespectful of him. But he handled it all beautifully and he even posed questions back to them that they couldn’t answer. I was mightily impressed by his ability to give and take.
I was even more impressed by his connection to God and his deep knowledge of what our Holy Law is all about. Even in the middle of conflict he radiated peace.
I remember him reminding the group that day of our great commandment, given to us all from God through the hand of Moses, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” [Deuteronomy 6:4-9]
They asked him which of the many commandments we have is the most important and I overheard him say that it was this one, commanding us to love God with ALL our hearts, ALL our souls, ALL our strength. Then he summed up the rest of the law neatly with what he added, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
He handled himself so well with his opponents. Who would have thought that in less than a week he would have been tortured and killed, set up by those same opponents, and condemned by the Roman government?
And who really would have thought that within the week the rumors would be flying around the city that he rose from the grave?
His teaching and his authority were hard enough for many to accept. Imagine how his resurrection turned the world upside down.
As I moved through my early adult years I watched his close followers blossom into devout God-followers who preached that Jesus is the Messiah and who urged people (as Jesus did) to repent, to let God into their lives totally, and to love the Lord their God with all their heart, all their souls, all their might.
After my marriage to Shoshanna and as I established myself in my father’s business I spent more and more time with these followers of Jesus. In the fashion of the day we began to call ourselves Christians—followers of the Christ, the Messiah. We met on the eighth day of the week, the day of the Resurrection and the New Creation, and we broke bread. We took care of the poor with all we had. We shared what we earned for the work of God in the name of Jesus.
My wife Shoshanna and I had our six children, and we had many trials along the way. Two of our children died when they were just babies. My wife died in childbirth when the last of our six was born. One of my surviving children is totally deaf due to an illness when he was a young child. Through it all I have tried to love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my might. And it has been excruciatingly hard to keep faithful sometimes.
Nonetheless I give thanks for my faith in Jesus Messiah. My faith says that he will return soon for us all, and that the dead and all of us will be raised. Suffering will end.
My faith is the only thing that has kept me from losing my mind.
And now some 40 years after I saw Jesus Messiah with my own eyes I am trying to secure my cloth shop in the City with my four sons who are taking over the trade. We are doing our best to endure this latest and maybe the most difficult trial we will know—as the Romans are laying siege to our beautiful Jerusalem, crushing our own Zealots who threw them out a few years back, starving us so that we are in despair, and closing in on our Temple.
And as the cries and shouts increase, as the food gets harder and harder to find, as we feel the battering rams shake the gates, and as fear seizes us, I give thanks for the times in our lives when we have been able to give ALL our hearts, ALL our minds, ALL our strength to the great God and to Jesus Messiah.
I, Micah bar Simon, dedicate the time I may have left here in this city of panic to helping others. I shall go out into the streets and take what food I can, and give comfort the best I can. I ask God to help us all get through this fearful siege -- and if it is my time to die, then I ask for Jesus Messiah to come and take me home.
I, Micah bar Simon, thank God for calling me to know Jesus Messiah from that first encounter outside the temple till now. I thank him for everything. I ask him to watch over my children after I am gone and to allow at least one or two to survive this attack.
I bless him and I shall continue to try to give him all my heart, all my mind, all my strength.
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