Pentecost +20 Sunday – B

Pentecost +20 Sunday – B

Years B
Job 23:1-9, 16-17 or Amos 5:6-7, 10-15
Psalm 22:1-15 or Psalm 90:12-17
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31

Job: "Today my complaint is bitter."

Everyman: "What must I do to inherit eternal life."

Both cases call for boldness - a boldness to complain about impoverishment and a boldness to give all our resources to the poor.

While this boldness is spoken of in terms of its result in mercy and grace, the clearer reality is that it is only mercy and grace that allow boldness to flourish and be enacted. To have it be otherwise, in any fashion, would be to give into entitled rights of goodness or rewards for righteous works.

Where we are left is exercising our right to choose, right up to the end, our response to the exigencies of life.

= = = = = = =

how hard it is to enter
a realm of experience
requiring only nakedness

our bodies and riches
become our definition
we cannot put down

without them we are nothing
we are definitely last
with no first in sight

our windup clockwork
does not go into any good night
gently or easily

we complain and grasp
and gasp to the end
shoving grace aside

until all that is left
is unrequited forsakenness
and we sputter out

may our difficult days
and persistent riches
recede before a wise heart