Sermon preached at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Rochester, New York at a joint celebration with the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, November 23, 2009: Matthew 6:25-33
I wondered if not worried would there be any different dynamic in our meeting together after the Pope’s invitation for disaffected Anglicans to come on over and bring some of your toys with you. Lunch with Kevin Mannara put me at ease about it, but as I was writing this sermon I had this sudden bout of anxiety—what if I wasn’t good enough? What if I became a living example of everything that is wrong with the Episcopal Church? You know what happens when irrational fear ceases us.
As in so many circumstances, I found myself faced with a choice. It is a choice we all face, and, one could make the case that it is one of the major choices Jesus places before us as his followers. It is a choice about reaction and attitude. It is the choice between anxiety and thanksgiving.
It is, at least for Americans, a nice twist of history that our civil Day of Thanksgiving comes at the end of our Church Year. Most years that means it sits as a kind of liturgical New Year's Eve. I think this is wonderfully appropriate--before we begin another Church Year, a day of reflection that pushes us in the direction of thanksgiving. It is a biblical bias, this attitude of thanksgiving, and a liturgical one as well, since it is the "Eucharist," the Thanksgiving, we celebrate Sunday by Sunday throughout the year.
Perhaps it is not anxiety that comes to mind as the attitudinal opposite of thanksgiving, but I think it is. It is my experience of human living, even the life of faith, that one of the most difficult things Jesus ever said is found in the Gospel reading this evening, "Do not be anxious about your life."
How hard is it? As hard as any part of life can be, to choose to be grateful rather than anxious.
Why? Well, one of the reasons is found in the vision of the prophet Joel, chapter 2. It is one of my favorite pieces of Old Testament Scripture. There is a bit of a refrain in it, "And my people shall never again be put to shame."
We are intensely, sometimes pathologically, afraid of being put to shame, of seeming to have not done our best, or to have let life get out of control, or simply look like "also-rans," if not out-and-out losers. And it makes us choose anxiety instead of thanksgiving as our attitude toward life over and over and over again.
It is so hard for us, even we professing Christian people, to get over this fear. It may actually be our biggest hypocrisy and what drives so many of our silly squabbles even among ourselves. How hard it is to grasp and accept the truth that we have nothing of which to be afraid or ashamed. Nothing. Jesus has come, lived all our fear, taken all our shame upon himself and banished it from the face of the creation. One way of looking at this choice we have to make between thanksgiving and anxiety is to simply ask ourselves, "This story that we are about to begin to tell again, of a babe in a manger, his gathering of people to table and telling their stories as stories of God, his death on the cross, and a people convinced he lived among them still, do we believe it's the Truth or not?" When we choose anxiety we say, "No, we do not believe it." When we choose thanksgiving we say, "Yes, we do."
Another way of putting this might be to remind you of another popular cultural thing this time of year, something I was raised on in the television age, "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer." I mean the great TV special.
That story as it's told in that version is about our anxiety about fitting in, being excluded when we seem to not fit in, our fear of ending up exiled to the island of misfit toys.
The Christian message is, of course, that that whole game is just that, a game, an illusion. We are, in fact, all misfits, all sinners, in traditional terms, all in need of love and mercy that is bigger than anything we can manage to bring about ourselves. None of us measures up.
Are we willing to accept that, and, in turn, accept an outlook on life that is dominated by thanksgiving, gratitude, and, yes, faith. Or are we going to continue to reject it and choose the way of anxiety, resist with all our might our exile to the land of misfit toys, and spend our lives worrying about whether or not we are OK?
We will, of course, even with the best intentions, teeter between the two. But seeking to be a people of thanksgiving is really the only necessity. "Seek," Jesus says, "and you will find." Seek to leave the way of anxiety and you will find the way of thanksgiving. You will arrive at the land of misfit toys and find it has been your real home all along.
I leave you with the last verse of a hymn which I would have requested we sing tonight if I had written this sermon soon enough--if I hadn't wasted time being anxious about whether or not I could be good enough and you would like me or not and perhaps think those disaffected Anglicans do have a point.
For the love of God is broader
than the measure of the mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Why We Call Him King
Sermon preached at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene, November 22, 2009, the Last Sunday after Pentecost: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-38
“My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus says to Pilate, putting his followers in a never-ending dilemma from that moment until the present day. If we are followers of Jesus, we are citizens of this “kingdom not from this world,” which means that, at best, we hold lightly to our affiliation with the kingdoms of this world.
The early Christians knew this well and it found them at nearly constant odds with the Roman Empire. Not that the Christians were taking up arms against the Empire. They absolutely were not. But the Romans knew their loyalties seem to be aimed in a different direction, symbolized by their calling Jesus of Nazareth kyrios, “Lord,” and not Caesar.
By the time of the emperor Constantine in the 4th century, Christians were growing weary of persecution, and when Constantine jumped at the chance to co-opt them, they jumped back and church and state became bedfellows for the first time. It has largely remained thus ever since.
Most of us grew up in the church assuming that the church supported the state, that one of the jobs of the church was to help make good citizens. This was especially true in the white church. The black church had a different enough history that caused them to be suspicious of the state.
It was the 1960’s when this dynamic began to change. The black church naturally spoke out against ongoing systemic segregation. The white church hesitated, with gradually some clergy and then some national bodies taking up the cause of civil rights. The rank and file largely opposed this and eventually many voted with their feet. Those were the days when places like old St. Luke’s shrunk dramatically.
Whole denominations were changed by this shift. In the 1950’s and early ‘60’s, the Episcopal Church was known as “the Republican Party at prayer.” Within twenty years no one would think of calling us that. But we have paid a price in much smaller numbers.
All of this history had to do with the question about just who is king and to just what kingdom do Christians belong?
On the one hand, the answers are clear. Jesus is our king, and we belong to the kingdom of God. But what does that mean in a practical sense? There are things that it does not mean as well as things that it means.
It does not mean that we are not citizens of our country. Of course we are. We can be grateful, loyal citizens of the United States. A symbol of this in the Episcopal Church is that Independence Day is a feast day on the church’s calendar.
It does mean, however, that we wear our earthly (for want of a better word to call it) citizenship lightly. We are never afraid to be critical of our country when the values we hold as believers are challenged. As it is sometimes said, we are unafraid to speak truth to power (which means, of course, that it will sometimes be spoken to us). We certainly never give in to extremist patriotism that feeds off anger and hatred and misinformation, and there’s a bunch of that going around today.
Belonging to the Kingdom of God does not mean that we are not members of a particular ethnic or cultural group. We can’t deny that in ourselves, and we shouldn’t. It’s part of our God-given createdness.
But belonging to the Kingdom of God does mean that we have a larger vision of all peoples gathered around a throne. It is the vision of Daniel we heard this morning:
To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
This vision echoes through others of the prophets and is carried into the Book of Revelation. To quote from chapter 5, using some of the same language as chapter one that we just heard:
By your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God.
That is our vision: all people as equal servants of God, equally gifted to offer what we call “the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.”
One more thing about this “kingdom not of this world” that we are called to live in. It is a non-violent kingdom. Notice how Jesus goes on when responding to Pilate.
My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.
Jesus’ followers, he points out, are not fighting back. That is not what he taught them. There was a little temptation to do so in the garden, with the flash of the sword, which Jesus rebukes. It is not his way. His way is the way of sacrificial love. He will become the king of which Pilate speaks only by offering his life as an innocent victim.
This is not the kind of king and kingdom we want. We want a king who will fight for us and inspire us to fight as well. We want a king who will react to our anxieties and do whatever it takes to keep us on top. We want a king who will prop up and feed our myths about ourselves and our country (or even our religion).
That is not the kind of king we get. We get a king on a cross, about as big a paradox as you can get. But we believe the power released from that paradox was enough to save the world, truly save it, which is why we do call him “king.”
Fellow citizens of the kingdom of God, blessings in navigating the tricky waters between your citizenship of Jesus’ not of this world kingdom and your citizenship in this earthly kingdom we call the United States of America.
One piece of advice: know where your loyalties lie ahead of time.
“My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus says to Pilate, putting his followers in a never-ending dilemma from that moment until the present day. If we are followers of Jesus, we are citizens of this “kingdom not from this world,” which means that, at best, we hold lightly to our affiliation with the kingdoms of this world.
The early Christians knew this well and it found them at nearly constant odds with the Roman Empire. Not that the Christians were taking up arms against the Empire. They absolutely were not. But the Romans knew their loyalties seem to be aimed in a different direction, symbolized by their calling Jesus of Nazareth kyrios, “Lord,” and not Caesar.
By the time of the emperor Constantine in the 4th century, Christians were growing weary of persecution, and when Constantine jumped at the chance to co-opt them, they jumped back and church and state became bedfellows for the first time. It has largely remained thus ever since.
Most of us grew up in the church assuming that the church supported the state, that one of the jobs of the church was to help make good citizens. This was especially true in the white church. The black church had a different enough history that caused them to be suspicious of the state.
It was the 1960’s when this dynamic began to change. The black church naturally spoke out against ongoing systemic segregation. The white church hesitated, with gradually some clergy and then some national bodies taking up the cause of civil rights. The rank and file largely opposed this and eventually many voted with their feet. Those were the days when places like old St. Luke’s shrunk dramatically.
Whole denominations were changed by this shift. In the 1950’s and early ‘60’s, the Episcopal Church was known as “the Republican Party at prayer.” Within twenty years no one would think of calling us that. But we have paid a price in much smaller numbers.
All of this history had to do with the question about just who is king and to just what kingdom do Christians belong?
On the one hand, the answers are clear. Jesus is our king, and we belong to the kingdom of God. But what does that mean in a practical sense? There are things that it does not mean as well as things that it means.
It does not mean that we are not citizens of our country. Of course we are. We can be grateful, loyal citizens of the United States. A symbol of this in the Episcopal Church is that Independence Day is a feast day on the church’s calendar.
It does mean, however, that we wear our earthly (for want of a better word to call it) citizenship lightly. We are never afraid to be critical of our country when the values we hold as believers are challenged. As it is sometimes said, we are unafraid to speak truth to power (which means, of course, that it will sometimes be spoken to us). We certainly never give in to extremist patriotism that feeds off anger and hatred and misinformation, and there’s a bunch of that going around today.
Belonging to the Kingdom of God does not mean that we are not members of a particular ethnic or cultural group. We can’t deny that in ourselves, and we shouldn’t. It’s part of our God-given createdness.
But belonging to the Kingdom of God does mean that we have a larger vision of all peoples gathered around a throne. It is the vision of Daniel we heard this morning:
To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
This vision echoes through others of the prophets and is carried into the Book of Revelation. To quote from chapter 5, using some of the same language as chapter one that we just heard:
By your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God.
That is our vision: all people as equal servants of God, equally gifted to offer what we call “the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.”
One more thing about this “kingdom not of this world” that we are called to live in. It is a non-violent kingdom. Notice how Jesus goes on when responding to Pilate.
My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.
Jesus’ followers, he points out, are not fighting back. That is not what he taught them. There was a little temptation to do so in the garden, with the flash of the sword, which Jesus rebukes. It is not his way. His way is the way of sacrificial love. He will become the king of which Pilate speaks only by offering his life as an innocent victim.
This is not the kind of king and kingdom we want. We want a king who will fight for us and inspire us to fight as well. We want a king who will react to our anxieties and do whatever it takes to keep us on top. We want a king who will prop up and feed our myths about ourselves and our country (or even our religion).
That is not the kind of king we get. We get a king on a cross, about as big a paradox as you can get. But we believe the power released from that paradox was enough to save the world, truly save it, which is why we do call him “king.”
Fellow citizens of the kingdom of God, blessings in navigating the tricky waters between your citizenship of Jesus’ not of this world kingdom and your citizenship in this earthly kingdom we call the United States of America.
One piece of advice: know where your loyalties lie ahead of time.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
There is a God Who is Not Ashamed
Sermon preached at St. Stephen's Church on the 24th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28B): Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25; Mark 13:1-8
Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
It’s been a long birth, longer than anyone ever expected. The labor of which Jesus speaks has been endless: 2,000 years, give or take. When will the reign of God finally be born? When will it stop being “near at hand” and be finally here?
Jesus promised, “The meek will inherit the earth.” Well, I say, the meek are ready. They’ve been ready, for quite some time now. The t-shirt says, “Jesus is coming back. Look busy!” But most of us have a question for him. “Where the hell have you been?”
My sister Leann’s first child—my first nephew—was born after a day’s hard and exhausting labor. She had been determined not to have a Cesarean birth, but finally she could take it no longer, and we could hear her from the hallway, “OK, get it out of me!”
Some days feel like that in this long birth of the kingdom of God, don’t they? Only, there’s no Cesarean option. You can create as many watershed moments as you want—you can win the lottery, re-elect your favorite political party, finally retire, whatever—and the birth pangs go on. Sometimes you can take a little break from them—go on vacation—but even then sometimes they have the audacity to follow you to Bermuda and, if nothing else, they’ll be guaranteed to be waiting for you when you get back.
There will be “wars and rumors of wars…nation will rise against nation…there will be earthquakes…famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” It is not the most popular of Jesus’ promises to his followers, but perhaps the one that has turned out to be most consistently true.
What are we to do in this long, hard age of the birth pangs?
By the time whoever it was sat down to write the letter to the Hebrews, he or she (I’ll call her she—why not, since the metaphor of the day is birth?) knew that we were in this for the long haul. She writes eloquently, movingly, in the chapter that follows our passage from this morning, of the saints who glimpse the reign of God, but only get to glimpse it.
All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13-16)
Her answer is, “Keep seeking a homeland. Keep desiring a better country. And know, most of all, that, no matter what, God is not ashamed to be called your God.”
This is easier said than done when we are in hard labor. That is why previously, in the passage we heard this morning, she set the vitally important context for this seeking and desiring and clinging to the “not ashamed” God.
Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Provoke one another. Meet together. Encourage one another. There are some wonderful sentiments there.
Provoke one another. “Provoke” is a great English word, even though I first learned it as a negative. My paternal grandmother was frequently “provoked about something,” and I learned at an early age that I needed to not be the one who “provoked” her. The word means literally “call forth.” And here it is not something to avoid but to do, and urgently. Provoke one another; call forth from one another love and good deeds.
Meet together. The interesting word here is not in English but in Greek: episynagogein. Synagogue is a Greek word for a meeting. It became the word for meetings of Jews who lived in the diaspora, away from worship in the Temple. It is a particular kind of meeting, what I would call a “formative” meeting that is much about identity. Meet together. Maintain your identity. Don’t forget who you are and whose you are.
I think this links directly to the writer’s later exhortation to cling to the God who is not ashamed to be your God. There is the profoundly important insight here that this only happens together. The God we can supposedly meet on the golf course is a different God, at least a less robust God, than then the God who is present when we meet together.
Encourage one another. “Encourage” is one of my favorite words, one that does not even need much explanation. Give courage to one another, and courage is certainly what we need in these long days of the birth pangs. “Hang in there” is a trite response to someone who is troubled, but it is one of the most important things we can enable one another to do in this world.
Provoke one another. Meet together. Encourage one another. And all these during the birth pangs, as we “see the Day approaching.” “The Day,” the consummation of the dream of God, the day for which we Christians, even after 2,000 years, stubbornly persist in our watching and waiting, because that is what keeps us alive. And God is stubbornly and persistently giving us glimpses of it—especially the one so very important to us in our tradition, this weekly gathering around this Table, our meeting together to be provoked and encouraged to life by the One we call God, and Savior, and Friend.
It should be obvious this morning that the tone of the readings and this sermon move us toward Advent, as they always do as the church year draws to a close. Advent is that time when we remind ourselves as Christians that watching and waiting for the glimpses of God’s reign is what we do. Hope is what we are about as a people. Despair is what we struggle against most ferociously as believers in the God of Jesus Christ who taught us about the never-ending birth pangs.
Hope for Christians is never any kind of cheap optimism. It is painfully won in the midst of the birth pangs. It is provoked by one another and encouraged in one another as we meet together. It is a conscious and stubborn choice to believe that there is a God for everyone, a God who is not ashamed to be called our God.
The “holidays” we are approaching can be joyous, life-giving times, but they can also be difficult, death-dealing times, mostly because the life they try to sell us, the faith and hope and love they try to sell us, is cheap. There is no depth to them, they are throw away commodities like most everything in this world, and so it is no wonder that so many people get the impression in this “most wonderful time of the year” that they are just “throw away” people, and that things like faith and hope and love are mostly useless drivel.
Let us struggle against these things. Let us be people of Advent through these days, trained at something deeper and more lasting than tinsel and mistletoe, the real, deep faith and hope and love that we provoke and encourage in one another, the ability to see glimpses of God’s reign even in the endless pangs of birth in our lives and in the life of the world around us from our own city streets to the streets of Kabul. There is a God who is not ashamed to be called our God.
Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
It’s been a long birth, longer than anyone ever expected. The labor of which Jesus speaks has been endless: 2,000 years, give or take. When will the reign of God finally be born? When will it stop being “near at hand” and be finally here?
Jesus promised, “The meek will inherit the earth.” Well, I say, the meek are ready. They’ve been ready, for quite some time now. The t-shirt says, “Jesus is coming back. Look busy!” But most of us have a question for him. “Where the hell have you been?”
My sister Leann’s first child—my first nephew—was born after a day’s hard and exhausting labor. She had been determined not to have a Cesarean birth, but finally she could take it no longer, and we could hear her from the hallway, “OK, get it out of me!”
Some days feel like that in this long birth of the kingdom of God, don’t they? Only, there’s no Cesarean option. You can create as many watershed moments as you want—you can win the lottery, re-elect your favorite political party, finally retire, whatever—and the birth pangs go on. Sometimes you can take a little break from them—go on vacation—but even then sometimes they have the audacity to follow you to Bermuda and, if nothing else, they’ll be guaranteed to be waiting for you when you get back.
There will be “wars and rumors of wars…nation will rise against nation…there will be earthquakes…famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” It is not the most popular of Jesus’ promises to his followers, but perhaps the one that has turned out to be most consistently true.
What are we to do in this long, hard age of the birth pangs?
By the time whoever it was sat down to write the letter to the Hebrews, he or she (I’ll call her she—why not, since the metaphor of the day is birth?) knew that we were in this for the long haul. She writes eloquently, movingly, in the chapter that follows our passage from this morning, of the saints who glimpse the reign of God, but only get to glimpse it.
All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:13-16)
Her answer is, “Keep seeking a homeland. Keep desiring a better country. And know, most of all, that, no matter what, God is not ashamed to be called your God.”
This is easier said than done when we are in hard labor. That is why previously, in the passage we heard this morning, she set the vitally important context for this seeking and desiring and clinging to the “not ashamed” God.
Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Provoke one another. Meet together. Encourage one another. There are some wonderful sentiments there.
Provoke one another. “Provoke” is a great English word, even though I first learned it as a negative. My paternal grandmother was frequently “provoked about something,” and I learned at an early age that I needed to not be the one who “provoked” her. The word means literally “call forth.” And here it is not something to avoid but to do, and urgently. Provoke one another; call forth from one another love and good deeds.
Meet together. The interesting word here is not in English but in Greek: episynagogein. Synagogue is a Greek word for a meeting. It became the word for meetings of Jews who lived in the diaspora, away from worship in the Temple. It is a particular kind of meeting, what I would call a “formative” meeting that is much about identity. Meet together. Maintain your identity. Don’t forget who you are and whose you are.
I think this links directly to the writer’s later exhortation to cling to the God who is not ashamed to be your God. There is the profoundly important insight here that this only happens together. The God we can supposedly meet on the golf course is a different God, at least a less robust God, than then the God who is present when we meet together.
Encourage one another. “Encourage” is one of my favorite words, one that does not even need much explanation. Give courage to one another, and courage is certainly what we need in these long days of the birth pangs. “Hang in there” is a trite response to someone who is troubled, but it is one of the most important things we can enable one another to do in this world.
Provoke one another. Meet together. Encourage one another. And all these during the birth pangs, as we “see the Day approaching.” “The Day,” the consummation of the dream of God, the day for which we Christians, even after 2,000 years, stubbornly persist in our watching and waiting, because that is what keeps us alive. And God is stubbornly and persistently giving us glimpses of it—especially the one so very important to us in our tradition, this weekly gathering around this Table, our meeting together to be provoked and encouraged to life by the One we call God, and Savior, and Friend.
It should be obvious this morning that the tone of the readings and this sermon move us toward Advent, as they always do as the church year draws to a close. Advent is that time when we remind ourselves as Christians that watching and waiting for the glimpses of God’s reign is what we do. Hope is what we are about as a people. Despair is what we struggle against most ferociously as believers in the God of Jesus Christ who taught us about the never-ending birth pangs.
Hope for Christians is never any kind of cheap optimism. It is painfully won in the midst of the birth pangs. It is provoked by one another and encouraged in one another as we meet together. It is a conscious and stubborn choice to believe that there is a God for everyone, a God who is not ashamed to be called our God.
The “holidays” we are approaching can be joyous, life-giving times, but they can also be difficult, death-dealing times, mostly because the life they try to sell us, the faith and hope and love they try to sell us, is cheap. There is no depth to them, they are throw away commodities like most everything in this world, and so it is no wonder that so many people get the impression in this “most wonderful time of the year” that they are just “throw away” people, and that things like faith and hope and love are mostly useless drivel.
Let us struggle against these things. Let us be people of Advent through these days, trained at something deeper and more lasting than tinsel and mistletoe, the real, deep faith and hope and love that we provoke and encourage in one another, the ability to see glimpses of God’s reign even in the endless pangs of birth in our lives and in the life of the world around us from our own city streets to the streets of Kabul. There is a God who is not ashamed to be called our God.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Belonging
Sermon preached on All Saints' Day at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene: Wisdom 3:1-9, Revelation 21:1-6a
Talk of saints and the communion of saints is a very dangerous thing. It’s no wonder that many of our Protestant brothers and sisters gave up on it. What’s dangerous about it is that when we speak of saints we can seem to be speaking of people who have earned that status by their good deeds.
The trick is that many of those who have gone before us and whom we call saints, were good deed doers. We wouldn’t remember them if they weren’t. But it’s important to get the order right. They did good deeds because they were saints not in order to become saints.
God makes people saints. He does this by bringing them in relationship with him. The definition of a saint is someone who is in relationship with God. The primary way that happens in the church is through Baptism. Baptism forges a relationship with God that the Prayer Book says is “indissoluble” (p. 298). If you are in a relationship with God that is indissoluble, then you are a saint. Hopefully you will live out that relationship by, in the words of the Baptismal Covenant, proclaiming “by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP, p. 305). Then you will be acting like a saint, although not earning your way to be one.
We get into the same trouble with the word “righteous.” The Wisdom of Solomon reading this morning begins
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.
Again, it is God who makes people righteous. They don’t earn it. We are made righteous by grace, which is defined as “unmerited favor.” “The righteous” is always shorthand for “those made righteous by grace.”
Thinking wrongly about “saints” and “the righteous” can then completely mess up our understanding of the communion of saints. If the saints have earned their status, then the communion of saints is kind of an exclusive club. And the Church becomes the doorkeeper, deciding who gets in and who stays out, whether it be by voting to add individuals to a calendar or through an elaborate beatification process. Someone has to decide whether a potential saint is worthy enough to merit inclusion.
But the doctrine of the communion of saints is meant to be quite the opposite. It is meant to be inclusive by nature not exclusive, using the New Testament sense of the word “saint:” all those in relationship with God. You and I are members of the communion of saints. That is one of the great things we celebrate today.
The Book of Common Prayer defines the communion of saints this way
The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise. (p. 862).
The communion of saints is about belonging. Belonging is a fundamental, powerful human need. We all need to belong. We suffer when we are made to feel like we don’t belong. All of us have stories of belonging and not belonging that define who we are as persons.
A significant part of the Good News we have to tell is about belonging. At the heart of what people of faith have discovered is that we belong to God and that belonging is both unconditional and eternal. It is this discovery that we enact Sunday by Sunday in the Eucharist at this Altar that we call “the Welcome Table.”
The vision from the Book of Revelation that we heard a few minutes ago is a vision of that belonging. Revelation was written for a people under extreme stress, the kind of stress that was no doubt testing their trust in God. It appeared to them that the strength of the Roman Empire was stronger than that “indissoluble bond” of God.
Revelation plays out this conflict, this test of trust. At several points it looks like the Empire might win, but in the end there is this vision: new heavens and a new earth, the holy city, the new Jerusalem come down from heaven. And the declaration of God that he will live among his people, and that he, not the Empire, is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the end the relationship of the peoples belonging to God has been sown to be indissoluble.
We celebrate this vision today. We celebrate our belonging, which is unconditional and eternal. What incredible good news! You belong! We belong! And it is all gift.
Talk of saints and the communion of saints is a very dangerous thing. It’s no wonder that many of our Protestant brothers and sisters gave up on it. What’s dangerous about it is that when we speak of saints we can seem to be speaking of people who have earned that status by their good deeds.
The trick is that many of those who have gone before us and whom we call saints, were good deed doers. We wouldn’t remember them if they weren’t. But it’s important to get the order right. They did good deeds because they were saints not in order to become saints.
God makes people saints. He does this by bringing them in relationship with him. The definition of a saint is someone who is in relationship with God. The primary way that happens in the church is through Baptism. Baptism forges a relationship with God that the Prayer Book says is “indissoluble” (p. 298). If you are in a relationship with God that is indissoluble, then you are a saint. Hopefully you will live out that relationship by, in the words of the Baptismal Covenant, proclaiming “by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP, p. 305). Then you will be acting like a saint, although not earning your way to be one.
We get into the same trouble with the word “righteous.” The Wisdom of Solomon reading this morning begins
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.
Again, it is God who makes people righteous. They don’t earn it. We are made righteous by grace, which is defined as “unmerited favor.” “The righteous” is always shorthand for “those made righteous by grace.”
Thinking wrongly about “saints” and “the righteous” can then completely mess up our understanding of the communion of saints. If the saints have earned their status, then the communion of saints is kind of an exclusive club. And the Church becomes the doorkeeper, deciding who gets in and who stays out, whether it be by voting to add individuals to a calendar or through an elaborate beatification process. Someone has to decide whether a potential saint is worthy enough to merit inclusion.
But the doctrine of the communion of saints is meant to be quite the opposite. It is meant to be inclusive by nature not exclusive, using the New Testament sense of the word “saint:” all those in relationship with God. You and I are members of the communion of saints. That is one of the great things we celebrate today.
The Book of Common Prayer defines the communion of saints this way
The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise. (p. 862).
The communion of saints is about belonging. Belonging is a fundamental, powerful human need. We all need to belong. We suffer when we are made to feel like we don’t belong. All of us have stories of belonging and not belonging that define who we are as persons.
A significant part of the Good News we have to tell is about belonging. At the heart of what people of faith have discovered is that we belong to God and that belonging is both unconditional and eternal. It is this discovery that we enact Sunday by Sunday in the Eucharist at this Altar that we call “the Welcome Table.”
The vision from the Book of Revelation that we heard a few minutes ago is a vision of that belonging. Revelation was written for a people under extreme stress, the kind of stress that was no doubt testing their trust in God. It appeared to them that the strength of the Roman Empire was stronger than that “indissoluble bond” of God.
Revelation plays out this conflict, this test of trust. At several points it looks like the Empire might win, but in the end there is this vision: new heavens and a new earth, the holy city, the new Jerusalem come down from heaven. And the declaration of God that he will live among his people, and that he, not the Empire, is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. In the end the relationship of the peoples belonging to God has been sown to be indissoluble.
We celebrate this vision today. We celebrate our belonging, which is unconditional and eternal. What incredible good news! You belong! We belong! And it is all gift.
A Model Disciple
Sermon preached on October 25, 2009 at the Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene: Mark 10:46-52 (Proper 25B)
This story of Bartimaeus is rich so I want to take the time to go through it noticing things that are helpful. You might want to have the story in front of you as I do this. This is sort of sermon as Bible study.
The story begins,
Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho.
If you investigate the context, this is part of a journey story. The journey is from Galilee, the region in which most of Jesus’ ministry has taken place, to Jerusalem. What has been going on over the course of this journey is that Jesus has been spending a lot of time teaching his disciples about what is to occur in Jerusalem and they have been spending a lot of time not getting it, or getting lost in distractions like arguing about who is the greatest.
You will also note from context that this is the last story before Jerusalem. The very next story in Mark is Palm Sunday. And if you take a glance through all that is to follow, you will note that this is the last healing Jesus does in Mark’s Gospel.
As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.
The first thing we should notice is that this object of Jesus’ ministry has a name. This is the only time that is the case in the whole Gospel. Why is that so? There must have been something important about this person for his name to have been remembered. What was it? We’ll see if there are any clues in the rest of the reading.
Is it important that this is a blind man? Perhaps it is. Certainly the disciples have been blind to what Jesus is up to. There has been an earlier healing of a blind man in Mark’s Gospel, back in chapter 8. It too followed an incident where the disciples were unable to see. It is followed by the story of Jesus asking “Who do people say that I am?”, which begins his time of teaching the disciples about the true nature of his mission, which has just ended before the Bartimaeus story. The two stories of healing blind men serve as book ends to the period of teaching and serve to emphasize the inability of the disciples to see.
When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Bartimaeus is bold and shouts out to Jesus, passing by with his entourage. One really wonders if he expects to be heard or not; he is probably frequently ignored by passers-by.
He calls Jesus a very unusual thing in Mark’s Gospel, “Son of David.” Nowhere else is Jesus called this. This shows a fairly sophisticated understanding of Jesus on the part of Bartimaeus. It may also be what pricked the ears of Jesus so that he stopped to listen.
Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Bartimaeus calls out from the edges of society. He is a powerless man in a world that is harsh to the powerless. The crowds do not consider him worthy of Jesus’ attention. He, however, is inspired and persistent.
Perhaps he has heard that Jesus has had a particular and peculiar ministry to the outsider and the powerless. Perhaps he has heard that Jesus has declared the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Whatever knowledge from which he is operating, there is tremendous faith here, faith that Jesus will recognize and name in a moment.
So often persistence is required of us. Why doesn’t God answer prayer immediately? I don’t know. I do know that persistent prayer is an antidote to discouragement.
Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”
Jesus enacts the last shall be first. The use of the word “call” three times here underscores that this is not just a healing story, but a call story as well, and at the end of the story it will seem as if Bartimaeus has become a disciple.
Who is “they” as in “they called the blind man?” Are they members of the crowd who have quickly changed their tune? Are they the disciples? We don’t know. Whoever it was, they participate in the overturning of the man’s outsider status.
So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.
It’s a wonderful little detail, this throwing off of the cloak. It was more than likely the man’s sole possession other than whatever it was keeping him from being naked. Contrast this to the rich man in the story two weeks ago, whom Jesus invited to give away all that he had, and he went away sorrowful because he couldn’t do it. Jesus had said that it would be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Here it is easy for the poor, who do not have possessions in their way.
From time to time in our lives we all have cloaks that we need to throw off in order to be in closer relationship with God. Whether we are seeking healing or deeper discipleship or something else, we are often tied down by something, and the more possessions we have the more things are likely playing this role. Like Bartimaeus, we need to throw off that cloak and go to Jesus.
Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
It is a very simple, direct question. Interestingly enough, it is the same question Jesus asked the disciples James and John in the previous passage. Their reply was to sit at his left and right hand in his kingdom. Clearly Bartimaeus is meant as a contrast to them. They ask for privilege that Jesus cannot grant them. Bartimaeus asks for sight which he can. Again, the disciples are blind even though they can see, and Bartimaeus can see even though he is blind.
The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”
As the question was simple and direct the response is simple and direct. “Let me see again.” The man comes to Jesus with no pretense, no guile, just honesty about his need.
He is healed with no effort on Jesus’ part at all. This contrasts to the previous healing of a blind man in Mark’s Gospel which included the rubbing of saliva on the eyes and the laying on of hands. No show is required here. The man’s faith is enough.
“Your faith has made you well” were the same words Jesus used with the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. She too had battled the crowds to get to Jesus, clearly an outsider and powerless like Bartimaeus.
Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
Jesus says “go,” but it is a somewhat ambiguous “go.” Others he directed specific places. “Go home,” he told the other blind man earlier in the Gospel. And usually he asks that no one be told about what had happened, but that is missing here. Perhaps it’s too late in the ball game to keep the secret. The authorities he is going to confront in Jerusalem already know everything about what he has been doing.
So what happens? Unlike any other story in Mark’s Gospel, the man becomes a disciple. He follows “on the way.” Perhaps this is why he is remembered. He became a disciple, a witness to the resurrection. True, we hear nothing more about him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
So what appears to be a healing story—and certainly is that—is also a discipleship story, and a “the last shall be first” story.
Bartimaeus ends up being a model disciple for us, more so than those we traditionally call disciples. We should all pray to see clearly, be ready to throw off whatever is in our way, and follow on the way. May this Eucharist continue to give us new eyes so that we can see our true calling.
This story of Bartimaeus is rich so I want to take the time to go through it noticing things that are helpful. You might want to have the story in front of you as I do this. This is sort of sermon as Bible study.
The story begins,
Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho.
If you investigate the context, this is part of a journey story. The journey is from Galilee, the region in which most of Jesus’ ministry has taken place, to Jerusalem. What has been going on over the course of this journey is that Jesus has been spending a lot of time teaching his disciples about what is to occur in Jerusalem and they have been spending a lot of time not getting it, or getting lost in distractions like arguing about who is the greatest.
You will also note from context that this is the last story before Jerusalem. The very next story in Mark is Palm Sunday. And if you take a glance through all that is to follow, you will note that this is the last healing Jesus does in Mark’s Gospel.
As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.
The first thing we should notice is that this object of Jesus’ ministry has a name. This is the only time that is the case in the whole Gospel. Why is that so? There must have been something important about this person for his name to have been remembered. What was it? We’ll see if there are any clues in the rest of the reading.
Is it important that this is a blind man? Perhaps it is. Certainly the disciples have been blind to what Jesus is up to. There has been an earlier healing of a blind man in Mark’s Gospel, back in chapter 8. It too followed an incident where the disciples were unable to see. It is followed by the story of Jesus asking “Who do people say that I am?”, which begins his time of teaching the disciples about the true nature of his mission, which has just ended before the Bartimaeus story. The two stories of healing blind men serve as book ends to the period of teaching and serve to emphasize the inability of the disciples to see.
When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Bartimaeus is bold and shouts out to Jesus, passing by with his entourage. One really wonders if he expects to be heard or not; he is probably frequently ignored by passers-by.
He calls Jesus a very unusual thing in Mark’s Gospel, “Son of David.” Nowhere else is Jesus called this. This shows a fairly sophisticated understanding of Jesus on the part of Bartimaeus. It may also be what pricked the ears of Jesus so that he stopped to listen.
Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
Bartimaeus calls out from the edges of society. He is a powerless man in a world that is harsh to the powerless. The crowds do not consider him worthy of Jesus’ attention. He, however, is inspired and persistent.
Perhaps he has heard that Jesus has had a particular and peculiar ministry to the outsider and the powerless. Perhaps he has heard that Jesus has declared the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Whatever knowledge from which he is operating, there is tremendous faith here, faith that Jesus will recognize and name in a moment.
So often persistence is required of us. Why doesn’t God answer prayer immediately? I don’t know. I do know that persistent prayer is an antidote to discouragement.
Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”
Jesus enacts the last shall be first. The use of the word “call” three times here underscores that this is not just a healing story, but a call story as well, and at the end of the story it will seem as if Bartimaeus has become a disciple.
Who is “they” as in “they called the blind man?” Are they members of the crowd who have quickly changed their tune? Are they the disciples? We don’t know. Whoever it was, they participate in the overturning of the man’s outsider status.
So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.
It’s a wonderful little detail, this throwing off of the cloak. It was more than likely the man’s sole possession other than whatever it was keeping him from being naked. Contrast this to the rich man in the story two weeks ago, whom Jesus invited to give away all that he had, and he went away sorrowful because he couldn’t do it. Jesus had said that it would be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Here it is easy for the poor, who do not have possessions in their way.
From time to time in our lives we all have cloaks that we need to throw off in order to be in closer relationship with God. Whether we are seeking healing or deeper discipleship or something else, we are often tied down by something, and the more possessions we have the more things are likely playing this role. Like Bartimaeus, we need to throw off that cloak and go to Jesus.
Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
It is a very simple, direct question. Interestingly enough, it is the same question Jesus asked the disciples James and John in the previous passage. Their reply was to sit at his left and right hand in his kingdom. Clearly Bartimaeus is meant as a contrast to them. They ask for privilege that Jesus cannot grant them. Bartimaeus asks for sight which he can. Again, the disciples are blind even though they can see, and Bartimaeus can see even though he is blind.
The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”
As the question was simple and direct the response is simple and direct. “Let me see again.” The man comes to Jesus with no pretense, no guile, just honesty about his need.
He is healed with no effort on Jesus’ part at all. This contrasts to the previous healing of a blind man in Mark’s Gospel which included the rubbing of saliva on the eyes and the laying on of hands. No show is required here. The man’s faith is enough.
“Your faith has made you well” were the same words Jesus used with the woman who touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. She too had battled the crowds to get to Jesus, clearly an outsider and powerless like Bartimaeus.
Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.
Jesus says “go,” but it is a somewhat ambiguous “go.” Others he directed specific places. “Go home,” he told the other blind man earlier in the Gospel. And usually he asks that no one be told about what had happened, but that is missing here. Perhaps it’s too late in the ball game to keep the secret. The authorities he is going to confront in Jerusalem already know everything about what he has been doing.
So what happens? Unlike any other story in Mark’s Gospel, the man becomes a disciple. He follows “on the way.” Perhaps this is why he is remembered. He became a disciple, a witness to the resurrection. True, we hear nothing more about him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
So what appears to be a healing story—and certainly is that—is also a discipleship story, and a “the last shall be first” story.
Bartimaeus ends up being a model disciple for us, more so than those we traditionally call disciples. We should all pray to see clearly, be ready to throw off whatever is in our way, and follow on the way. May this Eucharist continue to give us new eyes so that we can see our true calling.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)