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The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
February 9, 2014
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
Matthew 5: 21-37
Sometimes I wonder if Father Don likes me. As one of a privileged group of preachers, I sometimes feel I get more than my share of the really, really hard Gospel readings. For example, in the last year or so, I’ve been given two lessons with readings about the sun ceasing to shine, the moon turning to blood, stars falling and basically the end of creation. Sounds exciting, but ever try to preach about it?
Now, after today’s lesson, I know he doesn’t like me. This morning all I have to do with the text assigned is to wade through Jesus’ sayings on anger, lust, adultery and divorce. I mean, give me a good old cosmic explosion any time!
If you were in church last week, you heard read a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And, if you come for the next 2 weeks, you’ll hear more from this Sermon. My complaining aside, to me, there is no purer insight into the core of Jesus’ teaching than the Sermon on the Mount. This said, his teaching can be very hard to digest.
In fact, some say, the Sermon contains such impossible ideals that we can safely ignore them. That anyone who lives by these sayings will be trounced in the world of commerce, not to mention family relations. “Turn the other cheek to that person?” Are you nuts?
So, here we are. This morning we’re going to look at four subjects about which Jesus wants to have the last word: anger, lust and adultery, divorce and oath-taking. My job, my main job, is to somehow let Jesus convince us that his teaching, however seemingly idealistic and God knows usually impractical, is indeed the way, the truth, the life.
Let’s start with anger. We heard read how the NRSV renders Jesus’ words. I think it may be helpful for us to read these words in a more modern translation like the Message by Eugene Peterson.
Jesus says, “You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.”
Now, don’t read into what Jesus said about anger that it’s a bad thing. After all, anger is a God-given emotion for one’s well-being. Try to make yourself not be angry and you’ll end up at the least very depressed if not physically ill not to mention prone to untimely outbursts and destructive behavior. If I am hurting you in some way, your anger helps you tell me to stop it. This is good anger.
As you may know, on several occasions, Jesus modeled this good anger. For example, good anger was his response when he saw how people were profiting from Temple activities. Remember how he tossed their tables upside down, scattering coins all over the place and sending animals loose into the streets?
Good anger or righteous anger is when we’re angry because justice is not being served, when God’s great mission of love is being thwarted or we as a child of God are being threatened. Without such anger, bad things would happen, nothing would change!
Unrighteous anger, however, is something else. Unrighteous anger hurts people. Unrighteous anger comes from a whole different place. Instead of seeking justice or fairness, it seeks self-advantage and always at the expense of another.
Accordingly, in God’s future and ours, there will be no bad anger, no hostility between people. Not even between family members! We will not even think of calling someone stupid or jerk or other words that can maim or kill or harm self-esteem. Well, you say, Jesus never met so and so.
But, here’s the deal about Jesus and what he is showing us about God in the Sermon on the Mount and in everything he does and says. And, to explain this deal best I want to remind you of an African word you may have heard on the lips of Nelson Mandela or by those who memorialized him a month or so ago. The word is Ubuntu. Ubuntu has to do with the realization that my life is inextricably tied up with yours. Ubuntu is at the core of Jesus’ teaching about the world God is trying to fashion.
Bottom line, Ubuntu is Jesus saying on another occasion, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Not love your neighbor as much as you love yourself; that misses the radical nature of his teaching. Rather, love your neighbor as yourself. There’s a huge difference.
Loving my neighbor as I am loving myself means there is never a disconnect between considering my welfare and my neighbor’s welfare. It’s as if there is a solid link between us. As if I were you and you were me. So that I could never do to you what I wouldn’t do to myself. Never say even a word to you that I wouldn’t say to myself.
For me, Ubuntu is a fresh way of visualizing what Jesus meant when he said “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” The reality being that in this world that God is fashioning, there are no winners if there must be losers. In God’s world, all our destinies are tied together.
Let’s carry this thought into what Jesus says about adultery and lust. Again, hear this from the Message: “You know the next commandment pretty well, too: ‘Don’t go to bed with another’s spouse.’ But don’t think you’ve preserved your virtue simply by staying out of bed. Your heart can be corrupted by lust even quicker than your body. Those leering looks you think nobody notices – they also corrupt.”
In Jesus’ time, according to what we call the Old Testament, which was the Bible for Jews of course, adultery could only be committed by a married or engaged woman who would have sex with a man other than her husband. It was a grievous transgression punishable by death.
Men could technically commit adultery, of course. But because there was no punishment for it, men’s adultery wasn’t considered serious. It was a man’s world, to say the least.
Jesus was trying to change this. No wonder so many men ended up trying to kill him!
But Jesus isn’t through. We’ve got lust to consider. Lust, Jesus implies, is the pre-cursor to adultery. But, it’s more. The kind of lust Jesus is pointing at is not merely sexual attraction which is God-given. Rather, it’s a disordered understanding of oneself and others. It’s about body parts and not the whole person. It’s about self-gratification more than other-love. It’s about me more than you.
Leads to adultery, yes. But, on its own it can be toxic for all concerned.
Since we’re having so much fun, let’s move on to divorce. Many among us know the pain of divorce. If we’re average Americans, 50% of us know the pain of divorce.
In Jesus’ day, divorce was very easy to obtain – for a man. A woman, however, could not divorce her husband for any reason. All a man had to do, however, was declare himself divorced in the presence of a witness. Common causes were burned food or refused sexual relations. This is how much of a man’s world it was.
To make matters worse, a woman without a man was considered little better than a household animal. In fact, a woman who had been divorced often had to turn to begging or prostitution to make a living because her father usually wouldn’t take her back.
Now along comes Jesus. No more divorce for burning food and the like. Now, Jesus says, divorce is acceptable only for unfaithfulness. Meaning, that women had a far greater sense of economic security than they had before Jesus. Granted, a woman still couldn’t divorce a man, but the change proposed by Jesus was nonetheless astonishingly radical.
So, what’s the bottom line for us given differing cultural settings where marriage is no longer only between a man and a woman?
Here’s something to think about:
- For Christ-followers, marriage is a sacred relationship helping two people grow into Christlikeness, glorifying God and thus in community with other Christ-followers, loving God’s world all the better. To enter into such an intimate relationship without a lifetime commitment is to miss the point of it.
- Still, stuff happens. There are reasons, like but not limited to unfaithfulness, when divorce is the best solution, the most loving thing humans know how to do.
Nonetheless, Jesus’ words need to be taken with utmost seriousness: a marriage covenant taken in the name of Jesus and the church is a profound covenant for the couple and for the Christ-community of which they are part.
This said, please never forget: God’s mercy is always boundless.
Lastly we come to oath taking. For time’s sake, I want only to summarize what Jesus was getting at in talking about one’s yes being yes and one’s no being no.
The import here is that in the kingdom that God is inaugurating which shall last forever, truth shall be at its heart. So, begin even now, Jesus is saying, and let your yes be yes and your no be no. Don’t fudge. For love, Jesus style, is unconditionally truthful.
That is, in Christ, we don’t need to speak in such a way as to try to appear to be something we’re not. In Christ, we don’t need to personally fear the judgment of the truth being known. In God’s ongoing and everlasting community, no one should have to wonder about who I am and what I mean by what I say or don’t say.
Well, it’s important that we conclude bearing in mind this notion of God’s community, God’s peculiar community where your welfare and my welfare aim to be seamlessly linked together, Ubuntu style, Jesus style. For, really, it’s absolutely impossible to grasp the parts of this Sermon on the Mount without a firm grasp of the central truth and point Jesus is trying to make.
That is, Jesus is not just focused on individual sins, trying to help us keep our daily total at a minimum. Rather, Jesus is trying to shape a new community where love – Ubuntu style, Jesus style – is at the core.
For the world that God is working 24/7 to build even today depends on community. Depends on expanding, ever larger communities embracing the love-ethic that begins within families, between friends, then churches and eventually including every living being on the planet with the goal of embracing our farthest neighbor with the compassion of our nearest loved one. A community where everyone in the inner circle; no one outside. A community shaped by Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount, abounding in mercy and forgiveness, forged for God’s use in the ongoing mission of transforming the world.
This is why the bar is set so high. Not that we always carry a load of guilt around because of our shortcomings. But that we have a vision, a God-sized vision to energize us for a life worth living. A life worth living for God’s sake which is to say for the world’s sake. And even – though we’re usually the last to figure it out – for our own sake as well.
The Rev. Dr. Dennis Winkleblack
February 9, 2014
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford, CT
Matthew 5: 13-20
Some years ago in making a minor point in a sermon I singled out a church member. I said something like, “If Jesus would have said ‘blessed are the bald’ then so and so would be in highest heaven.” Something like that.
Afterwards, someone asked me what I would have done if the man I had singled out would have gotten mad and maybe walked out. I said I knew him well. I knew how he would react. I could call him by name, even to make a teasing remark, and he wouldn’t be offended. In fact, he would love the attention. I knew him that well.
Something similar takes place in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. For the first 10 verses of chapter 5 of Matthew, in the Beatitudes, Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek; blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, etc.” It’s all third person, general. Like Southerners say, “Blessed are all y’all.”
But in verse 11, it shifts to 2nd person. Blessed are you, in particular - you. Jesus turns from addressing the crowds in general and to addressing the disciples in particular. “Blessed are YOU when people revile YOU and persecute YOU, etc.” And, then he goes on with our verses today: “YOU are the salt of the earth; YOU are the light of the world.”
The question, therefore, is, “Is this ‘you’ that Jesus is talking about, you? Is Jesus talking to you? Talking to me?”
You want to know what I think about you? I think I don’t know for sure. Now, I know you’re wonderfully nice people. In fact, I like you so much that I worship more often with you than I do with my own church, the United Methodist Church. This is how much I like you. So, not surprisingly, I have strong suspicions about you in terms of the question, ‘is Jesus talking about you when he says you.’
But I have to say honestly that I don’t know for certain if Jesus is talking to you this morning.
Well, what about this for honesty? And, honestly, I’m not just trying to be clever. I’m only trying to say I think I’m beginning to believe with many theologians that Jesus called many people, but not all people to be among his closest followers. Coming to believe that while Jesus clearly welcomed the crowds in general, he didn’t call all of them to follow him as a disciplined disciple.
All of this, of course, flies in the face of what modern churches seem to be trying to do. We try as hard as we possibly can to get everyone in the inner circle of the church, in the inner circle of Jesus’ followers. But, in most places, we fail miserably. But, now I’m thinking, maybe this just can’t be helped. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that all church members were never called to the inner circle, to be disciplined discipleship in the first place. After all, Jesus also said, “Many are called, but few are chosen”
Well, I don’t mean to confuse your life this morning. No, wait. I take that back. I do mean to confuse your life this morning. I do want to knock you a bit off center, because, frankly, that’s the only way we ever grow as people – to look at self and life a bit differently, from a different perspective, a different slant.
So, work with me for another 8-10 minutes or so. Let’s just assume for the next 8-10 minutes or so that maybe you have been called by name by Jesus. That “you” means “you.”
Accordingly, If Jesus is calling you by name, then YOU are the salt of the earth.
Salt. Great metaphor, isn’t it? Many of you know from experience that you didn’t really begin to appreciate salt until your doctor told you to cut it out. Right? Then, you wanted salt as much as your next breath!
In Jesus’ day salt had many uses. Not only for food, but for preservation of food. Plus, it was used also in building roads, hence Jesus’ comment that if salt has lost its flavor it’s good only for trampling on by foot. In Jesus’ main commentary about salt in our words this morning, however, it’s clear he’s talking only about its use as flavoring. He is basically saying, “You disciples are few in number. But put you out there in the world and a few of you will make a huge difference. Just like salt.”
Green beans without salt? Or corn without salt? Or French Fries without salt? No thank you! A little salt, though, and “My, that’s good!”
Is Jesus calling you to be like this? Like salt?
I know of a college student who had made a decision not to drink alcohol. He said he’d read something about every single drink of alcohol killing a certain number of brain cells. He also said that since he wasn’t a great student to begin with, he couldn’t afford to lose any. He said that his decision had nothing to do with religion, per se. He said he wasn’t trying to make a point. But, even so, when he was at a party and refused alcohol, someone inevitably said something to him about being a goody two shoes.
Clearly his friends seemed to be driven crazy by his behavior. Like they couldn’t have a good time unless he got bombed also.
My sermon this morning isn’t an anti-alcohol sermon. But this student’s experience does point out a major reality. And that is, in a world where there are few universal values, anyone who believes anything in particular that’s contrary to the status quo is perceived as a threat. It can be real hard to stick to your guns because the pressure to conform can be overwhelming.
Now, your issue may not be alcohol. It might be capital punishment or mental health or ecology or education or hunger or homelessness or literacy or health care or guns on the street or racism or ageism or sexism or homophobia or politics or government misconduct or something else.
The deal is, whatever issues grab you at the core of your being, whatever the problem in the world is that you believe grieves God’s heart and stifles God’s on-going redemption of the world, then whatever you do as a result because of your desire to follow Jesus can be hard to sustain in this world which radically prefers you go along to get along.
But, still, Jesus says, a few salt-like people will make a huge difference.
Light. Like salt, it’s mainly of significance in what it enables or enhances. After all, you don’t stare at a light bulb. Light is valuable in that it enables us to see something else. Switch on a light and the whole room is transformed.
For Maundy Thursday in the First Methodist Church of Stamford where I served for 7 years we would gather at night in their large chancel area with pews on both sides. There, we would have a service of Tenebrae which concludes with all the lights having been turned off and all the 12 candles extinguished one by one. Then the still lit Christ candle would be removed to the sacristy.
In that church, as it is here, when the lights are extinguished, it is very dark, as near to pitch black as I’ve ever experienced.
Then, in the ritual we followed, after a few moments the lighted Christ candle which had earlier been taken out would be brought back in to the chancel from the sacristy. Although it was a big, tall candle, it held only a little light. But compared to the previous darkness it was literally like day and night.
That single light of Christ was enough.
“You are the light of the world,” says Jesus. Without you, the world can’t see what is, what really is, what really, really is real.
That is, without the likes of us, the world has no means of seeing that selfishness will consume us all, that merely seeking pleasure and trying to avoid pain is insufficient for a guiding principle. Without light the world has no way of facing its violence and the realization that force and threats of force never changed anyone’s heart.
More personally, without your example, your light, your circle of family or circle of friends or circle of workplace associates may not be able to see themselves clearly in order to reflect on any of their life choices which may be leading them further into darkness.
You are the light of the world, Jesus says. You. Hide your light under a basket, and the whole world continues to go to hell in the proverbial hand basket. But, show up, stand up, speak up for Jesus’ sake and Jesus’ way and let your little light shine and – who knows. But Jesus says it will be enough.
You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world; you are like a city built on a hill that can’t be hidden.”
To be very sure, Jesus isn’t calling disciples to a purely private religion, is he? This is not just about being nice, staying out of trouble, going to church when it’s convenient, getting some peace of mind so you can go to heaven, is it?
No, this is much more important than that. It’s about salt and light for nothing less than the transformation of the world.
Salt and light. Maybe your salt. Maybe your light.
If you are the you Jesus is addressing.
Now, if I still have your attention – if I still have your attention – this I think, is a most encouraging sign. A sign, likely, that Jesus may indeed be calling you. Calling YOU to be salt; calling YOU to be light.
February 2-2014
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Trinity Church, Hartford
The Presentation in the Temple
Malachi 3:1-4, Hebrews 2:14-18, Luke 2:22-40
As we struggle to understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus today the lessons from this morning’s as well as last week’s readings are both challenging and instructive. They are challenging because they give us examples of people who seemed to know immediately and without hesitation that the Jesus whom they encountered was truly the son of God or the messiah. In last week’s lessons Peter, Andrew, James and John all seemed to know without a moment’s hesitation that a man whom they had never previously met was the person for whom they ought to abandon everything and follow simply because he told them to do so.
In this morning’s lessons Simeon and Anna looked at the baby Jesus and seemed to know instantaneously at first glance that he was the messiah. This kind of immediate recognition of God in a momentary glance is a challenge for my rational and overly linear mind. I often wish I could look at someone and know immediately, regardless of context, whether he or she was a disciple of Jesus. It would certainly help if we could have Jesus in his full humanity standing immediately before us giving us through his words and deeds both moral guidance and a living model of what God expects of us. Direction and guidance are always easier to receive when they are concretely embodied directly in our presence in another human being. That is why God in his mercy toward us, as the Letter to the Hebrews says, sent us Jesus, a man who literally shared flesh and blood with us in order to participate fully in our human condition, in order to redeem us from the evil and corruption that had over time infected it. Jesus was not just a spiritualized human but a human being in all respects, literally warts and all, just like us. Our spirits exist in integral relation to our bodies and not apart from them.
Now what Simeon and Anna claim to see is the incarnation or embodiment of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. But, and this is what is challenging, they see that incarnation in a little baby, not in the full-grown man the disciples in Galilee saw and heard.
At the time Simeon and Anna saw Jesus he was probably no older than a month and a half, the time when a new-born child and its mother, according to ancient Jewish tradition, had to submit themselves to a ritual of purification in the temple.
But this raises the question for me of what exactly did Simeon and Anna see in a 6 week old baby that made them believe that they were looking at the Messiah? This is the same problem, in a way, that arises when we ask what led the shepherds at the manger and the Wise Men from the East to believe they also were looking at the fully human Son of God just a few hours after his birth? If Jesus was literally flesh and blood, as the Gospel clearly says, and was like us in all respects except that he did not sin, then how can the appearance of a newborn baby’s face encased in a little baby fat and drool, reflect to an observer the appearance of God in human form? I don’t mean to be irreverent, but if the Incarnation was real it means that Jesus went through the same growth and development as any other human being. And babies drool, and yammer, and fuss, and squirm, and utter inarticulate cries. And this must have been the Jesus upon whom Simeon and Anna gazed. So how did they know this squalling infant was God in human form? One obvious answer, and it’s explicit in the case of Simeon, and probably in the wise men from the east, is that God granted them a special revelation about the infant Jesus at whom they were gazing. Without that revelation Jesus would have looked like any other 6 week old child who clearly did not yet have the fully developed consciousness of someone who would later call people to repentance in anticipation of the coming of the Kingdom of God. Six week olds simply aren’t like that.
But with Jesus’ resurrection and ascension from his embodiment in historical time and space we have to look among those real people still embodied around us in the world today to see where God is incarnating his purpose and manifesting what it means to be a contemporary disciple. Today I think most of us, at least I can speak for myself, have not been graced with an immediate special revelation about precisely where in the world we can find God’s intentions incarnated today. This is not to say that we should be looking for a re-enactment of the first and decisive incarnation of God into the person of Jesus. But if being a disciple means modeling our lives on Jesus, then surely there are people in our own world who are doing just that: modelling their lives on Jesus. But how do I know who and where they are? Unlike Simeon, Anna, and the magi, we are left with the complicated job of discerning who is a true disciple of Jesus amidst a welter of often obscure and contradictory clues leading to a lot of false messiahs. Simeon, Anna, and the wise men got something like an immediate time-frozen snapshot taken by a flash bulb which instantaneously illuminated the significance of Jesus in a single brightly lit revelatory moment. The baby Jesus had not yet established the arc of a life with a beginning, a growth period, and a ripening into maturity. He hadn’t even reached a month and a half at the time of his presentation in the temple. To see in a month old baby the fullness of the messiah takes a special revelation and most of us don’t get those these days.
Unlike a snapshot fully illuminating the significance of Jesus at a single glance, we are more like being in the position of watching a very lengthy movie or reading a long novel which goes on for hour after hour or hundreds of pages covering the arc of the lifetimes of their protagonists. In discerning the significance of someone’s life, the plot and meaning emerge for us only over time and only through pains-taking interpretation and deduction from the patterns of meaning that we see developing within the narrative through the acts of those being portrayed. Unlike Simeon we see Jesus and his disciples today only within the overarching pattern of God’s work of redemption stretching back to the calling of the people of Israel. But that pattern of redemption continues even after the ascension of Jesus into heaven. There are still disciples of Jesus in the world today, people who are living, if flawed, models of what it means to live a Christ-filled life even in the midst of the messy, complex, ambiguous world in which we are enmeshed. The question is how do we find and identify them? Rather than a snapshot illumination we have to unpack the clues as best we can as to where Jesus’ work is being done in the world. And any discernment can be mistaken. But there are some clues which the light of dedicated reflection can give us.
One clue is that those who are doing the work of Jesus in the world today will those who are profoundly uncomfortable with the status quo, with much of what we take for granted. If there is one thing that characterizes all disciples of Jesus it is that they are uneasy with a complacency or acceptance of the world in its present forms and structures. The true disciple of Jesus will be someone who points us beyond where we are now and calls us to challenge and destabilize the prevailing practices of the world because they do not embody of the Kingdom. But this destabilizing of the status quo is not just an end in itself. It is intended to create the conditions for a more equitable, loving, and just community of persons, living not for themselves but for others. In a society in which the gap between the super-rich and the rest of us is growing every day, in which those being left behind are being left on their own by our systems and structures, the disciple of Jesus will be someone who is willing to expose the moral emptiness of a system that coddles the already privileged while making the dispossessed and disadvantaged even more desperate. The disciple of Jesus will be someone standing up for the poor and marginalized even while the rewards of wealth are flowing to others who already have more than enough. The disciple of Jesus will be someone who persists in adhering to the promise of the kingdom no matter what obstacles he or she encounters along the way, someone willing to say that the emperor of wealth has no clothes.
Now where do we find such disciples? Where are the people whose arc of their lives reveals ongoing and sustained commitment to changing the unjust structures of the world? People are not known fully or primarily by a single revelatory moment but only over the course of their whole lives dedicated to the mission of God. Where are these people? They are usually outside the comfort zone of people who are fully content with the world as it is. They are not normally what the world might think of as extraordinary celebrities who light up the skies, though occasionally the brilliance of a few breaks through our jaded complacency. One thinks of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. But most of Jesus’ disciples from the world’s point of view are much more ordinary. And where are they? They are right here, sitting and living and worshipping beside us, they are our brothers and sisters in this community, many of whom have suffered injustice and discrimination but have been tenacious enough not to retreat from the battle. They are also out there in other communities comprising the countless but unnamed persons who have given their lives to fight injustice, bigotry, and racism usually outside the glare of celebrity. They are the people in public and business life who work for more humane and just social policies, who are willing to sacrifice their narrow short-run interests in order to advance the cause of the long-run interests of the inclusive loving community of the kingdom of God.
But to see the work of these contemporary disciples of Jesus we have to look beyond the snapshot. We have to look at the whole course of their lives because the battles for justice are not fought in a day: they are fought over many, many years. What we should be looking for, unlike Simeon who saw the messiah in a month old baby, is the persistent, enduring, and long-suffering work of people spread out over the course of their whole lives, people known and unknown to the glare of publicity, who incarnate the discipleship called forth by Jesus. Discipleship is a life-long calling and can only be discerned fully after many years. So don’t be seduced into waiting for an instantaneous snapshot flashbulb experience: get down in the trenches with those who are engaged in the struggle of a lifetime. Hear their stories, pray with them, and join them in the struggle because they are where Jesus can be found today.
Light in the Darkness Sermon for Epiphany 3A
Reovery Sunday/Healing Service
January 26, 2014
Marie Alford-Harkey
Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford
Matthew 4:12-23
In his book, The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen says, “Our own experience with loneliness, depression, and fear can become a gift for others, especially when we have received good care. When we experience the healing presence of another person, we can discover our own gifts of healing. Then our wounds allow us to enter into a deep solidarity with our wounded brothers and sisters. We have to trust that our own bandaged wounds will allow us to listen to others with our whole beings. That is healing.”
Most of us have experienced times of loneliness, depression, or fear in our lives. Most of us know what it feels like to sit in darkness and the shadow of death.
There have certainly been more a few of those times in my life. But I think the worst ones are when I have screwed up – big time. Times when I have failed myself and those who love and care about me. There have been times when I have felt that even God could not possibly love me.
And of course there were people who made those times in my life even worse. They told me exactly what I had done wrong, and assured me that I would be forever defined by my worst moments.
But in those bad times, it seems that there have always been people around me who were able to be my light in the darkness.
I remember a friend who came to my house, hugged me, and then put me in her car and took me to a drumming circle. I remember a friend who sat and cried with me in grief. I remember the time a friend looked me in the eye and said, “I know you will get through this.” And I remember a friend who told me in the midst of failure, “You will be a better minister because of this.”
I remember the group of friends who told me, “We will hold your light for you, until you are strong enough to take it back.”
When I couldn’t hold it for myself, those people held the knowledge that my life was not defined by one failure. They reminded me that I would come out of the time of darkness and grief. Those people were my great light in the darkness. They were my healers.
And so I know the truth of Nouwen’s words about being a wounded healer. My own experiences with pain and loneliness and the healing that I experienced helps me offer the gift of healing to others.
I wonder if Peter and Andrew and James and John realized that Jesus was inviting them to help heal the world. Because that’s what Jesus means when he talks about the kingdom of God – healing the world in the here and now, not going to some place far away.
Galilee in Jesus’ time was a region of darkness for the Jews. Under Roman occupation, the elite of the Roman Empire were supported on the backs of the rural Jewish peasants who made up most of Jesus’ audience. They were taxed beyond their means, they were poor and hungry, and barely able to survive.
As fishermen, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, were trying to eke out a living supplying the fish quotas for the Roman Empire. Their impulsive decisions to leave what little livelihood they had and follow Jesus would mean even harder times for their families.
But is it any wonder that Jesus’ call was compelling? Of course these fishermen yearned for some light in the darkness. Of course they longed for a different world, and empire that didn’t break their backs and their spirits. How excited they must have been to hear that a new one was near.
I wonder if these disciples knew that the kingdom of heaven that Jesus said was near depended upon their help to arrive. I doubt it. I doubt they understood the implications of Jesus’ offer to make them “fishers of people.” I doubt that any of us know where Jesus’ call in our lives will lead us.
I imagine that if they had known, Peter, Andrew, James, and John would have protested. I imagine they would have said they were not ready to participate in creating the kingdom of God.
But Jesus called them to change their minds, to think differently about themselves. Jesus believed that they could help him make the kingdom of heaven come near. And so they did.
Today, we pray for healing for ourselves. We experience this community as our light in the darkness. Then, with our own wounds bandaged, we can answer God’s call to bring the kingdom of heaven near by bringing healing to others.
Epiphany 1 – Year A – January 12, 2014
Our Minister at Walgreen’s:
Claiming the Ministry of the Baptized
As I was on spiritual retreat at the Monastery of The Society of St. John the Evangelist during the first week of Advent, I was reflecting a lot upon all of the attention we in our Diocese and in this congregation have been paying to “mission” over the past several years. The question we have been presented is, “What is God up to out there?” We have preached a lot about it. Our Vestry has spent two annual retreats considering it. It has been part of the focus of my Doctor of Ministry work at Hartford Seminary – which, God willing, will be completed in this calendar year. And we now have a “Mission Discernment Initiative Group” established by the Vestry to consider and pray over what it means, and what it might look like, to be Trinity Episcopal Church on Asylum Hill, in the City of Hartford, as we move deeper into the 21st century. Yet, something was missing and it was troubling me.
And then I remembered an article I read a couple of years ago in Congregations Magazine. It was written by Dwight Dubois, a Lutheran pastor who is the Director of the Center for Renewal at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. In that article, he recounts the story of a woman who works at Walgreens pharmacy. Dubois writes,
The woman told a heart-warming story of her work and of her concern for what she saw as “her congregation,” that is, the customers she got to know and care for over time. In particular, she talked about an uninsured mother who needed a $400 prescription for a child. ‘I worry and wonder,’ the woman behind the counter said. ‘What will this mother have to give up so that her child will have the medication he needs?’
[He] commended the woman for her care and compassion, and then asked, ‘Does your church know that they have a minister working at Walgreens?’
‘My church?’ the woman asked with some surprise. ‘Why, no. I hadn’t thought about that. No,’ she admitted. Then she added, ‘They wouldn’t think that is important.’
Dubois concludes the story, ‘That broke my heart. It broke my heart that this woman has the perception that her church has the perception that what she does outside the church doesn’t count. I’m pretty sure that if we went to that particular congregation (or any of ours, for that matter) and asked leaders or members if this woman’s work is important, we would get resounding affirmation. But if we asked what that congregation (or ours) had done to affirm or support her day-to-day ministry, we would probably get puzzled looks.
As I re-read that article, I began to understand why my heart has been so disquieted. Our focus on mission, looking outward, being the Body of Christ in the world, furthering God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation in the world, is absolutely what the church is about. But the church, and its ministry, are rooted in something deeper, the teachings of Jesus. And in his Summary of the Law, Jesus teaches us that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all our mind. This is the first and the great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt 22:32-40; BCP 851).
It occurred to me that with all of our talk about mission, the institutional church has in effect defined “ministry” as church work. Let’s be clear: Mission is our reason for being, the goal of all that we do. In focusing on mission, however, I fear that we may have given the impression that what we really value – and what counts – is what our members do for and in the church. I know we have done them here at Trinity, and I’m sure you have at some point in your life filled out what the church called a “gifts inventory” or a “time and talent survey.” When I look back at those, virtually every single item on them involved doing work either in or at or for the church. Choir members, altar and flower guild members, church school teachers, Stephen Ministers, Loaves and Fishes, Church by the Pond, Place of Grace Food Pantry – I could name all 30+ of our ministries here at Trinity – all of these are critically important, and they are a part of what our church does as part of its mission. When a minister asks people how God is active in their daily life, what we typically hear are stories about volunteer activities. And while all of these are important and wonderful, and certainly further the mission of the church, they do not include the vision of ministry we see in the Minister of Walgreens.
I want to affirm today that ministry can and does take place wherever we are and whatever we are doing if it furthers God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation in the world. As Dubois points out, ministry happens “in the farm field, where food is grown so that people might be fed. Ministry happens in classrooms where children and adults receive education necessary for their welfare and for the sake of the world. Ministry happens when parents change a diaper, clothe, feed, shelter and raise their children. Ministry happens when adult children care for aging parents. Ministry happens in the workplace where products are produced, where countless decisions are made, where people and all creation are protected and served.
“Ministries” are the activities in which we engage that further that mission. “The ministry of all the baptized is rooted in God’s desire to be incarnate – enfleshed – in the world – in us – so that the world might be restored to what God intended it to be from the beginning. When Jesus himself was baptized by John the Baptist – even though he didn’t need to be baptized – He was giving formal witness to God’s desire to be one with us. And ministry is God’s way of being present and active in us for the sake of the world.
I would like to suggest, however, that unless and until each of us has an acute awareness of the ways in which God works in and through us on a day to day basis, we are going to continue to understand “mission” as ‘outreach” – to think that when we are “ministering” we are bringing Jesus from inside the church to the outside, instead of understanding that when we are outside the doors of this church we can meet and join up with God where God already is. We will be inclined to think of “ministry” as just one more thing we have to add on to an already long list of daily and weekly activities instead of believing that doing ministry is part of who we are and what we do in our everyday Christian life. And all of us are ordained for that purpose in our baptism.
The season after Epiphany is a season of light – a season in which we are enlightened through Scripture about the ways that Jesus was gradually, one ministry at a time, shown to be the Messiah, the one sent by God. And so, during this season after Epiphany, I am asking each of us to concentrate on this life into which we have been baptized, which is, after all, our life in Christ. To assist us in focusing on baptism, each Sunday during this season in lieu of the Nicene Creed we will pray an affirmation of our faith adapted from the Book of Common Prayer of our brothers and sisters in the Anglican Church of New Zealand.
In focusing on our baptismal vows, it is my hope that we will be more intentional about understanding who we are as ministers. I hope we will become more aware in our daily lives of the opportunities we have to spread the light of Christ using our every-day gifts in our every-day lives. I pray that during this season, each of us will develop a sense of our own innate, God-given gifts, and that we will be aware of the ways in which we can and do use those gifts both in and out of this church. I would like you to share your stories – stories of how you minister in your everyday life - with me and with one another. I pray that we will have a stronger sense of coming here to be strengthened, refreshed and renewed, and will have a new sense of how, by our very presence on a regular basis, we strengthen one another. Just as when we exchange a hug with someone, we strengthen the other person even as we are strengthened by their embrace. This is a first step to reclaiming the ministry of all of the baptized; as each member of the body is strengthened and grows, so we will grow stronger as the Body of Christ, and we will grow stronger in furthering God’s mission of restoring the world according to God’s plan. I think being part of a congregation like that would be tremendously exciting. Let’s make it happen! Amen.
Christmas Eve 2013 – Year A
The Rev. Donald L. Hamer
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins,
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.[2]
With these words, the theologian, poet, philosopher and mystic Howard Thurman described the work of Christmas.
Now, we don’t usually think of Christmas itself as work. Oh, to be sure – I only need to ask my wife – the preparation we go through for Christmas are a boatload of work: For some of us, that is decorating our homes with wreaths, lights and displays; for some it is preparing for elaborate and fancy parties and dinners for friends, neighbors – parishioners? – and family. For those of us who work at churches, there is the preparation for an expanded number of worship services and an expanded number of worshippers. For volunteer members of choirs, there are extra rehearsals. For some, it is selecting, purchasing, writing and addressing a multitude of Christmas cards or letters that we send to people we see every day or to people we may not have seen or heard from in years. And of course, there is Christmas shopping for family, friends, co-workers. This is what society and probably most of us would classify as the WORK of CHRISTMAS.
But if that is the case, then this is indeed a very hollow and shallow holy-day that we commemorate this night. If that is the work of Christmas, then the fruit of that work is very fleeting indeed: a frantic buildup to a an event that lasts but part of a day and ends with a kitchen full of dirty dishes, people who have eaten and drunk too much, and Grandpa and Uncle Bill asleep sitting up on the sofa.
Now of course, none of us here or anyone claiming the name Christian would ever admit to any of this. And obviously those of us here this evening at least understand the religious significance of that event that occurred over two thousand years ago in a stable in Bethlehem. But I think that culturally we are conditioned to relegate Christmas to a quaint story that focuses our attention on children, and on childhood dreams and memories – how many of us have ever said, “Oh, it’s so nice to have young children around at Christmas time.” And in doing that, we tend to either ignore or forget that the first Christmas was anything but quaint.
Christmas gets defined by the Hallmark and American Greeting pictures on greeting cards. Lost from the commercial message of Christmas is the scandal of the way that the God of all creation entered into God’s own creation: as a vulnerable infant, born on the outskirts of town, to a yet-to-be-married couple. We forget the scary nature of that first Christmas – that it was all about events that were unexpected at a time and in a place and in circumstances that Mary and Joseph did not choose and would not have chosen if given the opportunity.
The medieval writer Erasmus once wrote, “Bidden or unbidden, God is there.” Just ask Mary and Joseph. One of the lessons of tonight’s Gospel passage from Luke is that God happens in the midst of our daily lives, in the midst of our secular societies – whether we invite God in or not, and whether we are ready for God or not. Jesus was born into an imperial Roman society in which his own people were marginalized.
Even as politics and society and other forces try to name and number and control and place a monetary value on everything in the entire world, God establishes a counter-story that starts not with Kingly power on a throne but in the vulnerability of infancy in an animal stall, a counter-story that ends not with power and conquest but with death on a cross.
When God chose to send Jesus, God’s kingdom entered the human kingdom. In Jesus of Nazareth, God’s work unfolds not in spite of life’s tasks, but in the midst of them. God didn’t wait for Mary and Joseph to be ready. God’s work unfolds in the midst of our daily lives. Jesus meets us where we are, as we are, embracing who we are.
And it gets better. Because Jesus meets us where we are, God enters into all we do. You know, we’ve kind of been trained by the church to think of these four walls as home base to God’s kingdom. When you think of it, all that accomplishes is to exchange the tent that the Israelites used to house the Holy of Holies for a larger, more spacious building. But that tent of meeting would travel around with the people. And so God travels around with us in the person of Jesus the Christ.
Every aspect of our lives is another kingdom into which Christ enters if we will invite him in. What are some of your kingdoms? Your job? Your school? Your family? Your recreation? Your civic work in your community? Your work here at the church? Your moods – your sadness, your joy, your frustrations, your dreams, your hopes and your fears. . . The birth of Jesus signals God’s union with us and God’s willingness to enter every aspect of our lives. How can we look for Jesus in the midst of our everyday lives?
We are likely to say, “I don’t see how God can enter into what I do at work. . .” That’s probably what those shepherds were thinking as they tended their flocks in the field on that first Christmas. I’m sure they didn’t have a side trip to Bethlehem planned. My guess is that none of them were perfect, that each of them was a sinner, and they probably didn’t spend a lot of time in the synagogue. By sending Angels as messengers to the shepherds, God shows a willingness to be among any of us so long as we will stop and listen for God’s presence, God’s touch, God’s word. God came without warning in the middle of the night while those shepherds were going about their regular jobs. The shepherds weren’t on spiritual retreat? They had not laid down their shepherd’s crooks to duck into church for a moment of silence. They were doing what they did every day, and God appeared. Too often we think we have to set aside time to seek God in the beautiful, the the special, or those places traditionally set aside as “sacred.” Christmas teaches us that not only do we seek God, but God first of all seeks us right where we are, doing what we always do. We might take some time during this Christmas season to reflect on occasions during our lifetimes when we have seen God move unexpectedly, times when we weren’t necessarily looking for God but God appeared. Those are Incarnational experiences – they are Jesus moments.
So I invite you to not put Christmas on the shelf when you pack up all of the ornaments and the decorations and take down the tree. In fact – some of you are going to hate me for suggesting this – I’m going to challenge those of you who normally take down all of the Christmas stuff a day or two after Christmas to leave it up until Epiphany this year – honor the full twelve days of Christmas. Resist the temptation to pack it away and instead take it as an opportunity for at least a daily reminder of how Jesus has entered into your life during that day. Practice that during Christmastide and make it a regular practice for the coming year. You’ll be surprised at how often you will be aware of Jesus coming into your life, and through those frequent visits, being more aware of him dwelling in your heart.
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins,
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
Have a blessed Christmas. Amen.
Advent 4, Year A
December 22, 2013
Isaiah 7:10-16, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25, Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.
I have known for some time that the preaching rota for Advent and Christmas had me assigned to preach today, the last Sunday of Advent. Being assigned to this Sunday has been a blessing.
I printed the lessons out in mid-November read them and put them on the shelf of my memory.
Being a person who is highly regimented in everything that I do, I stepped out of my box and went against everything I had been taught as a young Episcopalian…… I shopped for Christmas presents before Thanksgiving, I wrapped the gifts, I bought the Christmas cards and addressed them and then…… heaven help me, I did something my beloved and missed parents never allowed us to do….I decorated the house and put my Christmas tree up not three days before Christmas, but on the day after Thanksgiving.
I was intentional in performing these acts. I wanted to better focus this Advent on the coming of Christ and what that means to me.
Now you might say I gave in to the worlds of retail and finance which now begin celebrating Christmas around Halloween.
Most of us have these thoughts. Am I prepared? What haven’t I done? What can I get for the most difficult person on my Christmas list? Do I have the finances to support the purchases I want to make?
I removed all of this from consuming me. I was able to focus on the true meaning of Advent and Christmas.
For me there has been no worldly tension this Advent. My focus has been on the words of today’s Gospel. I was better able to reflect on why God Incarnate sent his Son into our world.
I was able to ignore the advertisements for the biggest sale of the year (How many of those are there) and oh no, I deleted email notices for the best deal without even reading them.
Many times during this Advent season, I read the lessons for today. I gave myself time to reflect. I gave myself time to ruminate. I gave myself time to hear what God was calling me to say. I asked myself, do I focus on the Holy birth, the lineage to David, the words of the prophet Isaiah, the angel who came to Joseph in a dream, or do I address the man Joseph and his response to God when the angel appeared to him.
Trinity Church has helped me to focus
The mission initiative discussions around how God may be calling us to further his mission this world, the thought provoking homilies and the response of the outreach team and healing prayer teams to focus on giving rather than receiving during this season of Advent allowed me to hear what God has called me to reflect on.
Most importantly, the response to giving from the community of Trinity Episcopal Church made my decision easy. The bountiful results from the collection of warm clothing, donations to the Trinity green bags for those in need of warm hats, mittens, and toiletries for those who have little, the food donations for A Place of Grace food pantry, the Christmas gifts for Covenant To Care, our Blue Christmas Service and yesterday’s service of healing and prayer for the remembrance of National Homeless Persons Memorial Day at Church By The Pond in Bushnell Park further awakened me to God’s call of healing and reconciliation in this world. And yet with all of our planning and the bountiful response there is more to do.
Let me read to you again a portion of the Gospel According to Matthew
When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
We know little of Joseph. In doing research here is what we know about Joseph.
In the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke Joseph’s genealogy is traced back to King David
Joseph was a skilled tradesman in today’s terms he was a carpenter
Joseph is not quoted in the Bible yet there are three accounts of Joseph which are recorded in dreams.
The last time Joseph is mentioned in Bible accounts is in the temple when Jesus is twelve.
Nothing further is documented about Joseph.
He appears to be just a man with little known about him.
Yet God entrusted Joseph to be the father of Jesus in the flesh.
Today’s verses from Romans and Matthew tell us Joseph is the earthly father of Jesus.
The important fact is not who Joseph was, a carpenter, but what type of man Joseph was.
Joseph is described as a righteous man. His qualities are that of being sensitive to someone else’s (Mary’s) shame. He was betrothed to Mary. In biblical time this did not mean engaged but that a legal bond existed and could only be broken through divorce. Joseph could have divorced Mary with reason of adultery. Until the appearance of the angel in Joseph’s dream he planned to quietly dismiss Mary causing her little embarrassment.
But Joseph responded to the angel.
Joseph obeyed God in the face of humiliation and adversity.
In this sense Joseph was filled with integrity and godly character. Joseph offered love and mercy, even when he may have felt he was wronged.
For me this is what this Gospel speaks to;
Integrity, love, mercy and obedience to God in the face of humiliation.
Joseph was just a man, but he was a man of integrity, a man of good character a man of conviction.
We are just men and women, children of God.
In this day and age where self gratification ranks high, where do we place ourselves?
I believe that we individually and corporately are being asked to walk, like Joseph, in obedience to God. We may not be faced with humiliation or disgrace but we may be walking with someone who is facing these adversities. Perhaps at times we may be asked to walk and be with those who exist in a marginal world, demonstrating the love that God has for all of us.
A love that is so great that God sent his Son to us to be with us in a form that we could recognize, a meek child born in humble surroundings for the forgiveness of our sins
As the angel unexpectedly appeared to Joseph, we do not know when God will come to us or what he will ask of us. But we must be prepared.
Will our response be to turn away or will we respond, as Joseph did, humbly with integrity, love, and mercy in obedience to God?
My hope for the upcoming Christmas Season and beyond is that each of us may be awakened so that we may be the light in a darkened world for those who are lost, hurting, living on the margins of society, suffering or ill. May we respond with integrity, love, mercy and kindness as we continue our relationship with a loving and forgiving God.
In closing a portion of a prayer from Ted Loder in Guerillas of Grace
Let us pray.
O God, grant us a sense of your timing.
In this season of short days and long nights,
of grey and white and cold,
teach us the lessons of beginnings;
that such waitings and endings may be the starting place,
a planting of seeds which bring to birth what is ready to be born-
something right and just and different,
a new song, a deeper relationship, a fuller love-
in the fullness of your time.
O God, grant us the sense of your timing.
Amen
Trinity Episcopal Church – Hartford, CT
Year A – Advent 3
December 15, 2013
Matthew 11:2-11
The Season of Advent is in many ways a season of contrasts, a time when the tension between what is and what might be is almost palpable. Theologically, this season reminds us that we live in an “in-between” time – after the first coming of Jesus Christ at Bethlehem and the second coming of Christ in glory at the end of the world. Practically speaking, that brings us to reflect on all the ways that God’s human stewards of the world God created have caused it to fall so far short of the Dream of God. That is part of the “work” of Advent: We take stock of those aspects of our corporate and individual lives that tend to separate us from the Dream of God, resolve how to minimize those, and reflect on ways that we can make more space for God – more space for the work of this Child whose birth we are awaiting.
But what are we waiting for? What does that look like? That’s the question John poses today.
John is the really the last in the long line of Hebrew prophets. Remember that earlier in the Gospel of Matthew (ch. 3) John has already told his disciples that Jesus is the Messiah. Like them, he identified the characteristics of the Messiah without meeting him. Unlike them, he actually did finally get to meet the one whose coming he foretold, and, against his own wishes, gave in to Jesus’ request and baptized him. The prophecies to the people of Israel were fulfilled before John’s very eyes.
And yet here John is asking the question, “Are you really the guy?” What’s happened in the interim?
Well, for one thing, prison has happened. He has been arrested and jailed as a political enemy of King Herod. It’s funny, isn’t it, how easy faith can be when the sun is out and all is right between us and the world. But let the heavy doors of prison, family problems, poverty or other adversity slam shut, and doubt and despair can quickly fill the darkness. It’s then that we ask, “Jesus, are you for real? Are you really the one?” And so John asks, “Are you the one?”
As Jesus so often does, he answers not directly, but with a challenge: You go and tell John what YOU see: the blind receive sight; the lame walk; lepers are cleansed; the deaf hear; the dead arise; the poor have good news proclaimed to them. Then let John come to his own conclusions.
Jesus’ answer is the same when we ask the question, in whatever way we ask it.
What are some of the ways that we ask the question, “Are you the one?”
How does Jesus answer us today?
What evidence do we see in the New Testament or in Christian history that Jesus is the one?
What evidence do we see in modern history that Jesus is the one?
What evidence have we had in our own lives that Jesus is the one? Said another way, what personal experiences have we ourselves had that showed Christ is present and active in us?
What do all of these experiences tell us about the role of the prophet in pointing us to the Kingdom? The role of the disciple?
December 8, 2013, Second Sunday of Advent, Trinity Church, Hartford
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12, Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
One of the persistent dilemmas facing all persons who acknowledge the awesome power of God in history is how to reconcile the theme of divine judgment with the human temptation toward self-righteousness in claiming for ourselves the right to impose on others that divine judgment ourselves.
This morning’s scripture lessons are full of references to judgment. In the reading from Isaiah the one who is coming will judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek. In the Psalm, the King’s son will rescue the poor and with judgment will crush the oppressor. And, in some of the strongest language in the New Testament, John the Baptist warns that the ax of judgment is ready to cut down the unfruitful trees and throw them into the unquenchable fire.
I suspect that there is some part of each of us ready to cheer on the righteousness of God as the evil doers are given their just desserts. There is something emotionally satisfying in seeing judgment meted out on those who have been doing evil. Extreme examples of such heightened emotions often occur when cries of “fry the S.O.B.” are frequently uttered by people waiting for the switch on the electric chair to be thrown or the fatal pill to be administered in this irrevocable and final act of human judgment.
But there is often a thin line between cheering on what we take to be God’s judgment and becoming the arbiters of that judgment ourselves, a thin line between judging and being judgmental. When human beings claim the mantle of divine authority in administering moral judgment on other people, they often meet an increasing resistance to the use of moral language at all when the subject involves complex social situations. Passing moral judgment on someone else has come to seem harsh, dogmatic, absolutist, and intolerant. There is a strong sentiment ‘out there’ that one’s moral judgment should be left out of social policy because it seems like a violation of each person’s inalienable right to hold whatever views one has without them being judged by others. And there is also a reluctance to judge social policy by moral criteria because it seems to intrude on the secular realm of politics. But politics, as we’ve said many times before, is the realm of people deliberating together to form a just and compassionate community. And if morals don’t have anything to do with the quality of our life together then morality may as well be declared dead. Unfortunately, we’ve seen many examples, especially when they promise political benefits, of people proclaiming that they have the only true morality and that God, at the final judgment, will send everyone else to hell.
The dilemma this poses for most of us is that we do believe that there are some basic moral values at the heart of God’s created order and purpose for history and that these values cannot be compromised. Yet at the same time we are also acutely aware of the danger of dogmatic denunciations of others who disagree with us especially in the area of social ethics. We sense the problem of coming off as judgmental, arrogant, or self-righteous. There is a fine line between knowing what righteousness is and engaging in a self-righteousness that regards the moral convictions of others as unworthy of respect.
There are a couple of points we need to remember as we confront this dilemma of holding tightly to basic moral values without falling into moral arrogance. One, we know that in the end it is not our finite judgments that matter, but God’s. We believe that the ultimate outcome of history is in God’s hands, not ours. We know the moral treasure God has given us but we have that treasure in earthen and therefore fragile and corruptible vessels.
Two, we also believe that we are called by God to contribute to the events that constitute the arc of history which, as Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, bends toward justice. We are not to be merely bystanders in the work of justice but to be deeply engaged in that work. We have no excuse to abstain from the work of justice because abstention is tantamount to indifference to the crying needs of others.
Three, we must acknowledge the limitations of the application of our moral vision to specific circumstances. We may glimpse with a high degree of certainty what the essential elements are in God’s moral vision for the world: we can all agree that these include love, compassion, mercy, peace, reconciliation, and justice. And we also know what is fundamentally incompatible with these values: abuse, indifference, oppression, and hatred. We know that love is more basic to doing God’s will than hate, compassion trumps mean-spiritedness, that justice is morally superior to oppression and discrimination, and so forth. These are core moral values that must never be compromised.
Four: we must also recognize that our moral judgments are not primarily against persons, but against principles and behavior. I do not have the right to judge the interior life of other persons. That is for God alone to do. But I do have a right, even an obligation, to judge their principles of behavior and the actions they perform in carrying them out. I know absolutely that racial, sexual and gender discrimination are wrong. I can’t make the same absolutist judgment about the state of the souls of those persons who engage in such discrimination.
This leads us to a fifth and final point. We have to acknowledge that the basic moral principles of our faith may lend themselves to a variety of different, but equally worthy, means of implementation. Our earthen vessels are many and are often different in shape and form. In acknowledging our own limitations, including our sinful tendency to identify our own self-interest with God’s purpose for us, we acknowledge that there may be real-world circumstantial factors that lead us constantly to adjust the means for carrying out God’s will as best we can discern it without morally condemning different means to the same end which other people have proposed. This pragmatic adjustment is not a sell-out or a fatal compromise in our basic moral values which remain the guiding star for our moral actions. But the pragmatic application of moral principles is a morality without self-righteousness, without the judgmental arrogance that assumes that if we know the basic moral principles then only our conception of how they can be carried out is truly right.
For example, one of the basic moral principles which has often been obscured behind the fractious discourse over the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare), is our basic moral obligation to care for the health of those in need. No person in the Abrahamic traditions could ever conclude that we have no responsibility to provide the best possible health care to those who are in need of it, regardless of their medical condition or financial resources. This is a profoundly moral conviction, yet even some of supporters of the Health Care Act have shied away from embracing this moral conviction head on for fear of being seen as moralistic or judgmental on people who don’t share it. As New York Times columnist Linda Greenhouse put it in an essay earlier this week, “One of the failures of the Affordable Care Act saga, it seems to me, has been the president’s unwillingness or inability to present universal health care as a moral issue, a moral right in a civilized society. Thus the administration meets the moral claims of its opponents in technocratic mode, one hand tied behind its back.”
The moral principle of affordable health care does stand in stark contrast with the moral claim that we are all on our own and owe nothing to the less fortunate among us and that contrast between these two moral claims must be pointed out unambiguously. But for those who agree on the moral principle that health care is a moral right to be met by our society as a whole, then there is an obligation to be open to different ways of achieving the same moral end. We can do this by discerning through reasoned argument what are the most effective means of providing health care to the suffering people in our society. We need to move beyond slogans, rhetoric, and ideology, whether on the left or the right. If we can agree on the basic moral principles at stake, then surely we have the basis for a discussion with people of good will as to what will be the most effective means of implementing those values. That discussion should be informed by the spirit of humility and openness, and an awareness that we are not God and do not exercise the divine right of final judgment upon the souls of those who disagree with us. We are instead merely God’s servants who humbly offer up our best insights for bending the arc of justice a little closer to the goal of history by standing firm on the core moral values of our religion without a descent into judgmentalism, arrogance, or self-righteousness.
Trinity Episcopal Church
Feast of Christ the King – November 24, 2013
By The Rev. Donald L. Hamer, Rector
Luke 23:33-43
My first recollection of thinking of Christ as a King was as a child in another Christian tradition. I remember it as a very special event, with gold vestments and lots of decoration, much as one would experience for the coronation of a new monarch or a royal wedding. I envisioned Jesus sitting on a throne of gold, wearing a crown and holding a scepter in his hand, presiding over some grand room with marble floors and pillars and throngs of admiring servants, administrators and subjects gathered around, attentive to his every act and word. And to listen to most of the passage from Colossians this morning, that is the kind of image conveyed.
There’s only one problem with that vision. It’s a fantasy. It was a figment of my imagination. And it was not rooted in anything that anyone ever saw Jesus say or do.
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last day of the season after Pentecost and the final day of the church year. There is a reason we as Episcopalians celebrate a liturgical year – a cycle in which, on a yearly basis, we remember the time before Jesus was born, the events of his life and finally, after Easter and Pentecost, the long period since Jesus’ time in which the church has attempted to live out and further the mission for which Jesus came in the first place. And so on this Sunday we look not only to the reign of Christ in Heaven; we also look to his model of leadership and Kingship which he provided during his life and finally on a cross on a hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha.
And that model of kingship was radically different from anything the world had seen before. It was a kingship that involved identifying not with those in the traditional power structure but those who were traditionally on the outside of the walls of power, the margins of society. It was a kingship that was marked by feeding the hungry, attending to the sick and dying, giving light to those who lived in darkness, providing hope to people who had no hope. He modeled to the authorities an alternate picture of what life in this world might be like.
His model of kingship so unnerved the religious and secular authorities of the time that they thought he was dangerous – a threat to the existing order that served them so well. When they couldn’t overcome him with words, they determined he had to die, and so they conspired against him – the religious and the secular, hand in hand – to put him to the most humiliating and torturous of deaths, the death of a criminal.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus speaks three times from the cross. The first time, he speaks to his Father asking him to forgive the very people who have conspired against him. The second is the dialogue between Jesus and the two thieves who hang on either side of him. And the third is Jesus final word to his Father as he turns over his mortal life in God’s hands.
Let’s look at that dialogue for a moment and see what it tells us about the kingship of Christ. At the beginning of today’s passage, when Jesus had uttered words of forgiveness, the leaders and the soldiers surrounding him scoffed and said, “If you are the messiah, the King of the Jews, then save yourself. Come down off that cross.” The first thief picks up on this theme, challenging Jesus’ identity. “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
This challenge from the leaders, the soldiers and the thief are really a temptation, similar to the temptations presented to Jesus by Satan in the wilderness following his baptism. In those temptations, Satan challenged Jesus to turn stones into bread, and to throw himself off the Temple as proof that God’s angels would bear him up and save him from harm. This challenge on the cross is no different – it tempts Jesus into being someone he is not, into doing something that it not a part of who he is or why he took on a mortal body. It tempts him to be an entertainer, a miracle worker, a magician – one who is willing to amaze and strike awe for the sake of meeting the expectations of others.
But that is not the type of King that Jesus is. Jesus spent a lifetime talking about the kingdom of God and what it looks like. Listen to just some of the things he says and try to find the pattern:
In Mt. 21:1-30, Jesus tells a story of a son who says he is going to do what his father asks but doesn’t, and a second son who initially refuses to do what his father asks but ultimately does it. It is the second son, Jesus says, who is faithful – actions are more important than words. It is he who will enter the kingdom of heaven. He repeats the same admonition in Mt. 21:43, telling his listeners that the kingdom of God is for those who produce the fruits of the kingdom, not those who waste them or use them only for themselves.
In Mark 4:30 Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, which while it is the tiniest of seeds, grows into the greatest of all shrubs. Jesus is telling that from a very little can come great things in God’s kingdom. In Mark 10:14 he says that the kingdom of God will be for people who can approach God like little children, open and willing to accept. In Luke 6:20 Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” In Luke 9:2 and 9:11, Jesus sends out his disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God by serving and by healing, as he does himself with those gathered around him. Later in Luke 10, Jesus connects his own presence and the presence of his disciples with “the kingdom of God coming near.” In Luke 13:21, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a woman adding yeast to three measures of flour. Jesus is teaching us that in the kingdom of God things that alone are quite ordinary can work together to make something wonderful.
In Luke 17:35, following the cleansing of the ten lepers, Jesus tells a group of Pharisees, “‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’ And finally, the entire chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel tells about the values in the kingdom of God: Recovery of a single lost sheep even at the risk of 99 others; the joy over the finding of a lost coin; the celebration over the return of a son who had left home and squandered his own inheritance.
Do you see a pattern here? Jesus’ whole life and ministry is a prelude to the interchange between him and the second thief. What does the second thief see in Jesus that the other’s don’t see? We don’t know. But he doesn’t ask Jesus for a miracle, he doesn’t ask Jesus to save him. All he is says is, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And the last words that Jesus speaks to another person during his lifetime are, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
As we look at the life and the death of Jesus, he reveals the elements of his kingship. It involves looking past our own failures and forming a relationship based not on our merit but on his own goodness and love. It involves a risk in casting our lot with a savior who refuses to save himself; it involves recognizing opportunities to further God’s desire to draw the entire world into unity. It involves believing that people are better than their failures, and that God is willing to look past the sins of our youth or even our last days. It involves looking past that which is staring us in the face and looking forward to the possibilities of what
might be. Jesus is a king who asks us not to adore him, but to follow him where he leads.
We might say that those who participated in Jesus execution – the secular and religious leaders, the soldiers, those who mocked him, the first thief who chided him – all of these people lived in ordinary time, limited by their own circumstances and lack of vision and petty self-interests, where the powers of violence and greed and death have the last word. The second thief, however, lives already in the Reign of Christ. May God bless us with his faith, and help us to remember that through our baptism, we are the ones chosen to continue to Jesus’ work as we too are summoned to the Kingdom of God, and to bring it ever closer in our own time. AMEN.
