Sunday, November 24, 2019

What sort of king?


A Sermon preached on Nov. 24, 2019, Christ the King (Family Service) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Jeremiah 23:1-6, Luke 23:33-43


Today is the feast of Christ the King, and also the last Sunday of the Church year. Though when you heard the Gospel reading, you might have thought it we were in Holy Week and that today was Good Friday. 

What are the traditional symbols of a king or queen? What do they wear on their heads? [crown – of gold, laden with jewels]. And what do they usually hold in their hands? [scepter and orb - scepter is a staff that indicates royal authority and the orb is a golden sphere, usually with a cross on top symbolizing kingly power and justice]. They sit on a raised chair – a throne – so they are above the “normal” people. And they normally have an expensive robe. These are symbols of power and wealth. They tell us who they are. They show us that they have power over us.

And what does Christ the King wear or hold? None of those. Well he has a crown – but his crown is made of thorns. His robe was made of plain cloth, and now it is bloody and is taken from him: “they cast lots to divide his clothing.” (Luke 23:34) The evening before his arrest, instead of a scepter and orb he held a bowl and a towel in his hands. And while his throne is raised high above the people, it is a cross – which is supposed to shame him, like the inscription “This is the King of the Jews” (Luke 23:38) and ultimately kill him. These are symbols of service, suffering, sacrifice, and powerlessness. What sort of a king is that? 

According to the theologian Tom Wright[1], Jesus is a king who stands the meaning of kingship and of kingdom, on its head. During Jesus’ life and ministry, he has celebrated with the wrong people, with sinners and tax collectors, he has offered peace and hope to the wrong people, the poor, the outcasts, the foreigners, and he warned the wrong people that they will be judged – those in power, those who thought they were God’s favorites. And now he is hailed as king at last, but in mockery … or so the leaders and the soldiers think. 

The Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers all miss the point when they say, “Let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God” and “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” Because that is not what Jesus came for, lived for, and died for. Sure, I can understand why they think it would be Jesus’ main motivation to save himself. Surely everyone thinks of him- or herself first. They did. Then – and sadly still today – the main motivation of too many rulers is to amass and retain power and wealth. 

But not our king. Our king did not come to save himself but to save others. His first concern is for others, even on his way to the cross. Kings often promise a place of honor and advancement on their way to their enthronement, Jesus promises forgiveness. One of the two criminals – these will have been rebels, terrorists we might call them, people who attacked or threatened Roman authority – one of them recognizing Jesus as the true king says: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” To which Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43) Jesus is Messiah and King and he has the power to save – but not as expected.  

In the first reading from Jeremiah we already heard a contrast between two types of leadership. Israel’s leaders – kings and priests - had scattered God’s flock, driven them away, and not attended to them. God promises to raise up a different type of leader, a servant leader, a just and righteous leader, someone who brings God’s justice, God’s saving presence and action into the world. 

This is Jesus, our king and savior and our example. Like him we are called to celebrate with the “wrong people,” to reach out to the homeless and the refugee. We are called to offer peace and hope to the “wrong people,” those who are persecuted or rejected simply for their difference. And we are called to warn the “wrong people” that they will be judged – those who abuse power, those who do not serve their people, those who sow division and hate. You see in God’s eyes, and in Jesus’ upside-down kingdom these are the right people to be saved and the right ones to be warned that, in Jeremiah’s words, “I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 23:2) 

I’ll finish with one of the short daily reflections I get sent from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist.
“We live in a world where Me is king. But our citizenship is not of this world. We are citizens of another country, whose king is a servant, whose orb is a towel, whose scepter a wash basin, whose crown is humility, and whose motto is service. As citizens and subjects of that kingdom, we cannot swear ultimate allegiance in any other way than taking up our towels, holding our basins, and getting down on our knees.”[2]
Amen.



[1] Luke for Everyone, 284
[2] Br. James Koester, SSJE

Sunday, November 3, 2019

What makes a saint?


A Sermon preached on Nov. 3, 2019, All Saints and All Souls at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden


Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18, Ephesians 1:11-23, Luke 6:20-31

It is not unusual for us to do more than one thing at a time on a Sunday here at St. Augustine’s. This week, we are doing at least four. We have our regular Sunday Eucharist on what is also the 21st Sunday after Pentecost. We are celebrating both the feasts of All Saints and All Souls, and we have our Stewardship Ingathering. In our church the regular Sunday readings usually take precedence. This goes back to the English Reformation. In his preface to the 1552 BCP, Thomas Cranmer writes that in olden times it was “so ordered, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year” but that lately “this godly and decent order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain Stories, Legends, Responses, Verses, vain repetitions, and Commemorations…  that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four Chapters were read out, all the rest were unread.” To avoid this, the then new lectionary limited the number of feast days and of them, only a few were allowed to be moved to a Sunday. All Saints the day for commemorating all saints, known and unknown, is one of them. All Souls – aka the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed - did not appear in an American Prayer Book until 1979. We tend to put them together and commemorate all the faithful departed together, whether officially a saint or not.

What is a saint, what makes someone a saint you might ask? Well, it is not dependent on you pledging or on the amount of your pledge. That is not why we put those two events together! [But “God still loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7)] There is no mention of saints in the gospels and when Paul uses the word it in his letters, it mostly refers simply to all the other Christians, and to living ones! Only later, in the early church, did the idea develop of raising up individuals considered worthy of great honour to use them as models for the faithful. The example of the many who died as martyrs for their faith was considered too important for them to be forgotten. The Roman Catholic Church has a proper process of canonization, St. John Henry Newman was a recent instance, the Eastern Orthodox Church has a process of glorification. And in our church, we have committees and conventions to decide these things …. 

Actually, Anglicans can’t really decide what to do with saints. While some actively venerate them, others hold positions building on the Reformation desires to reform or abolish the cults of saints. That probably explains why we have had found it so difficult to revise our book of saints. Originally called Lesser Feasts and Fasts (the major saints’ days are already listed in the BCP), it became Holy Women, Holy Men and then A Great Cloud of Witnesses (still an optional resource) before turning back – at the last General Convention – into Lesser Feasts and Fasts again. 

What’s a saint? Well according to that book, “Christians have since ancient times honored men and women whose lives represent heroic commitment to Christ and who have borne witness to their faith even at the cost of their lives.” “What we celebrate in the lives of the saints is the presence of Christ expressing itself in and through particular lives …. In the saints we are not dealing primarily with absolutes of perfection but human lives … open to the motions of the Holy Spirit. Many a holy life, when carefully examined, will reveal flaws or the bias of a particular moment in history or ecclesial perspective.” [Just think of the colonial era missionaries – we have misogynist saints, intolerant saints … ] “It should encourage us to realize that the saints, like us, are first and foremost redeemed sinners in whom the risen Christ’s words to St. Paul come to fulfillment, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”[1] Or to use a quote I found recently in another sermon: “A saint is a dead sinner, revised and edited.”[2]

What’s a saint according to the Bible? Our first reading, from the Book of Daniel, says nothing about who they are, just what they can expect: “But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever – for ever and ever.” (Daniel 7:18) Actually it does say something about them – they are people for whom earthly kingdoms and power are not important, only God’s kingdom. The Ephesian Christians are also accounted among the saints – the holy ones. First they heard the word of truth, the gospel of salvation, then they believed in Christ, and finally were “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; as the pledge of their inheritance toward redemption as God's own people.” (Eph. 1:13-14) Which is what we might call the Baptismal sequence: we hear the word, it takes root, it becomes faith, we are baptized as a sign of that faith and our becoming part of the family of God. For that reason, All Saints Day is a day considered especially suitable for baptism. We don’t have one today but will still renew our Baptismal Covenant together.  

Then in the Gospel, Luke’s sermon on the plain – similar to but not identical with Matthew’s sermon on the mount –Daniel’s promise of the inheritance of the kingdom of God for those considered blessed is repeated, while those who rely too much on their current earthly wealth and power, especially if it is coming from exploiting and taking advantage of the weak and the powerless, are warned. It will not last, God likes turning things upside down. The kingdom that the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated and persecuted are promised, is meant as an encouragement. We look to that glorious future as we act in the present. We draw our strength from this promise, from the knowledge of “the hope to which (God) has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” (Eph. 1:18-19)

And we need that hope and that assurance if we are to act as Jesus tells his disciples to act, radically opposed to the values of the world. Loving even our enemies, doing good even to those who hate you, blessing even those who curse you, praying even for those who abuse you. Sometimes we are called to give seemingly beyond our means. And most difficult of all not to respond to persecution and hate and violence with more of the same. Jesus does not say, do to others as they do to you, but do to others as you would have them do to you – even if they don’t and even if the chances of them doing so are slim to say the least. If you do that, you certainly count as a saint in all definitions. This is not about accepting abuse for the sake of abuse, not about tolerating violence. This is Jesus saying, when you preach and live the gospel, when you try and change the world into what it is intended to be, you will meet significant resistance, you will be reviled and defamed. Don’t become like those you want to change. That is the easy option, that is the evil one’s way. Instead remember that God’s great power, the same power God put to work in Christ when God raised him from the dead is working in you. 

In the end though, the question is not, what makes a saint but who makes a saint. Our behavior, our witness is important. But God makes us saints; God sets us apart. What makes someone a saint is not that they are holy, but that the God they love and live for is holy.
Amen.


[1] Preface of Revised Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2018
[2] Ambrose Bierce