Author: John Drymon

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I was listening to the radio in the car the other day, and the presenter was introducing Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Eroica. I had known that “hero” to which the composer dedicated the symphony was Napoleon Bonaparte, but what I didn’t know was that shortly afterward Beethoven had revoked the dedication. Lest you think “getting canceled” is a recent phenomenon, this was 1804. While as first consul, Bonaparte was reckoned by Beethoven to be the embodiment of revolutionary and democratic ideals, declaring himself emperor ruined it entirely.

And discomfort with monarchy is far from a modern development. It was a huge concern in antiquity. Modern democratic movements were not creating something entirely new, but trying to recapture an ancient model which had been largely replaced in the middle ages. Of course there were kings in ancient times, but that polity frequently met with suspicion. Remember, the Israelites demanded a king; neither God nor his prophet, Samuel, thought this was a good idea; they relented and “gave the baby his bottle” as it were; and this led to disaster more frequently than to success. Or consider Ancient Rome (if you’re a young man, apparently you already do this on a daily basis, at least according to the internet). While counter-intuitive to us because of how language has evolved, the reason Augustus and those who followed were called “emperors” is because “Imperator” was considered a less lofty and more democratic title than the word “rex” or “king.” An emperor must at least theoretically rely on the Senate for legitimacy. Even “dictator” was a more congenial to the Romans than “king.” A Roman dictator, whenever it was deemed necessary to have one, had a six month term in response to an emergency and was frequently prosecuted afterward if he misbehaved too flagrantly.

A king, though, has ultimate power. He is the unquestioned military commander, a one-man supreme court, and chief priest of his nation’s religious cult all rolled into one. When the crowd gathered before Pilate at Jesus’ trial shout “we have no king but Caesar”, they are saying something more shockingly retrograde than any level-headed Roman citizen or imperial official who wanted to keep his job (Pilate included) would have dared say out loud. What’s more, this is blasphemy. It’s one thing to say that the most powerful imperial force has some right to police a territory; I’m not approving of that, by the way, but that was the nature of ancient geopolitics, the Jews had previously consented to such arrangements, and you can’t really apply the principles of posse comitatus retroactively by two millenia. It’s another thing entirely to say that Roman law is superior to the Law God gave by Moses and the imperial cult is superior to the worship of God in Jerusalem. And this is precisely what “we have no king but Caesar” means.

Now do not hear me as letting Pontius Pilate off the hook here. He was a bad egg to say the least, and frequently when you hear Pilate apologists they are not very well disguised antisemites. Even the wickedest of people can sometimes be forced to do something right, though. When the temple leaders tried to get him to amend the sign on the Cross—“he said he is the king of the Jews”—Pilate was not only keeping the sign accurate, but (whether intentionally or not) commenting on the temple leadership’s egregious blasphemy.

The world may have many emperors and dictators and lords and princes and presidents. But the world only has one king in the ancient, tripartite sense—only one who can perfectly combine the roles of captain and judge and priest and in each role he subverts our expectations. Instead of a diadem, he wears a crown of thorns. Instead of holding a scepter, he is pierced by the soldier’s lance. Instead of sitting on a throne he reigns from a tree.

At his second coming, the royal trappings may be more standard issue. I guess that depends on how much the imagery we see in Revelation is meant to be literal or metaphorical, but that’s a rabbit hole into which we need not delve this morning. In either event, we are called today to consider the historical type rather than the eschatological antitype, and recognize that they are ultimately the same.

So how does Christ see the royal will accomplished? He calls the nations to worship him upon the altar of his own sacrifice. He acts as merciful judge to the thief who repents. He leads a silent army, a surprise attack against the hosts of hell, breaking down its gates and leading the most successful rescue mission of all time.

So, we have two images—Christ as kingly king and Christ as crucified king. To this, let me add one more. It is the image on your bulletin covers. This is the oldest of a genre of icon known as Pantocrator, literally “ruler of all.” It is housed at St. Catherine’s (Greek Orthodox) Monastery, the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery, which sits at the foot of Mount Sinai. I love this image, because it makes one wonder why this is how Christ’s rule, his kingship, is meant to be thus depicted. Christ surrounded in the accouterments of royalty in eternity makes intuitive sense, and I’ve just the bulk of this sermon trying to show how the crucifixion can be viewed as an image of kingship, but this image seems less clear at first blush.

I think, and this is just my own hunch, that while the other two images require what I’ll call our proleptic imaginations (inviting the historical endpoint and the historical hinge-point into our present), this is an image which requires no such “timey wimey stuff.” This is Jesus as he is our king today. First, look at his hands. He gives us his word, symbolized by the Gospel book he holds in his left hand, and he gives us the sacramental ministrations of the church, symbolized in his right hand’s blessing. Thus his majestic Grace is mediated in this in-between time. But there is also the immediate (by which I mean, unmediated) Grace. Look up from the hands now, and consider the face of Jesus. He appraises us with the piercing eye of his divinity and the gentle eye of his humanity. And being both God and man, we may look back at him and behold the perfection which the nature of impassable deity precluded our seeing until he came to dwell with us. And what I see in those eyes is a statement which nobody but God could give: I see you fully, clearly, perfectly and I love you completely. Will you love me with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul?

This is the king who reigns even now, whatever the world, the flesh, and the devil may do to try to convince us otherwise. We have a living king who not only invites us into his court, but desires us to relate to him as a friend and a brother. And when he comes again in all his kingly grace, perhaps he won’t literally be wearing an ermine robe and jeweled crown, carrying an orb and a scepter. Maybe he’ll come to us looking more like the Pantocrator of Sinai, and more than behold us and we him through the medium of wood and wax and pigment, we may embrace as he welcomes us into his eternal kingdom.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I realize that one of the dead horses I continually strike is the lectionary’s unfortunate editing of biblical passages such that we can sometimes miss the point that I think we’re supposed to take from some particular part of scripture. I hate to do it again, but this morning’s Old Testament lesson from Job suffers so much from the editing process in this regard that I cannot ignore it.

Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! For I know that my redeemer lives.

It seems simple enough. Job wants his realization of the General Resurrection and the victory of God recorded, right? Well no. In the twenty-two verses which precede our lesson, Job presents a litany of complaints. It’s a long passage, so I won’t read it to you in its entirety, but here are some examples of what comes right before the reading we heard a few minutes ago:

How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? … Know that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net about me. … He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. … My kinsfolk and my friends have failed me; the guests in my house have forgotten me. … I am repulsive to my wife, loathsome to the sons of my own mother. … All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. My bones cleave to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

Job’s words at the beginning of this morning’s Old Testament lesson do not express a desire that the good news be recorded. Rather, they show Job’s desire that the depth of his suffering be recorded, that posterity might read it and learn how rotten his life had become and how angry he was at God for making it that way.

This makes the words which follow particularly striking:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

Why this sudden turnabout? Why the instant transition from despair to hope? There are a few possibilities. These are just three theories, and there may be others, but I think they’re the most likely, though you’ll see why I think two of them are unacceptable.

First theory- maybe Job was bipolar. This is not my favorite explanation, but let’s consider it. Perhaps he’s swinging from a depressive to a manic episode before our eyes and ears.

This might be a particularly comforting theory for those who struggle with mental health issues, but I think it’s a problematic theory. We can easily get into trouble by imposing modern categories on ancient people. One could take any of the prophets and view them through the lens of psychopathology- if Job was bipolar, maybe Jeremiah was depressed and Ezekiel was schizophrenic. It’s interesting to think about, but it either requires that we reject the biblical prophetic tradition or assume that God uses mental disorders as a means of communication. The former is not an option for a believer. The latter isn’t impossible, but then we’ve got all sorts of sticky questions about suffering and divine agency which are better avoided if we have an alternative to hand.

Second theory- the only way Job could get over the perceived injustice of his situation was to imagine a God who is ultimately just and who will set all things right in the end. This is a popular way for anthropologists and other social scientists to view the development and persistence of religion. The idea in a nutshell is that life is unfair (which I think is pretty self-evident), and that religious sentiment is an antidote to despair about this fact. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do some enjoy security and wealth and health and others don’t? Why is there so great a discrepancy between well-being and worthiness? Because, God’s gonna fix it all in the next life, so don’t get too upset about it.

On the one hand, we can see why this might be the genesis of religious commitment. Just looking at our own Judeo-Christian tradition, the most profound messages of hope we find in scripture were written in times of extreme difficulty- famine, war, and especially foreign rule and diaspora. It makes sense that in the midst of terrible situations, the only thing to do is to imagine that something greater is at work, that everything will get better, that there will be pie in the sky when we die, by and by.

But if that’s all there is to it, then Marx was right- religion is the opiate of the masses. It keeps us calm and prevents revolution, because it’s only a matter of time before we die and get to finally enjoy life. Maybe Job resorted to wishful thinking, because that’s all he had. That’s not a kind of religion I’m interested in, and I don’t believe it could possibly be the kind of religion professed by the saints who fought and died for the Lord they loved and knew. But it is a possibility. It is my least favorite of the three theories (I’d rather Job were mad than religion were just a pablum), but it’s a very popular way of thinking among the critics of religion. I think our response to those who espouse this theory is to admit the possibility that it’s true and then live our lives in a manner that disproves it- by living faithfully even when every potentially selfish end seems illusive.

Third theory- Job was neither mad nor deluded. God came to him precisely when he needed him the most. In his darkest hour, the Holy Spirit spoke his word of encouragement, literally inspiring him, filling him with the Truth to lift him out of despair. When all around is death and loss and malice, Job was given a vision of the life and joy and love that is the inheritance of God’s people. I’ve not got any empirical evidence for this claim. I cannot rely on psychology or anthropology or any other discipline in the modern intellectual tradition to prop up the third theory. I don’t think there is anything from those fields to help us here. They might prove faith and spirituality to be useful or maladaptive, but not whether or not it’s True. That’s where faith comes in.

That’s the starting point if you want to buy into this theory. You’ve got to have trust enough in those little experiences of grace and love that you experience from time to time that you can see the hand of God moving your heart and the hearts of your sisters and brothers. You’ve got to trust that a power greater than us can make sense of all this mess. I think this is how it happened, or rather I believe this is how it happened, for Job and how it can happen still for us. Even in our darkest moments, God can break in; God will break in if we’re open enough and trusting enough to hear the Spirit’s Word of peace.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A sign of the difficulty currently besetting the publishing industry, several magazines in recent years have enticed potential subscribers with a free gift subscription for the primary subscriber to pass along. So, we have given a subscription of The New Yorker to a friend for a few years, and just this week, said friend shared with us a gift subscription to The Atlantic. So I got the Atlantic app installed on my phone, opened it up, and the very first article that loaded up meant I had to read it right then and there. The title: “How Is the Israel Hamas Ceasefire Deal Like an Anglican Wedding?” That’s “clickbait” for a very particular type of person, and I am he.

If you’ve ever been to a wedding here or in any Episcopal Church, you may remember that after the couple exchange their “I do-s” (or actually, “I wills” in our service) there is a question for the congregation: “Will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?” And we respond “we will.” Why do we say “we will”? Because it’s printed in the book. Do we mean it? I try at wedding rehearsals to say to everyone gathered there that they will say “we will” because they mean it; because they are themselves making a solemn promise to support the couple over the course of decades, and I hope that they take that seriously. I’m sure some (maybe several) do, but I’m not sure everyone does. We say it, because the rubrics in the book instruct us to do so.

The writer of that piece in the Atlantic assumed that very few at your typical wedding do, though, and he feared that those who helped broker the increasingly fragile ceasefire in the Middle East—the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris, maybe the Americans—won’t hold to their own vows when things get tough. And unlike your average marriage, which typically takes some years before the couple want to murder each other, there will be no honeymoon here. I hope he’s wrong. I just don’t know.

But I really want to focus neither on Holy Matrimony nor on Gaza this morning. I bring it up, because there’s another time when we are called upon to make a similar solemn vow. At every Baptism we are asked this question: “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ.” And we answer “we will.” Are we just saying it because it’s on the page or do we really mean it?

We are in the business of making saints. Or rather, God is in the business of making saints, and we have the privilege of helping a little insofar as he gives us grace to do so. You’ve heard me say a thousand times that there is a difference between the majuscule and the miniscule, the “upper-case S” Saints and the “lower-case s” saints, and that all of us and all of those whom we’ll remember in a few minutes during the litany are probably in the latter category (though I encourage you to prove me wrong about that). I guarantee there will be no processions through the streets for St. John Drymon of Findlay day fifty or a hundred years from now. There are the famous men and women of whom the writer of Ecclesiasticus speaks and those who have no memorial.

But there is something which fundamentally connects all of us in the church—militant, expectant, and triumphant. Each and every one of us has been washed in the saving laver of Christ’s Blood. Life may seem a great tribulation sometimes, but we’ll all be clothed in white on that last great day, bearing branches of palm in our hands. The blessedness of the poor and the meek and the persecuted and the downtrodden will be ours then, and in can be ours today to a greater extent than we might imagine.

God being our helper, we can not only reach out to that crown of triumph even now when we allow him to work through us in supporting each other in growth in holiness, in upholding all our sisters and brothers in keeping the vows they made or that were made on their behalf and thus grow in holiness ourselves. This can be a virtuous cycle, and in that sense the church militant here on earth can serve as a sort of school for virtue, educating us, leading us toward the God who is love that we might become a bit more loving. All this can be accomplished when we take that baptismal vow “we will” as seriously as we ought to do.

And if you look around and scoff and say, “this peculiar lot is meant to teach me how to be holy!?” look again. You might be astounded when you sit in this classroom long enough. And ever give thanks that we can also look up to that great cloud of witnesses—the church expectant and the church triumphant—both for their examples and (I believe) for their intercessions for us before the throne of God. Thank God for them, and thank God that we’ll have an eternity of fellowship with them as we praise God together unto the ages of ages.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.