Author: John Drymon

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

The benefits of being in a church which requires use of the lectionary are manifold. It means that, despite some differences between our lectionary and those used by other churches, the similarities are such that we usually hear more-or-less the same lessons that the majority of Christians around the world are hearing on the same day. It saves you from being subjected to my own hobby-horses all the time, which is a danger when the preacher simply gets to choose his or her own text. Most importantly, it makes one deal with difficult texts one wouldn’t choose to. I mentioned to Bishop Jolly last week that I was relieved she had to deal with that Gospel text about the difficulty and division which faithfully following and witnessing to the Gospel can introduce into our lives and relationships.

So, I dodged a bullet and we have nice happy readings this week, right? Well, at first blush it seems that way, but this brings up a problem with lectionaries. Like any document produced by committee, the lectionary emerged from a political process, and that means that sometimes we miss some important things that somebody somewhere was uncomfortable with. Sometimes we’re forced to hear the nasty bits, but other times we get the sanitized version and miss the point which the authors of the various books of the bible intend for us to get. This is absolutely the case with this morning’s Old Testament lesson from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah. In fact, if we read this lesson out of context, we get a message which is precisely opposite that which is intended.

Our reading this morning sounds awfully hopeful. The time for preaching war and famine and pestilence, it seems, was over. “As for the prophet who prophecies peace,” Jeremiah says, “when the word of the prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet.”

Now to give you some context, Israel was captive to the Babylonian Empire, the greatest force in the near East at the time, the early 6^th Century B.C. Jeremiah, like many of the prophets, engaged in some of what today we would call “street theater”. He had placed a wooden yoke around his neck to symbolize Israel’s bondage to Babylon and its King, Nebuchadnezzar. Hananiah, the prophet to whom Jeremiah addresses his words in this morning’s reading, had just prophesied Israel’s deliverance. Israel’s problems were all over, Hananiah said, and Jeremiah believed Hananiah’s prophecy was from God. In the two verses which immediately follow this morning’s reading, it says:

Then the prophet Hananiah took the yoke-bars from the neck of Jeremiah the prophet, and broke them. And Hananiah spoke in the presence of all the people saying “Thus says the Lord: Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon from the neck of the nation within two yeas.”

Israel’s problems, it seemed, were at least very nearly over.

But if we read just a few verses further, we find the truth was very different. It continues:

Sometime after the prophet Hanani’ah had broken the yoke-bars from off the neck of Jeremiah the prophet, the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: “Go, tell Hanani’ah, `Thus says the LORD: You have broken wooden bars, but I will make in their place bars of iron. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: I have put upon the neck of all these nations an iron yoke of servitude to Nebuchadnez’zar king of Babylon, and they shall serve him, for I have given to him even the beasts of the field.'” And Jeremiah the prophet said to the prophet Hanani’ah, “Listen, Hanani’ah, the LORD has not sent you, and you have made this people trust in a lie. Therefore thus says the LORD: `Behold, I will remove you from the face of the earth. This very year you shall die, because you have uttered rebellion against the LORD.'” In that same year, in the seventh month, the prophet Hanani’ah died.

So when we read just a little bit further, we find that Jeremiah had been tricked. The prophecy of peace which we find in this morning’s reading was the result of deception and wishful thinking. Hard times were still to lie ahead for the children of Israel.

What does this mean for us, beyond the seemingly obvious, namely, that when the lectionary gives us a text we should pay attention to context? I think it means that we have to be careful about false prophets. If Jeremiah, himself a prophet, could be taken in, how much greater is the danger for us!

Jesus says “he who receives a prophet because he is a prophet receives a prophet’s reward,” but just a few verses earlier (from last week’s Gospel lesson) he says “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

A false prophet tells us exactly what we want to hear, namely that all is just peachy. He fools us into believing that the suffering we see around us is just an illusion. He tells us that if we sew our seed by sending in a bunch of money to his cause, we’ll be healthy and wealthy.

To receive a prophet who is truly a prophet is to welcome news we might not want to hear. We don’t want to hear that we might be complicit in sin. None of us wants to hear that he’s selfish or uncaring. None of us wants to hear that he needs a change of heart or a renewed commitment to God or he’s going to be in spiritual danger. We don’t want to receive a prophet because he is a prophet, because the false prophet makes us feel so good about ourselves.

We learn from Jeremiah and from Jesus that the truth can be unpleasant and it can be divisive, but we’re nonetheless called to accept it, and Jesus himself has told us that it will set us free. Let us set aside our fear of the truth, knowing that false hope and false security and a false sense of our own perfection are the quickest way to bonds more uncomfortable than Jeremiah’s yoke. The truth delivered by a true prophet may hit us like a ton of bricks, but when we climb out from under that pile we’ll find the yoke finally removed and we’ll find within us a will we never knew we had to walk in the light, seeing the world for what it is and working to make it what God would have it be.

+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 must admit, this morning’s Gospel reading always makes me a bit embarrassed when it comes up. The apostles are instructed to lead peripatetic, itinerant lives as heralds of the Gospel. “Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff.” No wonder the second half of this morning’s gospel which begins with those words is optional in our lectionary. It’s a discomfiting reminder. Here I am with every intention of staying settled for a while, with a stipend and a rectory and a pension and plenty of changes of clothes.

I guess this is just the nature of serving an established institution versus a nascent movement and these are just the concessions we make to the world we live in, but I hope this stark difference between the lifestyle to which I’ve become accustomed and the lifestyle of the apostles continues to make me a bit uncomfortable, lest I become complacent merely relying on an institution and forgetting about being a laborer in a pilgrim church.

It seems to me that the more important reminder in these words is not necessarily that each of us is individually called to a kind of unsettled lifestyle, but that the Church herself is always being called to this vocation, to be a sort of apostolic, evangelistic pilgrim in a world which may sometimes accept but will often reject its message of radical love and healing and the proclamation of salvation coming from outside us- frustrating our designs on control and self-sufficiency.

This is especially hard for us to grasp, though, considering our history, particularly as Anglican Christians. Our heritage is that of a state-sponsored religion before our establishment on this continent, and even after disestablishment in the newly formed United States, we remained a sort of de-facto state church. We’ve got the national cathedral and the famous, for better or worse, claim of having “the church of the presidents” which seems to come up every time we have a state funeral. We’ve got our cathedral in Washington (the epicenter of political power) and our church center in New York (our nation’s financial and media capital) because for a long time people really cared about what the Episcopal Church might have to say about the issues of the day.

Now, here is a hard teaching. That’s probably not what we are anymore. Granted, our Presiding Bishop has gotten a lot of airtime over the years (preaching at royal weddings and showing up on the Today Show and so forth!), and whatever you think about him, I’m glad that at a moment when we’ve gotten a little attention we have a presiding bishop who is not afraid of talking about Jesus, unlike his predecessor, but that’s another sermon. That’s likely to fade away eventually, though. Converting to the episcopal church to get ahead in politics or business hasn’t been a thing for decades, and I say thank God for that.

There is some really good news here, I think. I believe we are at a point where the church is, for the first time in centuries, given the opportunity to go out without gold and silver and extra tunics and sandals, to live into the apostolic vocation. This is not an easy thing; it is a great challenge, in fact. Even so, it is a tremendous gospel opportunity. When all the nonsense is stripped away, when all the worldly, practical reasons for following (or claiming to follow) the Lord Jesus Christ are no longer a matter of convenience, we can get back to the heart of the matter. This isn’t about winning friends and influencing people. This isn’t about getting ahead in life. This isn’t even about having a bully pulpit before the princes of this world. It’s about following Jesus, loving those he gave us to love, and inviting others to share in the same pilgrim journey. Wealth and power and prestige can, of course, be a great blessing for the church or for a person if the institution or the individual is very careful to use those gifts faithfully. However, they can easily become dangers and distractions and even idols if the central message of Christ’s saving work becomes obscured by their trappings.

When I think about this delicate balance, threading that needle with a camel to use Jesus’ own image, and how more straightened circumstances can be a blessing in disguise, I am often reminded of a wonderful hymn by an unlikely modern saint. The poem is “O God of Earth and Altar” and its author, the great apologist and critic G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was an English convert to Roman Catholicism, active in the early twentieth century- after Catholic emancipation but while practicing that form of Christianity was still extremely unpopular and considered unpatriotic. So he knew what it was for one’s faith to lack power and prestige in a way we Anglicans historically have, now need to come to terms with for the sake of following Christ alone. I think his words capture beautifully both the challenge and the opportunity we have as Christians in the 21^st Century to reevaluate what’s really important for the future not just of our institutions but, more importantly, of our efforts to bring that saving message to all the world. And so, I will conclude this sermon with that text:

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.

+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.

It has become almost cliched to point out that social media has made our discourse as a society less likely to be civil or to take account of complexity. I was amused and rightly lampooned a couple months ago. A clergyperson, thank God from a different church (though that’s not to say it might not have just as easily been an Episcopal priest) posted, in meme form, a remarkably bad take on the nature of Christ’s sacrifice and our justification. I responded by writing the following:

Christian theology attempted through memes is generally a bad idea. Trying to dispute two millennia of careful meditation on the nature of the doctrine of the atonement with a political slogan is a supremely bad idea.

Of course, somebody then took my quote and turned it into a meme. I thought that was pretty funny, but more importantly it was a good reminder for me. Don’t feed the trolls.

We might lament meme-ification and the scoring of points through soundbites, though it is nothing new. It certainly predates social media. I have been fascinated by church signs which feature slogans and inspirational quotes for a long time. Sometimes they’re fine, or even funny. Other times they are a bit, as the youngsters would say, “cringe.” Most of the time, I feel like they just need a bit more context, which I understand is impossible through the medium of church signs.

One message that one sees frequently on these signs is something along the lines of “the church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.” The point is well taken, but it doesn’t make it clear that we’re all both saints and sinners simultaneously. Nor does it advertise the fact that the “course of treatment” in this hospital for sinners is not primarily about making us morally better by its ministrations(as much as we might hope that this is sometimes possible), but about reminding us that we are wholly dependent on God’s Grace and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. I know… just try fitting all that onto a church sign.

The quote in question has been attributed to all sorts of people over the years, such that it’s probably impossible to determine who might have first said it. There is something, though, written by John Chrysostom, but its slightly different and I think more apposite:

The Church is a hospital, and not a courtroom, for souls. She does not condemn on behalf of sins, but grants remission of sins.

I like this better, particularly since few of us these days think of the church as a museum for saints (though this might be different if we were a medieval cathedral in Europe rather than a local parish church in the American Midwest). Plenty, however, have gotten the idea that the church is a court of law established to condemn the sinful, and this is likely due to the moralism that has been preached from many pulpits instead of the Good News of God’s Grace.

Chrysostom’s sentiments here are also closer to what I think Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel. I’ve mentioned in a sermon before, in relation to Zacchaeus, that tax collectors were reckoned an unrighteous lot by the Jews of Jesus’ day. They weren’t just performing a basic, necessary function for the smooth-functioning of the Roman Empire. They were, rather, rewarded for defrauding the people, bullying them into paying more than was owed. So in this morning’s Gospel, the pharisees were quite right to note that in sitting at table with Matthew and the other “tax collectors and sinners”, he was fraternizing with a bad group. Their problem, then, was not in recognizing sin, but in how they believed it should be addressed. “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, `I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’”

The other mistake they make is in what I said a minute ago could be taken from the church sign version of the quote–namely that there is a neat distinction between people who are saints and people who are sinners. Jesus says, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” One wishes he went on to make explicit here what I take to be implicit and obvious, at least from a Christian viewpoint, by saying “and you, Pharisees, are sinners, too. You, too, are sick and in need of the Great Physician. Come and join me along with the tax collectors.”

Recognizing one’s own need for mercy and grace is a tricky business. The apparent irony of the Gospel is that flagrant sinners are often more able to accept that grace because they’re not shielded by an air of conventional piety. This, I think, is why hypocritical pharisees, teachers of the law and seen by the world and by themselves as being a cut above the rest, are the most regular recipients of Jesus’ rebukes.

This is not, however, to say that those given over to outward and even hypocritical displays of piety are beyond the pale of Christ’s salvific will if they are brought low enough by life’s circumstances to see that they are in need of grace. Consider the ruler whose daughter has died from the second half of today’s Gospel. You might not have caught the strangest element of this story. “When Jesus came to the ruler’s house, [he] saw the flute players, and the crowd making a tumult.” What’s that about? These are professional mourners, no doubt hired by the ruler himself, to lend a veneer of propriety to the proceedings. This is the literal definition of hypocrisy–“play-acting”, expressing the “appropriate, ‘done’ thing”–regardless of the real feelings one has on the matter. They are clearly not even good professional mourners, as they break character and start laughing at Jesus rather than keeping up the wailing and gnashing of teeth.

But for all that, the ruler’s pain in losing his daughter is keen enough to get him to throw aside the artifice for long enough to go to Jesus and ask for help. He’s been brought low enough, if only for as long as it took him to seek out the Lord, to realize that he was at the end of his string, and he was miraculously rewarded for it.

I was asked recently if I had any idea why some people in our own culture have turned not just to secular “self-help” ideology, but even to pagan ideas of old, or at least the contemporary invention of supposedly pre-Christian beliefs pitched directly (let’s not beat around the bush) at comfortable, mostly white, radically individualistic Westerners. My theory, which is not at all politique but for which I can’t come up with a convincing alternative explanation, is that most of these folks just haven’t experienced enough loss or pain or some other reminder of how profoundly fallen our sin-sick world is, to realize yet that one needs a savior. It is my suspicion that the likelihood is that when one does experience for oneself his or her own inadequacy in fixing it, that person will set aside the crystals and smudge sticks and tarot cards and will either become a Christian or a nihilist. We pray it’s the former, and we, as the church, have no greater responsibility than to make the former more attractive than the latter, because it objectively is.

In the end, that’s really pretty simple even if we worry and wring our hands about it from time to time. Why? Because we too have been in need of the Great Physician to heal our souls, to apply the balm of his love and to give us the medicine which is the Sacrament. Thank God for that, and let’s be a little more ready to recommend the course of treatment we find here to others.

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