Sermons

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

Some of you know that when I was in seminary I had the honor of serving as chauffeur and “body man” for Desmond Tutu. He had come to New York to give an address, receive an honorary degree, and have his name given to one of the buildings on campus, and it was my task (along with one of my classmates, who was far more physically imposing than I) to get him from engagement to engagement. This was a rather frustrating task, because people kept recognizing him, and he clearly wanted very much to hear each person out, give advice if asked, say a prayer. It was just the way he was, but with a tight schedule and a city with eight million potential distractions (I mean, human beings), I often had to be the bad guy, because the Archbishop was not going to be.
Because this aura surrounded a man whom many considered a hero and some a living saint, it is often forgotten now how controversial his work in the immediate post-Apartheid era was, when he chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission—the work for which he earned his Nobel Peace Prize. And you might be surprised to learn with whom he became most unpopular if you’re not familiar with how it all went down. You see, it was a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, not a “Truth and Retaliation Commission”, and the goal was a clean start for a new, majoritarian democracy established on a principle much like Lincoln’s intention for Reconstruction in the American South—effected “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” So, the most frustrated with the process were not those white politicians and farmers who had to own their culpability publicly and contritely, but some in the black majority who wanted to “hang ’em high” and immediately seize their property.
Of course, history is complicated and the right method for establishing a more just society is a contentious and politically fraught issue. People of good will can have sincere disagreements on how to balance restorative and retributive justice—that is, how much should the legal system try to effect reconciliation and how much should it simply punish evildoers. I personally think that neither approach taken to its extreme is a terribly good idea, that there has to be some kind of balance for society to function, but I don’t intend to adjudicate that thorny issue in the next few minutes.
I will say that at least the attempt of effecting rapprochement before “throwing the book” at somebody—as Tutu’s Commission attempted to do—is more in keeping with how Jesus tells us to approach those who have wronged us than some alternatives may do. Note that the approach Jesus tells us to take in today’s Gospel is not without consequences for the absolutely impenitent; if the whole body of the church isn’t able to bring about reconciliation the offender is cast out “as a Gentile and a tax collector.” But before it gets to that point there are several attempts to find another way and to maintain fellowship.
This is a way in which we as Christians can, in our corporate and our personal lives, model something which is remarkably counter-cultural at present. We can act in such a way that the maintenance of relationships is held as a value in itself rather than the first reaction being to “bring the hammer down.” The cultural impulse right now, it seems to me, is inherently punitive and, speaking just for myself, I think it’s present on both extremes of the political spectrum. One side may wish to immediately lock up anybody who crossed the border illegally once and the other might wish to ensure that somebody who said something racist or sexist on the internet a decade or more ago should be forever banned from polite society no matter how contrite he is. I’m not trying to make a false equivalency here, but I do think these come from the same impulse. And that impulse is tribal—my side is right and the other side must be made to suffer. What if we first tried to gain a brother or a sister?
Jesus tells us that the first step is to go privately to one whom we believe wronged us, and this is a very tough thing in my experience. Perhaps the natural approach in some cases is to immediately elevate the matter to “the authorities”, whether that’s the priest, the boss, or the law, depending on the situation, and in cases where there is fear for one’s safety that is probably wise, but how often is that the case. For whatever reason, and despite having lived in big cities before moving here, Findlay is the first time I’ve been the victim of crime. It’s happened several times over the last decade, but always just petty theft or minor vandalism. Sometimes I’ve had no idea who the perpetrator was, but at other times I had a pretty good guess, and then I have struggled to take Jesus’ direction here. Sometimes I’ve succeeded and sometimes I’ve called the cops right quick. I’m still not sure I’ve always made the right decision there. Moral difficulty comes with the territory of trying to be a Christian, I think.
Less common in my case and perhaps yours, though, are these situations where there is a clear authority and the question is whether or not to appeal to them. More common are those where the choice us between approaching the one who wronged me with a desire for reconciliation, approaching them with a desire to tear them apart, or simply keeping it to myself, stewing about it, and becoming resentful. Sadly, I am probably most disposed to the last approach, and that can be deadly for one’s soul.
In these situations I find I must try to take a prayerful best guess: is a sincere desire for reconciliation and a charitable approach to the wrongdoer likely to be received for what it is, am I ready to own my own part in whatever has created enmity, and is the wrong significant enough that it must be addressed. If the answer is yes, then I try to explain calmly what I perceived to be my brother’s or sister’s fault privately in a way in which it can be heard. Rarely has this required elevation of the matter to two or three witnesses, and only twice in seventeen years of ordained ministry has it required “telling it to the church” (which, in my case means getting the bishop on the phone).
If, on the other hand, the answer to one of those previous questions is no, I have a choice. If I’m not ready to own my part in the relationship being broken, the choice is easy: I have to get there for the sake of my own soul. The other one’s easy, too: if it’s not significant enough to be a reason for demanding some satisfaction I’ can just let it go.
The tough one is when the wrong is big enough that one’s sense of justice is scandalized but there’s very little chance my interlocutor will ever recognize that he or she acted poorly, or at least not anytime soon. And here, I can only speak for myself and as someone who’s had to deal with things that are hurtful but not majorly criminal or very physically dangerous. I have determined just for myself (your mileage may vary), that I have to accept the reality, move on with my life, and try to be in relationship with that other person even in ways that may put me at risk of getting my feelings hurt again, assuming there is a reason that the relationship is a good in itself because that other is a family member or a colleague or a parishioner. Yeah, the boundaries will probably be a bit higher moving forward, but I’ve personally found calling it quits and breaking all ties permanently has a tendency to hurt me spiritually. Worst case scenario, my kindness can be like those burning coals from last week’s epistle. Best case scenario, I forget whatever mean, petulant thing was said or done, I’ve grown a bit more forgiving, and the bond of peace is maintained.
I say this approach is counter-cultural, because a lot of the advice you get these days is that if somebody doesn’t fully agree with you about something important about yourself or the world, even if that person is close family, your first recourse and almost your cultural or political obligation is to cut that person out of your life entirely. I don’t think this is a very Christian approach, quite honestly, and it’s not how the body of Christ should operate.
So let not the eye say to the hand “I have no need of you” nor the head to the feet. Sometimes my feet may be sore and bring about a generally sour disposition, but I do not then cut them off. I try to reconcile myself to the feet (perhaps by not wearing opera pumps). If we’re really called to suffer for the sake of others, we may need to be careful about putting a lot of conditions on that. At least I know that’s the case for me, who can easily justify the selfish avoidance of discomfort by calling them “boundaries.”
So I will leave you with a question to ponder. Who in your life do you need to approach one-on-one and engage in an act of mutual forgiveness? Perhaps such reconciliation is impossible; but maybe it is possible, it’s just uncomfortable. But this is how Christ calls us to be together, and through the discomfort we can find that love can cover a multitude of sins.
+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.


In last week’s Gospel, Saint Peter—who seemed to have made a career out of getting Jesus’ message wrong—finally got it profoundly right, and was granted authority. He was made the rock upon which the Church would be founded and was given the keys to the Kingdom and the power to bind and loose. What precisely this means is, you may remember me saying last week, debatable, but what’s clear is that Peter’s good confession was enough for Christ to give him a very responsible job in his service.
Well, as it turns out, poor Peter doesn’t get an opportunity to relish in Jesus’ affirmation of him, to get bask in the glow of having been made the chief apostle. In this morning’s Gospel reading—which takes place within the same conversation as last week’s—Peter is knocked down a few pegs.
Peter’s response to Jesus’ prediction of his own crucifixion is a natural one: “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you,” he cries out. To all appearances, Peter only wants his Lord, whom he loved, to avoid suffering and death. We should feel the same for those whom we love!
This seems to make Jesus’ reply a bit less than sensitive: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” The parallel in Mark’s Gospel is even more shocking. Jesus uses precisely the same words, but Mark, usually the most austere of the evangelists, fleshes out the story a bit by noting that Jesus words were meant as a “rebuke”. The Greek verb is “epitimao”: the same word used in the New Testament for when Jesus casts out demons. Jesus, here, quite literally demonizes Peter.
The Jesus of scripture and of history is not the “warm, fuzzy” fellow we, who care so much about affirmation and pleasantness, have sometimes made him out to be. He’s not “sensitive” in the cheap way we polite, modern people use the word. He’s not worried too much about hurting feelings, even the feelings of one extremely close to him, if it means getting the point across. The point is important enough that it had to be grasped. Indeed, it is a terribly important point: namely, that the path we Christians tread is the surest way to suffering and sacrifice if we’re really living up to the name “Christian”.
“If any man would come after me,” Jesus says, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” We all have a cross to bear, but once again, our polite, comfortable “Christianity”—which, I contend is not the Christianity of Christ—cheapens the sense of Jesus’ words. One’s head-cold or noisy neighbor is not one’s “cross to bear.” Those are irritations, no doubt, and we can face even greater difficulties than these which, I would humbly submit, are not “crosses to be borne” either. You see, they leave out the operative phrase in Jesus’ explanation of the crosses we bear: whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. There is an element of volition missing from the “head-cold” or “noisy neighbour” situation. We gain our souls by choosing to lay down that which really burdens us: self-satisfaction and egoism and the need to control others. The crosses we bear—selflessness and loving sacrifice and the call to serve Christ in all persons—turn out not to be very heavy burdens at all. In fact, they are a great deal more like life-preservers, lifting us out of a sea made putrid with the jetsam of human pride that we might be pulled aboard the ark, which is the Church as Christ intends her to be.
In his Epistle to the Romans, Paul reminds us how heavy that Cross may seem, but if we think about it for any length of time, we’ll recognize it’s quite the opposite. Perhaps the hardest-seeming requirement for Christian faithfulness is found in this morning’s epistle:
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… Beloved, never avenge yourselves… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

It seems like a heavy burden to live this way, but nothing could be further from the truth. How heavy a burden it is to hold on to anger, to live with resentment for our enemies, and how great a relief it is to let that go, to bear the Cross of self-abnegation and forgiveness rather than the yoke of bitterness!
What Peter forgot is that the twin idols of “comfortable living”—security and enlightened self-interest—are in reality a great deal heavier than we can handle; that even what seems at first to be genuine concern can be a mask worn by those idols. Naming the idols which we clutch more closely than the Cross of Christ can be more than a little uncomfortable. We may feel the Eye of God, which alone can pierce our souls, can cut as much as it can comfort. In the end, though, permitting God to root out of our hearts that which really weighs us down, will sting only for a little while. We will then find that Christ’s yoke is easy and His burden is light, that the Cross, borne with confidence and humility, becomes a part of us, an essential appendage, whose weight is so close to us that we cease to notice it and which grants us a life more abundant than we ever believed possible.
+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.

Some of you know that I am spending this year reading through the Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger’s magnum opus the Dekaden. It’s worked out pretty well, and not interfered with my other reading too much. It’s exactly fifty sermons, so I can read through one a week and still complete the task and have a Christmas break. That said, the sermons are long—fifty or sixty pages apiece—and one wonders what the good people of Zurich would have thought about a two- or three-hour-long sermon every week. I guess one effect of legally compulsory church attendance is that a preacher could get away with things like that in the Sixteenth Century.
The thing that’s surprised me most is that Bullinger will go on for pages presenting pretty carefully worded, thoughtfully analyzed arguments from a relatively moderate (for the time) Calvinist perspective but then he’ll just posit some crazy proposition as if it were self-evident. Like, of course all the Patriarchs from Adam to Moses knew the full Gospel of Jesus Christ a millennium and more before our Lord came in the flesh, they were just being intentionally ambiguous about it. Or that an ecclesiastical death penalty should be maintained as an option because Peter killed Ananias and Sapphira in Acts (listener, that’s not how I read the story). I came upon another doozy a couple weeks ago. When Jesus said “upon this rock will I build my church” in today’s Gospel he was referring to himself and not to Peter.
Now, I don’t think this is a good reading of the text, but we can understand why Bullinger presented it that way. Christ is the chief cornerstone upon which the church is built as Paul tells us in his Epistle to the Ephesians and as Peter himself affirms in his First Epistle General. Plus, just a generation after the beginning of the Swiss Reformation, it is understandable that Bullinger would want to distance himself from any who would suggest that Peter’s successors as Bishop of Rome had a particular authority given by Christ himself. Even so, I don’t think his is a terribly compelling reading of what Jesus actually says. And can’t poor Peter, who messed up so frequently during Jesus’ earthly ministry at least chalk one up for once? Don’t worry, he’ll get slapped down again in next week’s Gospel, when Jesus literally calls him Satan.
So I think Jesus is saying something particular and positive about Peter, here. Whether the “rock” is apostolic authority of a particular type which may or may not be translated in whole or in part to his successors or if it’s just his role as leader of the twelve during his lifetime or if it’s simply his embodiment of the good confession he makes of Christ as Messiah and Son of God I admit I am not completely certain. I think any of those options are possible as a faithful reading here, and can be justified as potentially valid interpretations.
What’s more interesting to me, and probably more useful for those of us who are not engaged in high level ecumenical dialogue, is what I take to be a possible double-meaning in Simon’s new nickname, Peter, and his status as “the rock”, however we are to interpret it. A rock is solid, steady, a good foundation. A lot better than sand if you’re in the business of building. A rock is also inert, heavy, dumb (in both senses of that word). Might Christ here be saying something like this: “Peter, you’re kind of a numskull, but you’re a good solid guy, and you’re good enough for the Kingdom. There are still some boneheaded things you’re going to say and do before this is all over, but I love and trust you. So just keep at it. You’ll be okay, and you’ll do great things for the sake of the Gospel.”
It may have become a cliché, but it remains true, that God only works with imperfect instruments, because that’s all he’s got. We are each of us flawed and fallen, but we’re enough, and thanks to the fact that we are regenerated in the waters of baptism and adopted as God’s children, God can do infinitely more through us than we of ourselves could manage. All we need to do is to put ourselves genuinely, wholly before him and allow him to consecrate our lives to his purpose.
I think that’s what Paul is getting at in today’s Epistle. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for one of my little Greek lessons, but there is such a confusing and unfortunate choice that all popular, modern English translations make in the first verse of that passage from Romans. Paul instructs us to present our bodies, a living sacrifice to God as our λογικήν λατρείαν. This is translated as “spiritual worship”, which is an interpretive leap. It literally means “reasonable service.” The point, I think, is not that we are making some mystical oblation of our selves, some occult process by which we are made to float above the ground where mere mortals tread. Rather, presenting the whole of ourselves to God is simply the reasonable thing to do, because all that we are and all that we have belong to God, anyway.
None of that is meant to deny the possibility or profitability of mystical experience. I’ve no doubt it happens, by the grace of God, for those heroic saints who through spiritual practice are given that gift. I’m not convinced we are all called to that peculiar vocation, though, and I am personally okay with the prospect that I won’t receive the beatific vision until after I die.
What we can all do, though, is recognize what we owe to God (which is everything), place it humbly before him, and ask him to use us as he will. We will receive in return an illumination of our minds—perhaps less like a thunderbolt from heaven and more like a small but sensible conviction—whereby we can the more easily discern God’s will for us and the gifts he’s given us, and the sober judgment to use them effectively for the sake of the Kingdom.
I think one will discover that the reasonable offering given to God in prayer, in study of his Word, and in service to his people in distress will slowly transform us into the best kind of stone: steady and unshakable and fit for supporting and adorning the house of God, just like Peter finally became. We’ll not be made perfect this side of Paradise, but neither was he. But he was still deemed fit for duty, and so are you.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.