Sermons

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

As tempting a text as this morning’s Gospel is, especially since we’ll soon embark on our annual stewardship drive, there is something about the Old Testament which I find compelling and, thus, want to focus on. Isaiah’s prophecy is the climax of a fascinating period of history which I think interesting to enough to rehearse briefly, because it makes this morning’s Old Testament lesson all the more surprising. So, on with a bit of a history lesson, and apologies if it seems dry to some. I for one find it to be a really enthralling story.

If you follow the daily office lectionary, you’ve been hearing a great deal of the background of this morning’s Old Testament over the past couple of weeks. To bring you up to speed, the last great king of Judah, Josiah, had done what none of his predecessors had managed- namely, large scale religious and political reform. Though Judah was a client state of Assyria, Josiah managed to tear down the altars of foreign gods and encourage the worship of Israel’s god alone- a feat not even managed by Solomon himself. He used tax revenue not to underwrite the monarchy’s expenses but to undertake a significant renovation of the Temple. Sadly, when Josiah died in the year 609 B.C. a whole series of bad kings followed. Josiah’s son, Jehoahaz, ignored his father’s reforms and was captured only three months into his reign after an ill-advised was with Egypt. Jehoahaz’s brother Jehoiakim was installed in his place by the Egyptian conquerors, but his eleven year reign was defined by his apparently constantly shifting allegiance to Egyptian and Babylonian powers who were at war with each other, and, worst of all, after facing criticism by the prophet Jeremiah, he undertook a policy of burning the prophet’s writings. Finally, Jehoiakim’s son, Jeconiah, only managed to rule for three months and ten days before he allowed Jerusalem to fall to the Babylonians and the best and brightest of Judah to be sent into exile throughout the Babylonian Empire on 16 March in the year 597 B.C.

Now, skip forward almost sixty years. Jerusalem had been decimated, leaving only a puppet monarchy and the poorest of the poor remaining in Judah. Educated and wealthy Jews had established communities throughout Babylon, leading to an increased nationalistic and religious fervor which the Empire had sought to quash by its program of forced exile. This was a period in which the Jews learned how to maintain their Judaism, their connection to the God of Israel, outside the land given their forefathers and without the benefit of temple worship. For the common Jew, this meant an increased attention to kashrut, faithfulness in observing the laws of purity and morality found in the Torah. For scholars, it meant not only an increased attention to studying the Law (the beginnings of modern, Rabbinical Judaism) but also an explosion of creativity. It is not in Israel but in Babylon that much of what we call the Old Testament was finally written down.

More and more, though, the Jews realized that they could only follow the God of Israel in the manner they desired by returning to the land and rebuilding the temple. The only problem was, they had no army and a couple generations of life in exile had made repatriation seem little more than wishful thinking.
But then, something unexpected happened. The Word of the Lord came not just to the prophet but to one identified in this morning’s lesson as God’s “anointed”. Indeed, considering that Isaiah was holed up in Babylon, we might assume that this prophecy was not even mediated through the prophet to this “anointed one” but went directly from God to him, 500 miles away from Babylon in the city of Susa.

And who was this “anointed one”? Cyrus, the pagan king of Persia. God says to Cyrus that He has “called [him] by name. I surname you,” God says, “though you do not know me… I gird you, though you do not know me.” God chose not one of His own chosen people, but a pagan king to bring deliverance to the Jews.

We Christians often miss this part of the story because we read Isaiah on one level when there are at least two levels on which the prophecies function. Isaiah most certainly points to Jesus Himself as his people’s redeemer, but on another level he also point’s to King Cyrus. It’s not a matter of figuring out when the prophet speaks about one or the other; he can be understood as speaking of both in the same breath, a difficult thing for us linear-thinking modern people to get our minds around.

Anyhow, there is more in this than a history lesson with a twist at the end, because I think the twist-ending itself gives us an important lesson about who God is. We talk so much about coming to know God more fully, but we miss what is arguably more important, namely, that God knows us fully. To Cyrus, the God of Israel, if he had even heard of him, would have been a minor tribal god. He wouldn’t have seen this strange religion of displaced Jews as being particularly interesting. But God knew Cyrus, just as he knows each of us: completely. Because God knew Cyrus before Cyrus knew Him, this pagan king was made an instrument of the one true God.

The fact is we can never fully know God. We project all sorts of cultural and personal biases onto Him, and getting an even slightly clearer image of Him is a life’s work. It is my strong belief that even those who reject God most vociferously (the Richard Dawkinses and Christopher Hitchenses of the world) are rejecting not God Himself but some inaccurate image which we’ve created—some white-bearded chap who lives in the clouds—that has less to do with who God is than it does with our own hang-ups.

That being the case, the Good News is that however skewed our image of God is, God’s image of us is perfect. God knows us fully and can employ the greater angels of our nature, made perfect in Christ Jesus, to do His Will whether we realize He’s doing it or not. It is a great God who can take some pagan Persian king to be a channel of his peace and deliverance. It is a great God who can take us, confused and sinful as we are, and build a Kingdom for which there is no end. May our ignorance of God be overshadowed by God’s perfect knowledge of us, and may His perfect love find a home in the hearts who as yet do not know Him at all.

+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.

About twenty years ago a film called As Good as it Gets came out. It starred Jack Nicholson as a man trying to woo a woman with who he had fallen in love, played by Helen Hunt, while he deals with a rather severe case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One of my favorite scenes from the film has the couple going to a restaurant which, as it turns out, has a dress code requiring men to wear jackets. Nicholson’s character had come unprepared, but the maître d’ assures him that the restaurant has jackets to lend such unprepared diners. The character’s OCD, however, makes him extremely uncomfortable wearing a loaner jacket, so he leaves his date at the restaurant and frantically drives around town trying to find a clothing store so he can buy a jacket for himself- not a particularly romantic gesture, to say the least.

There is an obvious lesson here, one which was drilled in to my head way back when I was a boy scout: be prepared. I suppose one could amend that by saying, “either be prepared or be flexible.” Clearly Nicholson’s character was neither. Nor was the fellow in this morning’s Gospel, the poorly dressed man at the wedding banquet.

I believe that the parable we just heard must be the most bizarre of Jesus’ parables. It starts out predictably enough. It seems a rather simple allegory at first. There were those invited to the banquet (representing the children of Israel), and the king’s slaves (representing the prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles of the New) go out to remind them that they had better come, but they refuse. So, the slaves go out and recruit all sorts and conditions of men—both bad and good—to take the place of the missing guests. This motley group of people is us- the saints and sinners who have been given Grace to attend the feast here at our altar and in the Kingdom on the last day. It all seems simple enough.

But then Jesus throws us a curve ball. Who in the world is this poorly dressed guest and why does the king deal so harshly with him? If you were to show up at the Toledo Club in jeans or tennis shoes they might throw you out, but they wouldn’t bind you and cast you out into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (though, I suppose for some who frequent fancy clubs, getting one’s lunch at the hotdog stand outside might be one’s idea of hell). We might think that the caliber of guests who finally showed up at the banquet would mean that many were uncouth enough to forgo a wedding robe or simply too poor to own one! At first blush, the king seems rather capricious and uncharitable.

Biblical scholars have engaged in a great deal of hand-waving to try to explain this. Some have suggested that the wedding robe would have been a garment which a host would provide for those who came without one, like those loaner jackets restaurants have. If that were the case, the guest in question must have refused to follow a dress code when compliance would have been easy enough. The truth, though, is that we just don’t know enough about the customs of First Century Palestine to say for certain if this would have been the case.

Fortunately, I don’t think a knowledge of ancient wedding practices really matters so much in this instance. What we have here is an allegory in which the symbols have a one-to-one relationship to the realities they symbolize. What matters is not how precisely wedding robes were distributed at first century weddings but the fact that the guest doesn’t have one on. Our work, then, is to figure out what the robe symbolizes.

There are two prevailing theories from the most ancient of Christian writers, which I will present as objectively as possible and permit you to come to your own conclusion. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not sure which of these views I personally agree with.

The first is found in St. John Chrysostom in his homily on this text says that while the invitation is “grace” the garment is “life and practice”. Others, St. Augustine among them, would agree. The implication of this view is that one’s response to Grace, namely Faith as it is manifest in good works, is necessary if we are to attend the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the heavenly banquet. To comply with the dress code of heaven, we must weave a robe with the threads of righteousness. “Faith without works is dead,” says James.

Ireneaus and Tertullian hold the opposite view. The wedding garment is itself Sanctifying Grace freely given. We may, of course, take off the garment, like the wedding guest, but it’s given to us in Baptism whether we want it or not. It is notable that in the Baptisms of the Early Church, the baptizand—whether infant or adult—would be baptized naked. For adults being baptized, this would mean only Christians of their own gender would be present for the Baptism, and it’s likely the reason for the ordination of female deacons from very early in the church’s history.

Anyway, after emerging from the water, the new Christian would be clothed in a white robe to symbolize his regeneration- his status as a new creation. While we cannot know for certain, it is possible that this practice is as ancient as St. Matthew’s Gospel. If so, the wedding garment in this parable might be not-too-subtly related.

So, I’ve left you with a question and two compelling but non-cotenable answers to choose from. I apologize for the lack of closure this creates in a sermon, but I encourage you to reflect on the question and most of all to pray. Pray that, whatever that wedding robe is meant to symbolize, we’ll see plenty of people following the heavenly dress code on that day when we reach the other shore. Thank heavens scripture tells us we will see a multitude dressed in white before the throne, all sorts and conditions being summoned from the highways of this old world to attend the greatest wedding feast of all.

+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.

One of the things I‘ve enjoyed over the years about being involved in local civic groups and boards is that it has afforded me a chance to get to know people who subscribe to other expressions of the Christian faith. I have to admit to knowing precious little about popular American religion except for what I’ve gleaned in church history classes and through the media. Thus, I love talking to people from other “flavors” of Christianity, because I always learn something that would not have occurred to me about how different kinds of Christians approach the Gospel.

A few years ago I was on a car trip to a meeting with a couple of friends from one of the I was a part of at the time, and (as often happens when I’m in the mix, for some reason) the discussion turned to religion. These two friends of mine were both Baptists, but Baptists of different sorts. One was a Southern Baptist and one was a Free-will Baptist. Having no idea what distinguished one from the other, I asked what the primary theological distinction (if any) was.

After some discussion they both agreed that it came down to different views on the permanency of a salvific experience. Whereas one group held that an experience and acceptance of God’s Grace at a pivotal point in one’s life assured eternal salvation (the pithy phrase used was “once saved, always saved”), the other group held that one could reject such an experience later on and “backslide”, as she put it, to a state of reprobation. This concept was new to me, and trying to inject a little humor into the conversation I admitted that I doubted Episcopalians would split over such an important theological issue, but we might do in a debate about whether one should use port or sherry for Holy Communion. In truth, I was rather impressed. If my friends’ assessment were the case (and I have no reason to doubt it was), it means these two groups broke communion not over petty issues of personality conflicts, but over a real theological issue- an issue as central to the Gospel as the nature of salvation. While the division of the Body of Christ is always a tragedy, something about splitting over such a critical issue seems a great deal more laudable than splitting over whether there should be a new roof on the church or whether there should be flowers on the altar. The latter reminds me of a spoof article on the web I read a few years ago titled “Forty-seven Church Splits Finally Brings Doctrinal Perfection.”

Anyway, this is a rather lengthy introduction to a short sermon about something this conversation got me thinking about- namely, the issue which had caused these two types of Baptists to fall out of fellowship. After doing some research, I’ve discovered that the crux of the issue is found in this morning’s epistle: work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. One way of interpreting Paul’s mandate to the Philippians is to claim that we’re never 100% sure of our status with regard to salvation, and we have to remain faithful to ensure it. Another interpretation holds that the “work” done with “fear and trembling” is confirmation rather than cause; it stands as assurance of salvation to the weak, though ultimately the faithful, were they to sit down and really think about it, would find such assurance in their initial conversion experience. This, it seems to me, is the crux of the issue between my two friends’ churches.

I want to offer a third way to approach this question. This is not a proposition for an expanded catechism, but rather a personal perspective which you may “take or leave”, as it were, but I think it is more compelling not only for an adherent of a catholic sort of Christianity, but for any Christian who might find weighing the two alternatives above frightening or stultifying.

The two alternatives given by my friends rely on two assumptions from two different periods of church history. The first is a concern with the mechanics of “justification”, which came to be seen as coterminous with the notion of “salvation” in the great debates of the sixteenth century. Put simply, both the Protestant reformers and the Catholic Counter-Reformation as it was embodied in the Council of Trent, assumed a definition of “salvation” which was neither more nor less than the mechanics whereby one was given eternal life in heaven.

The second assumption is of a much later origin, having its nascent stage in the Great Awakenings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and finding widespread acceptance in contemporary American evangelicalism. This is the assumption that a personal, affective religious experience of some sort or another is necessary for salvation (which is still reckoned by many Christian groups to be identical to justification).

The second assumption is, to my mind, easier to reject. Its relative novelty in Christian thought would seem to reject the validity of the religion of the majority of people who have claimed Christianity for eighteen hundred years (and, indeed, the majority of Christians in the world today- though they may not have been seen as a majority to one living in the bible belt of America). I’m not suggesting that a personal, affective religious experience of conversion is a bad thing. It is an incredibly good thing when it happens. What I am suggesting is that claiming such an experience to be a prerequisite to one’s entry into heaven is unjustified and unbiblical.

The former assumption—the one equating salvation and justification—is a bit harder to unpack. I think the best way forward is a little Greek. The Greek noun most commonly translated as “salvation” in our English New Testament (and, indeed, in our lesson from Philippians) is “soteria”. This word, in both the biblical context and in its uses throughout the history of Christian theology comprises several ways in which one might be saved and several things from which one is saved. One is saved from the fires of Hell and promised eternal life. That is what we called “justification” and it is one terribly important meaning of “soteria”. One is also saved from the influence of sin and given freedom to live righteously. One is saved from self-obsession and given freedom to live in humility, sacrificing one’s own good for the good of others, just as Christ is said to have done in that wonderful hymn which constitutes the first part of this morning’s epistle reading. One is saved from ignorance and given freedom to pursue truth and wisdom. All these elements and more make up the biblical notion of salvation, and to suggest that justification is the only meaning misses a great deal of the Good News we are given thanks to the divine mission of Christ Jesus.

So, I think the following axiom might better reflect the mechanics of salvation (and it’s a great thing to say to somebody who comes to your door or asks you on the street if you’ve been saved): I was saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved. I was objectively saved, justified and given a life free from the stain of original sin, when I was baptized (even if that happened when I was a little baby and didn’t know what was going on). I am being saved as I strive with fear and trembling to humble myself, to take the form of a servant, to turn daily away from the world, the flesh, and the devil toward the foundation of my greatest hope. I will be saved on the last day, when the graves give up there dead and we stand at last before the judgment seat of Christ and we hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the joy of your master.” 

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