Sermons

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

I’ve increasingly thought that I need to take a break from social media, and one of the reasons is that I get riled up by “hot takes” and the reduction of complicated issues to “memes.” I suppose something like this problem has been around for longer than Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and the like; we used to call them “soundbites.” These oversimplified propositions and slogans do seem to propagate so much more quickly online, though. The one that irked me this last week though was a quote from the Franciscan priest and popular writer about spirituality, Richard Rohr. Fr. Rohr has a big following, and I’m sure he’s a good, well-meaning man, but I’ve just never been a fan of his work. (Admitting that publicly in some circles is like saying you don’t like motherhood and apple pie, so I try not to rag on the man very often.)

Anyway, the “soundbite” that’s been circulating recently online, over a photo of Rohr, is his quote “Jesus never said ‘worship me’, but he often said ‘follow me.’” Now, this may be technically true, it gives the wrong impression of our Lord, who made it perfectly clear for those who would reflect on the whole of his words recorded in the Gospels that he revealed himself to be the eternal Son of God the Father, the second person of the Trinity, and thus is only fitting that he should receive our heartfelt worship.

I think this matters a great deal, because the impression one gets from this “meme theology” is that our emulation of Jesus’ morality, not our reliance on the love of God in Christ, is what saves us. In other words, you better earn your way into heaven by good works. I know I’m a broken record on this score, but the one thing I’ll never be ashamed of repeating ad nauseam is this one point. The Law kills and the Gospel saves. We can and should try to be better, to follow Jesus’ perfect moral example, but if that’s where our trust lies, we are in trouble, because none of us is really all that great at being good.

I say all of this to try to make some sense of a tension which is present in today’s Gospel. We learned that Jesus and the disciples didn’t even have time to eat because they were so busy with sick, hungry, needy people. So, they try to get away and have a time of respite by crossing the Sea of Galilee and getting away from the crowds. But when they get to the other side, the people there recognized who Jesus and his disciples were and rushed up with their own needs just as they had on the other side of the lake. The Gospel doesn’t say that Jesus and his disciples had a cup of tea and took a nap before getting on with it, and we can only assume that they continued their ministry as before. Tired and hungry, they tended to others who were tired and hungry without tending to their own needs. “What would Jesus do?” He’d sacrifice his time of respite whenever the any need presented itself.

Jesus could do this, and some heroic saints like the apostles did it as well, at least for a time, but for most of us such a schedule would lead to ineffectiveness at best and resentment at worst, our attempt at perfection ironically making us even less morally commendable. I would not be able to do the needful tasks set before me in my ministry if I didn’t eat at relatively normal times, and sleep relatively regular hours, and take time simply to be alone and pray in the presence of God. If I didn’t take time to do these things, I’d eventually get cranky and the work that I do for the church would be slapdash and inconsistent.

The same would be true for any of you, unless there is a real certifiable “capital ‘S’” Saint in the congregation this morning. Most of us would be sorely remiss if we didn’t take time to recharge our batteries, as it were, and God not only understands but insists on this.

We heard it in the psalm, which many of us know better in the King James translation:

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul.

Rest and restoration is something God intends for us, and which He gives us. We usually hear this psalm at funerals, and indeed death is the final means by which we attain rest and rejuvenation, albeit in eager expectation of the Resurrection. But this is not primarily a psalm about death. It is, rather, a psalm about life, the Christian life wherein we find periods of rest in God between the periods in which we furiously wage the glorious battle for the Kingdom.

Thus, the Christian life is one of balance. We are certainly not permitted to live a life of sloth and complete comfort. But neither does the Christian life entail that we labor for the Kingdom to the point of exhaustion and, to use a hopelessly contemporary term, “burnout”.

Yet our whole culture militates against this balance. Or, rather, I should say cultures, because there are, it seems to me, two diametrically opposed views of human activity to which significant portions of our society adhere, both of which miss the mark.

On the one hand, we have the “Protestant Work Ethic” a heresy which defined the American psyche for generations. In a nutshell, this worldview holds that we’ll stay out of trouble if we keep extraordinarily busy. We’re less prone to sins of the flesh if we work eighteen hours a day and sleep lightly the other six.

On the other hand, we have the hedonist approach, which has taken hold of much of society in the last fifty years or so. By hedonist I don’t necessarily mean sexual hedonism, though that fits under the umbrella, as it were. The technical meaning of hedonism is the glorification of any lifestyle predicated principally on self-gratification, whether vulgar or apparently lofty. So, sitting in a bathtub all day eating donuts and drinking cognac is one form of hedonism, and doing nothing with one’s life besides personally enriching leisure activities like reading dusty books and exercising is another form of hedonism.

Anyway, the “Protestant Work Ethic” and hedonism are two sides of the same heretical coin. Like so many heresies, the Christian view is found in the via media, the middle way. Just as the old Christological heresies, which held that Christ was either only God or only man, were resolved by a middle way of affirming both truths, so too do these modern heresies find their orthodoxy somewhere in the middle. We must come to balance work and play to be healthy people, and we must balance the good works enjoined by our Christian commitment with prayer and rest to be healthy Christians. Christian monasticism has struck this balance perfectly in its programmatic scheduling of time for work, prayer, and study; but we who live in the world can find this balance too if we make a prayerful assessment of our own lives, and develop what is called a rule of life: a plan for how to balance work and play and prayer and study and so forth.

In the end, we may be sure that the Christian life is one in which activity and contemplation both play a role. The Christian life requires rest if the work we are to do is to be done. Ultimately this rest is found in God and our times of recreation (or re-creation) are sanctified by God and held in His hands. Indeed, to rest at all is to rest in God in a profound and wonderful way. And so, let us ever pray the prayer of St. Augustine, who said, “our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they find their rest in 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.

Today’s Old Testament lesson came from the relatively short book of the Prophet Amos, which, along with the other so-called “lesser prophets”, gets a great deal less air time, as it were, than the more lengthy prophetic books like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel. In some cases this might be because the latter include more prophecies which we believe to have been accomplished or reinforced in the New Testament. Amos’ prophecy was a great deal more immediate. He predicted an earthquake and it happened about two years later.

Even so, there is much we can learn from this little book. Amos was probably the first prophet to have his prophecies written down. Biblical scholars have become surprisingly good at dating these things, and we are pretty sure that today’s Old Testament lesson was from a vision Amos had and preached about sometime between the autumn of 750 BC and that of 749 BC. In this sense, Amos would have been the first Old Testament prophet, an appropriate bookend to the figure usually reckoned the final prophet, John the Baptist, of whose demise we heard about in today’s Gospel.

Anyway, as the first prophet with a book, Amos set a program which other prophets would adopt, and this is specifically the practice of denouncing the unrighteousness of Israel. As the chosen people, the children of Israel would have been used to hearing prophets’ denunciations of their neighbors and approbations of Israel.

Now, Amos begins his prophecies in a manner which his contemporaries would have recognized. For the first two chapters of the book, we may read of the Lord’s wrath against the Edomites and the Moabites and the Philistines and so forth, and for about the first ten minutes of his sermon, Amos’ audience would have been quite comfortable. These were the familiar old denunciations which jingoistic pseudo-prophets would have given them before, and which would have served as pabulum for a people very much set in their ways.

But then would come the bit Amos’ audience wasn’t expecting. “Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt.” He had sounded so much like all the other prophets, his audience must have thought, and then he had to go and kick over the ant hill. He had to denounce Israel! It is little wonder that at the end of today’s reading, Amos is told in no uncertain terms that he had better just head back to the farm, away from God’s own native Israel. Perhaps a better end than John, who we learned was beheaded for much the same thing, but still a disappointing reception.

Amos’ audience must have been furious, because what he was doing was saying that the chosen people had the same sins as the Gentiles, that they were just as guilty and that, in a sense, they had lost their special status. They had become just like the pagan people who surrounded them, and thus were no better.

And what were the sins of Israel which made this the case? They were both moral and religious. On the one hand, though the birthright of the Israelites was a strong moral code which protected the helpless and the outsider, the people had begun to “oppress the poor” and “crush the needy”. They had become both greedy and, Amos pointed out, lazy.

But in addition to this moral bankruptcy, the Israelites had become religiously unfaithful. This is just under the surface of today’s reading, the story of the plumb line. God was to level out the land of Israel in a manner they might have found counterintuitive. God said, “the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste.” These were places which were erected to the glory of God, and in the time of Amos they had not been universally replaced by the Jerusalem temple as the locus of sacrifice, and thus they remained important places of prayer and devotion.

In fact, the places where Israel worshipped provided an all-too-simple means whereby they could overlook their own iniquity. This is a form of hypocrisy we might have noticed even today, and which from time to time I’ve noticed in myself. Now I’m the first to admit that religion is an important, powerful thing. It connects us to God. I’m not at all suggesting that being “spiritual but not religious”, as many contemporary people would say they are is preferable, and I personally don’t see how that’s ultimately tenable (but that’s the topic for another sermon). What I do mean to say is that sometimes our religion can be perverted to the point where it either justifies everything we’re already doing or it gives us an excuse to go out and be nasty people and still be self-righteous about going to church a lot. This was the point God was making through Amos by saying that he’d knock down all their temples. It was the point that a later prophet, Hosea, made even more explicitly when the Lord told him, “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.”

The prophets can get polemical and make their points in shocking ways, and a fulsome appreciation of prophetic literature as a whole suggests that sacrifice and worship were not seen as unbeneficial or any less necessary than they had been. Rather, the point is that without faithfulness to the moral laws of the Old Testament, the Israelites could not render an acceptable sacrifice. The “high places and sanctuaries” and even the Jerusalem temple were built in vain. The Christian analogue to this is that if we’re not prepared to live a life informed by the virtues, we’re not making it better by showing up at church. Both virtue and religion, both moral commitment and worship, must be held together. This was the point Amos was making and Hosea and even John the Baptist who, we may recall, referred to the religious authorities of his day as a “brood of vipers”.

As Christians we have a benefit, however, in that our worship life informs our moral life and gives it shape. I don’t just mean that my musings from the pulpit can occasionally encourage good behaviour, though I hope from time to time I might succeed in doing so. No, our whole liturgical life is constructed in such a way that faithfulness in worship can help make us better Christians. We are exposed not only to theological truths but to moral teaching by our extensive use of scripture in worship. But even more than that, and in a way we cannot possibly understand or quantify, our regular, faithful reception of the Holy Communion slowly, mystically transforms us into the kind of people God intends us to be. Christ is not just made known to us symbolically in the breaking of the bread; he literally comes to dwell in us when we receive his Body. Thus, we truly do take these Holy Mysteries to our own health and salvation if we do so aright. We take them to the end of being transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and conformed to the very body of Christ.

This takes some of the pressure off, because it means that it’s not all about what we do. It’s what God does in us. Yet we must remain open to the ways in which Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament is at work transforming us, or we can easily slip back into the hypocrisy and empty religiosity which Amos preached against. So, when you approach the altar this morning, and from now on, I encourage you to consider how the Sacrament is at work in your own transformation, how it is that it strengthens you to live in accordance with the virtues, and even how you might have stood in the way of that transformational work. In the end, the strength we need to be the kind of people God intends us to be is available at this very altar, and it is simply ours to be open to its power to change us.

+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.

Trigger warning: I mention the existence of partisan politics in my sermon this morning. However, you will not be able to analyze the following text in such a way as to figure out where I am situated vis-á-vis American political parties. If you read between the lines, you may be able to figure out how I feel about another country’s politics, but it will get you no closer to being able to translate that into our own political system, so try not to speculate, because I really think it’s neither here nor there.

I think it is manifestly unwise to engage in what might be perceived as party politics in the pulpit. Note that I use the term “party politics”, rather than simply “politics”, because it is almost impossible to always avoid saying anything which might suggest some government policies might be more in keeping with the Gospel than others. Even then, though, I try to be circumspect, because I’ve heard enough sermons that technically don’t say something like “the Democrats are right” or “the Republicans are right”, but one need but scratch the surface to see that this is really the preacher’s point. When Paul said that he strove to be all things to all people he was speaking primarily with regard to Jews and Gentiles in the early church, but I think he set a good standard for today’s church, which should proclaim the Gospel in ways that all can hear, regardless of voting preference and party affiliation.

I was thinking about all this for a couple of reasons. For one, Independence Day, which we just observed, always reminds me that my Christian Responsibility and my civic duty are not coterminous, but the former certainly informs the latter, since (at least for me) my Christian commitment must inform every aspect of my life. Thank God that we do not have an established church and religious tests in this country. (I know that’s strange coming from an Anglican, since historically our church, not so much in America, but certainly in England, has been among the most brazen Church-State “integralists” in this regard!) However, one cannot and should not have two competing worldviews in one’s head to deploy in different spheres of life, as if one could be a Christian on a Sunday morning and a secular humanist on election day. I think religious tolerance and a hesitancy to impose uniquely Christian expectations can themselves be Christian values.

I was also thinking about this because–perhaps incongruously but I hope not unpatriotically–I stayed up later than I usually do on Independence Day night following the results of the UK parliamentary elections. For twenty years and more, since I lived in Britain, I’ve particularly followed the ups-and-downs of the Liberal Democratic party, whose very name may be confusing to Americans, since (though this is an oversimplification) they may be seen as the centrist party ideologically between the Tories and Labour. The Lib-Dems had a big night, going from 11 to 71 seats; it doesn’t appear (at least from the publications I read) as if our country’s mainstream press has picked up on this rather big story and its implications for British politics going forward.

Anyway it reminded me of a period during which this party was in a crisis, having faced electoral implosion in 2015, after a noble if politically misjudged decision to join the Conservatives in forming a coalition government. They named a new party leader, Tim Farron, who only lasted two years in that post, and his decision to resign was, to me at least, devastatingly sad. He explained that he could not see how he could remain both a political party leader and a committed, faithful Christian. How heartbreaking, especially considering that this was in a country which, unlike our own, is constitutionally Christian with an established church. We should not, I repeat, have religious tests to hold office in this country, but that is not to say that we cannot appreciate or desire faithful men and women who bring core Christian values–mercy and justice and hope and love–to bear on how they lead and govern.

I bring all this up, because both our Old Testament and our Gospel this morning point to the difficulties and dangers inherent in bringing God’s Word to bear on the body politic. Ezekiel is warned that his own people are a rebellious house, that the leadership which remained in Israel after the rise of the Babylonians may not accept his prophetic word, and that national disaster could follow, which indeed it did. Likewise, Jesus said that a prophet is not without honor accept among his own people, no doubt because that prophet has a word which challenges his people–how they live and move and have their being in a social and, dare I say, sometimes political sense.

Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that all politicians or preachers can or even should be prophets. When a preacher claims as much for himself or herself, it strikes me more often than not that they are engaging in party politics in a narrow sense rather than in encouraging and enabling those values which are central to the Kingdom of God. I’ve heard preachers do just this from both the right and the left in sometimes subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways. I have two basic rules of thumb in this regard. 1) If someone claims to be undertaking the prophetic vocation, he or she is probably not. 2) More controversially, prophets don’t have pensions, so if one has dedicated one’s whole ministry to such action, it may be wise to do so as something other than a full-time parish priest. That’s just my opinion, and there are notable exceptions–Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Oscar Romero come to mind–but note well, they lost more than their pensions as a result.

We are not all called to the prophetic task in the proper sense, I think (though some would disagree), because that vocation in its fullest expression is one which I believe God gives the “prophet proper” in a way which he or she cannot deny and cannot mistake for something else–whether than something else be a vague feeling or a political bias. Being a prophet is not, as the youngsters these days say, a “vibe.” I don’t doubt that God can still appoint men and women to this task, but as I already suggested, this often ends in literal martyrdom, not just losing an election or getting some parishioners mad at you for “preaching politics from the pulpit.”

However, we can and should all bring our Christian values to bear on all aspects of our lives–how we live and support each other in our families, how we do our jobs, what we choose to do with our leisure time, how we use the wealth we have beyond that which we need to live in modest comfort and security, and (yes) even how we interact with our communities and country with regard to public policy. We should interrogate where our values come from–do they come from the Gospel or from somewhere else. And, here is perhaps the most political thing I will say, though I don’t think it’s controversial and you may be diasppointed if you wanted me to get controversial, so sorry– There is not a single political party’s platform or manifesto, in this country or any other, that is in 100% agreement with the values of the Gospel.

There is a song I love, written by Woody Guthrie, but which he never set to music or recorded. I first heard it in a recording from British singer Billy Bragg accompanied by the American rock band Wilco. The first verse goes like this:

Let’s have Christ for President
Let us have him for our King
Cast your vote for the Carpenter
That they call the Nazarene

Would that this were an option, but I regret to inform you, that as strongly as you might feel about any candidate or party, Jesus himself is not on any ballot this election cycle. You picks your person and you takes your chances. The important thing is that we do so in a spirit of prayerful discernment and of charity to your neighbor, by whom I mean, among others, the person in this church who will have chosen differently from you, because I guarantee that person exists. And thank God that we can come together in this place, if nowhere else in our polarized society, to worship the only man who can govern our lives and hearts and the entire universe, whose principalities and powers are now in some sense under his governance and which will on the last day be conformed entire and whole and perfect under the reign of the King of Peace.

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