Sermons

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

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we mainline Christians have ceded too much of what is essentially Christian belief and action for fear of being identified with fundamentalist Christians, and that in particular we tend to shy away from talking about Jesus’ second coming and the advent of the Kingdom of God. This is precisely what Advent is about (it’s not just about waiting to put the bambino into the crèche), but, due to mainline discomfort with the idea, we’ve been putting conditions on the meaning of the doctrine ever since the nineteenth century. Back then, liberal protestants started speaking in terms of gradually building the Kingdom of God themselves rather than expecting Jesus to actually, literally come back and establish it himself. The view has even gained some traction in American Catholicism with a very popular, but theologically unfortunate hymn whose refrain proclaims “Let us build the city of God.” Little is said in the hymn about Jesus’ role in the matter. It suggests, one assumes unintentionally, that we’re more powerful than God, or at least that God chooses not to act in history.

Conversely, we find people who espouse the view that we’ve really no part in God’s work. The claim is that being responsible stewards of creation, that working to bring about a better state of affairs for the poor and the oppressed is really to no avail, because Jesus is going to come back and fix everything anyway.

Like so many other theological issues, the truth here may be found in the middle way, the via media that our own Anglican tradition talks about so much but seems to overlook so often. The historical Christian view, which we hear in the Gospel appointed for this week, is that Jesus really will come again, there really will be a second advent, more grand and glorious even than Christ’s first Advent on the first Christmas, and, what’s more, we’ve got got something to do about it.

For one, we watch and wait. “Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning — lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch.” This is rare for me, but I actually prefer the newer translation of this passage, which is less accurate, but somehow more resonant. Instead of “watch,” Jesus says “Keep awake”.

We not only watch, but we pray. We pray ceaselessly for the establishment of God’s reign. “Thy Kingdom come”–we say it every week in church, and many of us every day, but we probably don’t fathom the full extent of the words when we utter them. They’ve become rote. If we did indeed pay attention, we’d recognize how potentially frightening those three words are. Jesus said in today’s Gospel:

But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

Scary stuff, huh? Actually, our Gospel reading this morning picked up right after the really nasty bits; I love nasty bits, so here they are:

But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; let him who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter his house, to take anything away; and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his mantle. And alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days! Pray that it may not happen in winter. For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never will be. 

It’s no wonder we tend to shy away from this theme in Scripture, why we replace the old themes of Advent—death and judgment and heaven and hell—with sentimentality. I think we’ve made a big mistake in that regard.

The response that the kingdom of God will elicit when it does ultimately come, doesn’t sound too comforting; but two-thousand years have passed since Jesus said these words, which has tended to take away the sense of urgency. But, as I said last week, we don’t need to be frightened or, worse, to cling to strange theories and time-tables regarding Christ’s return, but we should, nonetheless, urgently pray that God’s will might be done, that his Kingdom might come and his reign might begin on earth as it is already in heaven.

And prayer is not the only duty to which we are bound in light of our expectation of Christ’s return. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth with the following words of encouragement:

I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge — even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you — so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Paul says that in response to Christ’s return we should “[be] not lacking in any spiritual gift” and “[with God’s sustenance be] guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” God is the agent, of course, the one giving the gifts and sustaining us in holiness, but it is ours to open ourselves up to that. It is up to us to permit God in to make us love our neighbors and to make us more holy, more saintly, in preparation for eternity.

You’ve all seen the bumper sticker: “Jesus is coming, look busy”. In fact, what it should say is “Jesus is coming, let God get busy.” Let God get busy making each of us a temple of his presence, a mansion made ready for Christ when he shall come again. Let God get busy, his power working in us infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Let God get busy, restoring whatever is lacking in our faith. This is what Advent is about. Jesus is coming again; let God get busy, making us ready to receive him when he does.

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

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

Not having access to cable or broadcast television I had for several years been largely insulated from tv advertisements, which is just as well because my brain tends to latch on to annoying jingles. There are many such commercial jingles from the 1980s and 90s that are still taking up valuable mental real estate. Unfortunately, YouTube has for a while now been running precisely the sorts of ads that I assume air on regular television, and I’ve been exposed to an annoyingly catchy jingle from Burger King, informing the potential customer that he or she can have french fries or onion or french fries and onion rings. This is followed by the deathless reminder that at Burger King you can “have it your way.”

On this Christ the King Sunday, it is good to remember that the Kingdom of God is not Burger King. We don’t get to have it our way. I mentioned this to a group of clergy colleagues earlier this week as we were talking about what we might preach about today, and I was amused when one of them informed us that if one goes through a drive-through at this restaurant in the Year of Our Lord 2023, one is greeted with the following words: “Welcome to Burger King, where you reign.” I suppose they should really change their name to “Burger Anarcho-Syndicalist Collective”, though that just isn’t as catchy. That said, as contemporary Westerners, and as Americans in particular, the idea that one in authority should determine our choices (even if it’s just about what sort of fast food burger we should have) rubs against our commitments to democracy and individualism.

I hasten to add, I am happy to be an American and I also think that (at least in the secular realm and to an extent within the church) democratic principles are necessary and beneficial. My favorite political philosopher is Jacques Maritain, who laid the intellectual groundwork for Christian Democracy which became ascendant in Western Europe after the Second World War and later in parts of Latin America and in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union.

As an aside, Maritain got in trouble with one Pope–Pius XII who wouldn’t follow Maritain’s advice to unequivocally denounce antisemitism–and became best friends with another–Paul VI, who tried to make Maritain the first layperson to be a Cardinal in hundreds of years, but Maritain refused. So, Jacques Maritain was, in my opinion, one of the coolest dudes of the Twentieth Century, and deserves to be more widely known.

Anyway, democratic principles are necessary in a world in which one cannot trust an individual to be sufficiently enlightened and charitable to rule well alone. I was reminded of this when Annie and I went to the movies and saw the highly entertaining (if somewhat silly) Napoleon biopic the other day. The most important thing about that film, I think, was its reminder at the end (and this is not a spoiler, since it’s common historical knowledge) that 3 million people died during the Emperor’s various wars of conquest. Yes, what preceded this was a brutal example in Revolutionary France of the excesses to which democracy can fall, but this doesn’t mean that despotism is at all preferable in this world.

The vision of the Kingdom which is to come, which Jesus proclaimed, stands against both “every man doing right by his own lights” on the one hand and merely human authority on the other. The First Century Jews who were the first to hear Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel would have known painfully well that the answer to anarchy was not unchecked human authority vested in the Roman Emperor or any other fallen human, but in a different country with the only king who could be trusted.

We see in today’s Gospel the nature of this King and his Kingdom. As the King reigning from his throne, Jesus welcomes those whose citizenship is determined solely by the love and concern they share for those on the margins of that same society. He doesn’t require proper documentation or a citizenship exam or the promise to pay taxes. He requires love for the least, the last, and the lost.

The King of Glory is a King whose law is love, and (as I’ve said from this pulpit before) Christian love is not about warm, sentimental feelings; it’s about treating those people we call brothers and sisters as if they really were our brothers and sisters. It’s about comforting the weak and feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and putting the stranger’s needs before our own.

And when I say “stranger”, I mean it. If Christ is truly King, it means that His Law is universal. It really means that we are obliged to see our God and King in people outside our own community. It means we treat the stranger just as well as the person already inside our walls, because in a very real sense the stranger is our King. It means we have to welcome the criminal, just like Jesus did on the cross. It means seeing Jesus in the outsider and then treating that outsider as if he were more important than ourselves. As William Tyndale, father of the English Bible, famously put it, “The Church is the one institution that exists for those outside it.” I fear, sometimes, that we’ve forgotten that.

In all events, the Kingship of Christ is not only different from the kingship of the emperor; it is diametrically opposed to the spirit of our age- the spirit which revels in individualism and so-called enlightened self interest. There is no place in the Kingdom for ethical egoism. I am not sure which is worse: an Emperor in Rome or a king in every man’s self-estimation. Whichever is worse, the latter is the contemporary sin, and it is more dangerous than the former at least as it regards our souls.

So our response to the Kingship of Christ is pretty simple. It is in loving sacrifice that we involve ourselves in Christ’s Kingship. It is in that remarkable paradox in which we see Christ reigning not only from His Throne of Glory, but from the Cross of Shame with a Crown bejeweled by thorns. Our own Glory, our own Kingship is bought on that more shameful throne with that most heavy crown, and our acceptance of the reign into which Christ wishes to welcome us is predicated on our willingness to take up that Cross, put on that crown, and follow.

+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.

This morning’s readings may strike us as a bit disconcerting, as well they should. They all deal with last things, the events which precede and surround Christ’s return on the last day. We’re a couple of weeks away from Advent, which is the season typically associated with these last things, and specifically with what have been called the “four last things”: namely death, judgment, heaven, and hell. But, since we also get to talk about Mary and Joseph and John the Baptist and all that in Advent, the lectionary has wisely given us a few extra weeks before to get a good healthy dose of teaching on these often difficult themes. I concluded last week’s sermon by saying that reasonable Christians need to spend more time proclaiming our beliefs about eschatological matters, and here is our chance.

As I said, we might find this morning’s readings a bit disconcerting. The long section of potentially terrifying prophecy we heard in today’s Old Testament reading from Zephaniah concludes with the assertion that “in the fire of [God’s] passion, the whole earth shall be consumed; for a full and terrible end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.” And, in the famous “parable of the talents” from Matthew, we hear the master rendering a very final judgment against the unproductive servant: “throw him into the outer darkness,” he says, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

All of this is enough to send us each into a tizzy. However, this is precisely the wrong approach. We learn in today’s epistle the necessity for approaching the anxiety about last things, and indeed all of life’s troubles, with seriousness and calm clarity rather than panic; or to use Paul’s words, with sobriety rather than drunkenness.

In this morning’s epistle, the apostle writes to the church in Thessalonica commanding such spiritual sobriety. “Therefore let us not sleep,” he wrote, “as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober.” The command was all the more appropriate for that young Christian community considering the occasion for Paul’s letter to them. The year was A.D. 52, not twenty years after Our Lord’s ascension into heaven. Paul had sent his young apprentice, Timothy, from their headquarters in Corinth to check up on the church in Thessalonica.

The news with which Timothy returned to Paul was not encouraging. Now, the Christians in that little missionary outpost believed that Jesus would return within their own lifetimes, a common expectation among the first generation of Christians. When members of the church had died, they were unsure of the eternal fate of their recently departed loved-ones, and some began to lose their faith entirely. The result was fear and mourning and probably, as we might imagine, in at least a few cases, panic. They suffered from spiritual drunkenness.

It is because of this that Paul wrote the epistle from which we read this morning. He began the letter by reminding the Thessalonians of the good faith with which they received the initial proclamation of the Gospel, and, in the letter’s climax, which we heard last week, he explains the Christian view of Jesus’ return and the general resurrection of the dead. Remember what we read last week:

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again: even so them also which sleep in Jesus, will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them that are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

In short, those which are dead by the time of Christ’s return will precede the living to be with him, so there is no theological rationale for the kind of reaction suffered by the Thessalonians. Of course, loss (especially, the death of a loved one) can cause profound grief and even fear, which God, it seems to me, would not hold against us. Even so, the Christian message compels us to remain both faithful and hopeful in the midst of such hardships, knowing that on the last day God will raise his faithful people and make all things to right.

The theological problem addressed, Paul proceeds to the spiritual problem, namely what I termed spiritual drunkenness. Spiritual drunkenness, it seems, is the tendency to take our eyes off of the ways of God in an attempt to run away from painful reality. Its effect may be panic, an utter and irrational loss of hope like that experienced by the Thessalonians. Or its effect may be denial; as Paul said “when they shall say peace and safety: then sudden destruction cometh upon them.” Indeed, our reaction to the apparently nasty bits we read earlier from Zephaniah and Matthew might lead us to either panic or denial. So, too, might be our response to any profound troubles we experience in this life. In all events, the spiritual drunkard is like the literal drunkard–he cannot see things clearly for how they are. His vision is blurred and his reason is compromised. He cannot see God’s Providence at work in the time of trial. He sees only a world of horrific danger, and either he refuses to acknowledge it or he succumbs to sheer terror.

Indeed, in these last days—for just as St. Paul lived in the last days so do we still—there will continue to be trials, but however long they last God will, in the end, make all things new. In this same lesson from Thessalonians, the Apostle likens it to a woman in child-birth. It is a painful process, for sure, yet at the end comes a new and beautiful creation, a child. New life is always born of pain. So it is with the world to come. Its approach is beset by toil and peril, and ultimately death, for each and every one of us lest we’re fortunate enough to see Christ’s return in our own day. Yet the end for all of us, whether we live or die, is finally and unspeakably good.

In the meantime, the time in which we still live between Our Lord’s ascension and his return, we are called to stand firm in our faith and follow the counsel of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians to “be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men.” This can only be achieved if we grow in our souls a spirit of sobriety. We must remain serious and steadfast and vigilant if we are to respond to the pain and travail of these days faithfully. St. Paul commands it, as does St. Peter in his first epistle general. “Be sober,” he says, “be vigilant: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”

Spiritual sobriety is being able to see things clearly as they are and in the light of God’s plan for us all. It is also a matter of seriousness and intentionality in the spiritual life. This isn’t brain-surgery. It’s as simple as saying one’s prayers and reading one’s bible and coming to church on Sunday. This isn’t just naïve churchiness; it really works. A simple, serious commitment in these basic disciplines gives us the grounding we need to grow mature in the faith and approach the spiritual life with sobriety because they instill in us both the substance and the spirit of faith. The bible and the prayerbook especially, used together over many years of practice, build in us a firm foundation on which to stand, so that “in all the cares and occupations of this life” we may not stumble about as the drunkard, but remain awake and watchful and sober. And then, when Our Lord does at last return, He may find us to be a people who persevered during the time of trial.

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