Sermons

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

I’m sure I’d heard this morning’s reading from Isaiah before, but the first time it really sunk in for me was twenty four years ago. It was the first Sunday of Advent 2001. The terrorist attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania had happened three months previously, and our country had invaded Afghanistan just a month-and-a-half earlier. And a callow, seventeen-year-old version of myself heard this at church that morning:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

It might have been the first time it occurred to me just who else was hearing this reading. Politicians at church in Washington that morning heard it. Congregations at small Christian churches in majority Muslim countries like Iraq and Pakistan heard it that morning. Soldiers fortunate enough to attend chapel services in Afghanistan heard it that morning. And how very far from reality those words from Isaiah seemed.

How far from reality those words still seem. I sometimes joke about how out-of-date my pop culture references might seem to today’s young people. More shocking, though, is how people just a few years younger than me can’t really claim to remember a time without some major armed conflict.

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

How does this become a reality? I’ve said plenty of times from this pulpit that saving the world is God’s job not ours, but on the other hand we don’t have the luxury of saying that we can just wait until God comes and fixes everything so we have no moral obligation at all.

We heard that strange reading from Matthew’s Gospel a few minutes ago, in which some are taken and some are left. Some Christians, those of the fundamentalist variety, believe that Jesus was speaking of something called “the rapture”, wherein the righteous are spared the calamities of the end-times and the wicked are left behind. This belief was invented by folks doing some very bad biblical interpretation during in the nineteenth century. Suffice it to say, that in this morning’s Gospel reading, the one’s taken away are Christians who would be persecuted under the Roman Empire and other anti-Christian powers (as they still are in some parts of the world), rather than being whisked away to heaven to avoid the final judgment. The idea of a “rapture” as the fundamentalists would call it (like you might read about in the Left Behind books or hear televangelists talk about) is, as far as I’m concerned and insofar as I agree with the vast majority of serious biblical scholars, way off the mark.

So, with regard to the difficulties which beset our nation and our world, we’re not off the hook. We don’t get to just wait until Jesus comes back and raptures us up and lets the sinners hash it out. We are called to be a people of peace here and now. We’re called point to the reality of the Kingdom so beautifully envisioned by Isaiah—not to bring it about (again, that’s what God will do) but to try to model our own individual lives and our common life in such a way that it gets closer to that ideal.

Now, I’ve got a pretty bully pulpit here, but I’ve not got the ears of those who make the big decisions regarding these issues. None of you is a senator or an ambassador or a cabinet secretary. What I can say to you is that peacemaking begins at home. There are plenty of swords and spears which need to be re-purposed in our homes and in our community for the sake of the kingdom. None of us has much he or she can do with regard to international affairs beyond the ballot box and making a few charitable contributions. Nonetheless, we’ve got plenty we can do here. We can redirect the energy we spend hating those with whom we disagree to loving them in tangible ways. We can beat the sword of malicious gossip into the plowshare of community peacemaking. We can beat the spear of domestic strife into the pruning hook of self-sacrificing, unconditional filial love. We can take the money we spend for creature comforts and spend it on supporting those who don’t have enough for a meal or a winter coat.

Where can you redirect your own bellicose energies to serve as a peacemaker? I can only speak for myself, and so I shall, I hope not uncomfortably confessionally. I spend too much energy being angry with people I think are petulant and meddlesome when I could be using that energy to love them. I spend time and energy grousing and being depressed about things I don’t like about Findlay that I could use to make it more like the kind of place I’d like to live. I discount people I too quickly put into categories that I can easily dismiss, when I could try to actually approach each individual with whom I come into contact as a unique child of God and find some common ground with him or her. Those are my misplaced priorities. Those are my sins. But I think each of us has some place in our lives where we can allow God to transform war-making into peacemaking. All of us have swords and spears in our souls which can be beaten into plowshares and pruning hooks if only we let God work in us.

+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.

I was listening to the radio in the car the other day, and the presenter was introducing Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the Eroica. I had known that “hero” to which the composer dedicated the symphony was Napoleon Bonaparte, but what I didn’t know was that shortly afterward Beethoven had revoked the dedication. Lest you think “getting canceled” is a recent phenomenon, this was 1804. While as first consul, Bonaparte was reckoned by Beethoven to be the embodiment of revolutionary and democratic ideals, declaring himself emperor ruined it entirely.

And discomfort with monarchy is far from a modern development. It was a huge concern in antiquity. Modern democratic movements were not creating something entirely new, but trying to recapture an ancient model which had been largely replaced in the middle ages. Of course there were kings in ancient times, but that polity frequently met with suspicion. Remember, the Israelites demanded a king; neither God nor his prophet, Samuel, thought this was a good idea; they relented and “gave the baby his bottle” as it were; and this led to disaster more frequently than to success. Or consider Ancient Rome (if you’re a young man, apparently you already do this on a daily basis, at least according to the internet). While counter-intuitive to us because of how language has evolved, the reason Augustus and those who followed were called “emperors” is because “Imperator” was considered a less lofty and more democratic title than the word “rex” or “king.” An emperor must at least theoretically rely on the Senate for legitimacy. Even “dictator” was a more congenial to the Romans than “king.” A Roman dictator, whenever it was deemed necessary to have one, had a six month term in response to an emergency and was frequently prosecuted afterward if he misbehaved too flagrantly.

A king, though, has ultimate power. He is the unquestioned military commander, a one-man supreme court, and chief priest of his nation’s religious cult all rolled into one. When the crowd gathered before Pilate at Jesus’ trial shout “we have no king but Caesar”, they are saying something more shockingly retrograde than any level-headed Roman citizen or imperial official who wanted to keep his job (Pilate included) would have dared say out loud. What’s more, this is blasphemy. It’s one thing to say that the most powerful imperial force has some right to police a territory; I’m not approving of that, by the way, but that was the nature of ancient geopolitics, the Jews had previously consented to such arrangements, and you can’t really apply the principles of posse comitatus retroactively by two millenia. It’s another thing entirely to say that Roman law is superior to the Law God gave by Moses and the imperial cult is superior to the worship of God in Jerusalem. And this is precisely what “we have no king but Caesar” means.

Now do not hear me as letting Pontius Pilate off the hook here. He was a bad egg to say the least, and frequently when you hear Pilate apologists they are not very well disguised antisemites. Even the wickedest of people can sometimes be forced to do something right, though. When the temple leaders tried to get him to amend the sign on the Cross—“he said he is the king of the Jews”—Pilate was not only keeping the sign accurate, but (whether intentionally or not) commenting on the temple leadership’s egregious blasphemy.

The world may have many emperors and dictators and lords and princes and presidents. But the world only has one king in the ancient, tripartite sense—only one who can perfectly combine the roles of captain and judge and priest and in each role he subverts our expectations. Instead of a diadem, he wears a crown of thorns. Instead of holding a scepter, he is pierced by the soldier’s lance. Instead of sitting on a throne he reigns from a tree.

At his second coming, the royal trappings may be more standard issue. I guess that depends on how much the imagery we see in Revelation is meant to be literal or metaphorical, but that’s a rabbit hole into which we need not delve this morning. In either event, we are called today to consider the historical type rather than the eschatological antitype, and recognize that they are ultimately the same.

So how does Christ see the royal will accomplished? He calls the nations to worship him upon the altar of his own sacrifice. He acts as merciful judge to the thief who repents. He leads a silent army, a surprise attack against the hosts of hell, breaking down its gates and leading the most successful rescue mission of all time.

So, we have two images—Christ as kingly king and Christ as crucified king. To this, let me add one more. It is the image on your bulletin covers. This is the oldest of a genre of icon known as Pantocrator, literally “ruler of all.” It is housed at St. Catherine’s (Greek Orthodox) Monastery, the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery, which sits at the foot of Mount Sinai. I love this image, because it makes one wonder why this is how Christ’s rule, his kingship, is meant to be thus depicted. Christ surrounded in the accouterments of royalty in eternity makes intuitive sense, and I’ve just the bulk of this sermon trying to show how the crucifixion can be viewed as an image of kingship, but this image seems less clear at first blush.

I think, and this is just my own hunch, that while the other two images require what I’ll call our proleptic imaginations (inviting the historical endpoint and the historical hinge-point into our present), this is an image which requires no such “timey wimey stuff.” This is Jesus as he is our king today. First, look at his hands. He gives us his word, symbolized by the Gospel book he holds in his left hand, and he gives us the sacramental ministrations of the church, symbolized in his right hand’s blessing. Thus his majestic Grace is mediated in this in-between time. But there is also the immediate (by which I mean, unmediated) Grace. Look up from the hands now, and consider the face of Jesus. He appraises us with the piercing eye of his divinity and the gentle eye of his humanity. And being both God and man, we may look back at him and behold the perfection which the nature of impassable deity precluded our seeing until he came to dwell with us. And what I see in those eyes is a statement which nobody but God could give: I see you fully, clearly, perfectly and I love you completely. Will you love me with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul?

This is the king who reigns even now, whatever the world, the flesh, and the devil may do to try to convince us otherwise. We have a living king who not only invites us into his court, but desires us to relate to him as a friend and a brother. And when he comes again in all his kingly grace, perhaps he won’t literally be wearing an ermine robe and jeweled crown, carrying an orb and a scepter. Maybe he’ll come to us looking more like the Pantocrator of Sinai, and more than behold us and we him through the medium of wood and wax and pigment, we may embrace as he welcomes us into his eternal kingdom.

+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 realize that one of the dead horses I continually strike is the lectionary’s unfortunate editing of biblical passages such that we can sometimes miss the point that I think we’re supposed to take from some particular part of scripture. I hate to do it again, but this morning’s Old Testament lesson from Job suffers so much from the editing process in this regard that I cannot ignore it.

Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were graven in the rock for ever! For I know that my redeemer lives.

It seems simple enough. Job wants his realization of the General Resurrection and the victory of God recorded, right? Well no. In the twenty-two verses which precede our lesson, Job presents a litany of complaints. It’s a long passage, so I won’t read it to you in its entirety, but here are some examples of what comes right before the reading we heard a few minutes ago:

How long will you torment me, and break me in pieces with words? … Know that God has put me in the wrong, and closed his net about me. … He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. … My kinsfolk and my friends have failed me; the guests in my house have forgotten me. … I am repulsive to my wife, loathsome to the sons of my own mother. … All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. My bones cleave to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.

Job’s words at the beginning of this morning’s Old Testament lesson do not express a desire that the good news be recorded. Rather, they show Job’s desire that the depth of his suffering be recorded, that posterity might read it and learn how rotten his life had become and how angry he was at God for making it that way.

This makes the words which follow particularly striking:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

Why this sudden turnabout? Why the instant transition from despair to hope? There are a few possibilities. These are just three theories, and there may be others, but I think they’re the most likely, though you’ll see why I think two of them are unacceptable.

First theory- maybe Job was bipolar. This is not my favorite explanation, but let’s consider it. Perhaps he’s swinging from a depressive to a manic episode before our eyes and ears.

This might be a particularly comforting theory for those who struggle with mental health issues, but I think it’s a problematic theory. We can easily get into trouble by imposing modern categories on ancient people. One could take any of the prophets and view them through the lens of psychopathology- if Job was bipolar, maybe Jeremiah was depressed and Ezekiel was schizophrenic. It’s interesting to think about, but it either requires that we reject the biblical prophetic tradition or assume that God uses mental disorders as a means of communication. The former is not an option for a believer. The latter isn’t impossible, but then we’ve got all sorts of sticky questions about suffering and divine agency which are better avoided if we have an alternative to hand.

Second theory- the only way Job could get over the perceived injustice of his situation was to imagine a God who is ultimately just and who will set all things right in the end. This is a popular way for anthropologists and other social scientists to view the development and persistence of religion. The idea in a nutshell is that life is unfair (which I think is pretty self-evident), and that religious sentiment is an antidote to despair about this fact. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do some enjoy security and wealth and health and others don’t? Why is there so great a discrepancy between well-being and worthiness? Because, God’s gonna fix it all in the next life, so don’t get too upset about it.

On the one hand, we can see why this might be the genesis of religious commitment. Just looking at our own Judeo-Christian tradition, the most profound messages of hope we find in scripture were written in times of extreme difficulty- famine, war, and especially foreign rule and diaspora. It makes sense that in the midst of terrible situations, the only thing to do is to imagine that something greater is at work, that everything will get better, that there will be pie in the sky when we die, by and by.

But if that’s all there is to it, then Marx was right- religion is the opiate of the masses. It keeps us calm and prevents revolution, because it’s only a matter of time before we die and get to finally enjoy life. Maybe Job resorted to wishful thinking, because that’s all he had. That’s not a kind of religion I’m interested in, and I don’t believe it could possibly be the kind of religion professed by the saints who fought and died for the Lord they loved and knew. But it is a possibility. It is my least favorite of the three theories (I’d rather Job were mad than religion were just a pablum), but it’s a very popular way of thinking among the critics of religion. I think our response to those who espouse this theory is to admit the possibility that it’s true and then live our lives in a manner that disproves it- by living faithfully even when every potentially selfish end seems illusive.

Third theory- Job was neither mad nor deluded. God came to him precisely when he needed him the most. In his darkest hour, the Holy Spirit spoke his word of encouragement, literally inspiring him, filling him with the Truth to lift him out of despair. When all around is death and loss and malice, Job was given a vision of the life and joy and love that is the inheritance of God’s people. I’ve not got any empirical evidence for this claim. I cannot rely on psychology or anthropology or any other discipline in the modern intellectual tradition to prop up the third theory. I don’t think there is anything from those fields to help us here. They might prove faith and spirituality to be useful or maladaptive, but not whether or not it’s True. That’s where faith comes in.

That’s the starting point if you want to buy into this theory. You’ve got to have trust enough in those little experiences of grace and love that you experience from time to time that you can see the hand of God moving your heart and the hearts of your sisters and brothers. You’ve got to trust that a power greater than us can make sense of all this mess. I think this is how it happened, or rather I believe this is how it happened, for Job and how it can happen still for us. Even in our darkest moments, God can break in; God will break in if we’re open enough and trusting enough to hear the Spirit’s Word of peace.

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