Well, here I am, giving my first sermon at St. James. Francie asked me if I would be interested some time ago, and I have been waiting for my opportunity with excitement. And this is the Sunday that I got. If you ask what I mean by that, I’ll ask you one question. Did you really listen to those Bible passages from the lectionary this morning? I ask this in all seriousness, for I need your help in coming up with a topic.
First there was the New Testament epistle lesson. As a dramatically underemployed person, I listened intently to the Pauline attack upon the lazy, shiftless people without jobs in the Thessalonian community, busybodies who were living in idleness. Well, that didn’t strike me so good, so it’s out as a sermon topic.
Then there was the gospel lesson from Luke. And I’m sorry to say that things didn’t take a better turn there. For the days will come when you will see this temple, this place reserved for the sincere worship of the one true God, and it will be destroyed. Not one single stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down. Clearly that’s not a sermon text for this congregation. We’ve heard much too much about things like that in recent times. Besides, this time it could be Crissey Farms, God forbid.
But as if that wasn’t enough, things in Luke really begin to go down hill after that. You will hear about wars and insurrections, but don’t let that bother you. Nation will rise against nation, there will be earthquakes, famines and plagues, but don’t worry, that’s ok. And then, it appears that the powers that be will blame you for all of this, because you will get arrested, dragged into court, put in prison, and perhaps executed. This is the good news. Thanks be to God. I don’t think that I’m going in that direction either. So I still need your good thoughts and ideas.
Well, thanks be to God indeed because we also heard from the book of the prophet Isaiah this morning too. And here things begin to take a better turn. For out of a time of exile and captivity, Isaiah speaks of dramatically better days to come for God’s people. For God is at work in their midst creating a new heavens and a new earth that will usher in a new time of great prosperity and joy for the people. And he goes on to give images and symbols of the kind of life that that will bring. People will live long, good lives. They will have good homes and fruitful crops. They will have wonderful families and healthy children. But perhaps best of all, they will be blessed with a time of nonviolence and true peace.
Now that’s more like it. A Bible passage with a positive, upbeat message that you can really sink your teeth into if you’re trying to write a sermon to inspire people. And in truth, although it is harder to find, our reading from Luke is in fact also more positive than it seems. It has its tragedy and doom and gloom as we have seen. But its focus is elsewhere. For, what is “the time” that is coming near? And what is “the end” that is expected? It is not disaster, but the return of Christ and the coming of salvation, and the dawn of the kingdom of God.
Isaiah’s is in fact a grand and glorious vision, with a vast and indeed cosmic scope. Behold, I am creating a new heavens and a new earth after all. But there’s part of the problem. It’s a wonderful vision of health, prosperity and goodness, but in the world and life we live in, I think that it is somewhat hard to relate to in some ways. Because to say the least, in the economic and international situation that we are in right now, that vision has hardly come true in its fullness as yet at this point in human history. So we may still be looking for the heart of meaning that today’s scripture reading has for our lives.
Well, looking around and not seeing anyone, even the esteemed John Cheek, leaping up to save me and share their wisdom, I look elsewhere to find my clue and inspiration. And luckily for me, I found at least one little hint in another sermon of all places. Lately I’ve been reading a little bit of the famous theologian Paul Tillich for a comparative study I’m doing with the Hindu faith. He was for sure one of the very most important Christian thinkers of the 20th century. His first collection of sermons from the 1940s was called The Shaking of the Foundations, and in it there is a sermon called “Behold, I Am Doing A New Thing”. And although it is not a sermon on our text from Isaiah, it certainly could be. In it he remarks that the God of the Bible is first and foremost a God who does new things, who creates the new. And imaging the destructive aspects of our reading from Luke’s gospel, he says that the old has to die and disappear and pass away before the new that God is creating can come.
And that is exactly what we see in our Bible passages for today. In Isaiah the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. In Luke’s vision the end of all things comes through cataclysmic disasters. Both show the passing and death of the old in order that the new life and world that God is creating can come to be just like Tillich said. And I think that it is in this passage from the old to the new seen as the movement from a past that is dying away and disappearing to a future that is a new creation that is new life, is exactly the image that we need in order to see the personal meaning that there is in these passages for us in our lives.
For the stories we have been wondering about this morning I think are symbols that touch and tap into the very deepest and fundamental truths about faith, and the spiritual life, and God. For they tap into the pattern of true religious faith and spiritual life, namely the themes of death and resurrection. For that is the movement and meaning of Christ’s life as savior. But as Christian people that is intended to be the rhythm and nature of our lives of faith as well. For we are to participate in the very life of Christ.
There is an old prayer that shows this movement from Christ’s life to ours that you might know. It goes like this. “Pour your grace into our hearts O Lord that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ the announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection.” By his cross and passion may we be brought to the glory of his resurrection. By participating in the pattern of Christ’s life, we find new life ourselves. Our fundamental problem as human beings from the very beginning of creation in Genesis down to our own day has been our turning away from God’s life giving presence and focusing our lives just on ourselves in hurtful and destructive ways. Faith calls on us to die to that old self-centered person that is passing away, and turn in our hearts and lives to center them anew in a loving and saving God who is bringing new life.
The central symbols of our faith even proclaim this dynamic and movement from passion to resurrection, and from death to new life. Take the sacrament of baptism for example. My wife Nancy, who some of you know is an art teacher and painter, is also an accomplished potter and made this bowl that is our symbol of baptism. And what is it that happens when we are baptized? The Bible and our service says that in it, we what? We die and are raised with Christ. That in baptism we die to our old lives and rise again in new life participating in Christ’s resurrected life. And that then becomes the beginning and pattern of our faith that we are living out and witnessing to this very morning. It sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
And then there is the central Christian symbol, the cross. Nancy is coming out the hero this morning, because she made this beautiful cross too for me for my ordination several decades ago now. And I don’t really have to tell you in detail how the symbol of the cross proclaims the message we are talking about today, because you know it. But let’s just say that obviously, just like baptism, it has its reality in the life of Christ and the outside world of history. But it also has this personal meaning for our lives that our faith intends for us to get and live out. For it is the same one as baptism really. That we are called to participate in Christ’s cross and passion so that we can share in his new life of resurrection. Again, by turning from ourselves and life just focused on us, crucifying it if you will, and finding new life and love and salvation in God.
Finally, we come back around to our worship this morning and our very purpose in being here today. And we see that our communion (our communion with Christ) and our eucharist, our great thanksgiving, is itself a symbol of this great spiritual truth and pattern that is our theme for the day. For in our coming to worship, in our confession, we acknowledge our need of new life. In it we turn from life lived away from this place and from God, focused just on ourselves, and we die to that and come here to seek new life and healing and restoration through the presence and communion and nourishment we receive from the saving presence of Christ’s life that we find in this bread and in this wine.
So what we celebrate today is the new life that God gives us, the new creation that is made, when we turn our lives around and receive that into our hearts. You know, returning to the framework of today’s Bible lessons, I don’t know about our nation’s future in this post-election time. Which way will it go? Also in its conflict and troubles and violence, I have little clue as to where history is going on the international scene. And for sure, the destiny of the earth and our cosmos is not something I’ve been given any insight about. But I do know that in our lives and in our church, if we turn each and every day away from our solitary self absorption and let that die and pass away, and turn to God in prayer and thanksgiving and wonder, living out the love that God is creating, it will be possible for us to sing a new song of a new life and a new creation that comes to us from our savior.
Then we too will be able to sing with Isaiah
Surely it is God who saves me; I will trust and not be afraid.
For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense,
and will be my Savior.
Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing,
from the springs of salvation.
And on that day you shall say,
Give thanks to the Lord and call upon God’s name.
Make God’s deeds known among the peoples,
see that they remember that the Lord’s name is exhaled.
Sing the praises of the Lord, for God have done great things,
and this is known in all the world.
Cry aloud inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy,
for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.
Amen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
A Sermon Preached November 7, 2010 (All Saints C) by Lee Cheek
FREEDOM TO LOVE
“Love your enemies.” Luke 6:27
“But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever” Daniel 7: 18
It’s Sunday, March 7, 1965, and Jonathan Daniels, a 25 year old, white seminary student at what was then known as Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., is watching on national television the dramatic and violent events of a civil rights march gone wrong. A little later in the broadcast he hears Martin Luther King urge Northern white religious leaders to come to Selma, to complete the 52 mile historic march to Montgomery.
Later, at evening prayer, Jonathan sings with gladness the words of the Magnificat: “My Soul doth magnify the Lord.” When he gets to “He has cast down the might from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly,” he knows that he must answer King’s call. On March 9, Jonathan and ten other ETS students travel to Selma where they join thousands of clergy and nuns who accompany King and his followers to Montgomery.
Because of a ban preventing the second march, many leave before it finally takes place on March 21. Jonathan and fellow student Judith Upham decide to stay in Selma through the spring semester. They move in with a black family, tutor the children, and take them to the city’s segregated Episcopal Church, St. Paul’s. Their activism earns them the title of “white niggers” from the local white supremacists. Jonathan writes: “We are deep in enemy territory.”
Jonathan participates in a voter registration march in Camden and has a realization about his attackers while being tear-gassed and threatened. He writes in his journal: “I began to change. I saw that the men who came at me were themselves not free. Even though they were white and hateful and my enemy, they were human beings, too. I began to discover a new freedom in the cross: a freedom to love the enemy and in that freedom to will and to try to set him free.”
In August 1965 Jonathan and several members of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) picket a grocery store for abusing black customers in Ft. Deposit. They are arrested and put in the Haynesville jail for several days. They choose to not put up bail in order to buy time for an injunction for the case to go to Federal Court. They are suspiciously released. While deciding what to do they walk to a nearby store to purchase cold drinks. A special deputy is waiting for them at the door with a shotgun. He says: “The store is closed. If you don’t get off this god-damn property I will blow your god-damned brains out.”
Ruby Sales, a 17 year old black SNCC worker, is pulled from behind, the gun is fired and Jonathan falls. He dies immediately. About a month later, the deputy is acquitted by an all-white jury after only two hours deliberation.
After Jonathan’s death, people got stronger. Soon the southern jury system came under attack in scores of affirmative law suits. Within five years blacks were serving on juries, voting, sharing public facilities and holding public office.
Today Jonathan Daniels is honored in the Martyrs Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral and in 1994 his name was added to the Episcopal calendar as a martyr and witness to the Gospel.
Nearly 2000 years before Jonathan’s death, a young rabbi began to proclaim that God is love and has nothing to do with violence. A large group of disciples gathered to join him in his project of turning the long page of history by revealing once and for all the truth about human violence. To make absolutely clear what living in the Kingdom of the God of Love entails, he told them this: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.
His message was clear: Do not return tit for tat if you have faith that the world can be otherwise.
Less than three years later, every single one of his friends abandoned him to the jaws of the sacrificial death machine that says it is better that one man die. But … three days after his death, they were—to their astonishment—met by a forgiving, totally pacific, loving presence of their betrayed friend that was so real to them, that they rededicated themselves to the spreading the Good News that the True God NEVER requires a sacrifice.
The pilgrimage to the Kingdom of God ceases early for some like Jonathan Daniels, and we call them the holy ones, the saints. Through the witness of their lives, they have passed on the treasure of our inheritance: The knowledge that God is love which bestows upon us the freedom and power to love others without exception.
A very necessary part of my own pilgrimage is the time I spend with you each week to hear the stories and sing the songs of the people who gradually came to know that God is Love. Today, like always, we will come to the table together and together be forgiven. We will be sent out together to magnify this Love in the world in the unique way given to each one of us.
But can I remember by the time I even get to coffee hour? Will I continue to blame my less than charitable responses on someone else’s behavior? Will I continue to make my home in a world shot through and infused with self-righteousness, resentment, reprisals, and the triumphalism of avenged honor? Will I slip out from under the demands of justice and compassion and continue to reproduce what is done to me?
Of course, it is not easy. But to a God who loves me so much that I am forgiven before I ask, I pray: Guide me each moment of my life. Keep me company each day with the un-triumphant saints. Help me learn to love my enemies. So that one day, I may be able to say as Jonathan did:
“I realized that as a Christian I was totally free … at least free to give my life if that had to be, with joy and thankfulness and eagerness for the Kingdom no longer hidden from behind my eyes.”
AMEN.
“Love your enemies.” Luke 6:27
“But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever” Daniel 7: 18
It’s Sunday, March 7, 1965, and Jonathan Daniels, a 25 year old, white seminary student at what was then known as Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., is watching on national television the dramatic and violent events of a civil rights march gone wrong. A little later in the broadcast he hears Martin Luther King urge Northern white religious leaders to come to Selma, to complete the 52 mile historic march to Montgomery.
Later, at evening prayer, Jonathan sings with gladness the words of the Magnificat: “My Soul doth magnify the Lord.” When he gets to “He has cast down the might from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly,” he knows that he must answer King’s call. On March 9, Jonathan and ten other ETS students travel to Selma where they join thousands of clergy and nuns who accompany King and his followers to Montgomery.
Because of a ban preventing the second march, many leave before it finally takes place on March 21. Jonathan and fellow student Judith Upham decide to stay in Selma through the spring semester. They move in with a black family, tutor the children, and take them to the city’s segregated Episcopal Church, St. Paul’s. Their activism earns them the title of “white niggers” from the local white supremacists. Jonathan writes: “We are deep in enemy territory.”
Jonathan participates in a voter registration march in Camden and has a realization about his attackers while being tear-gassed and threatened. He writes in his journal: “I began to change. I saw that the men who came at me were themselves not free. Even though they were white and hateful and my enemy, they were human beings, too. I began to discover a new freedom in the cross: a freedom to love the enemy and in that freedom to will and to try to set him free.”
In August 1965 Jonathan and several members of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) picket a grocery store for abusing black customers in Ft. Deposit. They are arrested and put in the Haynesville jail for several days. They choose to not put up bail in order to buy time for an injunction for the case to go to Federal Court. They are suspiciously released. While deciding what to do they walk to a nearby store to purchase cold drinks. A special deputy is waiting for them at the door with a shotgun. He says: “The store is closed. If you don’t get off this god-damn property I will blow your god-damned brains out.”
Ruby Sales, a 17 year old black SNCC worker, is pulled from behind, the gun is fired and Jonathan falls. He dies immediately. About a month later, the deputy is acquitted by an all-white jury after only two hours deliberation.
After Jonathan’s death, people got stronger. Soon the southern jury system came under attack in scores of affirmative law suits. Within five years blacks were serving on juries, voting, sharing public facilities and holding public office.
Today Jonathan Daniels is honored in the Martyrs Chapel of Canterbury Cathedral and in 1994 his name was added to the Episcopal calendar as a martyr and witness to the Gospel.
Nearly 2000 years before Jonathan’s death, a young rabbi began to proclaim that God is love and has nothing to do with violence. A large group of disciples gathered to join him in his project of turning the long page of history by revealing once and for all the truth about human violence. To make absolutely clear what living in the Kingdom of the God of Love entails, he told them this: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.
His message was clear: Do not return tit for tat if you have faith that the world can be otherwise.
Less than three years later, every single one of his friends abandoned him to the jaws of the sacrificial death machine that says it is better that one man die. But … three days after his death, they were—to their astonishment—met by a forgiving, totally pacific, loving presence of their betrayed friend that was so real to them, that they rededicated themselves to the spreading the Good News that the True God NEVER requires a sacrifice.
The pilgrimage to the Kingdom of God ceases early for some like Jonathan Daniels, and we call them the holy ones, the saints. Through the witness of their lives, they have passed on the treasure of our inheritance: The knowledge that God is love which bestows upon us the freedom and power to love others without exception.
A very necessary part of my own pilgrimage is the time I spend with you each week to hear the stories and sing the songs of the people who gradually came to know that God is Love. Today, like always, we will come to the table together and together be forgiven. We will be sent out together to magnify this Love in the world in the unique way given to each one of us.
But can I remember by the time I even get to coffee hour? Will I continue to blame my less than charitable responses on someone else’s behavior? Will I continue to make my home in a world shot through and infused with self-righteousness, resentment, reprisals, and the triumphalism of avenged honor? Will I slip out from under the demands of justice and compassion and continue to reproduce what is done to me?
Of course, it is not easy. But to a God who loves me so much that I am forgiven before I ask, I pray: Guide me each moment of my life. Keep me company each day with the un-triumphant saints. Help me learn to love my enemies. So that one day, I may be able to say as Jonathan did:
“I realized that as a Christian I was totally free … at least free to give my life if that had to be, with joy and thankfulness and eagerness for the Kingdom no longer hidden from behind my eyes.”
AMEN.
[Facts from Jonathan Daniels’ story are taken from the 2005 film broadcast on PBS Here I Am, Send Me (available in streaming video at http://episcopalonline.org/Featured_Video). The remainder of the sermon was borrowed heavily, gratefully and shamelessly from the writings of James Alison (see publications at http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/index.html), René Girard (Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Stanford University Press, 1987, and other publications http://www.imitatio.org/), and Rowan Williams (Writings in the Dust, Eerdmans, 2002).]
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