The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost - November 13

Christ Died for You

Proper 28

Today is the next to last Sunday in the church year.  We have Christ the King next Sunday, and then begin anew with Advent.  The next to last Sunday.  The church year is drawing to a close.

This is also the first Sunday after the national election.

The readings appointed for today, of course, come from the lectionary and relate to the church calendar.  We always have apocalyptic readings, speaking of the end times, at this time of year.  They are always difficult to preach on.

Yet probably not as difficult as preaching on the election.  Yet we must engage with it.  As tempting as it may be for many of us to disengage as much as possible, we are called to be the Body of Christ in this world at this time.  We must engage events as important as this one and reflect and respond as Christians.

The campaign and election have inescapably been a part of all of our lives for months upon months upon months now.  We have that experience in common.

Yet…  it seems it has also been an experience that we have NOT had in common.  Based on your own life experience, your general political preferences, and maybe most importantly, where you get your news…  amongst us here there are undoubtedly vastly different perceptions and feelings.

It is part of my vocation as pastor and preacher to offer words to you now.  Faithful words.  Faith-filled words.  The preacher’s tool is words.

And yet, as I’ve struggled to find words the last few days, what has just knocked me flat is:  Words aren’t being heard.

I have felt overcome by the futility of conversation.  The literal impossibility of communication with words.  Our entire country is engaged in an enraged cosmic shouting match.  I fear that any words I might offer would just become weapons or fodder or lost in the fray.  As I read and listen, I am overwhelmed with the hopelessness of words having meaning right now, at least any words directly related to the candidates or the election.

At last count bishops in 24 dioceses in the Episcopal Church have issued statements on the election.  Words from the church.  That’s about a quarter of the dioceses in the Episcopal Church, which is remarkable!  Undoubtedly, it would have been even more, except it is convention season in the Episcopal Church.  Many bishops are sharing their thoughts and processing the election within the context of their diocesan conventions, rather than in published statements.  

Most of these statements say much what I would say if I were going to speak directly to the election. I made handouts including a few of the bishops’ statements (You can read them all HERE.  I included Presiding Bishop Curry, our Bishop of Chicago Jeffrey Lee, and the Bishops of Newark, Washington, and Fond du Lac).  Take them home.  Read them carefully when you have time to hear the meaning of the words.  I am definitely available to have individual conversations with any of you for whom that would be helpful.

But today I want to offer some different words.  As I hear and read and see the depth of anger, hatred, disrespect, threats… that are being shouted, I finally found words that I can say into that space.

They come from Frederick Buechner.  I’ve quoted this before, I think from the pulpit, certainly in other settings.  Buechner is talking about the Lord’s Supper.  What we gather, come together, as Christians to do here on Sundays.

It is also called Holy Communion because when feeding at this implausible table, Christians believe that they are communing with the Holy One himself, his spirit enlivening their spirits, heating the blood and gladdening the heart just the way wine, as spirits, can.

They (we!) are also, of course, communing with each other.  To eat any meal together is to meet at the level of our most basic need.  It is hard to preserve your dignity with butter on your chin or to keep your distance when asking for the tomato ketchup.

To eat this particular meal together is to meet at this level of our most basic humanness, which involves our need not just for food but for each other.  I need you to help fill my emptiness just as you need me to help fill yours.  As the emptiness that’s still left over, well we’re in it together, or it is in us.  Maybe it’s most of what makes us human and makes us [sisters and] brothers.

He concludes with words from the service…

The next time you walk down the street, take a good look at every face you pass and in your mind say Christ died for thee.  That girl.  That slob.  That phony.  That crook.  That saint.  That damned fool.  Christ died for thee.  Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee  (Wishful Thinking, “Lord’s Supper”).

Christ died for you.  First, I say those words to you.  To each of you here today.  No matter whom you voted for, or if you didn’t vote.  Whether you are now feeling hopeful or very frightened.  Christ died for you.

Christ died for you.  He willingly gave up his life to free you from sin and death.  To set you free!  To open up a way for God’s incomprehensible peace and unquenchable life to fill you.  Christ died for you.  Remember that.

I have also found it helpful to take Buechner’s advice.  When I walk down the street or when I hear some rant on TV or read some comment on the internet, whether the kind or the crazy ones, the ones I support or the ones that deeply offend me, to mentally say to whoever is speaking, Christ died for you. 

I wish I had thought of this in time to do it as I voted…  to look at every name on the ballot, those I voted for and those I didn’t…  those at the top of the ballot and even all of those endless pages of judges…  to say to each of them, Christ died for thee.

I commend this practice to you.  Verbally.  Maybe some one, some person, needs to hear you say to them, Christ died for you.  Or maybe you need to say, or think, it as you go about your daily life and encounter others.

What individual people do with Christ’s gift is up to them, between them and their Lord.  But this practice…  this practice of saying the words:  Christ died for you, has helped to restore my own heart and soul.

This is just the beginning.  It is internal preparation for the external work that needs to be done.  God knows there is work to be done!  Justice work.  The bishops talk more about that.  And it lies ahead of us.

Like many people this week I’ve found myself humming Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.  And if I leave you with that earworm, that’s a good thing.  But the last few days I’ve also been humming another tune.  Today’s canticle.  The canticle we prayed in place of the psalm this morning.  The words are from Isaiah.  It’s one of the canticles for Morning Prayer.  When I was in seminary, we prayed Morning Prayer together as a community every day.  And we sang the canticles; they are meant to be sung.

I know this canticle to a gentle, hopeful melody (Hymn 679).

(Sung)  Surely it is God who saves me; trusting him I shall not fear.

Surely it is God who saves me; trusting him I shall not fear.

Amen.

All Saints' Sunday - November 6

Knit Together

Collect for All Saints' Day

November 1 of course is All Saints’ Day.  One of the great festive holy days in the church calendar.  We’re allowed to transfer it to the following Sunday, so we celebrating All Saints’ Day today in our worship together.

All Saints’ Day.  Have you ever thought about the fact that’s is not called “some” saints day?  It’s not Some Saints’ Day, it’s All Saints’ Day.  There is no division or separation or exclusion among the saints.

This is the way the word “saints” is used in the New Testament.  Writing at the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians, a few verses before this morning’ s reading Paul says:  Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus…  all the saints…  Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  The saints are all the people who seek to follow Christ.

The saints are not separated or differentiated:  by age, by relative sinfulness or holiness, by political persuasion, slave or free, male or female.  And, although Paul wouldn’t have been thinking of this as he wrote to the Ephesians, today we see there is no separation between saints living and dead.  It is All Saints’ Day.

And to be a saint, to be among the saints is to be knit together.  In one sense, there really isn’t such thing as a single saint.  Yes, an individual person is a saint, but never in isolation.  To be a saint is to be part of the communion of saints.  Remember the All Saints’ Day collect we just prayed: Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord.

Almighty God, knit together your elect in the mystical body of your son.  God’s elect, the saints, are knit together.  And it is the mystical body of Christ that knits, weaves, binds us together into one communion and fellowship.

As I think about it, there are several Implications of being knit together in Christ.

First, among the living saints, all of us who seek to follow Christ and still live this mortal life.  We are knit together into one communion.  Knit together by the body of Christ.

The world seems more belligerent, divided, and partisan now than it has every been, at least in recent times.  Or maybe it isn’t; maybe people are just acting on feelings that have always been there.  But actions can be controlled.  What if we worked at acting like we were bound together in Christ?  What if we all worked at acting like the body of Christ unites us and holds us together?

Second, the living and the dead are knit together, too, by the mystical body of Christ.  I think especially of the faithful departed saints whom we remembered on Wednesday at the All Souls’ Day service.  These are the saints we knew and loved in life who now live in the nearer presence of God.  These are people who, in life, were bound to us by bonds of love and friendship.  Those bonds are not broken by death.  We are still united, knit together by the body of Christ.

I’m reminded of a prayer I know I’ve mentioned before.  It’s not in the Prayer Book, but it is a part of our Anglican tradition and is often said at burials.

What you give, dear God, you do not take away…..  These people whom you gave to us, whom we have loved, you do not take away…..  For what is yours is ours always, if we are yours.  And life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.  Lift us up, O God, that we may see further; cleanse our eyes that we may see more clearly; draw us closer to yourself that we may know ourselves nearer to our beloved who are with you.

Finally, for all of the saints to be knit together in one communion, is to have a common purpose, a common hope.  It is to share the promise of fullness of life in Christ, to seek the ineffable joys mentioned in the collect, to hope for the riches of Jesus’ glorious inheritance among the saints described by Paul in Ephesians.

All the saints, living and dead, share this common promise and hope.  And for us, today, to be knit into this holy fellowship of saints is to be supported by them in our life in Christ.  We are knit together with all the saints, the famous ones in the windows, the dear ones we remembered on All Souls’ Day, the familiar ones sitting next to us in the pews.  A mighty cloud of witnesses, living and dead, sharing a common hope, offering their presence with us to teach, guide, support and encourage us as faithful followers of Christ.

We are knit into the communion of saints.  Thanks be to God.

The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost - October 30

No One Helped Him See

Proper 26

Luke 19:1-10

Zacchaeus just wanted to see Jesus.  But, as the children’s song says, he couldn’t because he “was a wee little man.”  He just wanted to be able to see Jesus, but because he was “short in stature” he couldn’t see over the crowds.

This reminds me of a story from decades ago in my own life.  When I was in college I used to take the train into New York City to go to the opera.  The Metropolitan Opera in New York sells standing room tickets the day of the performance.  (The only way I could afford opera at the time!)  There are special places for standing room…  high rails/banisters with numbers on them.  So you get a specific spot at the rail, either in the back of the main floor or in the back of the upper upper upper balcony.

The opera was Donizetti’s Elixir of Love and Luciano Pavarotti was singing.  One of his signature roles.  I had a standing room ticket in the upper balcony, several miles from the stage. For some reason I had not brought my binoculars.  The tenor has a big showcase aria in that opera.   Earlier on, the lady standing next to me passed me her binoculars.  Unasked…  I had never seen or met her before…  As the big aria approached I offered them back to her, but she whispered, “No, you keep them so you can see Mr. Pavarotti.”  So I watched him for a little bit, and then returned her binoculars.  That was the only time I ever saw Pavarotti live.

She wanted me to see the great tenor.  She helped me see.

No one helped Zacchaeus see.  Nobody lifted Zacchaeus up so he could see, or got him a stool, or made way for him so he could move up front, or got him one of those contraptions that lets you see over walls or out of trenches or over crowds.   No one helped Zacchaeus see Jesus.

The crowd blocked his sight.  The crowd is a part of the story.  Later on they will be incensed when Jesus favors Zacchaeus.  At this point in the story, they block him from seeing Jesus.

As I think about placing myself in this story, I would have been in the crowd.  I would not have been in the close circle as a disciple of Jesus.  I’m not the impetuous sort who would have dropped everything to chase after an itinerant preacher.  Not until I knew more.  I certainly don’t think of myself as the tax collector Zacchaeus…

I would have been in the crowd.  Among those who went out to see Jesus when he came to town.  Curious, drawn by some internal urging.  Looking, yearning for something.  Eager to see this Jesus.

Zacchaeus was among that crowd eager to see Jesus.  But the people in the crowd didn’t care if he could see Jesus or not.  At best they didn’t care.  At worst they enjoyed blocking his sight.

Remember tax collectors were worse than scum in those days.  And Zacchaeus was a head tax collector.  As the story reminds us, tax collectors were Jews, children of Abraham.  But Jews who extorted money from their own people on behalf of the occupying Roman government.  They were both political traitors and vile sinners under Jewish law.  I can’t really think of a similar example today.

Imagining myself in this story I don’t know if I would have helped Zacchaeus see Jesus. 

Probably not. 

What about you?

At the very least the crowd was clueless to Zacchaeus’ needs.  They were certainly more interested and focused on their own self-centered desire to see Jesus.  At worst they willfully shunned him because he was despicable to them.

It’s easy for me to feel convicted by this passage.  It’s harder for me to understand specifically what it means for me, for us, today.  What more faithful stance is it calling us to?

The first question to ask is:  How do we block or impede other peoples’ desire to see Jesus?

Speaking as a life-long Episcopalian, for years the church marginalized children’s access and participation.  They were prohibited from receiving Jesus in Communion and often kept out of worship.  We’re better now, but still have a good ways to go.

Also, most Christian congregations today self-select membership in subtle, subconscious ways, discouraging people who are not “like us.”  “Like us” may be defined very differently in different congregations.  But congregations self-select membership keeping away people who don’t fit.

At the very least, this story is a challenge to be less self-centered in worship.  We joke, but seriously, it means offering (!) your pew to a visitor.  Offering.  Not just tolerating.  Offering, inviting, a newcomer to use your pew.  It means celebrating music that may not be your favorite, but that other people find inspiring.  It means welcoming all sorts of language in worship if other people find it prayerful.

More generally, it is a call throughout life to move from self-centeredness to generosity of spirit.  Generosity of spirit.  To show generosity of spirit, especially towards people who are different or even despicable.  Act with generosity of spirit.  Be a conduit for Jesus’ love and grace to flow to others, not a barrier.  Act with generosity of spirit.  That’s what people who really see and know Jesus do.

And, God knows, the world needs more generosity of spirit right now.  Show kindness and care towards people who are on “the other side” of whatever the battle of the moment happens to be.

Love your neighbor as yourself.  Even the ones you don’t like.  Help them see Jesus.