12/04/2023
There haven't been posts the last 2 Sundays because our camera was on vacation in Germany on November 26, and it had a touch of Covid on December 3 (Advent 1), but here are the sermons from those two days. (The camera is feeling much better now, thank you.)
Proper 29 (Nov 26)
There’s a theme that Matthew has emphasized throughout chapter 25, one that we’ve seen these last 3 Sundays of the Church year. It’s best summarized by the Greek word gregoreo, which usually is translated as ‘watch’ or ‘keep watch,’ but literally means ‘to have sleep taken away.’ But there’s more to watching than just sleeplessness, at least as Matthew uses it. It’s much more active and productive than just insomnia. Matthew means ‘be awake to opportunity.’ Be awake to the opportunity that the coming of the Kingdom of God gives us—whether that means a marriage feast and keeping your lamp ready, or the multiplying of your talents, or having a chance to serve ‘the least of these’ in our midst. It’s crucial to the faith, because if we miss the opportunity God is giving us right now, we’ll miss the ultimate in blessedness, the Kingdom of God itself; something ‘prepared for you from the foundation of the world’ as Matthew put it today in verse 34. And to miss that opportunity is tragic.
One thing that can unequivocally be said about Jesus is that he lived and moved and had his being in the social context of his day, among people who could really be called ‘ the least, the lost, and the last.’ It was a world that valued social status above money, and yet Jesus refused to acknowledge any sort of social ladder. He ate with tax collectors, who were considered traitors. He touched the diseased and those considered unclean. He broke a social taboo by valuing women, even going so far as to have a conversation with a Samaritan woman. His last-will-be-first-and-first-will-be-last message horrified those who considered themselves protectors of the status quo and the social order. Jesus made it clear that he not only wasn’t impressed by ancestry, wealth, authority, education, or virtue; he thought these status symbols were stumbling blocks so significant that it’d be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the ‘rich’ to enter the Kingdom of God.
What was behind this righteousness to which he called his followers, a righteousness that exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees? What sense of freedom allowed him to act across tribes, cultures, and theologies? It was the essence of the message of Jesus Christ, the essential, basic truth from which all Christian life and belief flowed and still flows, but what was it? Some say it’s love, others say it’s humility, still others say compassion or justice. But Jesus had more in mind than just a single virtue exalted above all else; what he wanted was relationship. It was essential to Christian faith that Christians have a relationship with God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and a relationship with others that reflects that relationship with God.
What impresses us in the Gospel is not that Jesus was kind or humble or gentle or merciful; it was that he loved God the Father. He loved God radically, and obeyed completely. There is no legitimate way to talk about Jesus Christ apart from this love of God. Everything else flows from that.
We’re not called to love our neighbors as we love God, but as we love ourselves; and we are to love God as we love nothing else. The Church is built on this foundation. Mercy, justice, compassion, humility: these all proceed from love of God. Everything in Christianity comes from this.
It’s important that we keep that in mind so we don’t turn the teaching about sheep versus goats into some sort of standard for Christian do-good and feel-good theology: the more we do, the higher we are valued. That sounds suspiciously like works righteousness, not saved by grace; although throughout history there have been those in the Church who would like to keep an accounting. Saint Augustine, as is well known, said, ‘Love God, and do what you will;’ but most of us forget that Augustine finished that breath by asking, ‘And what do I love when I love God?’
That’s the theme of today’s Gospel lesson. When we love ‘the least’—when we feed the stranger, welcome the homeless, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the prisoner—we do so because every person is an incarnation of God. Every human being is made in the image of God. That means every one of them is a member of God’s family, every one of them is precious in God’s sight, every one of them is valuable. In short, every one of them is Jesus.
So our radical love of God with all our heart and soul and mind forms the relationship that is the heart of our faith, and calls us to love God in others—freely, unconditionally, unself-consciously; not so that we’ll be considered a ‘good Christian’ or a ‘good citizen’ or whatnot. As someone pointed out, the more respectable we become in the world’s terms, the less redemptive we become in God’s terms. In other words, we love not because ‘the least of these’ deserve it or appreciate it or are changed by it, but because the character of God is formed in us through the Spirit to express the life of Christ in our own lives. Otherwise we remain just skin-deep disciples, and that’s tragic.
One theologian in the early 1900s said that many people grow worse by getting religion: more judgmental, more self-righteous, more rigid, more unresponsive to human need. As proof he spoke of the scribes and Pharisees who would cross sea and land to make a single convert who then became more a child of hell than they were (Mt 23.15). The mission to a broken and banged-up world is the acid test of our faith. Who we are in relation to those around us reveals the depth of our faith. This faith isn’t a possession, something that we own or claim as our own, like an insurance policy or a new suit; it’s not faith in a set of propositions and rules, a litmus test of where we stand on any particular social issue, whether abortion or immigration or divorce or anything else. It’s not a faith that celebrates dos and don’ts to justify the believer as righteous. Deep down, our faith is about something that is, a living faith existing in a world that needs to think more in terms of us and less in terms of them.
A little Hasidic tale makes this point beautifully. Rabbi Shlomo said, ‘If you want to raise a man from the mud and filth, do not think it is enough to stand on top and reach down to him with a helping hand. You must go all the way down yourself, down into the mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself into the light.’
To which I can only add, ‘Amen.’
Advent 1 (Dec 3)
A man is down on his hands and knees under a street lamp in front of his house. A passerby asks what he’s doing, and the man says he’s looking for his keys. The passerby gets down on hands and knees to help, but to no avail. After a long time he asks the man, ‘Where did you lose your keys?’ The man answers, ‘Inside the house.’ ‘So why are you looking out here?’ the stranger asks. ‘Because the light’s better.’
Advent is the season that reminds us forever that the perfection we seek, the fulfillment we long for, the destination to which we’re headed, is out of reach in this world. It can’t be found, like the keys in the story, under the light of whatever illumination this world gives off. Nor are the keys found in the dark house of cultural security where we think we lost them, where we believe, if we can just find them, everything will be OK. The hope that Advent offers us is not that this world will be perfected by healthcare plans or tax breaks or diplomatic initiatives or global trade pacts or military strategy, as useful and helpful as these things may be in the interim. No ideologies or causes or crusades will ever create a new world or a new humanity. Advent declares quite firmly that there’s only one reality, a divine order that’s beyond what we can see or do or achieve in this world. It’s, of course, the Kingdom of God, revealed in Jesus Christ, where we have to put our faith.
The Christian hope is that the future belongs to God. It says that God, and only God, will ever fully overcome evil in all its forms—political and social and economic and personal. God’s rule of perfect peace and perfect justice will not come in this world, but at the end of history. But that doesn’t mean we’re exempt from dealing with evil in the present. We don’t hope for the coming of the Lord instead of being faithful disciples today. Advent isn’t about pious indifference to the world’s suffering; that’s escapism. Advent is about acting in the present need in light of the fulfilled future. The Christ who will come at the end of the world is the same Christ who’s active now in the world, and who has been active in the world to bring about a new creation. And it’s just because of that that we can live in hope now.
Advent tells us that all of life is to be viewed through God’s future. The promise is that when we bring our brokenness, our sinfulness, our incompleteness, and our discontent to God, it will not be left unchanged. It may not be fulfilled in the way we imagined or the way we demanded, but it will be fulfilled, it will be redeemed.
The opposite of Advent hope is apathy and anger because of our despair. That apathy and anger is seen all around by the crisis of drug addiction, the increase of su***de, the mass shootings and random violence. If we have no hope, the prevailing attitude is, ‘Why bother?’ If there’s no confidence in the future, what are the prospects for the present? Why make great effort or moral sacrifices now if nothing can be undone? Why not drink or do drugs or shoot somebody?
Consistently, polls show that the parents of young children put drugs and violence as the biggest concerns plaguing our schools. Not low academic standards or poor teaching. The DOJ estimates that over 100,000 teens bring guns to school every day, and over 2000 students are physically attacked every hour. I have to wonder: to what degree do lack of hope, lack of faith, and the spiritual sickness it promotes lie at the root.
Cardinal Cushing used to tell the story of a young girl who sat on her grandmother’s lap to listen to the story of creation from Genesis. As the story went on the girl got quieter and quieter, so the grandmother asked her, ‘What do you think?’ ‘I love it,’ said the girl; ‘you never know what God’s going to do next.’
That’s Advent: you never know what God’s going to do next. But we do know that God’s creativity isn’t exhausted by what He’s done in the past. So our faith turns to the future, supported by God’s promise in the present: ‘Remember I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Mt 28.20b). Ours is not a faith with a hopeless end, but a faith born of hope. Without this hope—as the evening news constantly reminds us—we did, as slaves of despair.
So on this, the first Sunday of Advent and the first Sunday of the Church year, let’s reawaken our hope. Let’s come alive as hope-bearers to a needy and despairing world. Let’s be filled with hope, not for human reasons or from any sort of natural optimism, but because we believe the Holy Spirit is at work in the world, even when his name remains unheard. Thanks be to God!
