Do not let anyone disqualify you…

Homily preached at Morning Prayer in St Luke’s Chapel
Berkeley Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut
April 20, 2018 / Friday after Easter III

Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.

Liber Chronicarum, Nuremberg, 1493

We live in a moment characterized to a very great degree by metaphysical despair, by what Raymond Williams described as “the felt loss of a future.”^[1] Intractable racism, sexism, and violence; the uncertainties of the global climate; and alienation and social discord –– all of these engender a sense of existential peril.

Political conservatives tend to deny the existence of problems which, if real, would be depressingly overwhelming. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to absent themselves from the problem, to say “it’s you, not me.”

A friend of my sister’s once dated a guy in his 20s, who had gotten a vasectomy when he was 18, because he felt that he could not in conscience contribute to global overpopulation. He was incredibly smug about it all, as you might imagine, and he usually failed to note that the great reducers of birth rates are not vasectomies, but better education and better medical care.

This guy was not a Christian, but Christians are not exempt from such temptation to self-righteousness. We tend to read Jesus’ command to “be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect,” in a characteristically American, city-on-a-hill way, leading us to retreat into our perfect bunkers with our perfect ethically-sourced canned goods (in perfect recycled cans, of course).

As Paul says, These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence.

It is very tempting (and indeed I have given in to the temptation) to be smug and self-indulgent about Mr Vasectomy. But it does not take a great leap of imagination or empathy to understand the impulse to self-abasement. In the face of challenges of a global scale, our own lives and bodies tend to become the vehicles for our political expression; they are our keeps, our last refuges, the last things over which we have some autonomy, and even still, the enemy is circling. There is something very apt – even poignant – in my sister’s friend’s boyfriend’s having responded to a sense of practical impotence with effective sterility. His posturing was self-righteous, but the underlying action bespeaks desperation and hopelessness.

During Eastertide, it is worth remembering that the Resurrection is not a standalone event; it is the culmination of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry, a life which began with his incarnation into a world which was every bit as ragged, contentious, and despair-inducing as the world in which we live today.

We hear Jesus in that same world at the beginning of his ministry; even as his cousin John the Baptist has been arrested, Jesus proclaims the arrival of the kingdom of heaven, advocating a single activity on the part of all who could hear. Do you remember what he said? “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”^[2] Repent.

Repentance is not another form of self-abasement or mortification of the flesh, and it is not limited to Lenten observance. Repentance is the reorientation of our attention away from self-indulgence and toward Jesus Christ. Repentance is the opposite of the “pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God.” The fruits of this turn are the exact opposite of smugness and despair: they are mercy, charity, and hope.

To hope in Christ is a humbling activity, but also a liberating one, as the acknowledgement of the limits of our own power is coupled to a fidelity to the “God of peace, who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ,” in whom alone are all things possible.

We live in a time of genuine trial, with much before us about which we might feel anxious and uncertain. To be hopeful in the face of this is neither to deny the reality of grave peril, nor to absent ourselves from the struggle, but to face the world, secure in the knowledge that in the raising of Jesus from the dead, God has acted decisively against defeat and desolation.

Tomorrow at Morning Prayer, Paul will encourage the Colossians, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience… And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”^[3] That is the shape of Christian witness in a despairing world. Redundant and predictable posturing are just a restatement of a human way of thinking, and they have nothing new to offer. But hope in Christ is as solid as the ground beneath your feet, and it is the antidote both to political complacency and metaphysical despair.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

AMEN.

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^{[1] Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism: Against the New Conformists (London: Verso, 1989), 103.
[2] Matt 4:17
[3] Colossians 3:12, 17}

Are You Religious?

Sermon preached at St Peter’s Church by-the-Sea
Narragansett, Rhode Island
August 6, 2017 / The Transfiguration (Year A)

I would like to begin with a question, which is this: Are you religious?

Have you ever been asked this question?

Several years ago, I was standing in the kitchen of the house belonging to the parents of my girlfriend at the time. This was probably only my second or third visit to their house, and she and I had not been dating all that long, and so as you might imagine I was eager to make a good impression. In the course of making conversation, her mother asked me the question: “Are you religious?”

I was well aware, even at that early stage, that these were not churchgoing people. Both parents were – for their own reasons – skeptical of organized religion. I knew that they viewed churchgoing with amused curiosity at best, and mild hostility at worst. “Are you religious?” was not a neutral question. Her mother was almost certainly aware that I spent most of my Sundays in church, playing the organ, and she probably wanted to take stock of whether her daughter was involved with some sort of religious zealot. And so the question was asked: “Are you religious?”

I remember all the thoughts that went through my head. Oh no! They’re going to run me out of the house! But I also remember thinking that, Well, I mean, I don’t feel religious. I’m a churchgoer, and a believer, yes, but I’m not sure that I’m “religious.” I don’t always do the most charitable thing; I can be self-centered; I curse; and as an organist, sitting out of sight on Sunday mornings, I have been known to check my email or even to read a book during the sermon.

Am I religious? I’m no Mother Theresa.

In some ways, I think that my then-girlfriend’s mother unwittingly asked me a trick question. The answer to it goes to the very heart of what it means to be a Christian.

The great Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth described “religion” this way: he said, “Religion is a human work…” and, “A religion adequate to revelation and congruent to the righteousness of God…is unattainable by human beings.”^[1] In Barth’s mind, “religion” is all about human striving, about the human effort to project human wishes onto a god who ends up looking a great deal like the humans who are doing the striving. Barth describes this sort of “religion” as “the last human possibility,” which is always confronted by the “impossible possibility of God.”^[2]

In our Gospel lesson this morning, this confrontation is on vivid display. Peter, James, and John go up the mountain with Jesus to pray. As we heard, Jesus was transfigured before their eyes, “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” At the same time, Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus in glory, speaking to Jesus about his impending departure from this world.

And what is Peter’s response to this? He suggests to Jesus the building of three dwellings, or three tabernacles, such as those in which God had dwelt with the ancient Israelites in the desert. This is, on the one hand, a good idea, with ancient pedigree. But it also demonstrates the religious impulse, alive and well in old St Peter. Here Jesus is transfigured before his eyes, and what is his response? To domesticate it. To build a very human dwelling, bringing the dazzling power of God into the human realm.

The irony is, this is exactly what God has done in the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, in the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. Back on the mountain, Peter almost immediately learns his lesson, as “a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’” Jesus himself is the dwelling of God with humanity, and it is the work of God, not any human effort, that builds the true tabernacle. As we are reminded time and again, the leading actor in the universal drama is God, not humanity. As the Psalmist puts it, “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.”^[3]

Way back on June 18^th, we heard this shocking announcement from St Paul: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person– though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”^[4]

This is a most irreligious assertion. As Jesus himself put it, “The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.”^[5] The Christian gospel does not depend for its efficacy, or for its power, on the righteousness of any one of us. It does not require our moral perfection as a demonstration of its truth. As Christians, we are asked to obey Jesus’ commandments that we love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and that we love our neighbor as ourselves. And yet it is well known to God that we will often fail. We will usually fail. It is in human nature to be imperfect, and human history is the graveyard not only of aristocracies, but also of utopias of every kind, especially “religious” ones. One of the most insidious myths around is the one that tells you that humans can be perfected if only we buy this new thing, or follow these six easy steps. What a con.

Recognizing our human fallibility is the first step in understanding what it is that we are offered in Jesus Christ.

This is at the very heart of the good news of the Christian faith. Think about that statement of Paul’s: Christ died for the ungodly. What an astounding declaration that is. And what a relief! The love of God which is in Christ is not only available to the “good people,” the morally upright, the best, and the brightest. It is not only given out to those who say the right things or always behave the right way. Christ died for the ungodly, which is to say that he died for you, and he died for me.

Peter writes in today’s epistle that, “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Do you hear that? No prophecy ever came by human will. The power of God and the truth of the Christian gospel are not the work of human religious striving, or the effort to make a god in our own image. In the person of Jesus, God has done the work, God has chosen to make his dwelling place with humanity, and in the final analysis the only righteousness that matters is the righteousness of God, in which we are made partakers through faith in Jesus Christ.

Am I religious? No. I’m a Christian.

AMEN.

 

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^{[1] Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 366.
[2] Ibid., 332.
[3] Psalm 100:3
[4] Rom 5:6-8
[5] Luke 19:10}

The Power of Sin

Sermon preached at St Peter’s Church by-the-Sea
Narragansett, Rhode Island
July 2, 2017 / Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)

All this summer, and well into September, we will be working our way through St Paul’s letter to the Romans. We will hear a little chunk of it every Sunday. This letter is by common consent Paul’s masterpiece. In the words of one scholar, Romans “overwhelms the reader by the density and sublimity of the topic with which it deals, [which is] the gospel of the justification and salvation of Jew and [Gentile] alike by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, revealing the uprightness and love of God the Father.”^[1]

In today’s passage, Paul deals with a topic that has – for a variety of reasons – gone out of favor in the church. It’s a topic we hear about a lot, but which we don’t talk about a lot. Today, Paul names it. That topic is SIN. As Paul writes, “Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” Who can say what he means by that?

Perhaps a story by way of illustration will be helpful.

When I was younger, let’s say eight years old, my best friend – Tim – and I would often gather at one or the other of our houses to play. My parents believed that video games were for other people’s children, and so at our house, our chief engagements were with our Ninja Turtles action figures or, as often, with LEGOs. My little sister, who is four years younger, would frequently join us.

I remember one particular day when Tim came over, and we went right up to my room and got out the LEGOs. Shortly thereafter, my sister appeared in the doorway and asked if she could come in and join us. “No.” I replied. “But I just want to play.” “No,” I said. “Get out.” This continued through several more exchanges, until finally I pushed my four-year-old sister to the doorway and closed the door in her face.

Some minutes later, I went to go down to the kitchen, and when I opened my bedroom door, there was my sister, sitting on the floor, playing quietly, all by herself, with her own LEGOs. In my mother’s words, “She was so devoted to you and wanted to be a part of your life so much that she was willing to sit on the floor outside your room just to be close to you.” And what did I do? I closed the door in her face.

This episode is one of the very few things in my life that I feel really and truly bad about. I had to call up my sister yesterday while I was writing this sermon to apologize – again. My parents were so affected by this at the time that my mother took my sister out for ice cream, to honor her.

Our tendency at this point, I think, is to let eight-year-old Andrew off the hook. “You were just a little boy!” we might say, and that’s fair. But the truth is that when my mother and my father sat me down and said to me, “How would you like it if somebody did that to you?” my reply was, “I wouldn’t like it very much.” I knew. I knew that I could have said to my sister, “Not right now, but could we come and find you a little later?” But in the moment, I didn’t think about that. In the moment, I didn’t think about my sister at all. I just wanted her out. Have you ever done anything like that?

This is what it means to be under the dominion of Sin. It is to be mindlessly, thoughtlessly, and instinctively self-absorbed.

When we read Scripture, and when we read our Prayer Books, and whenever we encounter the word SIN, we must understand that Sin is not an ethical concept. For Paul, Sin is not just your individual deeds and misdeeds. It is not just those things done and left undone. Paul recognizes Sin for what it is: it is a force, a power that is always acting on us, working in us to have its way. This is Sin, with an uppercase S, and it is the absolute antithesis of the power of the Holy Spirit, by which God works us. In the face of Sin, we are basically powerless. Next week, St Paul will put it this way, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”^[2] I knew better, even at eight years old, than to shove my sister out of my room, but I couldn’t help myself.

If the power of Sin sounds like bad news, Paul has some good news: “But thanks be to God,” he writes, “that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” For Paul, each and every person has a choice. We can choose between the power of Sin, which leads to death, or the power of God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ, which leads to life.

It is always tempting to hedge on our faith. We’re all for Jesus on Sunday, but when the going gets rough, when we encounter evil, we tend to fall back on our own devices. It is seductive to believe that there is some combination of good deeds by which we can save the world. If everyone were just welcoming enough, or nice enough, or peaceful enough, everything would be okay. But this is us playing God, and it is Sin at its most lethal. The surest sign of Sin’s power is widespread consensus that it is nowhere to be found. To quote the movie The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”^[3] The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

Where this leaves us is, as always, at the feet of Jesus, echoing the father of the boy whom Jesus cured: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”^[4] We are asked, each time we attend a baptism, “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?”^[5] We all know the reply to the question: “I will, with God’s help.” With God’s help. We are continuously in need of the grace of God to turn us from the power of Sin, and toward the love of God that is in Jesus Christ. When we repent, when we return to the Lord, it is only accomplished by our surrender to the power of the Holy Spirit working in us.

We are not promised that with Christ life will be easy, or that we will never know hurt, or harm. What we are promised is that those who come to God through faith in Jesus DO NOT GO IT ALONE. Christ has taken on Sin and defeated it, once and for all upon the Cross. God has done in Jesus what we could not do ourselves. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”^[6] This is why those who live in Christ share our Lord’s own traits: they are marked by humility, and kindness, and mercy.

So whom do you want to obey? Paul puts this question to the Romans, and he speaks to us as well. “Do you not know,” he writes, “that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

AMEN.

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^{[1] J.A. Fitzmyer, Romans. Anchor Bible Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), xiii.
[2] Romans 7:15
[3] This is actually a paraphrase by the movie of Charles Baudelaire, but it works (“La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas.” Le spleen de Paris (1862), XXIX. This is Baudelaire’s quotation of a Parisian preacher.)
[4] Mark 9:24
[5] Book of Common Prayer (1979), 304.
[6] 1 Peter 2:24}