Friday, July 29, 2016
Pentecost 10, Year C, Proper 12, July 24, 2016
Sermon for The Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Year C, Proper 12 ~ July 24, 2016
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
Your Kingdom come…
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
I
|
heard that some insider journalists like to gamble on how many minutes it would take for a political speaker to mention Hitler. One doesn’t want to be too quick to compare the present state of the country to the Weimar Republic. Frequent wolf-crying notwithstanding, let’s remember that the other side of that coin is “it can’t happen here, and that kind of American exceptionalism is particularly fatuous. A few days ago was the Feast of St. Alexander Schmorell of Munich, the neo-Martyr of the White Rose circle – students who opposed Hitler and were guillotined in 1943. They had opposed Hitler on the basis of Christian faith, Roman Catholic as well as Orthodox. And today, the Sunday between our two political conventions of this critical election year, we hear our Lord teach us to pray that the Kingdom of the Father may come. We hear Him tell us that the Father will give to those who ask and open to those who knock. We hear Abraham’s relentless insistence on God’s mercy for the wicked city, and we hear our Lord’s comment that even wicked people give their children good gifts and that the sleeping householder will open to his importunate neighbor just because of his persistence. In the Collect we[bt1] also recognize God as the only Source of strength and holiness, and we address God as our Ruler and Guide.
It is probably time for some consideration of the Lord’s Prayer, but that will take a few weeks. Too much for one sermon. So today, I will concentrate on the first petition. Where we ask that God’s Kingdom may come. This prayer invites a consideration of political theology – particularly appropriate for us, just now.
The Kingdom we seek is not our own, and it is not of our own making. God alone is our Ruler, we pray that God is also our Guide. Listening to the Republican Convention, I kept thinking of the Nüremberg Rallies. People mistook their Leader for their Savior. The godless, Nazi ideology idolized German nationality and Hitler as its focal point: personal embodiment of the entire German People, the living incarnation of their suffering and hope, possessing the strength of will to achieve it. Trump said again and again “I am your voice.”
The theatrical adulation was, in fact, similar to Nüremberg, right down to the airplane circling low over Lake Erie, and then the Trump Helicopter delivering the Voice – the Leader – to the auditorium. Go and watch Triumph of the Will – Leni Riefenstahl’s great documentary about the Nazi Party Congress at Nüremberg in 1934. The whole message was similar: we are a great people, downtrodden by a corrupt elite, servants of foreign enemies: venal and self-serving parasites who care nothing for us ordinary Americans, but hold us in contempt. The would-be Leader invoked every real grievance, every fear, and every misguided prejudice: immigrants, terrorists, international financial arrangements, the “terrible crimes” of Mrs. Clinton, and on and on. We Americans used to be winners, now we are losers. But I am here to change that. I am going to fix it. I am America’s destiny. I am your voice. I am your savior.
There was one way in which Mr. Trump did not mimic Hitler, and that was his constant reference to himself. I am this, I am that, I will, I know how to, I am going to…, &c. Me, me, me. Now there was certainly a cult of personality in the Third Reich, but even Hitler didn’t talk like that. Trump appears to be even more self-absorbed than Hitler. Maybe that narcissism, that infantile egoism, will be his downfall. Maybe that will save us. Maybe not. We’ll see. But the combination of that pathologically disordered character with the Nüremberg theatrics in a celebration of grievance and anger and fear makes the comparison inevitable, in my opinion.
“Lock her up!” “USA, USA”. Not far from there to Sieg Heil. “America First.” Not so far from Deutschland über alles. Maybe this is nothing more than the exaggerated fever of a political convention. Maybe not. Unfortunately, if it is the latter, we won’t know for sure until it’s too late. For now, all we have to go on is style.
So we remember the glorious Neo-Martyr Alexander of Munich and his companions, who achieved the Crown of Martyrdom through political action in this world, and in so doing advanced the Kingdom for which our Lord taught is to pray. In our election year, it is legitimate to remember that all theology is political. Some of it is good and some of it is bad. Some is genuinely evangelical and some is ediabolical. Some say that it is the duty of every Christian to support Donald Trump. This diabolical kind of political theology passes off greed and the lust for power, scapegoating and hate-mongering as reform and salvation. The genuine kind of political theology is marked by self-sacrifice and refusal to offer – or to accept – idolatrous worship. The genuine kind of political theology points toward the Kingdom that only God can bring, the Kingdom of Him Whose throne in this world is the Cross. The Kingdom for which we pray whenever we say “Our Father…”. The prayer of a little child asking Abba for bread. If we ask, we shall receive. If, in the process, like St. Alexander, we receive the Cross also, that is not to receive a stone or a scorpion. It is to enter into the heart of the Kingdom, to join Jesus Christ on His earthly throne, to join in His suffering that is the Redemption of this world.
Today a light adorns [our glorious city] the City of Munich, having within it your holy relics, O Holy Martyr Alexander;
for which sake pray to Christ God,
that He deliver us from all tribulations,
for gathered together in love we celebrate your radiant memory, imitating your bravery, standing against th godless powers and enemies.
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME, LORD JESUS!
