Saturday, November 26, 2016
Advent I - Year A - November 27, 2016
Sermon for the First Sunday
of Advent
Year A ~ November 27,
2016
Holy Trinity & St.
Anskar
Let us then lay aside the works of darkness
and put
on the armor of light.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided
Trinity
Vigilance, repentance, and birth — or, better, gestation —
are the themes of Advent.
Christians are forward-looking people: people who expect
redemption in the future. We expect redemption not only for ourselves, as
persons, but for the world as a whole. Therefore, what happens in the history
of this world is spiritually significant for us. Something that I predict will
come to be seen as a major historical event is now taking place at Standing
Rock.
Plenty of disasters happen in history. The Gospel does not
promise otherwise: to struggle against the Prince of this World is to struggle
against human sin and wickedness — spiritual wickedness in high places. We who
believe the Gospel and hope in its promises are not surprised by the apparent
triumph of those forces. Our hope, which the Epistle to the Hebrews calls the “evidence of things unseen,” is
the assurance that such setbacks are but temporary. After all, our world is a
world of darkness — or rather a world in which light struggles with darkness
and all its works. Today, we hear the Apostle call us to cast aside those works
and to put on “the armor of light.” As in any struggle, there will be setbacks,
but the outcome is not in question: God has judged the world, made it right, re-created it.
Darkness and light — these images come straight out of
Persia. It was the Zoroastrian Cyrus of Persia who restored the captive Jews to
Zion. The Scripture calls him liberator and actually Messiah. “You are my Anointed though you do not know my Name."
Zoroastrianism is a form of monotheism, with a strong emphasis on the struggle
of light and darkness in this world. In the process of liberating the Jews,
Cyrus had a very big influence on later Judaism, and hence upon early
Christianity.
This influence extended throughout the Roman Empire, to such an
extent that Christianity’s biggest competitor in the first and second centuries
was a universal religion called Mithraism.
Mithra was a soldier in the army of Light, fighting the forces of darkness, in Zoroastrian tradition. No doubt Christianity picked up some of its themes.
Advent is the season of gathering darkness. Each of the
seasons of the Church year invites us to look at our own historical
circumstance in a particular way. Right now, the darkness is gathering, but so are
the forces of light. We must bear in mind that darkness is the absence of light, not its opposite. This is how we avoid the
mistake of dualism, to which Zoroastrianism is sometimes compared. Christians
say that Evil has no substance. The Light of God shines in the darkness, and
the darkness cannot overcome it. There is no Power in the universe that can
oppose God. God has no equal, and therefore no opposite.
That is why, in our
ancient mythology, it is the holy Archangel Michael who fights against the
apostate angels. Lucifer is opposite not
to God, but to Michael. God has no opposite. To “cast away the works of
darkness" is to oppose Lucifer with the “armor of light.”
The name, Lucifer, bearer
of light, is therefore ironic: Lucifer is the angel who imagines himself to
be an alternative source of light — just as much a source of light as God.
Lucifer thinks that he bears light in
himself, not merely as a reflection of the Divine Light. Lucifer insists that
he is in his own right, like God. Michael opposes that pretension, asking
derisively: “Who is like God?”. Tat is what his name means. Michael is Lucifer’s opposite, not God.
Like
Michael, we are God’s instruments in opposing the Prince of this World. The old
rite use to pray that the newly-baptized might “fight manfully under Christ’s
banner against the world the flesh and the devil.” This prayer for a tiny, newborn
infant usually elicited at least some giggles. But it is not a joke.
The ultimate instrument of God’s Liberation is the Cross: the
tool of ultimate, imperial evil, the worst thing that the Prince of this World could do.
Jesus Christ has turned that pinnacle of evil into ultimate good. The strongman
has been bound, and his house despoiled — his slaves set free. He writhes around
kicking in fury, his death throes unleash destructive power; and they can
inflict a great deal of damage. But in the end there is no question of his
winning. The Prince of this World has been defeated.
We believe in this Gospel and hope in its promise; we do not
hope in the natural processes of this world to bring forth the Kingdom. The Son
of Man will come like a thief in the night, that is, when we least expect it,
and not as a result of the natural fruition of the world’s own internal
processes. Our calling is to expect His Coming always — to stay awake during
the night and watch, clothed in the armor of light. While the Prince flails
around, not knowing what he’s doing or that he is doomed, we are called to stay
awake to the fact that we are no longer his subjects, but heirs of the promise.
As the forces of darkness, in the form of meaningless, lying promises, xenophobia, and bigotry of all kinds, seem to be getting the upper
hand, it is not mere coincidence that forces of light make their appearance at Standing
Rock. There gather people from all walks of life from all over the world, from
all nations and peoples, led by the most oppressed of all, in the largest
gathering of indigenous peoples ever to take place in North America, or
anywhere. The symbolism is profound: the Missouri River, the centerpiece of the
Louisiana purchase, which Pres. Jefferson got from Napoleon, doubling the size of the United States and ushering in our own Imperial period, which is now coming
to an end. Thomas Jefferson, who referred to the ancestors of the Protectors as
“savages” in the Declaration of Independence. The river where they gather calls
to mind many of those “works of darkness” that we must “cast away.” So the Standing
Rock Protectors gather at the Missouri River to oppose the darkness of
imperialism, white supremacy, greedy despoliation of creation, and the mindless
lemming-rush of global-warming denial.
To stay awake means to “put on the armor of light” and to watch
in hope, but that does not mean passive waiting. Gospel hope means repentance,
and work to prepare the way of the Lord, which we will consider next week.
AMEN!
MARANATHA!
COME, LORD JESUS!
+
All Saints' Sunday - November 6, 2016
Sermon for the Sunday
after All Saints’
Year C ~ November 6, 2016
|
|
Holy Trinity & St.
Anskar
One thing have I asked of the Lord and that
alone I seek:
To behold the fair beauty of the Lord.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided
Trinity
Well, I think it’s time for a philosophical riddle: if a tree
falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, is there any sound?.
It all depends on how you define sound: in one sense there isn’t any, because sound is a perception that occurs in the
brain. Still, no one would deny that there are sound waves, would they?
By analogy, beauty is real and its
reality is independent of any perception of it, just as the sound waves are
real in the uninhabited forest. One hears that “beauty is in the eye of the
beholder.” That is only partially true, and in its partiality it is misleading
and even false. It is all that the experience of beauty can be to a philosophical
materialist, that is to those who acknowledge no reality beyond what the senses
can perceive.
Materialism rules out a priori
the notion that there is such a thing as Unseen Reality According to
this presupposition, this commitment of faith, beauty can only be in the eye of
the beholder. There is no such thing as Beauty in Reality, independent of the human experience.
I find it interesting that many
philosophers of science are nevertheless happy to admit that new theories of reality
are sometimes preferred over others, some solutions of mathematical problems
over others, because they are “more elegant” sometimes scientists even openly describe them as more “beautiful.”
What, then, is this scientific criterion of beauty, if not a recognition that
it is objective, and not merely a subjective, non-rational experience?
Following the Greeks, especially Plato,
Christianity inclines toward the view that Beauty is real, as God is real,
because Beauty is of God’s essence, independent of human experience.
Furthermore, the Saints are perfectly beautiful because they reflect the beauty
of God. As an early Church Father put it The
Glory of God is a Living human being. Beauty is real, as God is Real.
The beauty of nature reflects the
beauty of God, too. That is why we rejoice in it yet at the same time we
experience a sense of longing: a longing to unite with it which can feel like an
erotic longing to possess it. Whenever I experience something really beautiful
— like a passage of my favorite music, or a perfect autumn day with its display
of created glory, or any of the other echoes of Divine Reality that surround us — I feel longing. We are told by our
spiritual masters that this phenomenon is longing for God. When I am moved to
tears of longing over a piece of music or an autumn day, it is because I have
experienced, momentarily, the Glory of God, and felt my own separation from it.
I think the same is true when I nearly weep at the sight of Pope Francis.
Which brings me to the celebration
of All Saints Sunday. For, above all other characteristics, the Saints are
beautiful. What is more beautiful than the poor in spirit, the meek, the
merciful, the pure in heart, the hungry for justice, and even those who mourn?
Since what they mourn is suffering and death, which God has come to destroy in
the person of His Son? Is not their mourning a longing for God? Are not their tears
of repentance, that is expressions of the intense longing that comes upon us
when our consciousness is ravaged by Divine Beauty, when our mind is changed in that terrible way?
These, then, are the Saints. Today
we celebrate all of them, unknown as well as known. The great saints, the
famous ones remembered officially by the Church together with the much greater
number of incognito saints, are all reflections of Divine Beauty, of the ineffable
Reality that surrounds us. As Dostoyevsky’s character remarks, the great
tragedy of our life is that a paradise of beauty blooms around us and we fail
to see it. Or, as Leon Bloy’s title character in The Woman Who Was Poor remarks in the last line of the book, “the
only tragedy is that we are not all saints.”
True enough, but it is true because we are all called to be saints, and we have every reason to hope that we all
shall be. Today’s observance reminds us of that, and that as we are surrounded
by the Paradise of Beauty, so we are surrounded by that “great cloud of
witnesses, whom no one could number” — the unknown, hidden holy ones, who have
become like God, who through Beholding the Divine Beauty have “been conformed
to the Beauty gazed upon”, and made partakers of Divine Life.
Those who have tried to tell of
this experience have offered the analogy of a piece of iron heated by fire. The
iron’s nature is thoroughly transformed into the nature of fire, as it glows
red and then white-hot, without ceasing
to be iron. So, we hope, is the life of human consciousness, utterly
transfigured in the Divine Beauty of the Beloved.
Alleluia!
The LORD is glorious in the saints.
Pentecost 24 - Proper 26C - October 30, 2016
Sermon for The Twenty-fourth
Sunday After Pentecost
Year C, Proper 26 ~ October
30, 2016
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
He was trying to see who Jesus was,
but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in
stature.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided
Trinity
Operating on the ancient theory that almost no detail in holy
Scripture is insignificant let’s look at some details in today’s Gospel:
1. the
significance of Jericho,
2. the
significance of Zacchaeus’s name,
3. the fact
that he was short,
4. Jesus’s
call to him.
A quick look at Wikipedia
reveals that Jericho was a pretty rich city, owing to the lucrative balsam
trade, and tax-collectors would’ve been quite rich indeed. Jericho was also the nearest town to the winter residence of Herod the Great. Below sea level,
near the place where the Jordan enters the Dead Sea, it is always warm, and in
the summer dreadfully hot. The proximity of the Royal Palace would also be good
for business. Finally, modern archaeology awards Jericho the title of the
oldest continuously-inhabited town on earth. There are signs of unbroken
settlement going back to the seventh millennium B.C. So, Jericho could be taken to
represent all of human civilization. There are also archaeological signs of the
destruction of the city walls at about the time of Joshua! So Jericho could
also be taken as a symbol for human obduracy, futile resistance to the will of
God.
Zacchaeus means pure. In some Christian traditions, he
is taken as a figure for those who, though defiled, are made pure by the grace
of God. They do take some initiative themselves, as Zacchaeus did by climbing
the Sycamore tree, apparently out of curiosity and because he was short and he
knew that he would not see anything unless he climbed. In a way, like
Zacchaeus, we are all of diminutive stature, spiritually speaking, and we must
take some initiative to climb up higher if we would see God. So, Zacchaeus
wanted to see Jesus. He didn’t know
Who Jesus was, and the Gospel said he wanted to. He had no idea of what his
seeing would entail. Neither do we. But it proved to be costly to Zacchaeus. He
wanted to “see who Jesus was.” He did, and it changed his life. If we spiritual
midgets “see who Jesus is,” it changes ours too.
For Jesus called him by name and invited Himself to dinner
and, presumably, overnight accommodation. Jesus already knew who he was: that
he was rich, and that he was much-despised because of the source of his wealth:
collaboration with the Romans in collecting taxes. People grumbled because
Jesus favored him, and not them, with an overnight visit.
Elsewhere in the Gospels, Jesus says that it is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Not impossible, but very difficult. What IS impossible is for less-rich persons
to enter the Kingdom, as long as they delight in the spiritual difficulties of
the rich. There is a certain spiritual luxury in that delight — a kind of
wallowing in imaginary spiritual riches — a delight that is one of the seven
deadly sins, right up there with avarice: envy. It is related to our feelings
of relief that we are not like the Pharisee of last week’s Gospel. That sense
of relief is actually envy. Contrary to popular usage, envy is not the desire
to have what another has, but the desire to deprive the other of it and to take
pleasure in the other’s downfall. Delight in the misfortune of another is envy,
including delight in the spiritual delusion of the Pharisee. Dejection or anger
at the good fortune of another is also envy, exemplified by the
grumbling residents of Jericho at the good fortune of Zacchaeus. We who delight
in the words of Isaiah about God’s disgust at the ritual offerings of the rich
need to be real careful here! Because envy is just as bad as avarice – the
inordinate love of riches.
So we have to consider the camel and the needle’s eye
alongside Zacchaeus in the Sycamore. He was rich. Not only was he rich, he had
become so, apparently, by dishonesty and collaboration with the foreign occupation.
As long as he stayed as he was, he was sunk. But something caused him to want
to see Jesus, and since he was short,
he climbed the tree. Whatever motivated him to do that also motivated him to
volunteer to pay any ill-gotten gains back fourfold and to give half of the
rest to the poor. In other words, he was willing to do what he could to purify himself, and to make himself fit
to be Jesus’s host. Even after he gave up half of his wealth, he would probably
still be pretty rich, but that promise was enough for Jesus to observe that salvation has come to this house.
This incident comes right after the Parable of the Publican
and the Pharisee, which we heard last week. It continues the gospel’s
insistence that those who judge by appearances are in for unpleasant surprises.
As God says in Isaiah, My thoughts are
not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. The crowd who condemned
Zacchaeus judged him to be a sinner. And it sounds like he was. But contact
with Jesus changed his mind — caused him
to repent. Notice that Jesus didn’t tell him he had to give back his
riches, he volunteered that as soon as Jesus asked him for hospitality. The
rich who learn how to use their riches well are not condemned, but those who
condemn them are on thin ice. Envy is as bad as avarice.
What brought Zacchaeus to repentance, to the desire to serve
God by offering hospitality? According to today’s Collect, it was grace. The
grace that “goes before” any righteous action of our own. “It is only by your
gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service.” Jesus
called Zacchaeus by name, just as He
calls each of us by name at our baptism. And by this Divine grace, Zacchaeus
was changed, purified so that he could live out the significance of his name
and offer God true and laudable service.
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME LORD JESUS
