Saturday, July 01, 2017
Holy Apostles
Sermon for Pentecost 4
(Sunday within the octave of
the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul)
Year A July 2 , 2017
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
Anyone
who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.
+In
the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
The feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, June 29, commemorates
the traditional day the Empire killed them. Tradition also reveres them as the
apostolic founders of the Church in Rome. These two Jews, very different in
background and social position, brought the Gospel to the Imperial capital.
There’s lots of symbolic meaning here. Ancient Hebrew monotheism transcends its
ethnic roots, extending to all nations, and polytheistic paganism embraces
monotheism. Peter, the rough working-class Apostle, is joined by Paul, the
Roman citizen of the Diaspora — not even from Palestine but from Asia minor,
who spoke Greek as well as he spoke Aramaic possibly better, the disciple of
the most noted rabbi of the time, Gamaliel. Peter and Paul represent the
universality of the Church — They are the Catholic Apostles, par excellence.
The Sunday after the feast of the Holy Apostles
Peter and Paul often falls around the time of our national holiday which makes
it a good time to reflect on the relationship of church and state. I mean that
in a broad sense, not in our usual legal, constitutional sense. All our
scriptures make it clear that human political arrangements are temporary and
instrumental. That is, when they promote God’s purpose of peace and justice
among creatures, God may bless them, but when they work against those purposes,
God shows them no favor. Among the worst kinds of idolatry, also among the most
prevalent, is the identification of one’s own society, culture, or nation with
the Kingdom of God.
One reason the Hebrew Scriptures seem authentic
is the criticism they often level against the People whom God has chosen to be
His own. The basic message is that the status of chosen people is not something
any nation can claim, but only receive as the gift of God, and the chosen status
can turn into judgment if the people ignore God’s commandments.
Today’s Collect identifies the Apostle and
Prophets as twofold foundation of the Church. The prophets leave no doubt that
God insists on our obedience to commandments: not so much commandments about
ritual purity and religious observance, but commandments of social justice. If
this is true of the descendants of Abraham by blood, how much more is it true
of any other country or nation that thinks of itself as specially favored?
From the beginning, we Americans have thought of
ourselves that way. Some even went so far as to dream that we could rebuild a
whole new society here, free of Original Sin. A new secular order, as our motto on the Great Seal — found in the back of the dollar bill — proclaims. Deep in
our national DNA is the notion of American exceptionalism: we are new and
different. We are specially favored by God. Even as we killed indigenous people
and enslaved Africans. But this is in fact a kind of apostasy, a blasphemy, a
form of idolatry because it places the nation on the throne in place of God.
That is not to say that the United States — or
any nation — may never be used by
God. But it is a warning against the kind of national pride that easily turns
into idolatry. Scripture threatens unpleasant consequences for that! As long as
we — or any other nation —genuinely try to advance the cause of peace and
justice on earth, we may have God’s favor. But whenever we begin to think that
God favors us and so we can do whatever we want, we are in for a big surprise.
I’m afraid that surprise may now be upon us.
I think of our present time as a “slow-motion
crisis.” We have elected an incompetent, infantile man to be president. A Hebrew
prophet would take this as the judgment of God, which we have called down upon
ourselves. Of course the ancient Hebrews were not individualists: they did not
think in terms of individual rights or deserts. It’s fine to quote H.L. Mencken
and say that “democracy is the form of government in which the people get
exactly what they deserve”, but what about all of us who didn’t vote for that
nincompoop? Well, modern human rights law may take a dim view of collective
punishment, but the Hebrew Scriptures didn’t. When the nation departs from the
way of the righteous, everybody suffers –
even the individually innocent.
All of this is important to remember in conjunction
with our national holiday. I do not intend to turn it into a day of mourning by
reciting our innumerable transgressions. I just want to observe that human
empires sometimes serve God, and sometimes they don’t. The Roman Empire served
to help spread the Gospel throughout the entire known world (at least that part
of the known world mattered to anyone in
that culture), and then having served that purpose, it declined and fell — or
at least changed into something very different.
We remember Peter and Paul as the founders of the
Church in Rome. According to tradition, both died there on the same day — one
crucified, the other beheaded as a Roman citizen. Although the Empire may be an
instrument, it is never the friend of the Church. The Gospel would spread under
the protection of the Empire, and eventually conquer it, even though it killed
the first apostles.
One important, underlying message of all this is
that parochial or ethnocentric religion — religion too closely identified with
one ethnic group — must become universal.
Anyone who loves father or mother more
than Me is not worthy of Me.
These difficult words we heard last week could well apply here: if you
think God favors you particularly because of your nationality, if you love your
own ancestry, your own blood more than you love Jesus, then you are not worthy
of Jesus. The Gospel is for everybody, not for any particular bloodline.
The Roman Empire was universal, and the Good News
that Peter and Paul brought to Rome was salvation for everybody, not only for the
blood descendants of Abraham. As the Empire was universal, so would be the New
Israel, the Catholic Church. All human classifications, all divisions, all
categories would be transcended and abolished. Just as there was one Emperor,
there would be one Lord and Savior of all peoples. Once that was firmly
established, the Empire had served its purpose. The Empire became Christian,
and more or less continued in Constantinople and Moscow right up into the last
century (remember that Tsar means Cæsar.) But these Imperial tools
eventually outlived their usefulness and disappeared. While the universal
Church continued to prosper.
As our own nation and our own world Empire
declines, dramatically, let us not be amazed. We cannot predict the future: it
may be that the United States of America has served whatever purpose God
intended for it — and we can all guess what that might be. [For my part, I
think it has something to do with the promotion of universal human rights.] But
then it may also be that God will repent, turn back our decline, cleanse us,
and lead us in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.
It is possible, but don’t count on it. In the end,
the Gospel is opposed to Empire. Sooner or later, the Empire will attack the
messengers of the Gospel, crucify and behead them as Rome did to Peter and
Paul. But the Holy Apostles will have the last word.
ALLELUIA
THE LORD IS GLORIOUS
IN THE SAINTS
COME LET US ADORE
ALLELUIA
