Sermon for Reign of Christ Sunday, November 20, 2016, "Preaching the gospel with your bags packed"

C Reign of Christ BFC 2016

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:33-43

November 20, 2016

          By now you have all probably noticed that I included the words of George Frederic Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus within the bulletin.  Handel composed the oratorio, The Messiah, containing the “Hallelujah” chorus in 1742, using Scriptural text and Psalms that were a part of the Book of Common Prayer. 

It has become tradition to stand during a performance of the “Hallelujah” chorus.  Nobody is exactly sure why, but legend has it that when King George II heard the chorus during a performance in England, he assumed it was being sung in praise of him and his reign.  So he stood that he might be rightly recognized.  When the king stood, the audience was obliged to stand with him.  “King of kings” and “Lord of lords” King George II was.  If not King George, whosoever could they be singing about?

          One of my spiritual mentors in Champaign, Illinois, a retired Disciples of Christ campus minister, told me to try and sing the “Hallelujah” chorus without any political language.  “Hum the political parts,” he told me, “and all you have left is hallelujahs.”  Jim’s point was that we have made religious faith such an impoverished romantic, sentimental practice that it barely speaks to real life at all.  And there it is, right before us, buried in the tradition of a song we consider central to that same faith.

          Jim also reminded me of the famous quote by a theologian who counseled young preachers about the reality of walking into such waters.  “Always preach the gospel with your bags packed,” he said.  It is not the nature of the gospel to make things easy, agreeable, or comfortable for those in the pews or pulpit.  University of Chicago professor and political scientist David Easton defined politics as “the authoritative allocation of values for a society.”[1]   In that definition, a focus on values, how can we not understand the inextricable ties between religious faith and politics? 

          We wax nostalgic about Congregational ancestors who provided refuge for freedom seekers that defined many churches in my home state of Illinois.  Think about that, our Congregational ancestors regularly broke federal law in the Fugitive Slave Act.  We puff out our chests remembering our Evangelical ancestors who formed the Deaconess movement in St. Louis, Missouri, providing health care for German immigrants, leading to other hospitals in the Midwest.  Advocate Health Care, based in Downers Grove, Illinois, and a descendant of that Deaconess work, is the largest integrated health care system in the State of Illinois.  But that was back then when racial tension, breaking federal law, immigration, and health care weren’t considered political issues.  Literally, thank the heavens, that these religious issues of racial tension, breaking federal law, immigration, and health care aren’t political issues in our time.  Our faith might require something of us if they were.  After all, when is the last time you have heard something in the news about immigration?

          Early Christian scholars believe that Jesus had a habit of referring to the movement he was leading as “the Kingdom of God” movement.  In Greek, βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ, literally meaning, the Empire of God.  It was a way of acknowledging, as so many Jewish prophets had done before Jesus, that the sitting ruler did not carry the authority of God and would be removed in favor of the right and just rule of God.  In the time of Jesus early life, that Augustus Caesar (“Augustus” meaning “the one to be worshipped and adored”) sitting on the throne would be removed and replaced by the Holy One of Israel.  The Empire of God stood as a critique over and against the Empire of the Romans or the Empire of Caesar. 

          Today we also heard words from the prophet Jeremiah.  The prophet Jeremiah was thrown into a well, accused by his own countryfolk of a lack of patriotism, and locked in jail for his critique of the sitting rulers of his day.   Jeremiah lashed out at the way they destroyed the lives of the poor and took advantage of the vulnerable, regularly dismissed their responsibility for their neighbor in favor of amassing their fortune and power.  In the passage before us today, Jeremiah imagines the “shepherds” of his time, “shepherds” a term regularly used for the political rulers or kings, deposed and replaced by “shepherds” or kings of God’s own choosing.  Those rulers, Jeremiah says, shall make mishpat and tzedekah, justice and righteousness, their central focus.  Here is how Jeremiah defined those terms.  Mishpat, justice, is making sure all members of the community have access to resources and goods for the sake of a viable life of dignity.  In the covenant tradition, Hebrew Scripture focuses particularly on three groups who are vulnerable to having their access to resources and goods compromised—the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant.  In a culture still largely governed by the whims and wishes of adult, Hebrew males, these groups needed an advocate.  The widow, orphan, and immigrant had no standing of their own in the senate of the square, at the bank or at the market—the places of power and wealth.  To do justice then, was to see and know life from their perspective. 

Tzedekah, righteousness, is about the active intervention into social affairs to rehabilitate society.  Tzedekah is also about having an inner integrity that is expressed through outer action.  Interrupting the status quo and working toward transformation are hard.  Nobody likes to enter into that much conflict.  Righteousness says that if interruption, transformation, and conflict need to happen to rehabilitate society, then bring it on.  No hurdles are too high, no stumbling blocks are too many which will keep us off the path.   If one says, “I value this!” but then blinks and gives up when things get tough, that person betrays themselves as something less than a righteous dude or dudette. 

And to paraphrase Dr. Cornel West, “Never forget that justice and righteousness are what love looks like in public.  They are love with legs on.”[2]

The prophet Jeremiah exhibited that he was just and righteous through his prophetic witness—exhibiting a solidarity and special concern for the poor and vulnerable. 

          Jeremiah does not ask that we be merely neutral.  As the great Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire, who worked in the slums of Brazil would say, “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and powerless means to side with the powerful, not to remain neutral.”[3]  Or the American educator Howard Zinn said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”[4] 

          Now we arrive on Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday in our liturgical year, asking whether that is just some romantic title that assents to our neutrality? Or a designation that will better define our Advent and Christmas season this year?  A new church year approaches with Advent and Christmas.  I know so often I plan to have a different Advent and Christmas only to throw up my hands a week before the season starts and say, “Well, it’s too late now.” 

We know the onslaught is coming and it would seem that what was once, at the very least, a segue season in Thanksgiving has been lost, tossed aside, in favor of getting the season started sooner and sooner.   Those orange and black M & M’s and Hershey’s kisses were replaced in record time by green and red ones this year.

          The prophet Jeremiah knew.  The first thing to go in God’s created order is an appointed time of Sabbath.  Remember Sabbath?  It is the idea that times of rest and re-creation are necessary for the thriving of all creation.  Slaves work 24/7.  Now the store times are extending sooner and later.   More and more businesses, even in a city dominated by evangelical Christian churches will be open on Thanksgiving Day.  It is to remember that what really dominates our fair city, even in our Christian churches, are rhythms of productions and consumption.  It is to acknowledge that the culture is cutting further and further into what it means to thrive.  We will have to be more and more intentional to not let the culture carry us on a wave of convenience that means always on, always open, and trample others to get the biggest sale.  Find meaning in glitz, gluttony, and greed.  In other words, don’t let the tryptophan stop you from a bag of thinly cut, highly-salted fries late Thursday night. 

          It ripples out.  People have to work those hours.  And as long as they are offered, someone will always want or maybe even need those hours.  Even the earth, which needs its own cycles of Sabbath and rest, loses its balance and begins to spin out of control.

          The culture comes like a runaway train, maybe even like a like an indiscriminate natural disaster, making us whisper, “Thank God it wasn’t me” this time around.   I didn’t get crushed by the crowds.  I didn’t go without family or friends.  But we should be asking in the midst of the devastation, “What intentional practices will we be about this Advent and Christmas season that let everyone know that Christ does reign in our lives, that Christ is King, stepping into a throne originally ruled by a Caesar—a Caesar who wants us to stay busy, buy more, eat more, and exhaust ourselves?”   To the point where the mere mention of Advent and Christmas 2016 will fill us with a holy dread.

          How shall these holy seasons be filled with not one more thing tacked on to our list, but a wholesale replacement of the usual cultural practice to grant ourselves Sabbath and rest, love our neighbor and strengthen that connection a little more, display our love and care for the earth a little more? How do we come out of the scary and terrible Scriptural texts for Advent and Christmas to hope in the same way the gospel hopes?  Those hopes are found not at the center of Caesar’s spirituality, Rome, nor at the center of Herod’s theology, in Jerusalem, but in a young, suspect Jewish girl from a backwater town.  The gospel passages from Matthew will tell us that she and her child will be hunted as refugees and immigrants. 

          The crazy Revised Common Lectionary places not only the Jeremiah passage before us this morning, but, in speaking about Christ the King, the crucifixion story, a story of political execution.  It is a reminder that if we are to claim the Reign, the Empire of Christ, Christ as our King, we will need courage to join in solidarity and friendship with those people who are persecuted, tortured, and executed by the Caesars of the world.  Caesar must be de-throned not only in our hearts, but through practices that say we welcome the Empire of God.   For the crazy and odd thing about calling Christ as King or Caesar is that we recognize our power comes from not being “over” others but having “power with” and “power for” others.  Christ as King is a parable that somehow does not come together.  It subverts the notion of king and suggests that God in Christ should also be about making sure that we work alongside the atheist and non-believer, we join hands with the most vulnerable and hurting, we cast our lot with the crucified in the world.  Biblical Christianity is always suspicious of a religious faith that cares more about power over and winning than identifying with those who might be most vulnerable, the political losers.

But as we begin to enter one of the most holy seasons in our Christian liturgical calendar, let us not add one more thing to our list this year.  Do not walk away from this worship service saying, “And now Mike wants me to find time to rest too!?  When is that going to happen?”   Rather, write a thoughtful card to one loved one, who would understand, and tell them that rather than a gift, you would like them to give to the thing where they volunteer, or have passion for the world, or are most human and to do it in your name.  Count it as a sign of hope for the world.  Write one note to your local Congressperson, thanking them for their service, but challenging them to specifically adopt policies that would bring more shalom—wholeness, connectedness, and well-being.  Count it as a sign of peace on earth.  Replace a day of shopping with this.  Each day, take five minutes, start out with five, and just dwell on the love of God for you.  See it as a gift and God’s intent for your joy.  Finally, turn off all the lights in your house for one half hour each night and light Advent candles, remembering the unquenchable and insatiable love God has for this planet.  In that time of small light and surrounding darkness, pray that you might mirror that love.  Remember people on the South Side of Billings or in Syria, during that time and ask God softly each night what must be done to turn back a season that probably does more for ravaging the planet than any other.

          Let Christ reign in your heart and be part of your regular practice during these upcoming seasons.  May he be your king—spiritually, religiously, politically, and economically.  When Christmas arrives, let it not be said that we have to hum all the words to the “Hallelujah Chorus.” 

          Look up ahead!  There is some crazy guy baptizing people in the Jordan River.  He is not found in Rome or Jerusalem but out in the wilderness.  During these Advent and Christmas seasons, let us draw close enough to hear what he is saying.  So that the Empire of God movement might continue through you.  And let God in Christ reign forever and ever.  Amen.

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[1] James Hanley, “What Is Politics?”  The League, December 21, 2010.  http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/2010/12/21/what-is-politics/.  The other common definition Hanley quotes is from Lasswell, “who gets what, when, how.”  If justice is about the material bases of life, as John Dominic Crossan suggests, then politics and justice should have an intimate relationship. When Hanley, in his critique, states, “’Politics’ as a term should not be limited to any one set of activities, but should be applied to a class of human behaviors that have a common purpose,” how can we not understand that as intersecting with a definition of “church.”

[2] “Cornel West’s Catastrophic Love,” bigthink, http://bigthink.com/videos/cornel-wests-catastrophic-love.

[3] Paolo Freire, The Politics of Education:  Culture, Power, and Liberation (Westport, CT:  Bergin & Garvey, 1985), p. 122.

[4] Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:  A Personal History of Our Times (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1994).

Beware the namecallers

Article printed in Billings Gazette in Faith and Values Section, July 16, 2016

As we entered into the Scriptural study for this summer, the Revised Common Lectionary led us through Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  In the central part of this letter, one of Paul’s earliest writings, we find one of the earliest baptismal creeds, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female in the service of Jesus Christ.”  Think, for a moment, how radical that creed is in Paul’s time.  Paul acknowledges the wide diversity found underneath the boot of the Roman Empire and then suggests that this diversity becomes one in mission and ministry with Christ.  At a time of strong patriarchy, gender and sexuality are not cause for excluding people from the table of Christ.  At a time of disparate social and economic status, one’s place in the hierarchy is not a reason for excluding people from the table of Christ. 

Even more radical, to suggest that Jews and Greeks in Paul’s time might break bread together seemed impossible. Jews and Greeks were mortal, violent enemies at the time of Paul.  Greeks massacred Jews and burned down their synagogues during a circus in Antioch.  In turn, Jews slaughtered Greeks.  So to get people together at the table of Christ regardless of religious, ethnic, or cultural identity would have been truly a miracle—world-transforming. 

What Paul sees is a Roman culture of law and order that is based on aspiring status, hierarchy, and privilege.  Roman law and order established peace through military might

and economic domination.  Roman peace was maintained by Rome and its Caesar’s “power over” other peoples.   So Rome had a vested interested in deciding who was Roman and who was barbarian, who was in and who was out, who was welcome to the table and who was not.  As a Jew, Paul also suggests that too often Roman law and order had co-opted and conflated Jewish Law to move Jewish Law from values of “neighborliness” and “power with” and “solidarity” to spiritual practices and a way of life that closely mirrored the values of Rome and its Caesars. 

Rome regularly defined its enemies through art and

architecture (the newspaper of the ancient world) by referencing the conquered and the vanquished as the wild and unruly barbarians over and against the law-abiding and peace-giving sons of god known as Rome and its Caesars.  In that art and architecture, Roman State violence and massacre is justified to keep the peace.  Roman general Manlius Vulso justified the massacre or enslavement of 40,000 Galatians by calling them “the enemies of Rome.”  In his victory speech, the Galatians were regularly referenced as “terrorists.”  In fact, Rome art, architecture, and literature often labelled the Galatians as the people of terror and chaos.  Beware the people who call a whole group of people names:  savages, barbarians, terrorists, or thugs.  Such name-calling of others is often a prelude to the justification of State power to do violence and death against those we call “other.”

As I survey the current state of affairs in religion and faith, I believe that baptismal creed is still just as radical as it was in the First Century.  Paul believed authentic Jewish faith should be found in values of “neighborliness”, “solidarity”, and “power with” others.  Christians are to be baptized into that faith.  I would argue that too often Rome now co-opts Christian faith to make it one focused on law and order, who is in and out (both at table and for eternity), and “power over.”  

We can hardly pick up the newspaper without some headline about Christians who seek to exclude based on race, ethnicity, culture, religion, socio-economic status, gender, or sexual identity.   The Roman gospel is a seductive gospel.  For as Christians imitate the Roman gospel, values of neighborliness are trumped in favor of success, wealth, and “power over” others.  “Do you not see how faithful we are,” co-opted Christians are heard proclaiming, “for God has given us such success and wealth!” Paul saw how easy it was to co-opt the world-transforming news of Christ’s baptism.  This is the reason Paul preached “Christ crucified.”  Christ is the consummate conquered and vanquished “other” whose baptism undercuts the empire’s “power over” gospel.   

On the third Saturday of every month this summer, at 10:00 a.m., I will be in the alleyway behind our church for an hour to offer the baptism Paul teaches, the one of Christ crucified, to those in the Billings community who share in that hope of “power with” so that our grand diversity does not keep us from being one in common cause, love, and neighborliness.  For there is neither Jew or Greek (religion, ethnicity, and culture), slave or free (social or economic status), male or female (gender or sexuality) in love, mutuality, and neighborliness.  No baptismal records will be kept.  Not status will be conferred in these baptisms.  We just want to continue a grand tradition of welcoming you as a cherished, beloved, and precious part of God’s plan of neighborliness.