Proper 23 (28) (2007): "The Church in Exile"
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-12; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19
preached by the Rev. Preston Parsons
As I finish up this series on Jeremiah today, I thought it is a good a time as any to let you know why think that Jeremiah is so important to us, and why I’ve chosen to preach these last few of Sundays on Jeremiah.
Why Jeremiah is so important for us, in this parish and in the church more broadly, can be summed up in one word: exile. Jeremiah is important for us to read and listen to because Jeremiah speaks to a people making the transition between establishment and exile, a people making the shift away from security and into uncertainty. My hope is that by way of Jeremiah we will be able to make those same transitions, that we too will move from establishment and security, into uncertainty and exile.
Strange hope, isn’t it. Strange to hope that we might become less established, and less secure. But remember that Jeremiah hoped for the same thing – but not because he had any great desire to actually be in exile. Rather, Jeremiah’s desire was for the people to see the truth of their situation, and the truth was that the people were about to go into exile. Similarly, if we took a moment to look around us, we would also see that we act like the church is still a well established cultural force, that we are far more secure than we are, when whether we like it, want it, desire it or not, the church is well on her way into exile from the culture and the world around us. This is true here, locally at St. Mary Magdalene.
So, what do you think? Are you used to thinking this way about the church? Are you used to thinking that we are a people in exile? Is it safe to say that not that long ago, Christianity and the practices associated with Christianity, were much more common? That more people used to go to church? That most of our public institutions, like schools and places of government, wouldn't see much conflict between being a good citizen and being a Christian?
It’s fair to say that not that long ago it was respectable to be a Christian. The church could assume that people would come to worship, because that's what good citizens did. We came to church, and we prayed in school. And no civil servant, MP or MLA, would get publicly derided for getting together with other Christians to pray. You could baptize children with the assumption that they would absorb Christian values outside the church as well as in Sunday School. You could marry people assuming that the surrounding culture would support marriage as a fundamentally Christian institution.
But those days are gone. We may not be physically uprooted like the people of Judah; we may not be suffering violence at the hands of a foreign army; but if we were honest about the world around us, we would see that Christianity is far from established, and we are far from secure. We are in an exile from a world where being a Christian can no longer be taken for granted, where nominal Christian values can no longer be assumed, and where it no longer makes sense to most people to darken the door of a church come Sunday morning.
There is no longer much social advantage to being a Christian: going to church isn’t going to get you that promotion; going to church won’t get you elected shop steward; and to pray in public might mean getting sneered at.
***
A few of us are going into the neighborhood to meet with local leaders of places like schools and community clubs. It's hard to describe what its like when I call people up and say "Hello, I'm calling from St. Mary Magdalene, a local Anglican parish. We'd love to come by and get to know you."
(And that is really what we're doing, too – simply hoping to get to know leaders in the neighbourhood, in order to build a sense of what the needs in St. Vital might be. They are meetings without agendas. We don't ask people to do anything, but to let us get to know them and to get a sense of their work.)
But whenever I call, and I say "I'm calling from St. Mary Magdalene . . ." there is a very awkward silence. An anxious silence. It's like people are thinking "what in the world do the Christians want with me . . ." The first response is not trust. The first response is not warmth. The first response is anxiety.
Now, so far so good. We haven’t been turfed out and no one has said no to meeting, nor do I expect they will. Once people realize that we genuinely just want to get to know them, people warm up. But I am coming away confirmed in my suspicion that we are now somewhere in-between establishment and exile, and that we can no longer assume that Christianity and the church is a meaningful and positive part of most people’s lives.
***
Am I depressing you yet? Probably, at least a little. Exile does suck. As we lose standing in the culture around us, we can no longer assume that people will just come to church (because that's just what folks do, they go to church), and when Christians are no longer automatically trusted, it really does suck for us!
But can you see why I've been preaching about truthfulness? So long as we operate like we are well-established, so long as we aren't truthful about our exile, we won't survive the cultural shift around us. We are going into exile, and the sooner we realize that, the better. So long as we assume that there is significant continuity between the culture around us and the practice of the Christian life, when there isn’t, we will shift with the culture right out of Christian practice!
This is why Jeremiah asks us over and over to remember the God who saves. When Jeremiah encourages us to remember what makes us the people of God – that we are a people who owe our lives to the saving God – Jeremiah helps us see that to love God does not always mean taking the world on its own terms.
***
In our reading for today Jeremiah is writing a letter to people in exile. When you’re in exile there are a number of temptations, as Jeremiah knew: one of the big ones is to cower in the corner in hopelessness. The world might not be totally against us when we are in exile; but it certainly isn’t for us, either. The first intuition of the world around us is not to support us in being Christian. And when this happens, we become tempted to take care of our own, to disengage from the communities around us, and to care for our immediate church family, longing for how things once were and romanticizing the past.
Shall we withdraw? Shall we think small, caring only for ourselves? There’s something in your heart that chafes at that, isn’t there. But to act like we are secure and established, like the world is on our side waiting to do us favours, will mean this: we will think small and ending up caring for ourselves by default.
But God would not have it be so. What God gives to that other community in exile – the one that Jeremiah wrote to – was a charge to think big. To take care of one another in the community of faith, to be sure – but not only to care for the community of faith. God called that people out of a closed sectarianism and into great responsibility, a missional responsibility.
“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,” says God to the Israelites in Babylon, “and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in [the] welfare [of Babylon] you will find your welfare." God asked that community of exiles not to despair, nor to think small, but to think big and to care for the strangers around them: because for Jeremiah and the prophets of the Old Testament, exile is where God promises a work of profound newness – exile is where we find a newness grounded in the retrieval of the past, in our memory of the God who saves. Even if we find ourselves in a strange place and in an unfamiliar time.
To put it simply: exile is where God is most powerfully at work.
***
This too is my hope for us, and why I find Jeremiah such an important voice. Let us be truthful: the world is changing around us; much of the world is pretty lukewarm towards us; much of the world doesn’t care too much about what we’re doing.
But it is also my hope that this doesn’t lead us into despair, or lead us to think small.
My hope is that we think big, that we engage the welfare of the people around us, and that we take on this great responsibility that God gives us precisely when we are in exile: the responsibility for mission, the responsibility to care in a big way.
My hope is that we embrace our exile, because it is exactly here, through his call to faithfulness in Him where God's great hope for us is most strong; it is exactly here where God's great hope for the world around us is most strong; it is in exile, where we are now, that God is most powerfully at work.
Showing posts with label Ordinary Time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ordinary Time. Show all posts
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Proper 9 (14) (2007): "Being the Body"
Proper 9 (14) (2007): "Being the Body"
2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
preached by the Rev. Preston Parsons, July 8th, 2007
I'm going to start this morning by talking about a finger. It is an especially long finger. This finger belongs to John the Baptist, and it is in a painting by a painter by the name of Grunewald. In this painting, just above John the Baptist's hand, read the words "He must increase, I must decrease."
Where is John the Baptist's finger pointing? It points to Jesus, but not only Jesus: but to Jesus on the cross. John the Baptist, with his long index finger, points to Christ crucified.
It was the favourite painting of one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, Karl Barth, because for Barth this was the task of any theologian, any preacher: to point. To point away from him or herself, and to Christ crucified.
By this action of pointing, the priest, the preacher, and the church, all live up to our vocation, becoming what we are pointing to – we become the body of Christ by pointing to Christ and the cross.
***
I think it's about time to talk about preaching. And after that, to talk about the eucharist, and get some preliminaries clear about the role of the priest and the preacher.
I'd like for us to begin by turning to Galatians, specifically to verse 14 and 15 in chapter 6, where Paul writes: "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!"
Paul's opponents were claiming converts to the Mosaic law. They were counting circumcisions because circumcision was the first observation of the law for any convert to the law.
But for Paul, there is no boasting, no story to tell, no story about his success, no personal illustration apart from the cross of Christ and new creation in the resurrection. Paul does not wish to tell any story, to boast and tell personal anecdotes about himself or what he has accomplished in the Galatians:
"May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!"
And in the end, this is his only story, and if he has a personal story to tell, it is about how the world has been crucified to him, and him to the world, but only through the cross of Christ. All other stories, his own, and the story of the Galatians,and the story of the whole world, is known only through the cross of Christ and his resurrection.
***
I spoke about this last week, about the central story Christians tell. The story central to our faith is that of the crucifixion of Christ, and that of the resurrection. This narrative, this story is the story that makes sense of our whole lives as Christians. This is the story that precedes and makes sense of our experience. This is how we make sense of scripture
and the life of the church. The story of the crucifixion is how we make sense of the world, of history. It is all made sense through the cross of Christ, the central event around which all things turn.
As Paul writes, the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection is the only story we really have to tell, the only story the church has to tell, the only one the preacher has to tell: Christ crucified, Christ resurrected.
Crucifixion and resurrection is the central story by which we identify ourselves, because to know and tell this story is to know Christ, it is to know how to be the body of Christ, it is to be who we are.
What we point to is what we become.
***
Think of baptism. In our baptism we die, and rise, in Christ. All identity outside our being in Christ, being dead and raised through baptism, anything besides this is peripheral. Our true self is now the one hidden in Christ, the one who died and rose again.
Further, this central narrative of the Christian life, that of Christ's crucifixion and his resurrection, your experience of this, our experience of this, our becoming what we point to is not a personal experience.
First of all, any experience that we have of the death and resurrection of Christ is already shared – because it is Christ who is crucified and resurrected first, and we share in that experience.
Secondly, even before it is personally shared, it is ecclesial – it is the experience of the church, it is the experience of the body of Christ.
We become what we are pointing to through our elder and experienced Christians, the ones who have learned the way of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection lived daily, and lived in hope.
But we also become, not just through the example of our elders in the faith, but it is also made true by the way we read the Psalms together, especially Psalms like the one we just read, Psalm 30. When we read the Psalms together, we read them as the body of Christ, the same Psalms that Jesus quotes n his life and on the cross. And we become this living and suffering body of Christ when we say together such things as:
“I will exalt you, O Lord,
because you have lifted me up *
and have not let my enemies triumph over me.
O Lord my God, I cried out to you, *
and you restored me to health.
You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead.”
This is the story, the one Paul insisted on boasting in rather than his own good deeds, the story of the one who is lifted up from the grave, the one whose enemies do not triumph, the one who cried out in pain, the one whose life was restored, the one who is the Christ, Jesus the crucified one, Jesus the risen one: through the Psalms, we point to Christ; and by this pointing, and speaking the words, we become the community of the crucified.
***
So what about the preacher?
Let's talk about the kind of preaching that is truthful to the task that is set before the preacher.
The truthful preacher will not tell personal stories, so much as he will always be pointing,
like John the Baptist in that painting by Grunewald, pointing to the crucified one. Because if the preacher points to him or herself, the cause is lost.
"He must increase." This is the story of Christ.
"I must decrease." This is not about me.
The proclamation of the church embodied in her preachers does not reveal the preacher nor the Scriptures. The proclamation reveals Christ, and him crucified.
"May I never boast of anything
except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ".
"a new creation is everything!"
Likewise, when you see the presider at the table, you better not be caught looking at him. Preaching is not about the preacher, neither is presiding about the presider. I'll be at that altar in a few minutes. And when I'm praying that great prayer of thanksgiving for you, don't look at me. Don't care about my voice. Don't care about my haircut.
No – Look at the cross. Look at the altar. Look at the bread and wine. Look there because that is how we do what we do, this is how we live out the Christian vocation, as a church, as a baptized people, a people baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, this is how we do crucifixion and resurrection: we signify our lives of crucifixion and resurrection by passing through the waters of baptism to our place at this table, participating in the crucifixion and the resurrection, at this table becoming what we point to.
We remember God's acts in history, we remember his crucifixion, we remember is resurrection, and we do what he asked us to do: "This is my body which is broken for you." "This is my blood which is shed for you.” Take and eat. Take and drink. "When you do this, you do this in remembrance of me."
Look at what is being pointed to: Christ and his crucifixion, the resurrection of Christ, each remembered and made true at this altar.
Take and eat, take and drink, become the body of Christ.
Because this is what makes us who we are: not the preacher, not the presider. We are made Christ, as we reveal and witness to Christ, the crucifixion and the resurrection become our own by pointing to the one greater than us, and by this pointing to the one greater than we are, by speaking his words, by participating in him at this table, then we become the one who has been lifted up from the dead, we become the body of Christ, and him crucified.
2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
preached by the Rev. Preston Parsons, July 8th, 2007
I'm going to start this morning by talking about a finger. It is an especially long finger. This finger belongs to John the Baptist, and it is in a painting by a painter by the name of Grunewald. In this painting, just above John the Baptist's hand, read the words "He must increase, I must decrease."
Where is John the Baptist's finger pointing? It points to Jesus, but not only Jesus: but to Jesus on the cross. John the Baptist, with his long index finger, points to Christ crucified.
It was the favourite painting of one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, Karl Barth, because for Barth this was the task of any theologian, any preacher: to point. To point away from him or herself, and to Christ crucified.
By this action of pointing, the priest, the preacher, and the church, all live up to our vocation, becoming what we are pointing to – we become the body of Christ by pointing to Christ and the cross.
***
I think it's about time to talk about preaching. And after that, to talk about the eucharist, and get some preliminaries clear about the role of the priest and the preacher.
I'd like for us to begin by turning to Galatians, specifically to verse 14 and 15 in chapter 6, where Paul writes: "May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!"
Paul's opponents were claiming converts to the Mosaic law. They were counting circumcisions because circumcision was the first observation of the law for any convert to the law.
But for Paul, there is no boasting, no story to tell, no story about his success, no personal illustration apart from the cross of Christ and new creation in the resurrection. Paul does not wish to tell any story, to boast and tell personal anecdotes about himself or what he has accomplished in the Galatians:
"May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!"
And in the end, this is his only story, and if he has a personal story to tell, it is about how the world has been crucified to him, and him to the world, but only through the cross of Christ. All other stories, his own, and the story of the Galatians,and the story of the whole world, is known only through the cross of Christ and his resurrection.
***
I spoke about this last week, about the central story Christians tell. The story central to our faith is that of the crucifixion of Christ, and that of the resurrection. This narrative, this story is the story that makes sense of our whole lives as Christians. This is the story that precedes and makes sense of our experience. This is how we make sense of scripture
and the life of the church. The story of the crucifixion is how we make sense of the world, of history. It is all made sense through the cross of Christ, the central event around which all things turn.
As Paul writes, the story of the crucifixion and the resurrection is the only story we really have to tell, the only story the church has to tell, the only one the preacher has to tell: Christ crucified, Christ resurrected.
Crucifixion and resurrection is the central story by which we identify ourselves, because to know and tell this story is to know Christ, it is to know how to be the body of Christ, it is to be who we are.
What we point to is what we become.
***
Think of baptism. In our baptism we die, and rise, in Christ. All identity outside our being in Christ, being dead and raised through baptism, anything besides this is peripheral. Our true self is now the one hidden in Christ, the one who died and rose again.
Further, this central narrative of the Christian life, that of Christ's crucifixion and his resurrection, your experience of this, our experience of this, our becoming what we point to is not a personal experience.
First of all, any experience that we have of the death and resurrection of Christ is already shared – because it is Christ who is crucified and resurrected first, and we share in that experience.
Secondly, even before it is personally shared, it is ecclesial – it is the experience of the church, it is the experience of the body of Christ.
We become what we are pointing to through our elder and experienced Christians, the ones who have learned the way of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection lived daily, and lived in hope.
But we also become, not just through the example of our elders in the faith, but it is also made true by the way we read the Psalms together, especially Psalms like the one we just read, Psalm 30. When we read the Psalms together, we read them as the body of Christ, the same Psalms that Jesus quotes n his life and on the cross. And we become this living and suffering body of Christ when we say together such things as:
“I will exalt you, O Lord,
because you have lifted me up *
and have not let my enemies triumph over me.
O Lord my God, I cried out to you, *
and you restored me to health.
You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead.”
This is the story, the one Paul insisted on boasting in rather than his own good deeds, the story of the one who is lifted up from the grave, the one whose enemies do not triumph, the one who cried out in pain, the one whose life was restored, the one who is the Christ, Jesus the crucified one, Jesus the risen one: through the Psalms, we point to Christ; and by this pointing, and speaking the words, we become the community of the crucified.
***
So what about the preacher?
Let's talk about the kind of preaching that is truthful to the task that is set before the preacher.
The truthful preacher will not tell personal stories, so much as he will always be pointing,
like John the Baptist in that painting by Grunewald, pointing to the crucified one. Because if the preacher points to him or herself, the cause is lost.
"He must increase." This is the story of Christ.
"I must decrease." This is not about me.
The proclamation of the church embodied in her preachers does not reveal the preacher nor the Scriptures. The proclamation reveals Christ, and him crucified.
"May I never boast of anything
except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ".
"a new creation is everything!"
Likewise, when you see the presider at the table, you better not be caught looking at him. Preaching is not about the preacher, neither is presiding about the presider. I'll be at that altar in a few minutes. And when I'm praying that great prayer of thanksgiving for you, don't look at me. Don't care about my voice. Don't care about my haircut.
No – Look at the cross. Look at the altar. Look at the bread and wine. Look there because that is how we do what we do, this is how we live out the Christian vocation, as a church, as a baptized people, a people baptized into the death and resurrection of Christ, this is how we do crucifixion and resurrection: we signify our lives of crucifixion and resurrection by passing through the waters of baptism to our place at this table, participating in the crucifixion and the resurrection, at this table becoming what we point to.
We remember God's acts in history, we remember his crucifixion, we remember is resurrection, and we do what he asked us to do: "This is my body which is broken for you." "This is my blood which is shed for you.” Take and eat. Take and drink. "When you do this, you do this in remembrance of me."
Look at what is being pointed to: Christ and his crucifixion, the resurrection of Christ, each remembered and made true at this altar.
Take and eat, take and drink, become the body of Christ.
Because this is what makes us who we are: not the preacher, not the presider. We are made Christ, as we reveal and witness to Christ, the crucifixion and the resurrection become our own by pointing to the one greater than us, and by this pointing to the one greater than we are, by speaking his words, by participating in him at this table, then we become the one who has been lifted up from the dead, we become the body of Christ, and him crucified.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Proper 28 (33) 2006: "Work and the Fear of Judgment"
Proper 28 (33): "Work and the Fear of Judgment"
1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25; Mark 13:1-8
Preached on November 19th, 2006.
I am a person who can worry a little. I've discovered that there are particular times when I worry a whole lot more than at other times. I worry when my future is uncertain. One of those times was during my studies in California.
I really had nothing to worry about. I was in my second year of a four year program, so any change in my life was still more than two years away. But I was still very worried about that future.
I love to study, so part of me was saying, "maybe you should do a doctoral program." But I was feeling a call to parish ministry, so another part of me was saying "c'mon. Be a priest. That's what you are really called to do."
So I worried incessantly about what I was going to do in two and a half years.
This was despite the fact that the next thing I really needed to do was my homework.
I was so worried about the future, a future I could do nothing about. And I worried about that future at the expense of my work in the present.
***
When Jesus' disciples are voicing their amazement at the grandeur of the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus is not particularly impressed. Jesus tells his disciples that the temple in Jerusalem will not stand for long, and that the whole building will be torn down.
This leads the disciples to ask Jesus exactly when this sign will be accomplished. The disciples are worried about the future.
But Jesus doesn't answer the question. Instead, Jesus begins one of the most difficult discourses in the New Testament.
Some texts are difficult because what they ask of us is daunting. Most of Mark up until now has been difficult to read because it asks the people of God, as disciples of Christ, to give their whole selves to God.
But not Mark 13. Mark 13 is difficult for other reasons. Mark 13 is difficult because it is apocalyptic literature, so it is about wars, earthquakes, and famines. It describes the persecution, beatings, and the trials of Jesus' disciples, and how people will hate Jesus' disciples. Mark 13 even says that children will soon have their parents put to death. It tells of false prophets who will come in Jesus' name, of the darkening of the sun,
and that even the stars will fall from heaven. All of this will precede the return of Jesus, and the gathering of his elect from all over the world.
This is the stuff that Christian conspiracy theorists have a heyday with, and there are whole industries built around reading texts like these as ways of predicting Jesus' return, and reading Mark 13 as a guidebook to the end times.
But reading texts like these as guidebooks to the apocalypse is to misunderstand what these texts are about and to miss the whole point, actually. Reading apocalyptic passages as if they are only about the end times, is a little like worrying about whether you should be applying to doctoral programs or to parish positions, when you should be worrying about your homework.
Apocalyptic passages are not about seeing the future. Texts like this one are not part of an elaborate code that tells us when Jesus will come back.
They are not about the future so much as they describe the present. The persecutions described by Mark were very real. Mark was writing to a community that was being persecuted, a community that was being dragged before judges and being beaten. They were a community that was hated by many of the people around them.
Jesus' message to his disciples, and to the community that Mark had in mind, was a message about not forgetting who Jesus is. It was a message about the one who will carry you through hardship, and about a Holy Spirit who will inspire your words in front of the judges. And importantly, Jesus tells the disciples that he will return, and that he will come in judgment and in glory to establish his kingdom.
In short, Mark 13 is about hope for those who are being persecuted for the sake of Christ.
I'm never sure that our difficulty in reading these passages as passages of hope is because we aren't being persecuted, or because we aren't doing Christianity right. I don't know. I wish I knew, actually.
***
Just in case we get too worried about trying to figure out exactly when Jesus will return, and we get so concerned with a future we can't know anyway, and we get sidetracked enough that we don't attend to what sits right in front of us, Jesus finishes this discourse saying that no one knows when he will return. ". . .about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father . . . you do not know when the time will come."
Despite this, Jesus does have some advice for the time in-between his ascension to the right hand of the Father and his coming again in glory. Jesus asks us to be watchful, to stay awake, to be attentive to what lies right in front of us. Jesus asks us to continue working for the kingdom even while we wait for the return of the King.
The author of Hebrews describes this time between Jesus' ascension and his return, advising us to be confident, to have "a true heart in full assurance of faith . . . ", and to "hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful." Hebrews says that we should "consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together . . . but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching."
As we see the day approaching, as we look to Jesus coming again in glory, it shouldn't be in anxiety, nor should it keep us from the hard work that is in front of us. Rather than being distracted by future judgments let us follow the advice of Hebrews.
Let us be confident in our faith that Jesus is our hope, and that Jesus is faithful to us and will keep his promise.
Rather than worry about the future let us provoke each other into doing good deeds in his name.
Let us meet together and worship together, encouraging each other.
This is the real work that is at hand, the work of hope, of fellowship, and of worship.
If we are attentive to this there is nothing to worry about, because when the day comes we won't be found asleep. We will be found to be about the work of hope, fellowship, and worship: the work he has asked us to do.
1 Samuel 1:4-20; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25; Mark 13:1-8
Preached on November 19th, 2006.
I am a person who can worry a little. I've discovered that there are particular times when I worry a whole lot more than at other times. I worry when my future is uncertain. One of those times was during my studies in California.
I really had nothing to worry about. I was in my second year of a four year program, so any change in my life was still more than two years away. But I was still very worried about that future.
I love to study, so part of me was saying, "maybe you should do a doctoral program." But I was feeling a call to parish ministry, so another part of me was saying "c'mon. Be a priest. That's what you are really called to do."
So I worried incessantly about what I was going to do in two and a half years.
This was despite the fact that the next thing I really needed to do was my homework.
I was so worried about the future, a future I could do nothing about. And I worried about that future at the expense of my work in the present.
***
When Jesus' disciples are voicing their amazement at the grandeur of the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus is not particularly impressed. Jesus tells his disciples that the temple in Jerusalem will not stand for long, and that the whole building will be torn down.
This leads the disciples to ask Jesus exactly when this sign will be accomplished. The disciples are worried about the future.
But Jesus doesn't answer the question. Instead, Jesus begins one of the most difficult discourses in the New Testament.
Some texts are difficult because what they ask of us is daunting. Most of Mark up until now has been difficult to read because it asks the people of God, as disciples of Christ, to give their whole selves to God.
But not Mark 13. Mark 13 is difficult for other reasons. Mark 13 is difficult because it is apocalyptic literature, so it is about wars, earthquakes, and famines. It describes the persecution, beatings, and the trials of Jesus' disciples, and how people will hate Jesus' disciples. Mark 13 even says that children will soon have their parents put to death. It tells of false prophets who will come in Jesus' name, of the darkening of the sun,
and that even the stars will fall from heaven. All of this will precede the return of Jesus, and the gathering of his elect from all over the world.
This is the stuff that Christian conspiracy theorists have a heyday with, and there are whole industries built around reading texts like these as ways of predicting Jesus' return, and reading Mark 13 as a guidebook to the end times.
But reading texts like these as guidebooks to the apocalypse is to misunderstand what these texts are about and to miss the whole point, actually. Reading apocalyptic passages as if they are only about the end times, is a little like worrying about whether you should be applying to doctoral programs or to parish positions, when you should be worrying about your homework.
Apocalyptic passages are not about seeing the future. Texts like this one are not part of an elaborate code that tells us when Jesus will come back.
They are not about the future so much as they describe the present. The persecutions described by Mark were very real. Mark was writing to a community that was being persecuted, a community that was being dragged before judges and being beaten. They were a community that was hated by many of the people around them.
Jesus' message to his disciples, and to the community that Mark had in mind, was a message about not forgetting who Jesus is. It was a message about the one who will carry you through hardship, and about a Holy Spirit who will inspire your words in front of the judges. And importantly, Jesus tells the disciples that he will return, and that he will come in judgment and in glory to establish his kingdom.
In short, Mark 13 is about hope for those who are being persecuted for the sake of Christ.
I'm never sure that our difficulty in reading these passages as passages of hope is because we aren't being persecuted, or because we aren't doing Christianity right. I don't know. I wish I knew, actually.
***
Just in case we get too worried about trying to figure out exactly when Jesus will return, and we get so concerned with a future we can't know anyway, and we get sidetracked enough that we don't attend to what sits right in front of us, Jesus finishes this discourse saying that no one knows when he will return. ". . .about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father . . . you do not know when the time will come."
Despite this, Jesus does have some advice for the time in-between his ascension to the right hand of the Father and his coming again in glory. Jesus asks us to be watchful, to stay awake, to be attentive to what lies right in front of us. Jesus asks us to continue working for the kingdom even while we wait for the return of the King.
The author of Hebrews describes this time between Jesus' ascension and his return, advising us to be confident, to have "a true heart in full assurance of faith . . . ", and to "hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful." Hebrews says that we should "consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together . . . but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching."
As we see the day approaching, as we look to Jesus coming again in glory, it shouldn't be in anxiety, nor should it keep us from the hard work that is in front of us. Rather than being distracted by future judgments let us follow the advice of Hebrews.
Let us be confident in our faith that Jesus is our hope, and that Jesus is faithful to us and will keep his promise.
Rather than worry about the future let us provoke each other into doing good deeds in his name.
Let us meet together and worship together, encouraging each other.
This is the real work that is at hand, the work of hope, of fellowship, and of worship.
If we are attentive to this there is nothing to worry about, because when the day comes we won't be found asleep. We will be found to be about the work of hope, fellowship, and worship: the work he has asked us to do.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Proper 27 (32) 2006, Remembrance Day Observed
Proper 27 (32) 2006, Remembrance Day Observed
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17; Psalm 127; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44
War, and our remembrance of war, makes a lot of people feel uneasy.
For those of us who are already feeling made uneasy by the remembrance of war, remembering war within the worship life of the church makes us feel even more uneasy.
I find myself uneasy because I have made the move myself between being a pacifist for theological reasons, to being a proponent of just war for theological reasons, and now perhaps back towards a pacifist position.
I am uneasy because of my own troubled experience of the effects of war on my family.
I am uneasy because days of remembrance, like today, brings to mind the injustices perpetrated in war, at the same time that it brings to mind that many injustices were ended, and peoples defended, by acts of war.
I am uneasy because war is messy, and I find myself in the middle of a mess.
I’m now, to be honest, a little perplexed by it all, because both positions, that of just war and that of pacifism, can both be theologically grounded, while they are at the same time irreconcilable. Just war, properly defended, is primarily about seeking justice within a limited horizon of options, and defending the dignity of a friend who cannot defend him or herself. Pacifism is primarily about living out, personally and in community, reconciliation and the peace of God in Christ. They are both coherent responses to the sin of the world, and both positions have proponents within the church.
This parish lists those who have volunteered, or died in war, on the back of the nave, and many of our former Rectors pictured by my office are wearing military uniforms. My guess is, though, that within this parish there are people who hold very different views on whether a person can be a Christian and a soldier at the same time; yet this thankfully does not prevent us from worshiping together. The Anglican Church herself has never been a pacifist church, yet the Anglican Church has been able to bear pacifism as a legitimate, even compelling, position. This has never threatened our ability to be a church.
I would say, though, that at this point in our history, the burden of proof does lie with the proponents of just war. Just war, and the pursuit of justice through the mechanisms of governments and nations, is becoming increasingly difficult to do, at least for Christians, mostly because it is increasingly difficult to call our nation a "Christian" one. Our political landscape is simply more complex that it used to be, and the reality is that Christians no longer have the privileged voice we once had. Our wars, though sometimes motivated by justice, are also just as likely to be motivated by greed.
***
Turning to our gospel, we read not of war, but of scribes and widows. This passage is not about war any more than the rest of the New Testament. I think, though, it may still help us understand what we are doing today, remembering our war dead, and taking a moment to think about war as a Christian community.
On the one hand we read in this passage of a widow giving her offering at the temple treasury in Jerusalem. This widow impresses Jesus more than even the great and majestic temple that surrounds them. The nameless and unremarkable simple widow is more impressive to Jesus because the widow, in her simple action, sums up what Jesus has been teaching to his disciples.
The widow is an example of one of the last, on of the last who shall be among the first; the widow is an example of the kind of commitment that is not measured by grand gestures; the widow is an example of wholesale devotion to God; the widow “out of her poverty has put . . . everything she had . . .” into the temple treasury. The widow serves as an example of the complete commitment that Jesus has been preaching to his disciples.
On the other hand Jesus has few good words for the scribes; the scribes abuse their position of authority; they take advantage of their position,; they even “devour widow’s houses,” taking advantage of the poor in their distress, widows like the one Jesus points to as an example of devotion.
I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to draw some parallels between this passage and the wars we know and remember. The soldier, just like the widow, embodies many things that we could point to as Christian virtue; we can point specifically to the soldier’s willingness to give all they have to what they believe in. The soldier offers all he or she has, including the very laying down of their life for their friend.
And the scribes, at least some of them, the ones willing to devour widows houses for the sake of their own profit, are a lot like the men and women sending soldiers to war for their own profit. Not all wars are simply for profit; some wars are motivated by genuine concern for justice, or concern for the oppressed neighbour. But anyone who justifies war simply for profit, a profit hidden by lies, is no better than the scribe who devours the houses of widows.
But the scribe who may very well devour the houses of widows, and the mechanisms that may send soldiers to war for the profit of others, do not erode the dignity of the widow or of the soldier. Just as the widow has a degree of dignity apart from the scribes that will devour her house, so also the soldier has a dignity apart from the mechanisms of the state that puts them on the battlefield.
Their dignity, and our dignity, is in the self offering of our whole selves, not to the state, or even to the Jerusalem temple, but our whole self-offering, our very lives, to our Lord.
***
One of the things we are called to do, as Christians, is to remember. When you see me behind the table, and praying with you all, one of the primary things we will be doing together is remembering the acts of God in history, acts like the suffering, and the victory, of God. We remember the whole self-offering of Christ to the will of his Father, the redemption of the world through his self-sacrifice on the cross, and his glorious resurrection.
May we remember the widow, and even the soldier, not for the political machinations that lead them to their own self-giving, but for the example of complete self-giving that they offer. And may our remembrance of them point us not to our own idols, but rather to the self-offering we see in Christ, and may it lead us to our offering of ourselves, our whole selves, to the work and the will of God.
Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17; Psalm 127; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44
War, and our remembrance of war, makes a lot of people feel uneasy.
For those of us who are already feeling made uneasy by the remembrance of war, remembering war within the worship life of the church makes us feel even more uneasy.
I find myself uneasy because I have made the move myself between being a pacifist for theological reasons, to being a proponent of just war for theological reasons, and now perhaps back towards a pacifist position.
I am uneasy because of my own troubled experience of the effects of war on my family.
I am uneasy because days of remembrance, like today, brings to mind the injustices perpetrated in war, at the same time that it brings to mind that many injustices were ended, and peoples defended, by acts of war.
I am uneasy because war is messy, and I find myself in the middle of a mess.
I’m now, to be honest, a little perplexed by it all, because both positions, that of just war and that of pacifism, can both be theologically grounded, while they are at the same time irreconcilable. Just war, properly defended, is primarily about seeking justice within a limited horizon of options, and defending the dignity of a friend who cannot defend him or herself. Pacifism is primarily about living out, personally and in community, reconciliation and the peace of God in Christ. They are both coherent responses to the sin of the world, and both positions have proponents within the church.
This parish lists those who have volunteered, or died in war, on the back of the nave, and many of our former Rectors pictured by my office are wearing military uniforms. My guess is, though, that within this parish there are people who hold very different views on whether a person can be a Christian and a soldier at the same time; yet this thankfully does not prevent us from worshiping together. The Anglican Church herself has never been a pacifist church, yet the Anglican Church has been able to bear pacifism as a legitimate, even compelling, position. This has never threatened our ability to be a church.
I would say, though, that at this point in our history, the burden of proof does lie with the proponents of just war. Just war, and the pursuit of justice through the mechanisms of governments and nations, is becoming increasingly difficult to do, at least for Christians, mostly because it is increasingly difficult to call our nation a "Christian" one. Our political landscape is simply more complex that it used to be, and the reality is that Christians no longer have the privileged voice we once had. Our wars, though sometimes motivated by justice, are also just as likely to be motivated by greed.
***
Turning to our gospel, we read not of war, but of scribes and widows. This passage is not about war any more than the rest of the New Testament. I think, though, it may still help us understand what we are doing today, remembering our war dead, and taking a moment to think about war as a Christian community.
On the one hand we read in this passage of a widow giving her offering at the temple treasury in Jerusalem. This widow impresses Jesus more than even the great and majestic temple that surrounds them. The nameless and unremarkable simple widow is more impressive to Jesus because the widow, in her simple action, sums up what Jesus has been teaching to his disciples.
The widow is an example of one of the last, on of the last who shall be among the first; the widow is an example of the kind of commitment that is not measured by grand gestures; the widow is an example of wholesale devotion to God; the widow “out of her poverty has put . . . everything she had . . .” into the temple treasury. The widow serves as an example of the complete commitment that Jesus has been preaching to his disciples.
On the other hand Jesus has few good words for the scribes; the scribes abuse their position of authority; they take advantage of their position,; they even “devour widow’s houses,” taking advantage of the poor in their distress, widows like the one Jesus points to as an example of devotion.
I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to draw some parallels between this passage and the wars we know and remember. The soldier, just like the widow, embodies many things that we could point to as Christian virtue; we can point specifically to the soldier’s willingness to give all they have to what they believe in. The soldier offers all he or she has, including the very laying down of their life for their friend.
And the scribes, at least some of them, the ones willing to devour widows houses for the sake of their own profit, are a lot like the men and women sending soldiers to war for their own profit. Not all wars are simply for profit; some wars are motivated by genuine concern for justice, or concern for the oppressed neighbour. But anyone who justifies war simply for profit, a profit hidden by lies, is no better than the scribe who devours the houses of widows.
But the scribe who may very well devour the houses of widows, and the mechanisms that may send soldiers to war for the profit of others, do not erode the dignity of the widow or of the soldier. Just as the widow has a degree of dignity apart from the scribes that will devour her house, so also the soldier has a dignity apart from the mechanisms of the state that puts them on the battlefield.
Their dignity, and our dignity, is in the self offering of our whole selves, not to the state, or even to the Jerusalem temple, but our whole self-offering, our very lives, to our Lord.
***
One of the things we are called to do, as Christians, is to remember. When you see me behind the table, and praying with you all, one of the primary things we will be doing together is remembering the acts of God in history, acts like the suffering, and the victory, of God. We remember the whole self-offering of Christ to the will of his Father, the redemption of the world through his self-sacrifice on the cross, and his glorious resurrection.
May we remember the widow, and even the soldier, not for the political machinations that lead them to their own self-giving, but for the example of complete self-giving that they offer. And may our remembrance of them point us not to our own idols, but rather to the self-offering we see in Christ, and may it lead us to our offering of ourselves, our whole selves, to the work and the will of God.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Proper 22 (27) 2006: "Boring gods for a Church Made Boring"
Proper 22 (27) 2006: "Boring gods for a Church Made Boring"
Job 1:1, 2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
Preached October 8th, 2006
North American Christianity has made an astounding achievement.
It is very, very difficult to make God, and Jesus, boring.
But we’re doing it.
We seem to be working terribly hard to strip Jesus of his divinity, and to make something less than a Lord of him. We seem to be trying awfully hard to turn a King into a pawn, and a lion into a domestic cat.
But Jesus is no pawn, he is a King; and keeping God to ourselves, within the church, is about as safe as keeping a lion as a house-pet.
There is no question in the mind of the author of Hebrews about the divinity of Christ, and by this divinity his Lordship. The author of Hebrews writes that Jesus is not just a man, but a man who is the very imprint of God, a man who is the reflection of God’s glory, a man who is more than a prophet. He is the Son of God, the heir and sustainer of all things, the one who existed with God before creation, and who suspends and sustains the creation through his word. Hebrews begins with the statement that “long ago God spoke through prophets . . . but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,” and then that Jesus is “superior to the angels.”
Hebrews teaches us anything but a tame and boring Jesus. Hebrews teaches us about a Jesus as dangerous as divinity.
***
Because Jesus is something more than a prophet, and even more than the angels, this does not meant that prophetic utterances will cease to be valuable. They remain a way that God speaks to his people, and we will continue to read them in Church, and expound their meaning in sermons. The dawn of the Christian age does not obliterate the many and various ways that God speaks.
But prophetic utterances, and the many other ways that Gods speaks, will never be as valuable, or as terrifying, as what we have in Christ.
***
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas blames the theologians for making God so boring, and I agree with him. The theologians have helped us a whole lot in this effort to make God a house-pet.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love to read theology, and I have the bookstore bills to prove it. I’m no anti-intellectual, and Hauerwas himself is a theologian teaching at Duke University. When the intellectual life of the church is vibrant, it is a good and beautiful thing.
But I would say that our theologians have a bad habit of giving away what is ours, and when we follow amicably, we yield our territory to other masters, often without even a skirmish or a fight.
Christian theology and doctrine was once a discipline of the church, done by the church, but for the world. But it has become something private and hidden, and nearly meaningless to anyone outside a little circle that divides the private from the public, divides ourselves into pieces, and divides our church from the world.
We buy into this at our own peril. Our habit of yielding territory is harmful both to ourselves as persons, and to our communities of faith. Our retreat from the world, and our yielding territory to lords other than Christ, divides people into parts, leaving us, our very selves, broken into pieces. It’s strange that we are so comfortably and easily living under one rule in private, and another in public.
We may have become comfortable with this kind of personal division, but it is certainly not good for us. Historian Shirley Letwin, in her description of the 18th century gentleman, describes this phenomenon of the divided self and the gentleman’s ability to live with constancy rather than personal division. Letwin points to the damage we do to ourselves when we surrender one part of ourselves to one master, and another part of ourselves to another master. She writes that “when a man contradicts himself, he becomes an adversary of himself, and when he divides his life into separate compartments, he hides himself from himself and is only partly alive, like someone who walks in his sleep. Because a gentleman is aware of himself as engaged in shaping a coherent self, he would not do either.” Anytime we surrender just one part of our lives to Christ, and another part of our lives to another master, we are in fact doing harm to ourselves, as Letwin puts it, we become our own adversaries, and hardly even alive.
Letwin doesn’t go quite far enough, though, because we have not only surrendered parts of ourselves to a master other than Christ to another master, the church has surrendered another territory. When the church surrenders her witness to the world about the world we surrender our witness that Christ is already Lord over all things.
This is very bad for us. It has turned out to be very unhealthy for our communities of faith, and this is not only unhealthy in an instrumental sense. Our surrender of our witness to the world has not only meant declining numbers in most of the mainline churches, but more importantly, our lack of witness to the lordship of Christ over our entire lives, over the entirety of creation, and over the private and the public, we risk becoming something other than the church. We risk becoming a religious ghetto. And this worries me much, much more than mainline decline in Sunday attendance.
There is good news. Even though many of us are broken and divided people, at war with ourselves because we are serving more than one master, even though we are a church struggling to be herself, the good news is that this kind of division and lack of witness is a perversion of the Christian tradition and the Christian faith. Christ will never let us determine the boundaries and limits of his Lordship. Try as we might to keep the lion in the house, we will always fail to do so. There is no boundary that this dangerous God will respect.
The good news is that, beginning with Scripture, but processing through the councils that gave us the Nicene creed, through the reformation, and passing through us and into the future, the discipline of the church is a witness to the divinity of Christ, and by that to his Lordship. The Church’s witness is a claim that Christ is Lord over the entirety of our lives, a claim over the entire world, and a claim over the entire cosmos.
To put it simply, the Lord is already Lord over all, and we will remember this witness, simply because we will never be able to keep God as a house-pet. At a certain point you figure it out. Lions are not house-pets, and we are in danger whenever we keep a wild cat from his natural habitat.
This is daunting stuff, because it calls into question nearly every corner of our lives as persons, and our life as a people. The confession of the lordship of Christ propels us into a world where we cannot escape the haunting presence of a dangerous lion, a God free from whatever walls we think we build.
This is frightening because we are propelled into the world where Jesus is always in the corner of our eye, only to disappear when we turn our heads, always present even in his seeming absence.
This is simply what it is like for God to finally be free from the walls of the parish building.
And we are better off because of it, because when Jesus is no longer kept within only one part of our lives, we become whole people. We are better off because when Jesus is no longer kept within the boundaries of the church, we become faithful to the witness of the church throughout history. We are better off because deep in our heart we knew we couldn’t tame him anyway. We are better off because after this long time, living a boring life in a boring ghetto, by our confession of Christ’s divinity and of Christ’s Lordship over all, we become closer to alive.
And thankfully, God, and our life in him, might finally get whole lot more interesting.
Job 1:1, 2:1-10; Psalm 26; Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16
Preached October 8th, 2006
North American Christianity has made an astounding achievement.
It is very, very difficult to make God, and Jesus, boring.
But we’re doing it.
We seem to be working terribly hard to strip Jesus of his divinity, and to make something less than a Lord of him. We seem to be trying awfully hard to turn a King into a pawn, and a lion into a domestic cat.
But Jesus is no pawn, he is a King; and keeping God to ourselves, within the church, is about as safe as keeping a lion as a house-pet.
There is no question in the mind of the author of Hebrews about the divinity of Christ, and by this divinity his Lordship. The author of Hebrews writes that Jesus is not just a man, but a man who is the very imprint of God, a man who is the reflection of God’s glory, a man who is more than a prophet. He is the Son of God, the heir and sustainer of all things, the one who existed with God before creation, and who suspends and sustains the creation through his word. Hebrews begins with the statement that “long ago God spoke through prophets . . . but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son,” and then that Jesus is “superior to the angels.”
Hebrews teaches us anything but a tame and boring Jesus. Hebrews teaches us about a Jesus as dangerous as divinity.
***
Because Jesus is something more than a prophet, and even more than the angels, this does not meant that prophetic utterances will cease to be valuable. They remain a way that God speaks to his people, and we will continue to read them in Church, and expound their meaning in sermons. The dawn of the Christian age does not obliterate the many and various ways that God speaks.
But prophetic utterances, and the many other ways that Gods speaks, will never be as valuable, or as terrifying, as what we have in Christ.
***
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas blames the theologians for making God so boring, and I agree with him. The theologians have helped us a whole lot in this effort to make God a house-pet.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love to read theology, and I have the bookstore bills to prove it. I’m no anti-intellectual, and Hauerwas himself is a theologian teaching at Duke University. When the intellectual life of the church is vibrant, it is a good and beautiful thing.
But I would say that our theologians have a bad habit of giving away what is ours, and when we follow amicably, we yield our territory to other masters, often without even a skirmish or a fight.
Christian theology and doctrine was once a discipline of the church, done by the church, but for the world. But it has become something private and hidden, and nearly meaningless to anyone outside a little circle that divides the private from the public, divides ourselves into pieces, and divides our church from the world.
We buy into this at our own peril. Our habit of yielding territory is harmful both to ourselves as persons, and to our communities of faith. Our retreat from the world, and our yielding territory to lords other than Christ, divides people into parts, leaving us, our very selves, broken into pieces. It’s strange that we are so comfortably and easily living under one rule in private, and another in public.
We may have become comfortable with this kind of personal division, but it is certainly not good for us. Historian Shirley Letwin, in her description of the 18th century gentleman, describes this phenomenon of the divided self and the gentleman’s ability to live with constancy rather than personal division. Letwin points to the damage we do to ourselves when we surrender one part of ourselves to one master, and another part of ourselves to another master. She writes that “when a man contradicts himself, he becomes an adversary of himself, and when he divides his life into separate compartments, he hides himself from himself and is only partly alive, like someone who walks in his sleep. Because a gentleman is aware of himself as engaged in shaping a coherent self, he would not do either.” Anytime we surrender just one part of our lives to Christ, and another part of our lives to another master, we are in fact doing harm to ourselves, as Letwin puts it, we become our own adversaries, and hardly even alive.
Letwin doesn’t go quite far enough, though, because we have not only surrendered parts of ourselves to a master other than Christ to another master, the church has surrendered another territory. When the church surrenders her witness to the world about the world we surrender our witness that Christ is already Lord over all things.
This is very bad for us. It has turned out to be very unhealthy for our communities of faith, and this is not only unhealthy in an instrumental sense. Our surrender of our witness to the world has not only meant declining numbers in most of the mainline churches, but more importantly, our lack of witness to the lordship of Christ over our entire lives, over the entirety of creation, and over the private and the public, we risk becoming something other than the church. We risk becoming a religious ghetto. And this worries me much, much more than mainline decline in Sunday attendance.
There is good news. Even though many of us are broken and divided people, at war with ourselves because we are serving more than one master, even though we are a church struggling to be herself, the good news is that this kind of division and lack of witness is a perversion of the Christian tradition and the Christian faith. Christ will never let us determine the boundaries and limits of his Lordship. Try as we might to keep the lion in the house, we will always fail to do so. There is no boundary that this dangerous God will respect.
The good news is that, beginning with Scripture, but processing through the councils that gave us the Nicene creed, through the reformation, and passing through us and into the future, the discipline of the church is a witness to the divinity of Christ, and by that to his Lordship. The Church’s witness is a claim that Christ is Lord over the entirety of our lives, a claim over the entire world, and a claim over the entire cosmos.
To put it simply, the Lord is already Lord over all, and we will remember this witness, simply because we will never be able to keep God as a house-pet. At a certain point you figure it out. Lions are not house-pets, and we are in danger whenever we keep a wild cat from his natural habitat.
This is daunting stuff, because it calls into question nearly every corner of our lives as persons, and our life as a people. The confession of the lordship of Christ propels us into a world where we cannot escape the haunting presence of a dangerous lion, a God free from whatever walls we think we build.
This is frightening because we are propelled into the world where Jesus is always in the corner of our eye, only to disappear when we turn our heads, always present even in his seeming absence.
This is simply what it is like for God to finally be free from the walls of the parish building.
And we are better off because of it, because when Jesus is no longer kept within only one part of our lives, we become whole people. We are better off because when Jesus is no longer kept within the boundaries of the church, we become faithful to the witness of the church throughout history. We are better off because deep in our heart we knew we couldn’t tame him anyway. We are better off because after this long time, living a boring life in a boring ghetto, by our confession of Christ’s divinity and of Christ’s Lordship over all, we become closer to alive.
And thankfully, God, and our life in him, might finally get whole lot more interesting.
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