Feast of Christ the King

Today we hear the Prophet Jeremiah speak of unfaithful shepherds.  The faithlessness  of Jewish leaders led to the fall of the State and of the state religion, culminating in the Exile to Babylon.  The Prophet tells us that God must be trusted to raise up new leadership.  In particular, there persisted the belief that a Davidic king, a Messiah, would come to save the nation and the faith.

Soon the credentials of the Messiah would expand to include conversion of the Gentiles to the God of Israel, and triggering the establishment of a never-ending Kingdom of God on earth -- a world free of pain, sorrow, violence and warfare, and even death.  Into this perfect world then would be grandfathered all the righteous dead who would be resurrected to join the eternal party.

Now along comes Jesus, hailed as Messiah, who revises the job description.  He will not save the people from Roman oppression but from sin -- the oppression of self-centredness, greed, violence and hate.  He will call for the Kingdom of God, not manufactured miraculously around believers but deliberately through us believers.  And the key will be servant ministry.  A relatively modern analogy might be His Majesty, King George VI who, when offered safe haven in Canada during World War II, refused safety and remained in England on the front lines with his people.  He modelled in action the idea that the true Christian king is servant of all.  And so must we be.

Jesus also demonstrated to us that God is the God of second chances.  At this season we once again have a second chance to make God first in our lives..  Let us ask ourselves:  if an auditor came to our home and looked through our personal calendars and our  chequebooks, would that auditor conclude that God's work is the most important thing in our lives?    If God is not first in our use of time, talent and treasure, then he is not our God.   Something else is in first place -- perhaps security, pleasure, family or wealth -- and we need to rearranged our priorities to re-establish the primacy of Christ the King in our lives..

Pentecost XXVI: Election Reflection

Our reading from Isaiah reminds us that the end of the exile was not necessarily a fun time to be a Jew.  Those who had been exiled to Iraq for sixty years believed they were God's Chosen People, as he had loved them enough to chasten them for the unfaithfulness but was now bringing them home. Actually, about twenty percent returned, for most had flourished in the new homeland.  Those never exiled -- basically northern kingdom folk and Samaritans -- believed that they were God's Chosen People and true believers, therefore spared loss of their homeland.  They did not like the religious liberalism that had been embraced by the Jewish exiles whilst in Babylon (Iraq) where the prime Talmud was written.  At this time of great division, Second Isaiah reminds them that God remains supreme, is still at work in history, and has a vision worth waiting for and trusting God to bring to reality.  [As a footnote, Jewish authorities just recently have reversed course and acknowledged the Samaritans as a manifestation of Judaism!]

The past week has been painful for Americans.  Once again American voters picked one candidate and the Electoral College chose the other, Donald Trump.   The run-up to the election was the very nastiest, disrespectful and hateful election season I have ever experienced.  Now, with the decision made, the disaffected are protesting and causing damage because things didn't go their way. I find their frustration understandable, but their behaviour disappointing. Like those post-exile Jews, the American People remain deeply divided.

Contributing to the hostilities has been a Christian Establishment much of which long ago gave up Jesus' teachings to follow their own politically correct script.    Renewed faithfulness to the Lord's message can make us part of the solution instead of the problem.   I won't even go into pacifism, our Lord's radical commitment to peace and the Religious Right's love affair with weaponry and wars. Let us begin now by first considering selfishness.  Jesus taught us to love God and our neighbour as much as ourselves, to see the image of God in all God's children and to put them first, which we accomplish not only on a personal level but in political policy.   Conventional wisdom suggests, as President-Elect Trump has said, that "selfishness is good," the foundation of our economic system.  And many false prophets teach "prosperity theology," Jesus wants you to be filthy rich as a sign of his blessing, and those in want are not esteemed of God or don't have enough faith.  What hogwash! This easily translates into the voter deciding he wants more personal tax cuts, regardless of the effect on the poor and needy, and even if roads and bridges collapse along with public education.  It's all about 'looking out for number one.' Jesus, by contrast, has told us to be servant people for others.  Doing that will help heal the nation.

A second gap between our "Christian" culture and the values promoted by the Saviour involves fear. We see ignorance leading to fear, and fear to violence. People are afraid of change, which occurs at an ever-increasing rate and is inevitable.  People are afraid of uncertainty, especially terror which is typically unpredictable.  People are afraid of those they don't understand -- different races, different religions, different cultural heritages -- and so judge, exclude, and demonize them.  Jesus embraced the outsider and the outcast.  He loved and served the lowly and the lonely.  And Jesus has shared with us the antidote for fear:  "Do not live in fear, little flock, it has pleased my Father to give you the Kingdom."  We've also biblical assurance that "Perfect love casts out fear."  To be in love with God and God's children is how we live into the kind of trust in God that overcomes fears and anxieties and empowers us to accomplish the divine will on earth as it is in heaven.

Let us actually begin to practise the way of life taught by our Lord, trusting that in doing so we will be able to overcome the original sin of selfishness and defeat our fears.  Let us be part of the solution to the terrible divisions in our country -- people who build bridges instead of burning them, people who choose to lift up and serve others instead of demeaning them, people who take their Christianity seriously and refuse to water down or redefine it to serve selfish ends.  And, as we find ways to live into genuine Christianity, let us remember that God has a Vision for the faithful.   Wait for it, it will surely come!

All Saints Sunday with Baptism

What is a saint?  In the most basic, biblical sense a saint is one who is set apart, called by God in Christ to fulfil his work: building the Kingdom of God.  Lower-case saints.  However, there are also the wonderful men and women of exceptional holiness who have been noticed and honoured by the Church, canonized and added to the official calendar of upper-case Saints.  But all of us people of faith -- past, present and to come -- are part of the great Communion of Saints, which the Prayer Book defines as "one great fellowship of prayer and praise."

That phrase, the Communion of Saints, appears in the Apostles Creed, a faith statement issued near the end of the first century C.E. as a short summary of Christian belief. It predates the first Christian Bible by almost three centuries.  That phrase meant then, has always meant, and still means, the truth that because of what Christ did, death no longer has dominion over us. We are united in the spiritual dimension to all God's holy people who went before, and they pray for and with us.  Indeed we pray surrounded by the angels and saints.  Praise God!

In today's baptism, Amelia will become the newest member of Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.  She will be joined to two thousand years of love and praise, obtaining a new, second family which will help raise her spiritually and have her back in all occasions.  She will also have two wonderful godparents committed to her spiritual welfare.  And she will have for her patron Saint Amelia Bloomer who was a civil rights activist in the last century.   An appropriate choice for one who is so active!  And she will later have an opportunity in the Sacrament of Confirmation to confirm for herself the promises made for her today.  Let us proceed to the font of new life.

Pentecost XXIV: Zacchaeus the Righteous

Jericho is a border town and was a major centre for the collection of customs.  Here we find the man Zacchaeus, who is a chief tax collector, in other words a very rich man.  He wants to see Jesus but is very short in stature and, so, climbs a tree to catch Jesus' act.  Jesus sees him, calls him down, and invites himself to Zacchaeus' house.  That move scandalizes the crowd who berate Zacchaeus as a sinner.  They are, of course, technically correct, because Zacchaeus is in a precarious employment situation, as an agent of the hated occupying Roman Power and a traitor to his fellow Jews.

Before arriving and going into his house, Zacchaeus defends himself before the crowd, stating that he gives half of his income to the poor and compensates anyone defrauded at a 400% rate.  That is quite astounding.  The NRSV mistranslates, having him state that in future he will do these things, but in the Greek and the Latin, he uses the present tense and that is reflected in the old bedrock translations, the King James and Douay-Rheims.  Accepting the present tense for his assertion is further suggested when we see that Zacchaeus does not confess or repent, and Jesus does not commend his new faith or a change of heart.  It would seem that salvation is upon his house because in his behaviour he far exceeds the requirements of the Law and therefore demonstrates true righteousness from the heart.  Jesus commends him as a true "Son of Abraham."  Jesus is always doingd the unexpected and siding with the outsider who often turns out, like the Good Samaritan, to be the real servant of God, the one truly justified before God.

The Four Crowned Martyrs

Their feast day falls on the first of November and, so, is always eclipsed by All Saints Day.  So let's give them a breakout.  They were four Persian stonemasons:  Claudius, Nicostratis, Simpronian, and Castorius.  They worked for the Emperor Diocletian, a scattered unstable Caesar with a passion for building and a passion against Christians.   He was the last dictator to persecute our Faith before it became officially tolerated in the Roman Empire.  The four worked at the quarries and workshops of Sirmium, now Sremska, Serbia.

The Emperor ordered a statue of Aesclepius, the god of medicine, for the temple he had built for the deity at the Baths of Trajan.  Being Christians, the four refused and were arrested.  While their fates were being contemplated, the chief investigator of their case, Lampadius, died suddenly.  Suspecting foul play had been arranged, the Emperor ordered the four drowned, and they were.

Later they were honoured with a basilica on Celian Hill in Rome, hence their official nickname, the Four Crowned Martyrs.

Pentecost XXIII: Pharisee v. Tax Agent

The great theologian Paul Tillich. reflecting on Saint Paul's comment that the gospel is for some a "stumbling block" once wrote that the danger is in stumbling over the wrong thing.  Such is the essence of today's gospel reading.

The little vignette at Luke 18: 9-14 is well known to many.  In it, a Pharisee and a tax collector are standing by each other in the Temple for prayer.  The Pharisee rattles off a laundry list of his religious achievements and thanks God that he is not one of various kinds of sinners, especially like this tax collector!   (Today's Old Testament passage from Sirach in the old lectionary says, "You can't bribe God.")   The tax collector simply prays, "God be merciful to me, a sinner," and Jesus says the latter was the one justified before God.

At that time this would have been a shocking story, as if today we told it about a nun and a criminal.  Although often condemned in the New Testament for instances of hypocrisy and some self-serving behaviours, the Pharisees were a religious group noted for high standards of conduct and considered righteous by the public.  Jewish tax agents, on the other hand, were the instruments of a heretical occupying power, and traitors to their own people.

It is noteworthy that we have no reason to doubt that everything the Pharisee said was true as to his religious track record, including fasting and tithing.  He was, by every account, righteous as that term was understood by Jesus, James and all Jews.  That is, he lived his faith and that was what counted.  Where the problem comes in is self-righteousness and judgmentalism.  We learn that religious status doesn't matter to a God who differentiates between haughty religious folk and humble sinners -- and prefers the latter!

The story carries a strong message for us:  to avoid self-righteous attitudes, especially trying to play games with God; and to realize our judge's licence expired on the cross,so we had better be judging ourselves, and not other people.

Pentecost XXII: Using and Misusing Scripture

Let's talk Bible today.  What is this book that we use more extensively in our worship than does any other Christian tradition?  Briefly, a collection of 46 books in the Jewish tradition, 27 Christian, for a total of 73 documents.  They comprise a wide range of literature, from historiography to poetry, from collections of aphorisms to censuses, from Babylonian mythology to prophecy, and even apocalyptic, which George Bernard Shaw described as "impossible opium dreams."  The collection was actually determined and declared Scripture for the first time by our bishops in 397 CE.

All of the books were, in some sense, inspired by God, but all were written by fallible humans with limited knowledge and understanding in a pre-scientific world.  They contain errors, discrepancies, and contradicitons.  All require serious discernment, using all the available methods to discern the historical and cultural contexts, resolve manuscript discrepancies, and to tackle issues of translation. Episcopal clergy are well-educated and trained in such disciplines, and so can be helpful to their congregants in conversation with the Bible.

With proper engagement, we gain alternative and new insights into Scripture.  Let's take a lot at the matter of translation as applicable to today's New Testament pericope, II Timothy 3:14- 4:5.  Here, in the NRSV translation we find the author declaring that "all Scripture is inspired by God and is useful..." so that "everyone who belongs to God may be proficient..."  The Greek would equally allow the translation "all writing inspired by God is useful...," so that "the man of God may be proficient..." In fact, the alternative renderings seem a bit more logical, as the Jewish Canon was not closed in the lifetime of Paul (the putative author!) and the letter asserts itself as having been written from one bishop to Timothy, another bishop, hence the literal Greek "man of God" -- we might say clergy -- seems to fit the rest of the passage better.  You decide.

In some cases failure to consider context results in a bad reading.  For example, consider the story of the widow's mite.  Most of us were raised to believe that the point was that the widow gave away everything she had to live on, and thus would rely on God's miraculous providence for her needs.  In fact, Jesus has just been hammering the Pharisees and their homies for ripping off the poor and the vulnerable, widows especially.  The point to the story is that the woman has been conned out of her living, in direct violation of a Commandment, and has now become dependent on others.  In modern televangelical terms she has been convinced to make a "seed gift" she can't afford in order to qualify for miraculous blessings.  This is exactly 180 degrees from what Jesus was trying to teach there.

In today's Gospel, Luke 18: 1-8, we see how theological reflection also affects reading Scripture. Here a helpless widow badgers an indifferent judge until she finally receives justice.  In traditional interpretation, the unjust judge is God (being thus depicted as the capricious, ill-tempered deity of early Jewish imagination) and the women represents us who are called to badger our God until he gets tired of it and gives us what we want.   Let's take another tack -- seeing the elderly woman as representing God and us his representatives who are being called on to attack the powers of unjust oppression, domination and imperialism for as long as necessary until justice is done.  We call that building the Kingdom of God on earth, which was Jesus' agenda.  This healthy approach treats God and us with condign dignity and makes the story resonate with the overall pattern of Jesus' teaching.

Thank God that we may and do engage in mature discernment of Scripture,