25th Sunday after Pentecost Sermon

I remember clearly the first time I approached the pulpit to preach after I’d been ordained. I was trembling. And it wasn’t a fear of public speaking. It was this audacious – ludicrous! – vocational hazard that I would dare to speak for God. Or of God or godly things. Who am I, after all I? But a fellow traveler with you, gazing out at the eternity of the night sky and wondering, “Who are you, God? And what’s this life all about?” And, to varying degrees – that trembling has never ceased.

And yet, week after week, you keep letting me do it, without much fuss. At some point I may say something about God that doesn’t agree with your notion of God, but – by and large – you let it slide. “Poor little heretic.” And we carry on.

But I avoid preaching about politics from the pulpit. For a lot of reasons. Chiefly, my preference is to proclaim the highest values of the Kingdom of God that I can conceive. And though none of us is living into them fully, this gospel continues to beckon us as a light, as a worthy intent to which – bit by bit – we pivot our lives as seek – more and more – to resemble the Christ we follow. I also avoid politics because it’s too easy to equate political solutions to Kingdom of God values. And though the two can – and should – have significant areas of overlap when it comes to seeking the common good, politics comes with political parties which comes with loyalties and passions that easily override our common faith.

I’m sorry this is so. I’m sorry for the ways our political passions and allegiances so easily supersede our faith allegiance.

And I am sorry that, as a rule, we are fearful people – that the voice of fear is often the loudest in the room… and in our heads and in our hearts. But when we gather here, in this room, in this liturgy, opening our heads and hearts to the hope of God, I want to silence that voice of fear. I want us to hear the good news that lay at the center of Jesus’ life and ministry, of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

And, today, it is this gospel I want us to focus on. Because we need religion and we need the religion – the good news – that Jesus specifically offers.

Three things are defining of our human species: We do science. We make art. And we foster religion. And the incentive of all three is a spirit of wonder. Wonder – and awe and delight and attentiveness – propel us to understand this creation to which we belong (that is science), to interpret this creation (that is art), and to worship and obey the One Who Is the source and ruler of this creation. (That is religion.)

But, whereas, our generation is going strong (or strong enough) on science and art, we’ve nearly dropped religion completely. We’ve made “optional” or “doubtful” that which is a cornerstone of our being. This isn’t to say that generations past always did religion well. We know otherwise. But at least there used to be a shared belief that God existed and that fidelity to this God mattered. But over the past 200 years or so in the west, this shared assumption has been steadily waning. And our species is the weaker for it.

So for us in the church, who still hold to the hope that God is, we

1. recognize our own enculturation, which means our own unavoidable vulnerability to agnosticism. AND
2. we press on with determination all the same: we will believe and behave on behalf of this good world with the hope and the spirit of the good news Jesus brought us.

Jesus said:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”[1]

Love God. Love your neighbor.

The benefit and rationale of loving God is the foundational hope that the reverse is equally true, and more so: that God is loving us. Always. And without exception. We are joined in love with our creator. In every circumstance and in every moment – when we are thriving and when we are failing; when we are filled with faith and when we have little faith at all; when life is pleasant and when life seems most unbearable – God is and God is with us. And if this is true, then we are assured at the core of our being that there is nothing in our world or in our circumstances which will not be gathered within the reach of God’s saving embrace.

And if this is true, then its corollary is also true: In loving God and being one with God, we must also be one with what God is about, which is love. That is why we love our neighbors as ourselves. This is how Jesus lived always: giving to the one who has little; forgiving the one who has sinned much; healing the one who is sick; embracing the one who is outcast. Everything about Jesus’ ministry was rooted in compassion. Every act of ministry was inspired by seeing the other and desiring their well-being and – as he was able and as they would receive it – emptying himself to see them restored.

As a wise person once said, “Whether this is the first day of the Apocalypse or the first day of the Golden Age, the work remains the same…to love each other and ease as much suffering as possible.”[2]

Jesus came to a world, frantic in fear and fractured by discord, and showed us a better way. He showed us God’s way – which turns the powers upside-down. And when he had risen from the dead, conquering these powers of evil and death, he returned to his disciples, assuring them:

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid….

The ruler of this world is coming. [But] he has no power over me… I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us be on our way.[3]

And let us be on our way, too (when you’re through crying and listening to Joni Mitchell), to choose each day to love – to love the one who is before us today; to forgive the one who has sinned against us today; to shelter the one who is left out today.

And let us be clear, it is reasonable to seek a government and the outworkings of government to give structure and policy to our values as followers of Jesus. It is reasonable to be upset when these values are, in fact, thwarted by the government. And it is reasonable to be outraged when the government and its policies proport to be expressions of a Christian agenda which in no way resembles the Christ you follow.

However, it is unreasonable to believe the government will ever – in its essence – reflect the Kingdom of God in Christ. The very nature of government means it must always be about power. And when Christ stood before the powers of Rome, in the person of Pontius Pilate, he was silent. Jesus did not come to conquer Rome – by power or persuasion. In fact, three centuries later, when the Roman Empire was Christianized under Emperor Constantine, Christianity itself lost much of its true power. For power is something no empire will ever share.

Sure, the Christianizing of Rome created a structure by which the institution of the church was preserved and propagated. And, certainly, in every generation fresh faith has arisen, even from within that institutionalized church and amongst those who have given themselves to the work of public service.

But the Jesus we follow knew – and himself followed – a different form of power. It was the upside-down power of love and self-sacrifice. He gave himself away, and in so doing, could be controlled by no man.

They could control his punishment, which they did, through a twisted collusion of the religious and political power-structures of his day. And so he was crucified. But they could not control his message (to say nothing of his resurrection!) and its undying insistence that love and grace will have the final word.

And it is this Jesus in whom we are baptized.

Martin Luther, the great reformer of the church (when, in its grotesque institutionality, had claimed authority to eke out God’s grace in exchange for cash), would say to himself a kind of mantra whenever he was depressed or doubtful or overwhelmed by the woes of his days that were his to confront, “Martin, you are baptized. Yes, everything’s going badly; yes, you’re questioning everything you claim to believe. But, Martin! You’re baptized.”

It’s not all about you. Your faith in God is of less significance than God’s faith in himself to redeem you and this world in love. You are baptized into God’s grace, into Christ’s death and resurrection. And it is accomplished. And you are now risen from the waters of chaos and death, a new person, alive in the peace and the purpose of Christ.

Eric, you are baptized.

Eve, you are baptized.

And so, with our faith set on the hope of Christ, we stride forward into the way of Christ:

We will continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship.

We will persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.

We will proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.

We will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

We will strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

For we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever. Amen.

[1] Matthew 22:37-40

[2] paraphrase of a teaching attributed to Ram Dass

[3] (John 14:25-27, 30b-31).