28C, 2019--Don't Follow the Death Eaters...

Scripture appointed for today can be found here (track 2). Audio of this sermon can be found here

+++

Hearing these texts proclaimed today, did it give anyone pause? I mean, there are times when I look out at the congregation and thing, “oh, of all the days to visit a church for the first time!” I mean really, stewardship and apocalypse! It’s a somewhat daunting combination…

So, first things first—before we get too deep into the specifics of the texts—is a summary. 

We have a broken world that needs repair.

There is violence that needs to be ended.

There are false teachings that need to be corrected. 

And, every single one of us is desperately needed, needed to show up for our community. To stay focused on the needs of the now, and not get distracted by despair and fear. We are needed for the work of healing and of peace. We are needed to spread the good news of God’s love. We are needed. 

Amen. 

The end. 

But, you came expecting more, right? That wasn’t enough, was it? 

So, let’s take some time—to sit with these readings written in the then, in order to explore what God is saying to us now.

The word apocalypse is thrown around a great deal—it’s a genre that has always had appeal. From Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman’s, “Good Omens”, a humorous depiction of two friends, an angel and demon, who have lost the antichrist and are trying to avert Armageddon, to the words of the prophets—apocalypse has been part of our cultural self-understanding. But why? Why do so many of us find ourselves drawn to narratives that depict the destruction of all that is?

I would argue that it’s because when we stand on the brink of despair. Apocalypse offers the possibility for the creation of all that might be.

The word apocalypse means, “unveiling”. It is an unveiling of the violence, the hatred, the cruelty, and the fear, that exist—that exist, regardless of whether or not we want to see these things in the world.

What the prophets are doing is unveiling the violence in the world—whether that violence is spiritual, physical, emotional, political, religious—so that it can be addressed. So that we can, through our actions, work towards peace and liberation.

If you were to go back to chapter 3 of Malachi, the prophet is castigating those who have failed to set aside a portion of the harvest as an offering to God—an offering that would have been used to feed the poor (Malachi 3:10).

Apocalypse unveils injustices so that we can change course and be part of a new creation.

A new creation that emerges from the hope that drives apocalyptic thinking.

Hope and apocalypse?

Apocalyptic literature can only be written out of hope. Hope that what has been unveiled can be transformed.

Hope that God’s love will prove more powerful than any human hate.

Hope that death is not the end of the story.

If you look at the last verses of Malachi, you see this most powerfully…

“I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a course.”

I will…I will not leave you, evil will not prevail, you will dwell in mutual love and affection. I will.

And, this is the hope in which we dwell.

I will…

Which brings us to the Gospel appointed for today.

Luke wrote these words, recording them for a time and a place beyond his time and place, to people who were scared. They were scared of the empire. They were scared of persecution. They were scared that the world would never change.

And, they wanted better.  They longed for the in——breaking of God, and the overturning of those structures they knew, through their experience, were oppressive.  For them, the coming of the messiah was not about heaven, it was about the here and the now.

It was about finding a new way forward because the present way had ceased to serve.

Next Sunday, we observe St. Clement’s Feast Day. So we lose Christ the King Sunday from the cycle of church year observances, which is unfortunate. It’s unfortunate because we also lose the context for today’s readings. Readings which are meant to set us up to analyze the brokenness of human systems in order to welcome the reign of Christ as our true authority in heaven and on earth.

Today’s text sets us up for a political transformation—from a flawed human governance to the governance of the sovereign Christ. 

Further, this text is meant to affirm the hope that this is not all we have and that more and better will come to pass.

More and better will come to pass. This is what the Gospel offers us as truth. And, in this truth, Luke’s listeners would have found hope.

They would have found hope, because they knew that the 1^st Temple in Jerusalem had fallen, and yet they continued. They found hope, because their story is one of exile but but also of liberation. They found hope in knowing that they were not passive victims but active participants in what would come next. They found hope because they knew that death would become life, and the cross the empire used to inspire fear would become a symbol that would proclaim God’s love.

Again, and again, and again, they found hope.

And, our tradition has set us within the story of hope. When we gather here, we proclaim in word and deed that what has been broken can and will be made whole.

So we show up for hope. And, in doing so, in showing up for hope, for God’s hope, we become the creation that God had first envisioned, we make known that we will not sit in idleness but proclaim the way of Christ, the way of dignity and justice and love, to a world that so often seems to have lost its way.

Which is where we come to the epistles. The epistles, in many ways, were authored in order to address communities that were losing their way. Communities in which false teachings had wrought havoc, conflict had divided, and despair had taken root.

As I mentioned last week, the second letter addressed to the Christian community in Thessalonica was written in part to address false teachings that the end had, somehow, already come or was about to arrive.

This teaching, meant that individuals in the community had given up taking responsibility for the care of the community. They had ceased to follow the example of their leaders--and instead of demonstrating mutual care and concern had begun to exploit others in the community.

They were living without hope, and without hope they were taking what they could out of nihilistic greed and despair. If it’s all going to end anyway, why bother?

Does anyone resonate with this, with this sense of despair that self-perpetuates the evils of the world? If there is no hope, why would we try?

If there is no hope, why not just smash, grab, and run?

Hear the good news of the Gospel, "Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, `I am he!' and, `The time is near!' Do not go after them.”

Do not go after those who would lead us into despair. Do not listen to the death eaters or dementors of this world. Do not let go of the hope for the world to come. Do not let go…because hope is our story and the abiding presence of God is our truth.

So, act out of hope. Act out of love. Act out of the teachings of the Christ who would have us know that what is, is not all that will be.

And, this, this my friends is where apocalypse and stewardship meet. In how actions grounded in hope for the world that we’ve been promised. We offer what we have, out of hope that in doing so, we will help bring into being the world we’ve long been promised.

So, while live in the world that is, we hope for the world to come, a world we help to create--a world in which violence, death, hatred, and cruelty have reached their limits, and the in-breaking love of God has utterly transformed us all.

Amen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tisha_B%27Av

27C, Now

Readings can be found at this link, http://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp27_RCL.html
Audio of the sermon can be found here

+++

Halley’s Comet and the Second Coming

In 1986, when I was eight years old, I began to understand the finitude of human life when it is juxtaposed with the universe--heady stuff for a third grader.  It was late at night, much later than I was usually allowed to stay up, and my entire family had gathered at the summit of Mount Haleakala to observe the passing of Halley’s comet. 

It was cold at the 10,000-foot elevation and we were crammed with a great many other people in the observatory perched above the cinder filled caldera.  I huddled next to my grandmother and craned my neck in order to see. 

Eventually, a bright star traced across the sky. Awestruck, I was silent with the magnitude of the night. The cold air, my grandmother’s arm around my shoulders, and this star. This star that moved across the heavens, causing the usual rules to be suspended.  It was a surreal moment, a mystical one where the rules of heavens and earth seemed to shift and bend. But, puncturing the night came my grandmother’s words.

“I won’t see this again. The next time Halley’s comet shows up, I’ll be dead.”

She was a loving and pragmatic woman.

Her matter of fact approach—she was simply stating a FACT—meant that I wasn’t scared or saddened by her words. Instead, I was impressed. Impressed by the span of time before and ahead. Impressed at the notion that this event was so rare, that it fell outside of the scope of the human lifetime. Impressed by the possibility that someday I would stand in the same place, watching the same sky, and see the comet again—but, this time at the end of all my days.

Now, I don’t know if I will see the comet again, July 28^th, 2061 is a LONG way off. But, I remember that night, I remember that star, and I can hope within the certainty that the comet will come again.

Will come again…

The Talmud details the first recorded sighting of Halley’s comet—an observation dated to 66AD.  This is roughly the same time period in which the Gospels themselves were also recorded. And, the comet still courses, the Word is still proclaimed, and we are still here. Still here, waiting in hope, for what has already happened but not yet been fulfilled.

Already, but not yet. This is our reality as Christians—we proclaim it each week in the words of the memorial acclamation, “Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.” Has, is, and will. Jesus has, Jesus is, Jesus will.

And so, we wait. We wait for the second coming even tho’ Jesus already is. What a funny thing to think of, is and will. Present and yet to be.

And, the now is now and it is where we are.

So, what then? What now?

As we sit here waiting for Christ, while simultaneously taking our place in the midst of Christ’s body, how shall we live?

It is not uncommon for people, to focus on the mystery of the life that is to come. Think of the Sadducees and their logic puzzle of a question. Theirs is an intellectual question—do the laws that govern us now hold true in death? If, as you teach, there is new life…what about human laws that would make that new life an absurdity?

Logic puzzles are not theology…and solving their puzzle is clearly not Jesus’ concern. Jesus’ concern is our relationship with God—a relationship that is grounded in God’s concern for us as God’s children. We are God’s beloved children…and that is true for both the living and the dead.

So get over yourself, and get busy!

When you look at this passage in context, the Sadducees question is an interruption. It is flanked by two passages, one about taxes and the other about giving, which address our economic lives and our obligations and our choices.  The question of who is married to whom in the life that is to come is a distraction—a distraction from the hard work of choosing how we shall live and what we will do with all that we’ve been given.

It’s fair to say that the early Christians found themselves distracted as well…by false teachings, external pressures, and conflict within their own communities.

The 2^nd Letter to the Christian community in Thessalonica directly addresses a false teaching that was making the rounds—that Jesus’ second coming had already happened. “As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.”

I can’t help but think it would be a little like having someone tell you that you’ve missed the bus, only to then go home and really miss the bus!

To miss the opportunity to take our part in the life that is, because of our fixation on the life that is to come…

Okay, so, if these texts aren’t about death, what are they about?

Well, in a deliberate twist, I’m going to enter into this question by sharing with you what I hope death will be like…

Heaven will have coffee shops and libraries, grassy yards and blue skies. Everyone I’ve ever loved will live in my neighborhood. I won’t have anyone to grieve because everyone will be with me. And, because I believe in redemption and forgiveness, everyone who ever messed up, no matter how big, lives there too—but now they are awesome and we are all friends. Amen.

Feel free to laugh. But, this is my land of milk and honey, thank you very much! And, doesn’t it sound pretty awesome. Wouldn’t we all like a neighborhood like that?

Which brings me to my point. When we wax rhapsodic about the life that is to come, we are talking about our hopes for the life that is RIGHT NOW.

I want peace and reconciliation. I want to be surrounded by those I love. I want to be surrounded by beauty. I want comfortable public spaces. I want everyone to have a home.

I want to forgive and be forgiven. I want those I’ve lost to time and space to be brought close once more.

I want the Kingdom of God, and I want it now!

So, how do I do that? How do WE do that? How do we live a life, in word and deed, that reflects the abiding love of God, the promise of the resurrection, and our belovedness as children of God?

Ponder this in your hearts and then, get busy.

Amen.