Christ the King vs Fascism

 

Christ the King vs Fascism

It may strike us as odd that, as we celebrate Christ the King, we focus on Christ on the cross. To add to the oddness of this feast of our Lord is our second reading from Luke 1:68-79, the Song of Zechariah, the old priest in the Temple explaining to his wife and others why he will name his and Elizabeth’s child John. These two passages from Luke’s Gospel may strike one, at first glance, not the most obvious way to celebrate what Pope Paul VI in 1969 named this day, the Last Sunday before Advent, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe; often shortened to Christ the King Sunday, or The Reign of Christ.

 

Christ the King Sunday was the creation of an earlier pope, Pope Pius XI, during a time of gathering darkness throughout Europe, not dissimilar to what Zechariah and his people experienced under the oppression of the Roman Empire. Thus, the old priest sings, “[The Lord] has raised up for us a mighty savior, born of the house of his servant David. Through his holy prophets he promised of old, that he would save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us” (Luke 1:68-79). This mighty savior, of course, is Jesus, of whom many had hoped would rescue the Israelites from the severe darkness of Roman rule. And this entire song, ostensibly to be about John, defines John’s role in just a few words as the one who is to announce the coming reign of Christ and what he often calls the kingdom of God as an alternative to life in the empire.

 

In 1925, as the world was being gripped by nationalist, secularist, anti-Semitic, and authoritarian-fascist dictators like in the old Roman Empire, Pope Pius XI instituted Christ the King Sunday to refocus the Church, the Body of Christ on Earth, on why we are here at all – to be icons of God’s love in this world. As Christ’s disciples, we are to serve the world as Christ did: loving God his Father, and loving all people as neighbors – even to the extent of admonishing us to pray for and love our enemies. This would be a hallmark of a Christlike life: to love others as Christ loved all others, and as our Risen Lord and King loves us today. No doubt, Pius XI would recognize the signs of a similar gathering darkness once again, throughout the world today: so-called “strong men,” dictators, and fascist governments are once again promising peace and prosperity, but delivering nothing close to the promise Zechariah sings of: “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

 

It is our God’s tender compassion, which one sees at work even as Jesus is already nailed to a Roman cross. The scene, as Luke describes it, is dark. They are at the Place of the Skull, a hillside outside the city gates of Jerusalem, where the Romans have crucified countless others considered, like Jesus, a threat to the empire (Luke 23:33-43). As Jesus is crucified alongside two other criminals, he forgives the soldiers doing the empire’s dirty work, “for they do not know what they are doing.” People in the crowd and leaders of the community are mocking Jesus. If indeed he is the Christ, the Savior of God’s people, why does he not save himself? Why doesn’t he order his followers, who are many, to revolt? The disciples and the reader all know, however, that is not the way of God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness.

 

Then, one of the criminals also crucified joins in the jeering: “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other says, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” He continued, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” We hear Luke’s Passion every three years on Palm Sunday. Perhaps, however, we miss the greater meaning. Jesus does not say, “Someday in the distant future you will be with me in paradise – in my Father’s kingdom, living with me under the reign of Christ.” That is, we can all be with Christ, whom Pope Paul VI calls “the King of the Universe.”

 

As the author of Colossians reminds us, in agreement with the opening words of John’s Gospel, this Jesus, the Christ, the Word, was with God before Creation itself, and is “the very image of God, the first born of all creation” (Colossians 1:11-20). This is the Universal Christ and King of the Universe itself, which we know to have been set in motion nearly 14 billion years ago and is still expanding, still growing, still evolving! The Good News for all humankind is that the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption and forgiveness, is open to all today, here and now. For the cross was not the end of the story. It was just the beginning of the reign of the resurrected Christ, whose Spirit is with us and in us at all times. For those of us who know the rest of the story, the prophecy of the old priest Zechariah is true: “In the tender compassion of our God the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:68-79).

 

The Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio, in her book The Primacy of Love, reminds us of the power of this moment with Christ on the cross. The reign of Christ, this Paradise he promises us here today, means that “each person is a divine creative work of love.” We are all created in the image of God and represent God’s special and distinct love for each person. She goes on to speak of that powerful and early follower of St. Francis, Clare of Assisi. Clare, in correspondence with Agnes of Prague (the sister of King Wenceslas!), urges us to meditate on the image, the icon, of Christ on the cross every day, for it is a mirror of our hearts: “Study your face within it, so that you may be adorned with virtues within and without.” Delio then asks the reader, “Does your face reflect what is in your heart? When the image of who we are reflects what we are; when our face reflects what fills the heart, then we image Christ, the image of love incarnate, God’s agape.”

 

The prophet Jeremiah, the old Priest Zechariah, and Jesus were all familiar with a world of “bad shepherds” dividing, misleading, scattering God’s people, God’s flock, in darkness and fear. Such bad shepherds are at work throughout the world today. It is on the cross that Jesus promises to gather a remnant of those of us who look upon the crucified Christ and see just who we are and whose we are. Christ the King Sunday is meant to be a day, a moment in time for us to be freed from all darkness, freed from the clutches of bad shepherds everywhere. In Christ, through Christ, and with Christ, we can learn to let go of any and all attachments to empire, and let all fears, worries, and obsessions fade into the background. As Albert Nolan, a Dominican priest from South Africa, writes in his book, Jesus Today, “For some, the greatest relief of all is the experience of freedom from guilt. Our wrongdoing will never be held against us. We are forgiven. We are free.” We are freed to be with Jesus in paradise today.

 

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” This is Jesus’ final declaration from the cross. This is what the “mirror saint” Clare wants all of us to see as we gaze at Christ on the cross. May God forgive us, may Christ renew us, and may the Spirit enable us to grow in Christ’s love, mercy, and compassion for all persons, and all creation itself. Amen.

 

[RCL] Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 1: 68-79; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

Apocalypse Now Proper 28C

 

Apocalypse Now

Go back for a moment to September 11, 2001. Where were you when you heard that two passenger jets had crashed into the World Trade Towers? What was your immediate feeling? What feelings did you have as the day wore on as we all waited for some sort of “All Clear” signal? Where were you and what did it feel like when you heard that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated? Or, if you are old enough to remember, the attack on Pearl Harbor?

 

Any one of these events, and all three together, cannot match the feelings of those who first heard Luke’s version of Jesus discussing the destruction of not just The Temple, but all of Jerusalem as the Roman Empire squashed an attempted insurrection to drive them out of Israel. [Luke 21: 5-36] For Caesar, it was like a gnat attempting to bring down Tyrannosaurus Rex! It was no contest. And destroying The Temple and all of Jerusalem was in effect to drive a stake through the very heart of the People Israel. In good times and bad times, in times of Exile, and in diaspora, The Temple has stood as a reminder of better days ahead when, as Isaiah’s soaring poetry makes the case that they would return, and once again the appointed offerings would be made in a new Temple to the God of the Exodus. [Isaiah 65:17-25] Its absence is heart breaking. 

By the time Luke reports Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse, there was no longer a city or a Temple. It all lay in ashes. The people spread out into centuries of diaspora. The “new heavens and a new earth” that had been a promise such that “the former bad times shall not be remembered.or come to mind,” did not, and has not happened. From the perspective of the infant Church, the promise of God’s reign, God’s kingdom, still had not and has not materialized. Unlike our Jewish sisters and brothers who still hold on to a time when the Temple shall be restored, all memory of The Temple has long been replaced in the Church by Constantine’s establishment of Christendom – a distinctively un-holy Holy Roman Empire – and a Church that for the most part has not been anything like the “kingdom of God” that was central to the Good News Jesus preached, taught, and lived every day of his earthly existence. The heart of his apocalyptic discourse as his disciples look admiringly at the grandeur of the of the Temple, is that “Yes” one day the Son of Man will return, and the glory of the Lord restored. A promise of “Yes – but not yet!” Meanwhile, says Jesus, we are to endure: “By your endurance you will gain your souls." 

We learn from the letters to the church in Thessaloniki that things for the young church were going badly before the insurrection and destruction of The Temple. The church, as a vanguard movement that might be characterized as Making Israel Great Again, had already turned against one another, some refusing to adhere to the core principle to “love one another as I, Jesus, have loved you.” [2 Thessalonians 3:6-13] The Greek suggests that these people were not idle or lazy, but rather were “insubordinate,” or “irresponsible,” shirking their duties to Tot make sure that everyone has enough to eat - a core value in the Bible all the way back to the days of manna in the wilderness: where everyone got enough, no one could take too much, and if you hoard it, it rots. Perhaps these insubordinates took Jesus’s apocalyptic words literally, believing that if he were to return soon, why should we work hard to meet the needs of others? 

There’s a problem when we read “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” We hear echoes of talk about welfare mothers cheating the system, using Food Stamps and SNAP benefits to illegally obtain drugs and alcohol, but that is not what is going on. As Luke describes in the opening chapters of Acts, the early church was a mutual aid society: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” Those not participating in this mutual aid society, it is suggested, ought not to benefit from it. Note: This addresses a church problem only. This is not talking about people in the general public. Note as well, when the church operated as a mutual aid society, the church grew by leaps and bounds! Their faithfulness endured through persecutions and the brutality of the Empire. 

Indeed, in good times and in bad, there have always been those in the church who have endured and who faithfully fulfill the vision as declared some five centuries before the time of Christ. A vision declared in Isaiah 12:2-6:

Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid.

For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense, and he will be my Savior.

Therefore, you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.

And on that day, you shall say, give thanks to the Lord and call upon his Name;

Make his deeds known among the peoples; see that they remember

that his Name is exalted.

Sing the praises of the Lord, for he has done great things,

and this is known in all the world.

Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy, *

for the great one in the midst of you is the Holy One of Israel.

We can endure for the great one is in the midst of us. We gather each Sunday to remind ourselves, that it is Christ who was raised from the dead who is present in our Eucharist. There is no need to wait for him to appear – it is his Spirit that sustains us through whatever wilderness, hard times, and times of darkness and destruction surround us. Christ, the Morning Star that knows no setting is here, day and night, whose laser-like light directs us to live life as those Christians of old did: a mutual aid society, in which we all work together to be sure that everyone has enough, and no one has too much. We must remember that we are those people who pool our resources to meet the needs of one another, and as Jesus tells us, all others, even the strangers, foreigners and resident aliens who flee lands of terror, warfare, and famine. 

Immediately following Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse, the Temple authorities and collaborators with the Roman occupation enlist Judas in their attempt to remove Jesus once and for all from meddling in their monopoly of the resources meant for the whole community. They forgot that the “great one in the midst of us is the Holy One of Israel!” They forget that it is God who shall save us and not we ourselves. And therein, lies the mischievousness that has plagued Christendom since Constantine changed the church from a mutual aid society into a mechanism of the Empire. Thus, the importance that we remain a prophetic voice, a community who remembers the vision of a just society articulated in our sacred scriptures, despite whatever destruction seems to surround us on all sides. Our endurance will save our souls! Christ is with us to remind us that all that we do and all that we say is meant demonstrate our love one another, and for all others, as he loves us.

Resurrection and Transformation Proper 27C

 

Resurrection and Transformation

In a chapter in which Jesus is tested by the Sadducees, Priests and Scribes three times while teaching in The Temple, the third test is this question about a poor widow who, after her first husband dies, marries one brother after another of his seven brothers. Each one dies. After each marriage she is left childless. [Luke 20 27-40] Which one, ask the Sadducees, will be her husband in the resurrection? Now admittedly, the whole thing sounds weird to us unless we understand that this was a thing in ancient Israel. It’s called levirate marriage. Levirate marriage was designed to help widows who otherwise would have no one to support them marry a brother of her deceased husband. Of course, it was also designed so that she could go on to have children to perpetuate the dead husband’s family line. That she would marry all seven brothers is absurd. And that all eight marriages would end up childless seems far-fetched as well, but possible. Most absurd of all is the idea that the Sadducees who do not believe in the resurrection, would ask a question about marriage in the age of the resurrection of the dead. So, what gives? 

No doubt Jesus asks himself the same question. What gives? Nevertheless, he handles the situation masterfully! First, he asserts that people are married and given in marriage in this life, but there is no need for marriage in the resurrection of the dead – no need for children, no need for support, no need to extend a family line. Everyone is still dead. “Because,” he says, “they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.” Angels and children do not procreate; thus, widows in the resurrection age will have no need for a husband anymore.

Then he gets to the really substantive issue, for he knows the Sadducees are just messing with him. Remember, they do not believe in the resurrection. That’s why they are so sad, you see? But resurrection is the issue. Speaking like true Pharisee or Rabbi, he appeals to Torah, and that moment when Moses is speaking to a bush that is on fire, but is not consumed. I don’t know what is more remarkable: that the bush is not consumed? Or, the fact that it is talking directly to Moses? At any rate, Jesus asserts that it is Moses himself who finds out that the dead are raised to new life. After the bush instructs Moses to lead the people out of Egypt, Moses wants to know who the bush is? Who should I say has told me to prepare the people to leave and to tell Pharaoh to let our people go? The bush replies, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Jesus scores the final knock out: “Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.” And that is why we Pharisees, he seems to say, believe there is a resurrection of the dead! Point, Set, and Match! Unless you want to challenge Moses. In which case, sure, go ahead! 

That he has survived this third round of testing is evidenced by the conclusion of the story, which the lectionary, for some reason leaves out: “Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well.’ For they no longer dared to ask him another question.” Touche! Thus, proving once and for all that Jesus is a shrewdie! 

What are we to make of all this? Luke, writing after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70 CE, places this just before the final conflict with the Priests, who are aligned with Pilate, who is the appointed authority of Caeser, Emperor of the Empire, and styles himself as a rival God to Yahweh, the God of Israel. Nevertheless, the Sadducees, Scribes, and Pharisees, I believe, sincerely wanted to know if Jesus really was The One sent by God to turn their world right-side-up again. Such testing is part of the culture. When I considered converting to Judaism, Rabbi Stanley Kessler made clear that it was customary for him to test my intention three times before beginning a process of conversion. Something similar was going on with Jesus among the various sub-sects of Israel, some sincerely hoping he might be The One, the New Moses, to lead them back to a life of freedom from the brutal authoritarian dictatorship of Rome.

 

Then there is the primary issue. If the end of the gospel story is to make any sense at all, a case must be made that there is, in fact, a resurrection of the dead. Jesus offers such an argument from Torah, which was the respected group of texts for all the groups testing him. Some of the Sadducees and the Priests, however, were conflicted, since they were effectively on Rome’s payroll and therefore granted some degree of power and freedom. We humans often allow ourselves to be morally compromised to maintain whatever power and freedom we may have been given. This was true for those who collaborated with the Empire. 

Then there are questions about the resurrection. There’s a story that goes something like this: A man on his death-bed, nearing the end of this life, calls his priest to come. “I have listened to everything you have said for years, and I know that you have said that we can’t take it with us when we die. But I really do want to take my vast wealth with me. What can I do?” The priest suggests, “Why not convert your wealth to gold bricks, put them in a suitcase under your bed and see what happens.” The man does this, Sure enough, when he dies, he finds himself, suitcase in hand, facing St. Peter at Heaven’s Gate. “Wow!” he says, “It worked!” He walks over to St. Peter who is looking at him with a puzzled look on his face. “What do you have in the suitcase?” asks Peter. The man opens it up, and proudly displays all of his gold. But Peter looks on with even greater puzzlement on his face? “What’s the matter?” asks the man. “Well,” says Peter, “we’ve never had anyone show up with a suitcase filled with pavement before!”

 

This reflects Jesus’s initial argument that resurrection life will likely not to be at all as we experience life in this age, in our earthly life. All expectations that the life after this life will be familiar ought to be suspended. The question about the eight-time married widow is absurd and irrelevant. In resurrection there will be a radical discontinuity with life in this age. The one reliable continuity, however, is God – the One who transcends death. As New Testament Scholar Charles B. Cousar concludes, “Jesus’ point is simply that God’s future cannot be understood as an extension of our present existence. It is not the case that we can take what we like out of our current life, raise it to the nth power, and call it heaven. Resurrection entails transformation.” 

As we say in our Burial Office, “life is changed, not ended; and when our mortal body lies in death, there is prepared for a dwelling place eternal n the heavens.” (BCP 382) Scribes, Pharisees, Priests and Sadducees all try to test Jesus to see if he truly is the Son of God. They try to pin him down on when the Day of the Lord will come and what life in the age of the resurrection of the dead will be like. Jesus steadfastly responds that only God knows, only his Father, and our heavenly Father, knows any of this and all of this. The one thing we can rely upon, the one continuity in the age to come, is that which is expressed by the prophet Haggai to a people who return from exile to find Jerusalem and the Temple an utter shamble. It is not like they remembered. The Lord God says to them, and to us, “I am with you…my Spirit abides among you. Do not fear!” 

That fourteenth century female mystic, Julian of Norwich, sums it up this way, “All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.” Resurrection entails transformation. God is with us; God’s Spirit abides among us. Fear not. All shall be well! It may not be the same, it may not be familiar, but if we let ourselves live into the transformation God has in mind, then all shall be well, for God’s Spirit does abide among us. Now, and forever. Amen.

Blessed be God, for you have created me! All Saints 2025C

 

Blessed be God, for you have created me!

Some have likened Jesus to a Lighthouse, a beam of light that cuts through the darkness to lead us like ships to safety on the dry land of the kingdom of God. Jesus, the light that shines through the darkness, and which the darkness has not overcome the life that is the light of the world. Jesus, like navigators, also relies on lower lights upon the shore, which in relation to the Lighthouse provides a more precise picture of how to land in life eternal in God’s kingdom. 

All Saints is an annual feast of the Body of Christ, his Church. In the earliest days, all those baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Jeus the Christ were referred to as saints, lower case. Lower case, but all-important amplifiers of the Light of Christ, that morning star that knows no setting. Over time, however, this festival of All Saints celebrated the lives of those Saints, upper case, who answered the bell to step up in their generation as those who follow Christ in all that that do and all that they say. Often these Saints were peacemakers in a world of force and violence. Most of all, they were men and women in all generations who one way or another lived lives that reflected a deep understanding of what many consider Jesus’s Magna Charta for Christians: The Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), and the parallel Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:20-31. It is a sign of our own time of the need always to remind ourselves of these Saints who represent those core teachings of what it means to follow Christ, for there are American Christians now complaining that the Sermons on the Mount and the Plain are “too woke” and no longer express values relevant to our world. 

There is a list of individuals in our Book of Common Prayer (1979) listed on their feast days beginning on page 19.  Clare, August 11, came from a wealthy family in the often-overlooked town of Assisi in thirteenth century Italy. She was inspired by Francesco Giovanni, or Francis, who had left his wealthy merchant family to “repair” the church, as the voice of Christ on the cross had called him as he prayed in the chapel at San Damiano, outside of Assisi. Francis renounced his wealth and his patrimony, and wandered from town to town gathering stones to rebuild the San Damiano chapel. But then he was inspired to go further: to repair the Whole Church. He gathered companions to found an order of mendicant Friars Minor. They dressed in brown, woolen peasant robes with a knotted rope belt and devoted themselves to Christ and serving the poor and the mortally ill. Clare was moved to join Francis and went on to found a women’s order of Franciscans later called the Poor Sisters. 

Francis helped Clare write a Rule of Life similar to that he had written for the Friars Minor. When Francis died, the Friars had begun to abandon the Rule of Life until Clare held their feet to the fire of the Rule and refocused them on their work of spreading the gospel through service to others, especially to those most in need, thus saving the order of Franciscans for the ages. 

Clare was not the only thirteenth century woman to abandon a life of marriage and wealth, as communities of women living together began to appear throughout Europe. Many of them had heard of Clare and the Poor Sisters. They would write to her for advice on how to order their communities. Some of her letters have survived, and anyone interested in how one might become a peacemaker, live a life of poverty, and withstand being reviled and misunderstood for not living a life characterized by eating, drinking, over self-indulgence, and merriment, can find much to learn from Clare’s letters. It took courage on behalf of Francis, Clare and others, to abandon what most would consider the good life for a life of poverty and service to others in the name of Christ. To become one of those lesser lights that amplify and extend the True Light that still cuts through whatever darkness attempts to prevail against it. 

One such woman was Ermentrude of Bruges, daughter of the mayor of Cologne. She took a pilgrimage in 1240, and ended up living as a hermit in Bruges. She heard of Clare and as a result of their correspondence, she made a pilgrimage to Assisi to meet her, only to arrive two weeks after Clare had died. After meeting with the sisters, however, on returning to Bruges she turned her hermitage into a house of Poor Sisters. In one letter that survives, Clare wrote to Ermentrude, and really to all of us:

Be faithful, dearest, to the one to whom you are promised until death. By Him you will be crowned with the laurels of life. For our labor is short but the reward eternal. Do not be confounded by the clamor of a world as fleeting as shadows. Let not the empty specters of a deceitful world torment you; close your ears to the whispers of hell and strongly resist its assaults…Freely support adversity and be not elated when things go well for the former challenges faith and the latter demands it. Faithfully return to God what you have promised and he will reward you. O dearest, look to heaven which summons us, and take up your cross and follow Christ who goes before us, then, after various and numerous troubles we shall enter through Him into His glory. With your whole being, love God and Jesus his Son, crucified for us sinners, never let the memory of Him slip from your mind… Watch and pray always. The work which you have well begun, swiftly complete, and the ministry which you have undertaken in holy poverty, and sincere humility, fulfil it…Let us pray to God for each other, then in this way we will each hear the burdens of the other in love, easily fulfilling the law of Christ. Amen.

 

“With your whole being, love God, and Jesus his son.” “Faithfully return to God what you have promised and he will reward you.” For All the Saints. Those lesser lights that amplify the True Light and Life of the world. Faithful women and men in every generation who hear the voice of Christ in prayer. As the popular hymns say, “And there’s not any reason, no, not the least, why I shouldn’t be one too.” For the truth of the matter is that we pray for those who have gone before because they have always been praying for us. And the Saints of the Church are people just like every one of us. We celebrate All Saints to remind us who we have been created to be. Saints. 

 “We all have the inborn wisdom to create a wholesome, uplifted existence for ourselves and others. We can think beyond our own little cocoon and try to help this troubled world. Not only will our friends and family benefit, but even our enemies will reap the blessings of peace,” writes Pema Chodron. By virtue of our Baptism, we all have the inborn wisdom of Christ. We have all been created to be the Saints of the Body of Christ, His Church, to help this troubled world. 

No one knew this more than a young woman from Assisi. On her death bed, the Poor Sisters gathered around her, and Clare said to them, and to us, “Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear, for he that created you has sanctified you, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother.”  Then came her final words, “Blessed be God, for you have created me.” May each of us start each day with Saint Clare’s final words to remind ourselves who we are, and whose we are: Blessed be God, for you have created me! 

May we share the Life and Light of the world with others this day. Amen.