Sermons

Now do something about it.

Preached by Mother Lizette Larson-Miller on 21st Sunday after Pentecost (Sunday, December 7, 2008)

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20, Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

I don’t know how many of you are still able to listen to the news these days. Between the high stakes presidential election process, the massive financial meltdown with its personal and global ramifications, the spreading resurgence of jihadist groups engulfing more and more of the Middle East and beyond, let alone more local and particular rounds of bad news in California and the Bay Area, I find myself tempted to crawl back under the covers and pull them over my head, rather than make my way through the New York Times

“You shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” The elections matter, the financial crisis is real, our responsibilities to family members and others are real, but how do we put them in a Christian perspective? Is there a Christian perspective, especially when livelihoods, pensions and security are in question? Is it simply a matter of priorities? If we put Christ first, will everything else fall into place? “You shall have no other gods before me…” certainly it is not a matter of us making gods, idols of our income, our pension, our political commitments, our place of living, our work as our identity – certainly it is just a matter of balance. We must live both in the world and as Christians.

“Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…I want to know Christ (and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings) by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

I suspect many of us stand condemned by the Apostle Paul’s passionate evangelism to the Philippian Christians of the first century – I know I do. And it seems to me that there are two primary forces that separate us from the intensity and commitment of his discipleship in the twenty-first century.

The first is that many of us are comfortable, we have made our peace with the world and our inculturation to the world. And second, how central to our daily life is the next world as opposed to this world? We rarely preach about it- we prefer to focus on realized eschatology, working to bring about God’s justice and peace in this life, on this planet, in our time, and letting the future take care of itself. Increasingly even Christian funerals are celebrations of life – looking back to a life well-lived and relationships celebrated rather than looking forward to life in union with God eternally, the ritual expression of the migration of the soul to that place of refreshment, peace and light. As Philip Jenkins says in his magisterial treatment on Christianity in the Next Millennium, many Christians are “looking for solutions, not salvation.”

It is at this point that I am reminded of the crucial importance of the presence of religious orders in our midst. There are many Episcopalians who have never seen an Anglican Franciscan, Benedictine or other religious – many don’t even know they exist outside of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But in this parish we know they exist because they exist here – we can often see them, talk to them, on a regular basis. And what does their presence mean in an urban church like ours? Is it simply to remind us we are not generically Protestant but Anglican – the middle way? Is it to make us feel smug that we’ve got them and the Presbyterians don’t? I hope that it is to make us uncomfortable. Not because the individuals that we know and love and who dress oddly are perfect Christians, or lord it over us, but they are making their peace with the world in a different way than most of the rest of us. They have embodied, in their very being, some of what it is to be in but not of the world. And they remind me that I am more than often both in and of the world – I hope they always witness to not just having put on Christ but having done so at a cost. I think it is crucially important that they are often in their habit – we cannot avoid the witness before our eyes and the weighing of our own practice of discipleship that their witness makes.

But it is not just those in religious habits who do this – it is just Christians who do this as witnessing to Christ, who try to live by knowing Christ through living in Christ, but others in many religious traditions and in none witness to a selflessness that is at the heart of emptying ourselves so that we are not at the center of everything. I was struck by the murder of 25 year-old Kirsten Brydum this past week, an activist whom the SF Chronicle said “wanted to change the world,” either through assisting the homeless and poor in this city, or being part of something beyond the usual material gods and idols. Kirsten did not give up her life, for Christ or any other, it was taken from her, she was murdered in a robbery. But she had, in some way, already given up her life, let go in order to be free, “forgetting what” was behind and “straining forward to what lies ahead.”

The story in Exodus of Moses and the people of Israel coming face to face with the omnipotent God is a story of fear and discomfort – “You talk to him, Moses, don’t let God speak to us, or we’ll die!” The Apostle Paul recounts his struggle and journey toward union with God and we are uncomfortable, realizing that many of us are not even on the same track or in the same race as he was. The parable in Matthew’s gospel today leaves the Pharisees uncomfortable, condemned by Jesus’ statement “therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom” – ouch!

Perhaps we are to walk away uncomfortable, unsettled, restless. There was a great wisdom in the older Anglican prayer regarding our coming to the table: “deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” The assent to the communion formula is “Amen” – the body of Christ, the bread of heaven, the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation” – the assent is your agreement, yes, it is, but it is also the recognition that this is a challenge – “the body of Christ” – now do something about it, be the body of Christ for the world; “the blood of Christ” – now do something about it, be poured out for others. It’s a risky invitation – “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only speak the word, and I shall be saved.”