Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017 (Last Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 17:1-9
“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5)
Peter, James, and John hear the voice of God speak these words about Jesus as they are gathered on the mountain in today’s Gospel reading.
We heard these exact same words just a few weeks ago, on the first Sunday after the Epiphany, when our Gospel reading was the story of Jesus’s baptism. After John the Baptist baptizes Jesus in the River Jordan, the Holy Spirit descends from heaven in the form of a dove and comes to rest on Jesus’s head, and a voice from heaven says,
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
The season after the Epiphany is bookended by this phrase – “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The season starts and ends with moments where God declares Jesus to be his beloved Son and commands those around him to take notice. These two great revelations from God take place at the beginning of the two significant phases of Jesus’s life. The first event – Jesus’s baptism – occurs at the start of his public teaching ministry, and the second event – the Transfiguration – occurs at the start of his passion, his journey to the cross. We are told to “look, listen up, take notice!” – as he begins to show us how to live and as he begins to show us how to die.
After the story of Jesus’s baptism, we get a series of his teachings in the following weeks. This year, our readings came primarily from the Sermon on the Mount, and we used those readings as starting points to consider how Jesus taught us to live, and how we vow to follow those teachings through the promises we make when we, too, are baptized. Our Baptismal Covenant is our vow to behave in ways that echo the teachings of Jesus: love your neighbor and your enemy, serve God in all people, strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.
The Transfiguration marks the starting point of Jesus’s journey toward his death. Shortly before this revelatory moment, Jesus begins to predict his death and speak of it to his disciples, and shortly after shining with a holy light on the mountain, he “sets his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), where he will be killed. We always hear the story of the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent begins because it marks the beginning of Jesus’s journey to the cross, the journey we commemorate during Lent and Holy Week.
It also gives us a preview of the Resurrection: the image of Jesus changed in form but yet still recognizably Jesus, shining with an otherworldly light, being proclaimed God’s beloved son, worshipped above all other revered prophets of old, foreshadows his eventual triumph over death through his Resurrection.
On their way down the mountain afterwards, Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone about what they have just seen until after “the Son of Man is raised from the dead.” The Transfiguration only makes sense in light of the Resurrection, but the Resurrection cannot happen without walking the road to Jerusalem, the road to death. Peter, James, and John, Jesus’s “inner circle,” are given the vision of the Transfiguration as a “spiritual booster” before they head down that difficult road. They may not understand it in the moment, but somewhere in their consciousness, when they find themselves in the midst of despair, they will remember this: the road may be long and dark, but the end result is Jesus standing triumphant, radiant, shining, glorified above all the prophets.
And as we remember these events of so many years ago, we too are given this “spiritual booster” right before Lent, a “foretaste of the feast to come,” a reminder that the doom and gloom of Lent isn’t all there is to the story. As we prepare for Lent, the Transfiguration reminds us that the Resurrection is not far behind. We enter Lent with the image of a shining, glorified Jesus to lead us through the darkness. In the words of the psalmist, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4). As we begin Lent this year, let us not forget that God is with us even as we walk through the wilderness. God is with us in our pain and God is able to transform that pain into new life. The road to death is lit by Resurrection light.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Loving your neighbor -- and your enemy: some practical steps
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017 (Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part seven of a seven-week series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 5:38-48, Baptismal Covenant Question #4
In this final week of our preaching series on baptism, we consider the fourth question in the Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”
Our readings today invite us to consider what it means to love our neighbor, a common instruction in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. Our passage from Leviticus includes this instruction:
“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin… You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:17-18)
Jesus takes this even a step further in our Gospel passage for the day:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?... And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” (Matthew 5:43-48)
For much of my life, I would hear passages like these and throw my hands up with exasperation.
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge?”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”
“Be perfect, as God is perfect?”
Yeah, right!! Thanks a lot, God. There you go again, setting your standards so impossibly high that we could never reach them.
And then, in my study of world religions in college and graduate school, I discovered lovingkindness meditation, which comes out of the Buddhist tradition. For me, a lightbulb went on when I encountered this ancient practice. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but he didn’t teach us HOW – at least, not in the records that were preserved and passed down to us. Just saying, “Love your enemies” without giving any practical instructions as to how to do that, especially since it is so contrary to the instincts of human nature, was, for me, not helpful at all. Reading and hearing these biblical passages did nothing for me except frustrate me and induce feelings of guilt and shame over how poorly I did at trying to follow these instructions. But when I discovered lovingkindness meditation, I felt like FINALLY, here was a set of practices that gave me tools to actually change my behavior and follow the teachings of Jesus more closely.
Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, has noted the similarities between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha on loving one’s enemies, but he points out that Jesus was only able to teach for about three years before he was crucified. The Buddha, on the other hand,
At its most basic, lovingkindness meditation is the act of sending goodwill and well-wishes into the world. It involves repeating a certain set of phrases silently during meditation that express a wish for the person, people, or beings you are directing these wishes toward to be free from danger, to have mental and physical happiness, and to be content and at peace in the world.
The word translated into English as “lovingkindness” is the Pali word metta. (Pali is the language in which most of the Buddhist scriptures are written, a language that originated in ancient India.) Sharon Salzburg, a prominent American Buddhist teacher, writes about how metta differs from what Americans normally think of when we use the word “love:”
It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word hesed, often translated as “lovingkindness” in English, also refers to this kind of unconditional love, the kind of love God offers to humankind. It is this kind of love that Jesus commands us to have for our enemies. Not passion or desire or sentimentality, not a feeling of liking or being drawn toward them, but that kind of unconditional acceptance of what is, a love that sees all things and accepts them as they are. This kind of love recognizes the common humanity of all people and genuinely seeks the happiness of all, rather than nurturing resentments and wishing ill upon those who have harmed us.
In traditional Buddhist lovingkindness practice, the meditator moves through a series of six categories of beings in a set order. One begins by directing metta -- lovingkindness, well-wishes -- towards oneself, then moves on to a benefactor or mentor, someone who has supported you in your life or work in such a way that feeling gratitude toward this person and wishing him or her well is easy. Then, you consider a beloved friend, then a neutral person, then an enemy, and finally, all beings.
There is a wisdom to the order of this structure. First, we have to be able to love ourselves before we can truly love others, which is why metta starts with a focus on self. And finally, we can only say we love all people when we have been able to send love toward our enemies, toward those we find it most difficult to love.
You may see different translations or expressions of the metta phrases, but they all convey those basic sentiments: that the person you are focusing on be free from danger, be mentally and physically well, and have ease of well-being – be content and at peace in the world. The set of phrases I use that express these wishes is:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Ideally, you would spend a good deal of time with each category before moving on to the next one, but for the purposes of illustration today, I want to focus on just the “friend” and the “enemy” categories, to show you how this works and how you might use this practice to help work with the feelings of anger or pain that may come up for you when you think about a “difficult person” or enemy in your life.
So now I’m going to walk you through a guided metta meditation.
Take a moment to find a comfortable sitting position. Ideally, you’d sit with your spine straight, so that the air can flow unobstructed in and out of your lungs. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment, and exhale all the way out. Then let your breathing return to normal, and just watch it as it settles in to a regular rhythm.
Traditionally we always start by directing metta toward ourselves, but since that can be somewhat of a complex practice in and of itself, today we’ll start by focusing on a good friend, someone it is easy for you to love, someone you naturally wish well. It is best to pick someone who is not a family member, and not a romantic partner, since we want to generate a feeling of pure, unattached love and goodwill, not love that is mixed up with feelings of desire, whether that be sexual desire or a sense of needing that person’s approval or attention. Think of a friend with whom you have a relatively uncomplicated, positive relationship, and bring up an image of that person in your mind.
Now say these phrases silently, directing them toward that friend:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Now shift your attention toward someone it is difficult for you to love. You might think of this person as your enemy, or it just might be someone who you find difficult or annoying, someone you do not naturally feel positively toward. As you work with this practice, it is best to start with someone with whom the dislike or difficulty is relatively mild. Don’t start by trying to love the person who has caused you more pain than anyone else in the world! (Over time you can gradually work yourself up toward being able to direct goodwill toward that person, but for now, pick someone you just mildly dislike.)
Think of that difficult person or enemy in your mind, and then direct the metta phrases toward them:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if your interior landscape changes when you send positive wishes toward this difficult person. Do you feel areas of tightness loosening? Do you feel a relaxation or sense of relief?
If not, if you still find yourself angry and tight and clenched toward your difficult person, try playing with different visualizations to help you feel some sense of kindness and compassion toward them. You might imagine that person as a baby, as an innocent child. Or you might think of them in another situation where they are vulnerable or in pain – gravely ill, or on their deathbed – although be careful not to nurture any feelings of vengefulness or celebration at imagining this person suffering – that is not the point. The point is to open a door for you to connect with them, to see in their shared suffering your common humanity.
Sharon Salzburg says “you should allow yourself to be creative, daring, even humorous, in imagining situations where you can more readily feel kindness toward a difficult person.” One of Sharon’s students chose a difficult person who was extremely talkative and annoying, and it helped her send lovingkindness to that person if she imaged her sitting bound and gagged in a chair. Another student could only send lovingkindness toward his difficult person if he imagined him locked up in jail. Take some time to think of images or visualizations that would help you feel compassion toward this difficult person, situations that would soften your heart toward them.
Now with that image in mind, direct the metta phrases toward your difficult person again:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if anything changes in your body as you sit with that image of your difficult person as you repeat these phrases.
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Go ahead and open your eyes.
Now, if that was difficult, or if you didn’t feel or see any immediate changes in your feelings or attitude toward this person, it’s important to remember that it’s called spiritual practice for a reason! It takes practice! It doesn’t always happen overnight. It’s important to go easy on yourself, to not set expectations too high in terms of what the results of the practice will be. Ideally, you’d spend 30 minutes in silent meditation each day, working with this or any other meditation techniques. People do this for a lifetime and are still working at it, so don’t expect to be the perfect example of “loving your neighbor” after only trying this a few times.
When Jesus says, “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he doesn’t mean you should never make any mistakes. The Greek word translated as “perfect” is teleios, which doesn’t mean “without flaws or mistakes,” but “complete, whole, having reached its end, full-grown, or mature.” Jesus is calling us to be mature Christians, to be grown-up Christians, to put the effort in to work on our faith and develop it over time. That means not being content to stay in that frustrated, exasperated state – “yeah, right, Jesus, how can I ever live up to what you’re asking of me!” – but to actively search for tools and techniques to help you work toward making those commandments a reality. Maybe lovingkindness meditation will help you as it has helped me, maybe not. But in any case, we’re called to make an effort, using whatever tools are most effective for us. Because at our baptism, we made a vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. There is much wisdom in the teachings of the world’s religions about how to do that, and taking the time to find a practice that works for us is part of the way we keep our baptismal vows.
We’ll close with our 3 minutes of silent meditation that normally comes before the sermon. During that time, I invite you to try out these techniques more extensively, directing the phrases first toward a friend and then toward an enemy.
REFERENCE SHEET:
Metta (Lovingkindness) Phrases:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Metta Sequence:
1. Yourself
2. Benefactor or mentor
3. Friend
4. Neutral person – someone for whom you do not feel an immediate attraction or repulsion, someone who you do not like or dislike
5. Enemy or difficult person
6. All people/all beings
[1] “Sharon Salzburg & Robert Thurman: Meeting Our Enemies and Our Suffering,” On Being with Krista Tippett, 15 December 2016, http://onbeing.org/programs/sharon-salzberg-robert-thurman-embracing-enemies-suffering-2/ Accessed 17 February 2017.
[2] Sharon Salzburg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995): 18-19, 21.
Sermon Text(s): Matthew 5:38-48, Baptismal Covenant Question #4
In this final week of our preaching series on baptism, we consider the fourth question in the Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”
Our readings today invite us to consider what it means to love our neighbor, a common instruction in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. Our passage from Leviticus includes this instruction:
“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin… You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:17-18)
Jesus takes this even a step further in our Gospel passage for the day:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?... And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” (Matthew 5:43-48)
For much of my life, I would hear passages like these and throw my hands up with exasperation.
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge?”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”
“Be perfect, as God is perfect?”
Yeah, right!! Thanks a lot, God. There you go again, setting your standards so impossibly high that we could never reach them.
And then, in my study of world religions in college and graduate school, I discovered lovingkindness meditation, which comes out of the Buddhist tradition. For me, a lightbulb went on when I encountered this ancient practice. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but he didn’t teach us HOW – at least, not in the records that were preserved and passed down to us. Just saying, “Love your enemies” without giving any practical instructions as to how to do that, especially since it is so contrary to the instincts of human nature, was, for me, not helpful at all. Reading and hearing these biblical passages did nothing for me except frustrate me and induce feelings of guilt and shame over how poorly I did at trying to follow these instructions. But when I discovered lovingkindness meditation, I felt like FINALLY, here was a set of practices that gave me tools to actually change my behavior and follow the teachings of Jesus more closely.
Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, has noted the similarities between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha on loving one’s enemies, but he points out that Jesus was only able to teach for about three years before he was crucified. The Buddha, on the other hand,
“had to slave away [teaching] for 46 years after his enlightenment,” Thurman says. “So he had time to provide more practical methodologies to underlie these sort of high moral-sounding slogans like ‘love your enemy.’” [1]Discovering those “practical methodologies” has been an incredible blessing to me, and I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned with you all, in the hopes that it will be useful to you, too, as you strive to “love your neighbor as yourself” and “seek and serve Christ in ALL persons,” even your enemies.
At its most basic, lovingkindness meditation is the act of sending goodwill and well-wishes into the world. It involves repeating a certain set of phrases silently during meditation that express a wish for the person, people, or beings you are directing these wishes toward to be free from danger, to have mental and physical happiness, and to be content and at peace in the world.
The word translated into English as “lovingkindness” is the Pali word metta. (Pali is the language in which most of the Buddhist scriptures are written, a language that originated in ancient India.) Sharon Salzburg, a prominent American Buddhist teacher, writes about how metta differs from what Americans normally think of when we use the word “love:”
“In our culture, when we talk about love, we usually mean either passion or sentimentality,” she says. “It is crucial to distinguish metta from both of these states. Passion is enmeshed with feelings of desire, of wanting, or of owning and possessing. Passion gets entangled with needing things to be a certain way, with having our expectations met… By contrast, the spirit of metta is unconditional: open and unobstructed… When we practice metta, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life. Metta – the sense of love that is not bound to desire, that does not have to pretend things are other than the way they are – overcomes the illusion of separateness… and all of the states that accompany this fundamental error of separateness – fear, alienation, loneliness, and despair – all of the feelings of fragmentation. In place of these, the genuine realization of connectedness brings unification, confidence, and safety.” [2]
It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word hesed, often translated as “lovingkindness” in English, also refers to this kind of unconditional love, the kind of love God offers to humankind. It is this kind of love that Jesus commands us to have for our enemies. Not passion or desire or sentimentality, not a feeling of liking or being drawn toward them, but that kind of unconditional acceptance of what is, a love that sees all things and accepts them as they are. This kind of love recognizes the common humanity of all people and genuinely seeks the happiness of all, rather than nurturing resentments and wishing ill upon those who have harmed us.
In traditional Buddhist lovingkindness practice, the meditator moves through a series of six categories of beings in a set order. One begins by directing metta -- lovingkindness, well-wishes -- towards oneself, then moves on to a benefactor or mentor, someone who has supported you in your life or work in such a way that feeling gratitude toward this person and wishing him or her well is easy. Then, you consider a beloved friend, then a neutral person, then an enemy, and finally, all beings.
There is a wisdom to the order of this structure. First, we have to be able to love ourselves before we can truly love others, which is why metta starts with a focus on self. And finally, we can only say we love all people when we have been able to send love toward our enemies, toward those we find it most difficult to love.
You may see different translations or expressions of the metta phrases, but they all convey those basic sentiments: that the person you are focusing on be free from danger, be mentally and physically well, and have ease of well-being – be content and at peace in the world. The set of phrases I use that express these wishes is:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Ideally, you would spend a good deal of time with each category before moving on to the next one, but for the purposes of illustration today, I want to focus on just the “friend” and the “enemy” categories, to show you how this works and how you might use this practice to help work with the feelings of anger or pain that may come up for you when you think about a “difficult person” or enemy in your life.
So now I’m going to walk you through a guided metta meditation.
Take a moment to find a comfortable sitting position. Ideally, you’d sit with your spine straight, so that the air can flow unobstructed in and out of your lungs. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment, and exhale all the way out. Then let your breathing return to normal, and just watch it as it settles in to a regular rhythm.
Traditionally we always start by directing metta toward ourselves, but since that can be somewhat of a complex practice in and of itself, today we’ll start by focusing on a good friend, someone it is easy for you to love, someone you naturally wish well. It is best to pick someone who is not a family member, and not a romantic partner, since we want to generate a feeling of pure, unattached love and goodwill, not love that is mixed up with feelings of desire, whether that be sexual desire or a sense of needing that person’s approval or attention. Think of a friend with whom you have a relatively uncomplicated, positive relationship, and bring up an image of that person in your mind.
Now say these phrases silently, directing them toward that friend:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Now shift your attention toward someone it is difficult for you to love. You might think of this person as your enemy, or it just might be someone who you find difficult or annoying, someone you do not naturally feel positively toward. As you work with this practice, it is best to start with someone with whom the dislike or difficulty is relatively mild. Don’t start by trying to love the person who has caused you more pain than anyone else in the world! (Over time you can gradually work yourself up toward being able to direct goodwill toward that person, but for now, pick someone you just mildly dislike.)
Think of that difficult person or enemy in your mind, and then direct the metta phrases toward them:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if your interior landscape changes when you send positive wishes toward this difficult person. Do you feel areas of tightness loosening? Do you feel a relaxation or sense of relief?
If not, if you still find yourself angry and tight and clenched toward your difficult person, try playing with different visualizations to help you feel some sense of kindness and compassion toward them. You might imagine that person as a baby, as an innocent child. Or you might think of them in another situation where they are vulnerable or in pain – gravely ill, or on their deathbed – although be careful not to nurture any feelings of vengefulness or celebration at imagining this person suffering – that is not the point. The point is to open a door for you to connect with them, to see in their shared suffering your common humanity.
Sharon Salzburg says “you should allow yourself to be creative, daring, even humorous, in imagining situations where you can more readily feel kindness toward a difficult person.” One of Sharon’s students chose a difficult person who was extremely talkative and annoying, and it helped her send lovingkindness to that person if she imaged her sitting bound and gagged in a chair. Another student could only send lovingkindness toward his difficult person if he imagined him locked up in jail. Take some time to think of images or visualizations that would help you feel compassion toward this difficult person, situations that would soften your heart toward them.
Now with that image in mind, direct the metta phrases toward your difficult person again:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Notice if anything changes in your body as you sit with that image of your difficult person as you repeat these phrases.
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Go ahead and open your eyes.
Now, if that was difficult, or if you didn’t feel or see any immediate changes in your feelings or attitude toward this person, it’s important to remember that it’s called spiritual practice for a reason! It takes practice! It doesn’t always happen overnight. It’s important to go easy on yourself, to not set expectations too high in terms of what the results of the practice will be. Ideally, you’d spend 30 minutes in silent meditation each day, working with this or any other meditation techniques. People do this for a lifetime and are still working at it, so don’t expect to be the perfect example of “loving your neighbor” after only trying this a few times.
When Jesus says, “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he doesn’t mean you should never make any mistakes. The Greek word translated as “perfect” is teleios, which doesn’t mean “without flaws or mistakes,” but “complete, whole, having reached its end, full-grown, or mature.” Jesus is calling us to be mature Christians, to be grown-up Christians, to put the effort in to work on our faith and develop it over time. That means not being content to stay in that frustrated, exasperated state – “yeah, right, Jesus, how can I ever live up to what you’re asking of me!” – but to actively search for tools and techniques to help you work toward making those commandments a reality. Maybe lovingkindness meditation will help you as it has helped me, maybe not. But in any case, we’re called to make an effort, using whatever tools are most effective for us. Because at our baptism, we made a vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. There is much wisdom in the teachings of the world’s religions about how to do that, and taking the time to find a practice that works for us is part of the way we keep our baptismal vows.
We’ll close with our 3 minutes of silent meditation that normally comes before the sermon. During that time, I invite you to try out these techniques more extensively, directing the phrases first toward a friend and then toward an enemy.
REFERENCE SHEET:
Metta (Lovingkindness) Phrases:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.
Metta Sequence:
1. Yourself
2. Benefactor or mentor
3. Friend
4. Neutral person – someone for whom you do not feel an immediate attraction or repulsion, someone who you do not like or dislike
5. Enemy or difficult person
6. All people/all beings
[1] “Sharon Salzburg & Robert Thurman: Meeting Our Enemies and Our Suffering,” On Being with Krista Tippett, 15 December 2016, http://onbeing.org/programs/sharon-salzberg-robert-thurman-embracing-enemies-suffering-2/ Accessed 17 February 2017.
[2] Sharon Salzburg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995): 18-19, 21.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Repentance, reconciliation and return - in the liturgy and in our lives
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017 (Sixth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part six of a seven-week series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Deuteronomy 30:15-30, Matthew 5:21-37, Baptismal Covenant Question #2
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”
Moses’s speech to the Israelites in today’s reading from Deuteronomy reminds them that while God has given them a set of commandments and instructions for living, he does not make them behave in a certain way. They always have a choice whether they will follow the commandments or not.
We, too, have a real choice as to whether we will follow the commandments we have been given in our Baptistmal Covenant. Because we have free will, our obedience to our baptismal vows is by no means guaranteed. It is always a choice, and because we are human, we will mess up sometimes. We will make the wrong choice. Sometimes we choose death and curses instead of life and blessings.
This is why our baptismal covenant has built into it a vow about what we will do when that happens. In this sixth week of our preaching series on baptism, we look at the second question of the baptismal covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
Notice that the question does not say IF you fall into sin, but WHEN. The Baptismal Covenant does not assume perfection from us. It assumes we will mess up. Being faithful does not mean never sinning. It means properly making amends when we do.
Jesus’s teachings in today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount set an extremely high standard for our behavior, pretty much guaranteeing that we will always fall short! Don’t just refrain from murdering someone, but refrain from being angry at them, he says. Don’t just refrain from having an affair with a married person, but refrain from even thinking lustfully about anyone who is married.
Seriously, Jesus? How is it even humanly possible to obey these teachings completely? Maybe it’s not, but his point is that you’re not made right with God simply by refraining from certain actions. Fully embracing the ethical standards God sets means making an effort to live with integrity, purifying your inner life and thoughts as well as your outward actions. Even if you never kill someone, if you nurture anger and resentment toward that person, that in itself is its own kind of death, for you and for the person you are angry with.
Jesus encourages us to go the extra mile in the work of reconciliation and actively seek to restore relationships with our neighbors as part and parcel of what it means to be reconciled with God.
Right after the teaching about it not being enough to simply not murder someone, but not to be angry with them either, Jesus says,
“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
This is the theological basis behind the passing of the peace during our liturgy. After we collectively confess our sins, first we are reconciled with God, symbolized by the priest pronouncing absolution over us, reminding us that God forgives us, and then we are reconciled with our neighbors, symbolized by our sharing the peace with one another.
When we say “peace” to one another, we are offering a sign of reconciliation, making peace with everyone before we receive the Eucharist, as Jesus instructs us to do in this passage from Matthew: “First be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come [to the altar].” Some interpretations of this passage say that we should not receive communion if we are in a serious conflict with anyone in our lives that we have not attempted to resolve. I once voluntarily denied myself communion for several months because I was in conflict with a member of my family. He did not immediately respond to my attempts to reconcile, but after I had written a letter and reached out and done all that I felt I could at that point, after I had made a good faith effort to be reconciled, I started to receive communion again. As much as we enjoy greeting one another and being cheerful during the peace, the peace is not meant to be a time to casually greet one another on a social level. It is meant to be a time to seek forgiveness from anyone whom we may have harmed and to forgive anyone who may have harmed us in the community.
While I was serving a congregation in Omaha, Nebraska, as an intern through one of the Episcopal Service Corps discernment programs for young adults, I carelessly made a remark that offended one of my parishioners. At a book study one night, I was commenting about the lack of mental health services for veterans coming back from war. My intent was to express concern and to advocate for veteran’s needs, but the way I said it – making a comment about how the military “turns people into killing machines” through basic training and then doesn’t give them the tools to undo that training when they return to civilian life – inadvertently upset one of the people in the book study, who was a veteran and didn’t take kindly to my categorization of soldiers as “killing machines.” We talked about it afterwards and were able to come to a congenial resolution. That Sunday, we intentionally approached each other at the peace, and that handshake and brief eye contact we made while saying “peace” to one another had a much deeper meaning to me in that moment than it ever had before in the liturgy.
If you have ever been through a Twelve Step program, or know someone who has, you know about the importance of Step Nine – making amends. Making amends means approaching anyone we have wronged and attempting to make things right – to apologize for what we have done and to offer any kind of remuneration appropriate to the situation, anything we can do to “make it up to them,” as the saying goes. After this initial reconciliation, Step Ten is to “continue to take personal inventory and when we [are] wrong, promptly admit it.” Since the founders of AA and the Twelve Step program were influenced by biblical teachings, it is no surprise that Steps Nine and Ten echo these teachings of Jesus and the second vow of our Baptismal Covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
In other words, this question asks us, “Will you continue to be vigilant in your resistance against evil, against sin, against addiction, against whatever it is that draws you away from God, and whenever you find yourself going astray from that, whenever you realize you have done wrong, to promptly admit it and make amends – to others and to God?”
Of course, while we may be able to right some wrongs we have done to others in this life, some wrongs are impossible to correct. An apology doesn’t bring someone back from the dead, for instance. When we come up against the limits of our ability to make amends, we are forced to acknowledge our dependence on God’s grace.
Remember in stewardship season when we talked about how we can never really “give back to God?” Well, it is also true that we can never really “make amends” to God. What could we possibly give to God or do for God that would make up for all the ways we have harmed God when we have fallen short of God’s intentions for us, for God’s plan for us to live with one other in peace? Despite the universal foxhole prayer – “Dear God, if you just save my life, if you just get me out of this situation, I’ll make it up to you – I’ll go to church every week, I’ll give up all my possessions, I’ll become a preacher, I’ll….” whatever the bargain is we’re making with God” – in reality, we can never actually “make it up to God.” If we do make it through whatever difficult situation we’re in, we know that our success or relief is a gift of pure grace.
If our relationship with God is built on trying to “make up for” all the things we have done wrong, we will only sink further into guilt and despair. The heart of the Christian message is one of pure grace – completely undeserved, unearned mercy shown by God to us, a complete gift. It is a foundation in this overflowing mercy of God that frees us, that compels us, to forgive as we have been forgiven. Knowing that God forgives us for anything and everything we have done allows us to begin to work toward forgiving others.
This is why I like the absolution from the New Zealand Prayer Book and why I’ve been using it in our liturgy for the past several months:
“God forgives you. Forgive others, forgive yourself.”
It is through fully coming to understand that God forgives you that you can begin to forgive others and yourself.
And the second part of that absolution: “Through Christ, God has put away your sins. Approach your God in peace.” – reminds us that God has ALREADY forgiven us. I, as the priest, am not pronouncing you to be forgiven in that moment. I am reminding you that, as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” You are already forgiven. You are free. Free to approach God in peace, without fear of retribution. Free to approach your brothers and sisters secure in the knowledge of your own acceptance and forgiveness and therefore free to offer them your forgiveness.
After this, we flow seamlessly into the exchanging of the peace. We “approach our God in peace” by approaching one another in peace, being reconciled with one another, and then coming together to share the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ “given for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.”
Repentance, reconciliation and return. We rehearse these steps every week in the structure of our worship. It is meant to be a pattern for our lives outside these 90 minutes on Sunday mornings as well.
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
We will, with God’s help.
Sermon Text(s): Deuteronomy 30:15-30, Matthew 5:21-37, Baptismal Covenant Question #2
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.”
Moses’s speech to the Israelites in today’s reading from Deuteronomy reminds them that while God has given them a set of commandments and instructions for living, he does not make them behave in a certain way. They always have a choice whether they will follow the commandments or not.
We, too, have a real choice as to whether we will follow the commandments we have been given in our Baptistmal Covenant. Because we have free will, our obedience to our baptismal vows is by no means guaranteed. It is always a choice, and because we are human, we will mess up sometimes. We will make the wrong choice. Sometimes we choose death and curses instead of life and blessings.
This is why our baptismal covenant has built into it a vow about what we will do when that happens. In this sixth week of our preaching series on baptism, we look at the second question of the baptismal covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
Notice that the question does not say IF you fall into sin, but WHEN. The Baptismal Covenant does not assume perfection from us. It assumes we will mess up. Being faithful does not mean never sinning. It means properly making amends when we do.
Jesus’s teachings in today’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount set an extremely high standard for our behavior, pretty much guaranteeing that we will always fall short! Don’t just refrain from murdering someone, but refrain from being angry at them, he says. Don’t just refrain from having an affair with a married person, but refrain from even thinking lustfully about anyone who is married.
Seriously, Jesus? How is it even humanly possible to obey these teachings completely? Maybe it’s not, but his point is that you’re not made right with God simply by refraining from certain actions. Fully embracing the ethical standards God sets means making an effort to live with integrity, purifying your inner life and thoughts as well as your outward actions. Even if you never kill someone, if you nurture anger and resentment toward that person, that in itself is its own kind of death, for you and for the person you are angry with.
Jesus encourages us to go the extra mile in the work of reconciliation and actively seek to restore relationships with our neighbors as part and parcel of what it means to be reconciled with God.
Right after the teaching about it not being enough to simply not murder someone, but not to be angry with them either, Jesus says,
“So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.”
This is the theological basis behind the passing of the peace during our liturgy. After we collectively confess our sins, first we are reconciled with God, symbolized by the priest pronouncing absolution over us, reminding us that God forgives us, and then we are reconciled with our neighbors, symbolized by our sharing the peace with one another.
When we say “peace” to one another, we are offering a sign of reconciliation, making peace with everyone before we receive the Eucharist, as Jesus instructs us to do in this passage from Matthew: “First be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come [to the altar].” Some interpretations of this passage say that we should not receive communion if we are in a serious conflict with anyone in our lives that we have not attempted to resolve. I once voluntarily denied myself communion for several months because I was in conflict with a member of my family. He did not immediately respond to my attempts to reconcile, but after I had written a letter and reached out and done all that I felt I could at that point, after I had made a good faith effort to be reconciled, I started to receive communion again. As much as we enjoy greeting one another and being cheerful during the peace, the peace is not meant to be a time to casually greet one another on a social level. It is meant to be a time to seek forgiveness from anyone whom we may have harmed and to forgive anyone who may have harmed us in the community.
While I was serving a congregation in Omaha, Nebraska, as an intern through one of the Episcopal Service Corps discernment programs for young adults, I carelessly made a remark that offended one of my parishioners. At a book study one night, I was commenting about the lack of mental health services for veterans coming back from war. My intent was to express concern and to advocate for veteran’s needs, but the way I said it – making a comment about how the military “turns people into killing machines” through basic training and then doesn’t give them the tools to undo that training when they return to civilian life – inadvertently upset one of the people in the book study, who was a veteran and didn’t take kindly to my categorization of soldiers as “killing machines.” We talked about it afterwards and were able to come to a congenial resolution. That Sunday, we intentionally approached each other at the peace, and that handshake and brief eye contact we made while saying “peace” to one another had a much deeper meaning to me in that moment than it ever had before in the liturgy.
If you have ever been through a Twelve Step program, or know someone who has, you know about the importance of Step Nine – making amends. Making amends means approaching anyone we have wronged and attempting to make things right – to apologize for what we have done and to offer any kind of remuneration appropriate to the situation, anything we can do to “make it up to them,” as the saying goes. After this initial reconciliation, Step Ten is to “continue to take personal inventory and when we [are] wrong, promptly admit it.” Since the founders of AA and the Twelve Step program were influenced by biblical teachings, it is no surprise that Steps Nine and Ten echo these teachings of Jesus and the second vow of our Baptismal Covenant:
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
In other words, this question asks us, “Will you continue to be vigilant in your resistance against evil, against sin, against addiction, against whatever it is that draws you away from God, and whenever you find yourself going astray from that, whenever you realize you have done wrong, to promptly admit it and make amends – to others and to God?”
Of course, while we may be able to right some wrongs we have done to others in this life, some wrongs are impossible to correct. An apology doesn’t bring someone back from the dead, for instance. When we come up against the limits of our ability to make amends, we are forced to acknowledge our dependence on God’s grace.
Remember in stewardship season when we talked about how we can never really “give back to God?” Well, it is also true that we can never really “make amends” to God. What could we possibly give to God or do for God that would make up for all the ways we have harmed God when we have fallen short of God’s intentions for us, for God’s plan for us to live with one other in peace? Despite the universal foxhole prayer – “Dear God, if you just save my life, if you just get me out of this situation, I’ll make it up to you – I’ll go to church every week, I’ll give up all my possessions, I’ll become a preacher, I’ll….” whatever the bargain is we’re making with God” – in reality, we can never actually “make it up to God.” If we do make it through whatever difficult situation we’re in, we know that our success or relief is a gift of pure grace.
If our relationship with God is built on trying to “make up for” all the things we have done wrong, we will only sink further into guilt and despair. The heart of the Christian message is one of pure grace – completely undeserved, unearned mercy shown by God to us, a complete gift. It is a foundation in this overflowing mercy of God that frees us, that compels us, to forgive as we have been forgiven. Knowing that God forgives us for anything and everything we have done allows us to begin to work toward forgiving others.
This is why I like the absolution from the New Zealand Prayer Book and why I’ve been using it in our liturgy for the past several months:
“God forgives you. Forgive others, forgive yourself.”
It is through fully coming to understand that God forgives you that you can begin to forgive others and yourself.
And the second part of that absolution: “Through Christ, God has put away your sins. Approach your God in peace.” – reminds us that God has ALREADY forgiven us. I, as the priest, am not pronouncing you to be forgiven in that moment. I am reminding you that, as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished.” You are already forgiven. You are free. Free to approach God in peace, without fear of retribution. Free to approach your brothers and sisters secure in the knowledge of your own acceptance and forgiveness and therefore free to offer them your forgiveness.
After this, we flow seamlessly into the exchanging of the peace. We “approach our God in peace” by approaching one another in peace, being reconciled with one another, and then coming together to share the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ “given for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.”
Repentance, reconciliation and return. We rehearse these steps every week in the structure of our worship. It is meant to be a pattern for our lives outside these 90 minutes on Sunday mornings as well.
"Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?"
We will, with God’s help.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Tradition without ethics is worthless, but ethics without tradition is exhausting
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017 (Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part five of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13:20, Baptismal Covenant Question #1
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)
Today’s scripture readings raise questions about what it means to keep tradition. Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount about not coming to abolish the law but to fulfill it may sound surprising to some Christians, who tend to think the Jewish law is irrelevant for us. The early church decided that Gentile converts to the faith did not have to keep the entirety of the Jewish law, and many Reformation-era theologians wrote volumes on how the law was a prison from which Jesus released us, drawing mostly on Paul’s thought. But Jesus himself kept the Jewish law and observed Jewish traditions. He criticized those who focused on the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit behind the law; those who were so concerned about not breaking a commandment that they wouldn’t help someone in need because doing work was forbidden on the Sabbath, for instance. But he never advocated for entirely throwing out the traditions and law of his religion.
“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,” he says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today also speaks to the question of what it means to keep tradition. The people are questioning why God is not responding to their fasting:
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isaiah 58:3a)
And God’s answer, coming through the prophet Isaiah, is that the people may be keeping the letter of the law, going through the motions of the correct rituals, but their behavior is not in line with God’s ethical commandments:
"Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high…
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:3b-4, 6)
Now, God has previously commanded them to do just the things they were doing: to “lie in sackcloth and ashes” and to humble themselves. So when he dismisses their actions, saying that is not the fast he chooses, that the fast he chooses is to “loose the bonds of injustice,” he’s not saying that he doesn’t want them to ever observe ritual fasting. He’s not saying lying in sackcloth and ashes and humbling oneself is a BAD thing – he’s just saying that without the ethical behavior it is intended to bring about, it’s worthless. If ALL you do is lie in sackcloth and ashes and don’t help your brothers and sisters in need, your fasting is worthless and God’s not going to take your piety seriously – because you’ve shown by your actions that you don’t really get it.
As we enter week five of this preaching series on baptism, these themes in our readings today invite us to consider the first question of our Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”
At its core, this question is about keeping tradition, about “following the law,” to the extent that Christians have a concept of religious law. Will you keep teaching what the apostles taught, keep meeting together as the apostles met, keep breaking bread together in the holy meal of the Eucharist as the apostles did, and keep praying as the apostles prayed?
This vow actually comes directly from Scripture – the Book of Acts tells us that after the Gentiles received the Spirit of God at Pentecost and Peter preached to them explaining the significance of all they had heard and seen, about three thousand people were baptized. Acts 2:42 says of these new converts, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
It is significant that this call to keep tradition comes directly from the description of what the earliest converts to Christianity did right after they were baptized. Even the words used to ask this question are part of church tradition!
So what is it exactly that we’re being asked to keep and pass along? What is “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers?”
The “apostles teaching” refers to the message about Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection that we talked about a few weeks ago, that “good news of God in Christ” that we are called to proclaim: that Jesus is raised from the dead and has defeated death. It is summarized in the Creeds, and the church has continued to expand upon these foundational beliefs through its doctrine and teaching throughout the centuries. When we vow to “continue in the apostles’ teaching,” we are vowing to study the church’s teaching, both what it has taught historically and the way that is taking shape in our own day, and to pass that teaching on to a new generation. When you come to Bible study, when you instruct children in the faith, when you read scripture or books about Christian history or theology, you are “continuing in the apostles’ teaching.”
What about the “apostles’ fellowship”? The church has always been clear that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. Fellowship, community, connection with other Christians is of utmost importance. The apostles came together on a regular basis to encourage one another in their faith and to worship together, and Christians have continued to do that throughout the ages. Even monastics who choose a cloistered life, away from “the world,” have shared the community of other monks or nuns, with only very few choosing a life of solitary hermitage, and even those who did choose that life were connected in some way to a larger praying community. Fellowship is critical. We cannot do this faith thing alone. We need each other.
“The breaking of the bread” is the celebration of the Eucharist – the ceremonial meal that Jesus commanded us to continue “in remembrance of him” until he comes again. It is the central act of worship of the church, and when we are baptized we make a vow to continue in that tradition, to regularly attend and receive Eucharist.
And finally, “the prayers” are the prayers the church has taught us – the Lord’s Prayer, the various litanies and liturgies that the church has passed down to us – as well as individual, personal prayers offered up to God spontaneously from our hearts. We vow to maintain an active prayer life as part of our commitment at our baptism.
This vow – to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers – this vow to preserve and pass on the rituals and traditions of the Christian faith – is foundational to what we vow to do when we are baptized. It is the first question we are asked after we recite the Creed. But it does not stand alone. It is grouped with the other four baptismal vows to show that observing ritual and “maintaining tradition” alone are not enough. This affirms the message of Jesus and the prophets: that ritual observance without proper ethical behavior is meaningless. We can teach the doctrines of the church and come to Eucharist all day long and say all the right prayers, but if we’re not also “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves,” and “striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being,” then we’ve entirely missed the point.
Unfortunately, much of our society has seen too much of the ritual observance and too little of the ethical behavior from the church and has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the only important thing is the ethical behavior piece. “What has ritual behavior done for anyone except make them hypocrites? Just ‘strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being’ and you’ve pretty much got it covered.”
But from the church’s perspective, it’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and. It’s not ritual observance OR ethical behavior, it’s ritual observance AND ethical behavior. We can do ethical behavior without ritual observance, sure, but it’s a lot more likely to lead to burnout if we do. Because the ritual observances of the church are there to feed us, to guide us, to sustain us as we do that ethical behavior we’re called to do. We come to Eucharist not just for the sake of coming to Eucharist, not just to blindly obey a rule of the church, but to be renewed and recharged for the work God calls us to do in the world. We read the scripture and church theology not because the church gave us a homework assignment, but because the teachings of the church inspire and motivate us to work for justice and peace, and connect us with the saints who have gone before us, who have walked this path before, who know something about standing up against injustice. In our current day, the voices of Christians who have stood up against injustice in the past: from the earliest apostles who said to the Roman courts, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29) to the modern-day prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1930s Germany, who challenged his church’s complicity in the Nazis’ rise to power, can inform our own struggles in this new era of American history, providing us with a sense that we are not alone in this work.
We gather in community with other Christians, we receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and we study the teachings of Christians who have gone before us to support and facilitate the hard work of ethical living and advocating for justice that God calls us to in our own day. Because if ALL we do is come to church and receive Eucharist and study scripture and we don’t offer sanctuary to refugees or feed the hungry or advocate for just governance in our land, our tradition is worthless and God’s not going to take our piety seriously – because we will have shown by our actions that we don’t really get it.
Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13:20, Baptismal Covenant Question #1
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)
Today’s scripture readings raise questions about what it means to keep tradition. Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount about not coming to abolish the law but to fulfill it may sound surprising to some Christians, who tend to think the Jewish law is irrelevant for us. The early church decided that Gentile converts to the faith did not have to keep the entirety of the Jewish law, and many Reformation-era theologians wrote volumes on how the law was a prison from which Jesus released us, drawing mostly on Paul’s thought. But Jesus himself kept the Jewish law and observed Jewish traditions. He criticized those who focused on the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit behind the law; those who were so concerned about not breaking a commandment that they wouldn’t help someone in need because doing work was forbidden on the Sabbath, for instance. But he never advocated for entirely throwing out the traditions and law of his religion.
“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,” he says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today also speaks to the question of what it means to keep tradition. The people are questioning why God is not responding to their fasting:
“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isaiah 58:3a)
And God’s answer, coming through the prophet Isaiah, is that the people may be keeping the letter of the law, going through the motions of the correct rituals, but their behavior is not in line with God’s ethical commandments:
"Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high…
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:3b-4, 6)
Now, God has previously commanded them to do just the things they were doing: to “lie in sackcloth and ashes” and to humble themselves. So when he dismisses their actions, saying that is not the fast he chooses, that the fast he chooses is to “loose the bonds of injustice,” he’s not saying that he doesn’t want them to ever observe ritual fasting. He’s not saying lying in sackcloth and ashes and humbling oneself is a BAD thing – he’s just saying that without the ethical behavior it is intended to bring about, it’s worthless. If ALL you do is lie in sackcloth and ashes and don’t help your brothers and sisters in need, your fasting is worthless and God’s not going to take your piety seriously – because you’ve shown by your actions that you don’t really get it.
As we enter week five of this preaching series on baptism, these themes in our readings today invite us to consider the first question of our Baptismal Covenant:
“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”
At its core, this question is about keeping tradition, about “following the law,” to the extent that Christians have a concept of religious law. Will you keep teaching what the apostles taught, keep meeting together as the apostles met, keep breaking bread together in the holy meal of the Eucharist as the apostles did, and keep praying as the apostles prayed?
This vow actually comes directly from Scripture – the Book of Acts tells us that after the Gentiles received the Spirit of God at Pentecost and Peter preached to them explaining the significance of all they had heard and seen, about three thousand people were baptized. Acts 2:42 says of these new converts, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
It is significant that this call to keep tradition comes directly from the description of what the earliest converts to Christianity did right after they were baptized. Even the words used to ask this question are part of church tradition!
So what is it exactly that we’re being asked to keep and pass along? What is “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers?”
The “apostles teaching” refers to the message about Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection that we talked about a few weeks ago, that “good news of God in Christ” that we are called to proclaim: that Jesus is raised from the dead and has defeated death. It is summarized in the Creeds, and the church has continued to expand upon these foundational beliefs through its doctrine and teaching throughout the centuries. When we vow to “continue in the apostles’ teaching,” we are vowing to study the church’s teaching, both what it has taught historically and the way that is taking shape in our own day, and to pass that teaching on to a new generation. When you come to Bible study, when you instruct children in the faith, when you read scripture or books about Christian history or theology, you are “continuing in the apostles’ teaching.”
What about the “apostles’ fellowship”? The church has always been clear that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. Fellowship, community, connection with other Christians is of utmost importance. The apostles came together on a regular basis to encourage one another in their faith and to worship together, and Christians have continued to do that throughout the ages. Even monastics who choose a cloistered life, away from “the world,” have shared the community of other monks or nuns, with only very few choosing a life of solitary hermitage, and even those who did choose that life were connected in some way to a larger praying community. Fellowship is critical. We cannot do this faith thing alone. We need each other.
“The breaking of the bread” is the celebration of the Eucharist – the ceremonial meal that Jesus commanded us to continue “in remembrance of him” until he comes again. It is the central act of worship of the church, and when we are baptized we make a vow to continue in that tradition, to regularly attend and receive Eucharist.
And finally, “the prayers” are the prayers the church has taught us – the Lord’s Prayer, the various litanies and liturgies that the church has passed down to us – as well as individual, personal prayers offered up to God spontaneously from our hearts. We vow to maintain an active prayer life as part of our commitment at our baptism.
This vow – to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers – this vow to preserve and pass on the rituals and traditions of the Christian faith – is foundational to what we vow to do when we are baptized. It is the first question we are asked after we recite the Creed. But it does not stand alone. It is grouped with the other four baptismal vows to show that observing ritual and “maintaining tradition” alone are not enough. This affirms the message of Jesus and the prophets: that ritual observance without proper ethical behavior is meaningless. We can teach the doctrines of the church and come to Eucharist all day long and say all the right prayers, but if we’re not also “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves,” and “striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being,” then we’ve entirely missed the point.
Unfortunately, much of our society has seen too much of the ritual observance and too little of the ethical behavior from the church and has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the only important thing is the ethical behavior piece. “What has ritual behavior done for anyone except make them hypocrites? Just ‘strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being’ and you’ve pretty much got it covered.”
But from the church’s perspective, it’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and. It’s not ritual observance OR ethical behavior, it’s ritual observance AND ethical behavior. We can do ethical behavior without ritual observance, sure, but it’s a lot more likely to lead to burnout if we do. Because the ritual observances of the church are there to feed us, to guide us, to sustain us as we do that ethical behavior we’re called to do. We come to Eucharist not just for the sake of coming to Eucharist, not just to blindly obey a rule of the church, but to be renewed and recharged for the work God calls us to do in the world. We read the scripture and church theology not because the church gave us a homework assignment, but because the teachings of the church inspire and motivate us to work for justice and peace, and connect us with the saints who have gone before us, who have walked this path before, who know something about standing up against injustice. In our current day, the voices of Christians who have stood up against injustice in the past: from the earliest apostles who said to the Roman courts, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29) to the modern-day prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1930s Germany, who challenged his church’s complicity in the Nazis’ rise to power, can inform our own struggles in this new era of American history, providing us with a sense that we are not alone in this work.
We gather in community with other Christians, we receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and we study the teachings of Christians who have gone before us to support and facilitate the hard work of ethical living and advocating for justice that God calls us to in our own day. Because if ALL we do is come to church and receive Eucharist and study scripture and we don’t offer sanctuary to refugees or feed the hungry or advocate for just governance in our land, our tradition is worthless and God’s not going to take our piety seriously – because we will have shown by our actions that we don’t really get it.
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