A Tale of Two Bishops

Dietsche

Dolan

June is traditionally Gay Pride Month -- a month of celebration, education and advocacy on behalf of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) people. The month culminates in New York City with the annual Pride March, held each year on the last Sunday in June -- to commemorate the same Sunday in June of 1969 when patrons at Greenwich Village's Stonewall Inn spontaneously decided to fight back against an all too regular round of police harassment in the bar. The event is considered the beginning of the modern LGBT Rights Movement. 

Recently, New York City has experienced a sharp spike in anti-gay violence. The most egregious example is the brutal murder of Mark Carson in May of this year. Naturally, Pride Month events will be both saddened and inspired by this senseless event. 

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, has issued a new bulletin insert to be included in the service leaflets and bulletins used on Sundays in most Roman Catholic parishes. The insert urges parishioners to pray and advocate to influence upcoming Supreme Court cases that might extend LGBT rights. Dolan's timing is focussed on the Supreme Court calendar and, not surprisingly, completely ignores Pride Month and Carson's murder.

The Rt. Rev. Andrew Dietsche, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, takes another tack. Bishop Dietsche issued a pastoral letter on the eve of Pride Month condemning the surge in anti-gay violence in his diocese and condemning the Carson murder. Dietsche's letter urged a different approach for Episcopalians during the upcoming month of June. 

Dietsche writes, "Tomorrow is June, during which our communities will observe Pride Month. We will take into this month the still-fresh memory of these victims of anti-gay hate-crime violence, and most especially our brother Mark Carson... There are many voices in our culture which insist that homosexuality is incompatible with the Christian life. We emphatically do not believe that. So do find a way in these coming weeks to grieve the fallen, to make your witness to the love of Jesus, to engage our godly call to justice, and to let the world see and know that there are countless faithful Episcopalians in the LGBT community, and that they are loved, embraced and respected by the larger body of the Church of which they are and have always been a part." (emphasis added)
  

Past Perfect, Past Imperfect: a sermon for Year C, Lent 5

Preached on Sunday, March 17, 2013 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lectionary text that this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. You can listen to a recording of this sermon on the parish website by clicking here. 

The etymologists disagree over the origins of our English word religion. The word itself is from the Latin -- that much is agreed upon. Cicero believed that the root of the word was the Latin word lego, to read; so re-lego, religion, means to read again, to go over again, to consider carefully. Modern language scholars disagree. They feel that the root of the word is more likely to be ligare, to bind; so re-ligare means to rebind, to reconnect to something in the past. Being Anglicans, we can accept both explanations; because we reconnect constantly to the sacred, to the history of salvation by rereading again and again our Scriptures when we gather as we do each Sunday.

And in our Scripture readings today, we find faithful looking back to mighty deeds, and other who look back and see only lose. We see people looking forward to death, and what lies beyond death.

Our reading from Isaiah recalls the past in very explicit terms. This part of Isaiah believed to have been during the Babylonian captivity, when part of the nation of Israel was held in captivity in Babylon in order to ensure the compliance of the remainder of the remaining in Israel but nonetheless captive to the will of their Babylonian persecutors.

The Prophet Isaiah reminds the people that their God is the one who brought them out of captivity in Egypt, and he recalls the very circumstances of that rescue. It was then, during that mighty deliverance, that the God of Israel made ‘a path in the mighty waters’ that trapped ‘chariot and horse, army and warrior’. Isaiah then says, ‘But do not consider the things of old, for God is about to do new things’. And funnily enough, those new things are quite a lot like the old things. Rivers and water to drink in the desert, just as in the Exodus. Drink for the chosen people will be provided so that they might once again sing the praises of their God, as they first did on the far shore of the Red Sea led by Miriam, the sister of Moses.

Of course, the deliverance that Isaiah was predicting was the deliverance and return of the Babylonian captives. Though he tells us not to look back, he makes us look back to the mighty works of redemption and release, of liberty and deliverance that God has done in the past, and he calls us to remember, and to know, and to believe that such will be our lot again in the future.

And there is the Apostle Paul. In this morning’s passage from Philippians, Paul looks back and finds quite a bit to be perhaps a bit proud of. He is -- or was -- a member of the tribe of Benjamin, of the nation of Israel, born under the law and blameless under the law. But all of that is now gone; “I have suffered the loss of all things” says Paul. And we know from his letters, than in his ministry, Paul has known harassment, captivity, thorn-in-the-flesh suffering, and eventually, a martyr’s death.

Paul discounts all that he once may have had, and similarly, he also discounts all that he may has suffered. For Paul knows that no matter the glories of the past days or the trials of the past, the eternal life that is to come will outshine them all. He proclaimed to the Philippians, “I want to share in the sufferings of Christ, by becoming like him in his death, if it means that somehow I might attain the resurrection from the dead.”

Whether we look back into the past like Isaiah and see mighty works of God or whether we look back like Paul and see loses and suffering, we often find it hard to let go of the past.

When we get older, and are perhaps a bit less able than we used to be, we look back and remind ourselves, and take the opportunity to remind others, of the prominence and power and prestige that was once afforded us. And then we lament the decline that lies ahead with dispair.

Or sometimes we look back and see all our hurts and sufferings and loses, and they too, can exercise a claim on us, so that we continue to see ourselves as wounded victims; for years and years, long after the wounds have healed and the hurt places have scarred over, becoming tougher than could have been otherwise.

Sometimes in our relationships, we look back at the heady days of first love and then we come to rue the routine, predictable patterns we’ve fallen into, forgetting all the uncertainty and nervousness of those first days of love, and in turn discounting the value of the surety and trust that comes only with, well, with predictability and forbearance.

Sometimes parishes look back and see only days of brimming budgets and crowded churches, fully subscribed Sunday Schools, nightly programs of theological edification and spiritual power; and they find in the past only the most benevolent priests who never made a pastoral mistake or penned a boring sermon. And with such a storied, glorious past, those faithful people look forward and see what can only be decline and more decline from all that once was in the past…

But whether we look back and see, as Isaiah does, great deeds done for us by our Lord God. Or we look back and see, like Paul, all that we have lost, and all that we have suffered; nonetheless our God calls us forward.

And as in the past we can expect some hardship, some trials, some disappointment.

Our gospel reading this morning looks forward to just such a future of trial and hardship. Today’s reading from the Gospel of John is, in essence, a great foreshadowing of the Passion of Christ. Jesus is in Bethany with his friends Mary, Martha and the newly resurrected Lazarus. And at a dinner there, Mary anoints the feet of Christ with some very fragrant, very costly perfume. So pungent it is, and so much of it, that it fills the house with its fragrance. This kind of anointing has a clear referent, it connotes a particular context, that of death. It recalls the Jewish practice of preparing the body for burial by cleansing it, and anointing it with spices and ointments. Mary’s kindly, comforting act in our gospel reading is meant to foreshadow the death and burial that Jesus will soon undergo.

But like the Apostle Paul, we can look back through disappointment, and then forward through even death with confidence and hope and joy. For we know what the ultimate future holds, what eternity holds. And we can, like Paul forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead, pressing on toward the goal, for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:14)

Whether we look back at a past perfect, or a past imperfect, in faith we can all look forward to a future that will be made perfect in the one who was suffered as we do, even unto death, so that we might know mercy, redemption and eternal life.  +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Come, Come To... : a sermon for Year C, Lent 4

Preached on Sunday, March 10, 2013 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lectionary text that this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. You can listen to a recording of this sermon on the parish website by clicking here. 

Our gospel reading today is a very famous one: the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is the longest of Jesus’s parables in all the gospels. And it is one that only recently was included in the Lenten cycle of lectionary readings. Before, this reading would have been part of the ‘green’ season, the long stretch of ordinary time that follows Pentecost through the summer and fall months until we approach Advent once again.

When read in that context, the tale of the prodigal son has a particular focus. We read it and remark upon the infinite mercy of God for the most unworthy sinner. We look at the resentment of the brother in the parable and note how God’s mercy towards us is greater that we would think justified, we who judge in merely human terms.

But as we read this parable in Lent, other aspects of the story come to the fore. We are called to notice and remark upon the prodigal son’s sin, and his repentance.

And the sin of the prodigal son is a grave one. The son asks for his inheritance from his father. Biblical scholars point out the insult that is inherent in this act in the ancient world. To ask for one’s inheritance before time was not a tax dodge as it might be today, it was like saying to one’s parents, ‘You are dead to me. Our relationship is at an end.’ And that is exactly how the prodigal son acts. He takes his money and runs; to a far off land leaving his father, his brother, his people, their laws and customs, and their religion, behind.

And the prodigal son suffers for his sin. As is often the case for those with great wealth at too young an age, those who receive great bounty that they themselves did not work for, the prodigal son squanders his fortune in what Jesus says is ‘dissolute living’. Later in the parable the disgruntled brother will put a finer point on it when he says that his brother has devoured his inheritance with prostitutes. Dissolute living, indeed.

And with no money left, and hard times upon the land to which he has fled, the prodigal son is forced to hire himself out as a common farm laborer, one charged with tending the pigs. To have the task of tending pigs would be particularly insulting for a Jew, but to envy the very pigs he is tending and to covet the seedpods and fodder that they eating, is to sink to the lowest of depths, to hit absolute, rock bottom.

Then Luke says that the prodigal son ‘came to himself’. He came to himself; and he makes his decision to return to his father and to seek his forgiveness, but not so that he can be restored to his father’s favor. That, he knows, he doesn’t deserve. But merely to be treated like one of the laborers, like one of the hired hands, who have bread to eat, and a respectful occupation by which to earn it. 
Remember that the prodigal son has as much as declared his father to be dead to him, and has fled from him and his brother and his country and their faith, to a far off land. He has separated himself from all that he has ever known. And in so doing, he has separated himself from his own selfhood. He is disassociated, he is divorced from his own identity, he is not who he once was. He’s not just lost his way, somehow he has lost his very self in the process.

There’s an essential truth about the nature of sin and the effects of sin on the sinner in that. Sin separates us from our truest natures, from our identities, from our true selves, our most sacred selves. Sin is that which causes us to deny the truth of who we are. Sin is that which rejects the truth of who those are around us really are. Sin is a rejection of the respect and honor due those we love, with whom we share community.

When we reject the honor and respect due others, when we seek our own gain regardless of the effect it will have on others, when we abandon those we are bound to in love, we sin. Not just against them, but against our selves.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that we are not to think critically about our relationships, nor to stay bound to those who mistreat us, or who dishonor and disrespect us and the love we bear them. Such actions break covenants, sometimes inextricably, in which case, we come to our selves most truly when we separate ourselves from such abuse and disrespect.

In coming to ourselves, we acknowledge the painful truth about ourselves and the actions we have taken. And in so doing we experience not degradation, rather we experience clarity, and we begin to see some glimmer of hope, for ourselves and for our future. Like the prodigal, we begin to envision our way back. We are conscious of the amends we must make, and the reconciliation we must seek with others.

In the parable, the prodigal’s unearned enrichment and self-aggrandizement are what precipitate his disconnection, dissolution and degradation. But it is his acknowledgement of his sin that brings a reconnection where there has been disconnection; and a solution where there has been dissolution. He sees, finally, the path he needs to take to become whole again. 

A friend of mine who has been in recovery from addiction for many years puts it similarly. He says, ‘I used to call the day I hit my absolute, rock bottom as the worst day of my life. Now, I know, it was in fact the best day of what had been a truly miserable life up to that very point.’ 

Where have you become disconnected from your truest self, your essential identity. We are all of us many things: spouses, parents, siblings… bosses and workers, citizens and advocates… But our essential identity is that we are all of us beloved children of a merciful God. 

 If you need reminding of that identity, come to this place, when you can, when you are drawn here. And come again, and again. And as you do, you may find that you are able, somewhat to ‘come to’, to awaken in a new way, to see in a new light. And after you have come to, come to yourself, your truest self, your most sacred self, a beloved child of a merciful God. A loving God that has prepared a great feast for you, here in this place where you have come, and again in the wonderful world to come. Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Dear Associated Press...

FROM: father.mark.collins@... (The Rev. Mark R. Collins)
TO: tkent@ap.org (Tom Kent, AP standards editor);
dminthorn@ap.org (David Minthorn, AP stylebook editor)

Dear Mr. Kent and Mr. Minthorn:

I understand that, contrary to your policy with mixed-sex married couples, as a same-sex married couple, the Associated Press (AP) will only refer to my lawfully wedded husband, Denton Stargel, as my "husband" if you are aware that we have regularly used those terms.

As this determination is being made on a case-by-case basis, I wanted to let you know, for your records, that we use these terms on a regular basis and will continue to do so. Therefore, in any instance when our relationship may be referred to in your press coverage, you are to use the term 'husband' for either or both of us.

Thank you for your attention,

The Rev. Mark R. Collins

To Live and Not Learn: a sermon for Year C, Lent 1

Preached on Sunday, February 17, 2013 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lectionary text that this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. You can listen to a recording of this sermon on the parish website by clicking here. 

We begin our journey through Lent with a story of temptation in the desert. Jesus has just come from the River Jordan. Where he as been baptized and declared the Son of God by a voice from heaven. But rather than start off on his ministerial career Jesus retires to the desert for 40 days.

 Specifically, Jesus is led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days. If you were one of the first readers of Luke’s gospel, the references would have been unmistakable. The number 40, the wilderness, led by the Spirit… Jesus is identified with the history of the nation of Israel itself. The same nation of Israel that wandered in the wilderness, facing temptation yet let by the Spirit to the Promised Land. Also, like the nation of Israel wandering in the wilderness, Jesus is tempted, in ways that echo the trials of Israel during the Exodus.

After he has spent 40 days fasting and praying in the desert, Satan appears and tempts a very hungry Jesus. “Make these stones into bread.” We remember the Israelites and their fear of starving in the desert, and their longing to return to the fleshpots of Egypt. But Jesus refuses to succumb to the devil’s seductions. He will not resort to extraordinary means, nor will he give in to despair as the Israelites did. He will wait upon the Lord, and wait for God’s grace to provide his needs. He answers the Devil with a verse from the Scripture that details the miracle of the manna from heaven that saved Israel from starvation: ‘We don’t live by bread alone.’

Then the Devil tempts Jesus with dominion over the kingdoms of the earth. Luke makes a subtle point here that is easy to overlook. Notice how worldly power is in the Devil’s gift, and is his to mete out. Luke asserts that God’s power and authority is fundamentally different that the powers control the world.

But the hopes and expectations of many in first century Palestine were tied to a messiah with exactly the kind of earthly power the Devil offers. They wanted a messiah who would banish the Roman occupiers, and all who trod upon the Promised Land and its people, claiming Israel’s milk and honey for themselves, subjugating Israel’s people, and suppressing Israel’s religion.

And again Jesus’s response to Satan seems to encompass Israel’s past. No resorting to Golden Calves or Canaanite hill altars as in the past. Jesus will remain true to the One God who has established the covenant with Israel. Again, quoting from Scripture, Jesus insists that he will not pay homage to Satan, because such homage belongs only to God.

The Devil then takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple at Jerusalem. And he urges Jesus, with quotations from the Psalms -- Satan has picked up a trick or two from Jesus in the coarse of their discussions. He now uses the Hebrew Scripture to formulate his temptations. The Devil urges Jesus to provoke God’s recognition of him as the messiah, the son of God, by making God preserve the only begotten son from dashing even his foot upon the stone.

But Jesus remains steadfast, answering with a competing Scripture verse, quoting, in fact, from the passages that refer to Israel’s testing of God at Meribah and Massah, when they demanded water which Moses made pour forth from the rock. But Jesus refuses to test God by flinging himself from the Temple tower, telling him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

In so much as Jesus is identified with the history and heritage of Israel, during his 40 days of fasting and prayer, he is able to, in some respects, redeem some of those past actions, and mark a new path forward. Jesus in the desert offers us an example of how we might also reestablish a renewed, redeemed, reconciled relationship with God.

When Jesus refuses to turn stones into bread, he is refusing to take advantage of his power over the natural world. He is refusing to exploit the natural environment to reap its rewards.  Though he has the ‘technology’ to do so, he does not turn stones into bread. That begs the question, “What would Jesus frack?” I’m not sure he would frack at all. When given the chance, and in possession of the power to do so, Jesus doesn’t manipulate nature to meet his appetites.

Notice those appetites, too. Those who struggle with addictions know the temptation of succumbing to appetites. And when the Devil is enticing you to do so, that’s a pretty good sign of the bad to come out of it. On other occasions, maybe, we can have that dessert; for other people, perhaps, the cocktails wouldn’t be a problem. But not when appetites are out of control, and when they lead to further dependence and self-destruction.

When Jesus refuses to do homage to the Devil and gain control over the kingdoms of the world, he gives us an example of integrity. He refuses to betray his core values, no matter the expediency. It is a Faustian moment. But most of us know similar, though smaller, moments in our daily lives. When we nervously laugh along at the racist, homophobic or misogynistic joke instead speaking up against such rhetoric. When we vote with our pocketbooks rather than with our sense of what is just and right so to do.

And when Jesus refuses to gain power and control over nations and peoples, we see an example of respect for the autonomy and authority and agency of others. We see an acknowledgment that there should be limits to our power over others. Whether we are a Superpower, or a ‘helicopter parent’, or a controlling, even violent, spouse, or a gun-owner. There is power that it is wrong to make use of, there are rights that belong to others that place limits and bounds on our own rights. And if the Son of God himself can respect those limits, then so should we.
  
When Jesus refuses to test God from the Temple tower, he shows us what are the right and the wrong expectations and demands to put on God. Jesus understands his own responsibilities. And God’s. It is not God’s job to preserve life and limb when our own behavior puts them at risk. God’s gift is the gift of life and of creation. And because they are gifts, freely given, they become our responsibility -- to steward and develop, to protect and to respect and to correct.

One of our confirmands is facing down what is apparently a recent rash of atheism among her ninth-grade classmates. You’re never smarter than you think you are in the ninth-grade, are you? But the questions she brought to our confirmation class from her classmates are very like questions I often hear -- and I’ll bet you do too.

How could there be a God when there are also things like the Holocaust and September 11th and Superstorm Sandy. How could God allow these things to happen? Good question, but the wrong one, I think. The question is not how could God allow these things to happen, but how could we? These things all occurred on our watch.

Could we have learned something about restraint of power from Jesus on the pinnacle of the Temple that might have tempered the interaction of nations and helped us foster more peace on the earth, rather than retaliation and oppression and resentment? Could we heed the example of Jesus in the desert and establish a more right relation to our environment stop the kind of actions our scientists tell us are causing Sandys and other storms to become Superstorms?

During this Lent, I invite you to be mindful of the history you inhabit, and to look at the ways you interact with the environment, and with power, and with God. Examine your appetites. Look at how much control you seek over others, and how much respect you give to others? Look into your hearts and ask yourselves, are you asking God to do for you what you should do for yourself?

The message of Lent is that we are prone to sins such as these, but we are also capable of repentance, restoration and recovery and reconciliation. We are all of us capable of some amount of amendment of life. And now is the time to seek it.

But if you don’t achieve such amendment of life; if you fail in your first or second or third attempts, that’s OK. Because we’ll have Lent again next year too.

All we can do is our best, with God’s help, and our intentions are just as important as the changes that might one day be wrought out of those intentions.

Hear and heed the Gospel of Christ Jesus. Listen, and live and learn. For the only sin, really, when you come down to it, is to live and not learn.

Take this great gift of life and creation and learn from it, amend it where it is in need of amendment, reform it where it is in need of reformation. And live it is such a way as to honor your God. In so doing, you will do yourselves and your souls great honor as well. + Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Rend Your Hearts: a homily for Year C, Ash Wednesday

Preached on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lectionary texts this homily is based on can be found by clicking here. 

You can listen to this sermon on the parish website by clicking here.

Today is perhaps the most ironic day in the Christian calendar. Our actions on this day are in direct contradiction to the gospel that we read on this day. Or so it might seem. The point of Jesus’s admonitions against public displays of piety have to do with, not so much the actions themselves, but with the intentionality inherent in those actions.

It is a great temptation to make a public display of one’s piety, one’s self-denial and good works. It is, after all, very rewarding to be admired for such actions. Jesus notes that those who make a show of their prayer, their fasting and their charity have already received their just reward. They are admired by others, and therein is there sole reward. 

Jesus tells us, where our treasure is, there will be our heart also. What we value, the relationships we invest in are roadmaps of our hearts. If the destination you seek is a high place in the esteem of others, then your reward will be that, and only that. If the destination you seek is a deep place, somewhere near the bottom of your heart, a place of deep and profound intimacy with God, then you’ll disregard the esteem of others, and seek through your prayer and self-denial and charity a deeper relationship with God.

If the point, if the intention, of our prayer is communion with God, then in God will we find our truest heart, our deepest love, our treasure. If our acts of charity are meant to impress others, then our deepest desire is for the approval of other people, a shifting sand if ever there was one. To strive for God, to look for our hearts’ deepest desire within God is, is the reward of a holy Lent. 

The prophet Joel tells us to ‘rend out hearts, not our clothing’. He’s referring to the custom of tearing one’s clothing as a sign of deep grief and distress. Again, an outward sign. But Joel tells us to rend our hearts, to tear them open. 

 Rend Your Heart © Jan L. Richardson

A heart torn open is one in which all is exposed, every sin, every bad thought, every vanity, every harsh word. But a heart torn open is also one in which every hurt, every disappointment, every moment of doubt and fear is exposed, laid bare as well. When we rend our hearts we acknowledge those parts of our hearts in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness. When we rend our hearts, we offer to god those parts of our hearts in need of God’s healing love. 

Nothing found in a human heart torn open will be a surprise to God. And no sin or hurt therein is beyond God’s mercy or healing grace, no heart is beyond the redemption and salvation of God.

Rend your hearts, open up to God in the coming forty days. Seek God in the prayers of your hearts. Set aside unnecessary things so you can focus yourself on God. Serve others so as to honor God, seeing in those you serve the face of the living God. 

Rend your hearts, and return to the Lord.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

The Still More Excellent Way: a sermon for Year C, Epiphany 4

Preached on Sunday, February 3, 2013 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lectionary readings that this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. 

You can listen to this sermon by clicking here. 

I don’t have to guess what most of you will be doing this afternoon and evening. It’s a pretty important night for those of us who are true fans. I can expect that, like me, you’ll try to get home in time to get the TV set warmed up. Maybe you’ll have some friends over to join in the fun. Maybe you’ll have some special TV watching snacks at the ready. 

If you’re like me, you’ll make sure you’ve got good command of the remote in case any instant replays are needed. Because, as I don’t have to tell you, tonight all across the nation, millions of us will be tuning in to see who will be the winners and who will be the losers… on another episode of Downton Abbey.

What, was that not what you were expecting? 

Well, neither was the death in childbirth last week of Lady Sybil. But such is the nature of life at Downton Abbey. I mean, how many fortunes is Matthew Crowley going to inherit? He’s up to two now, and still counting… You never know what’s going to happen next at Downton, who’s going to be this week’s loser or next week’s winner. 

Well, the people at Downton Abbey aren’t alone. They have something in common with some very surprised Nazoreans from our gospel reading today. 

Our gospel today takes up immediately after last week’s gospel -- it even overlaps by a verse or two. As we know, Jesus is on the rota as a lector -- and he has read from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth, his hometown. The section of Isaiah that he reads is one in which the anointed messiah has come to give comfort to the poor and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Instead of ending his reading with, “The Word of the Lord” as you just heard our lectors do, Jesus makes a bold declaration. Jesus says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He proclaims here in his hometown, among those who’ve known him all his life, that he is God’s anointed messiah.

In addition to Luke, Matthew and Mark also recount this incident. And in the other two synoptic gospels, the Nazoreans seem to take umbrage with Jesus’ proclamation because of their familiarity with him. Their reaction is sort of, “Who does this guy think he is?  He’s not messiah, he’s just a carpenter, not a scholar, and certainly not the messiah.” 

In Luke’s version, it seems that the Nazoreans’ umbrage is based more on the fact that they expect something from Jesus. If he’s going to make these miraculous claims, well, OK. But what’s in it for us? Jesus recognizes the Nazoreans’ self-centeredness right off and he calls them on it. “I’ll bet you’re thinking, ‘What’s in this for us?’ I’ll bet you’re thinking, “Let’s see if he can make a big splash here like we hear he has done in Capernaum.” 

Jesus points out to the Nazoreans that God’s healing and life-saving works have not always been directed toward and visited upon the people of Israel to the exclusion of all others. He cites two examples from Scripture that show how the prophets of old worked their wonders, not for Israelites, but for foreigners -- for a widow of Zarephath and a general of the Syrian army.

   

And remember, we’re in Ephiphanytide, when our readings emphasize the revelation of Jesus’ identity as the messiah, and not just a messiah for the people of Israel, but a messiah for all the world. In our gospel reading today, Jesus points out that throughout salvation history, God’s mercy and grace has been extended beyond the Hebrew people, to those who might be, to some, beyond God’s grace and love.

++++++++++++

This week’s gospel overlaps with last week’s, as we’ve noted. And this week’s epistle reading follows directly after last week’s. Last week, Paul urged the Corinthians to be members of the same body, to be one in Christ. Now comes Paul’s famous hymn to love, as beautiful a piece of Scripture as any in the New Testament. It’s one of the selections most often used at weddings. But that’s a bit of a misuse of this passage. Paul is not speaking about individual love, Paul is speaking about the love that is or should be part of community life. There is one part that we’ve skipped over in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians from last week. Not even a whole verse even but one-half of a verse that concludes chapter 12. Paul writes, “I will show you a still more excellent way.”

The verses that follow that we read today remind us that, really, it’s all about love. That no matter our talents, if we don’t use them out of love for God, in a reflection of the love God has for us, they are meaningless. We must be mature in the faith, to use our mature reason alongside a humble acceptance of the limits of our knowledge. This is the still more excellent way to live together as a community that in some wise, in some dimly shimmering image, reflects the great love that Christ bears for us -- and not only us, but for the whole world. 

This broad, accepting, loving community that Jesus and Paul seem so sure about… it’s quite a challenge to bring about. The very idea of it angered the Nazoreans to the point of violence, as it still does some today. It was clearly beyond the reach of the Corinthians, else Paul would not have had to write to them -- and so often -- to exhort them to live together with their several gifts, and several claims to authority, as one body in Christ. 

They struggle with it at Downton Abbey too. There are Irish rebels sitting at table with English aristocrats, reformed prostitutes brought into good homes as respectable cooks and maids. There are lowly law clerks set to become earls, no less. It’s a new world breaking into being that troubles many of the old guard in the early 20^th century. And herein lies the fascination for us, I think -- it’s not unlike the world we live in, that so often troubles us today. When lesbian and gay folk are allowed to marry and take positions of leadership in the church, when an African-American can be elected president of one of the last nations on earth to abolish race-based slavery, there is a new world coming into being. One that, we hope, in some darkly reflected way is a reflection the great and good community of the body of Christ that Paul urges on us, and that Jesus proclaimed at Nazareth.

Like the folks at Downton Abbey, and at Corinth and at Nazareth, we all struggle to live into, and to live with, such a sweepingly broad and accepting image of community. It’s not easy, it’s never going to be. But we do struggle forward towards it, I believe, in fits and starts. But by with the light of our faith, and with the enduring hope that we know, and compelled onwards by the compelling love of Christ that we know, and that we try to manifest in the world, for the world, we try, we try to see through the glass darkly, and to bring about the vision we see there.

The still more excellent way is still a ways off. But we’ll get there. Our faith will abide until we do, and our hope will hold out, and most of all, the love of God will not abandon us, will not leave us orphan. So we strive still to follow the still more excellent way, in faith, and in hope, and above all, in love. +Amen. 

  © The Rev. Mark R. Collins

The Benefits Package: a sermon for Year C, Epiphany 3

Preached on Sunday, January 27, 2013 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Lectionary texts this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. 

You can listen to this sermon by clicking here.  

It is Epiphanytide, and we are hearing gospel readings about revelations, new understandings, truths breaking into the world. We’ve heard the Magi proclaim that a new star was in fact a sign of a portentous birth. We saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and heard the voice of God booming out over a baptism in the river Jordan. We attended a wedding feast, and saw water become wine.

Today, we hear the subject of these epiphanies really speak up for the first time during this Epiphanytide. It’s important to notice where Jesus has been just before the events we read of in this morning’s gospel from Luke. Jesus has been in the desert, and he hasn’t been alone. The Devil has been with him, tempting him. In response to these temptations, Jesus has refused to turn stones into bread. He has refused to try to gain dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. He has refused to throw himself from the highest pinnacle of the temple so that the angels might rescue him. 

Jesus has flatly refused to use his status, his authority, as the Son of God to his own personal advantage. So, what will he use his status and his authority as the Son of God for? 

After the tempting in the desert, Jesus comes to Galilee, to Nazareth, his hometown, to the synagogue there. And there, much as Ezra does in our Old Testament reading This morning, he proclaims the Scripture. In particular, he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He reads the ancient texts as a proclamation and a prophesy to the people.

And in the first verses he reads, he establishes his own authority. He proclaims, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me…” (Luke 4:18a) So, as God’s anointed, what will he say, what will he do? 

Does he appoint himself to the board of the synagogue, or make himself its leader? Does he call a new rabbi to lead the congregation, or make himself the rabbi, demanding a generous salary and an exorbitant benefits package? Does he go further, and proclaim himself the new Chief Priest of the Temple at Jerusalem, the religious leader of all the Hebrew people? Does he claim secular authority for himself, and ascend the throne of David as so, so many are waiting for, hoping for, the long-expected messiah to do? 

Jesus does none of these things. Once again, as he did in the desert, Jesus refuses to seek dominance or recognition for himself, he refuses to seek his own gain, or to establish himself at the head of, well, at the head of anything. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

Jesus uses his status and his authority as the Son of God to help the lowly, the oppressed, the poor, the imprisoned, the very least of the people of Israel. Quoting from the scroll of Isaiah, he says he has come “to bring good news to the poor... to proclaim release to the captives… recovery of sight to the blind… to let the oppressed go free’ He says that he has come to proclaim the jubilee year, the year of the Lord’s favor, when debts are to be forgiven, and slaves set free. Then he rolls up the scroll, returns it and says very simply and straightforwardly, “‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” 

William Temple was the archbishop of Canterbury during part of World War II. He was archbishop of York, bishop of Manchester, and the son of a previous archbishop of Canterbury. He was a noted theologian and author -- his most famous work is Christianity and the Social Order. In that work and others, and in sermons and speeches he urged the church to engage the problems of the world, and to work to ensure a just society for workers, children, the poor and oppressed. 

Archbishop Temple’s theology can be summed up in what is likely his most famous quote, “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members." 

Like the Virgin Mary of the Magnificat, and like Jesus, her son, Archbishop Temple was not afraid to proclaim the gospel truth that God’s concerns are for the poor and the oppressed, and that the work of the church was not its own benefit or its members’ just deserts, but the solace and succor of the least of those outside of it.

For who among us can say we have gotten what we deserve from God or from God’s church? One of the basic tenets of reformed theology is that we are the recipients of God’s unfathomable grace and unbounded mercy. Our own shortcomings and sins might well warrant condemnation and punishment, but such is not what we receive from God. We have been saved and redeemed by the mercy of God and the atoning sacrifice of no less a person than the very Incarnate God himself, Jesus, God’s son. 

By God’s bountiful gift of mercy, we are forgiven, through God’s extravagant grace, we are saved and redeemed, and given the exalted position of heirs, through Christ, of eternal life, a place little lower than the angels, far above the station we might rightly deserve. 

We don’t get what we deserve from God or God’s church, but much, much more than we can ever deserve. More than we can ask or imagine, more than we can ever repay. The only response to such unjust deserts is unbounded praise and worship, and joyful service to those whom God calls us to serve: the poor, the oppressed, the captive, the sick, the disabled.

This may seem a rather ironic message to deliver in the midst of our Annual Meeting, during which, after our worship, we will concentrate intensely on ourselves. We’ll elect a warden and vestry members, and hear about our financial health and our search for a new rector. All interior concerns, all interests that might be construed to be for the benefit of the members of this church, rather than its non-members. 

Well, it’s not about that, or it shouldn’t be. The efforts we undertake this morning must not be about us, but about our health and readiness to perform our mission as Christians. We seek to preserve and prosper this parish not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who might find their way here in search of the beauty of holiness and the salvation and hope of the Gospel. 

We select lay leaders whose leadership is grounded in and proceeds from their recognition of God’s grace and their desire to be as one who serves others, rather than themselves, so that the people of God in this place can respond in mission to the needs of our neighborhood, our city, our country and our world. 

All we do this day is, or ought to be, not to our own benefit; not to the benefit of our own egos, or our own aesthetics, our own political beliefs, our own desire for power or influence, or a desire to create our own legacy. We are not here to build a community for ourselves, but rather a community that serves those without a community. So that, in whatever small ways we can, we reflect the open arms with which our God embraces us, and offer to the world the grace and mercy that we have been offered in Christ. 

And, again ironically, when our focus is on our service to others rather than any benefit to ourselves we, in fact, do benefit. Not to put too fine a point on it, but when the homeless shelter volunteers rota is full and the Sunday School teachers jobs are more coveted than positions on the vestry we are a healthier and happier community because we are a community in service to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The rich compensation and exorbitant benefits package that comes with being a member of this church are unique. The chief benefit is salvation unto eternal life. Quite a perk, when you think about it, quite the executive level of compensation. And the work done to earn such compensation and benefits has been done for us by Christ, our Lord.

All we need do, is to recognize it, and to make everything we do an act of thanksgiving, an act of worship to such a beneficent God all we need is to make all our service a song of grateful praise. +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Kings and Cowboys: a sermon for Year C, Christ the King

Preached on Sunday, November 25, 2012 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. To listen to this sermon on our parish website, click here. 

In the neighborhood where I grew up, at the end of the street, right next to our house, there was a field. It was probably about an acre or two in size. It was rarely mown, it stood in tall green grass for most of the summer which turned wheaten in the winter months when it was often covered in white frost. In the middle of the field, a generation or two of children armed with spoons, sticks and the occasional shovel had dug a hole, that over time deepened to about a foot and a half.

As is always the case with children, the field was a big canvas onto which we painted our playtime fantasies. It was a time when Combat starring Vic Morrow and directed by Robert Altman was popular on TV; as was The Rifleman starring Chuck Conners. So the games of choice in our neighborhood were either Army – or Cowboys and Indians. Our field might then serve as the wide open West, and pitched battles between settlers and savage Sioux warriors would be waged on a Saturday afternoon -- in which case, the hole served as the all precious fort that must be defended at all costs, and which would inevitably be surrounded at some point in the battle, allowing some overdramatic kid to shout, ‘We’re completely surrounded by Indians!” with a blood-curdled terror that would only add to everyone’s enjoyment. At other times, the field would serve as the snowbound Russian Front, and the Allies would battle the Nazis from the cover of their front line foxhole, lobbing dirt clod hand grenades with a merciless accuracy. 

Most of the kids on our block were my little brother’s age, which is 19 months younger than me. Now 19 months is not a big age difference, but when you’re only 60 or 72 months old, it can seem like an eternity. Being so much older by the vast stretch of 19 months, and being therefore much more sophisticated, I eschewed both Army and Cowboys and Indians. 

Somewhere in our family set of World Book encyclopedias, I had seen an entry all about medieval castles. I wanted to play Kings and Castles, not Army or Cowboys and Indians. I would lobby fiercely on behalf of my fantasy, but I rarely won out. No one really knew the script of Kings and Castles. Vic Morrow and Chuck Conners didn’t supply us with our lines. On the rare occasion when everyone agreed to play Kings and Castles, we’d run out of plot lines and scenarios rather quickly and then someone would shout, ‘We’re surrounded by Indians!’ and the battle would morph into Cowboys and Indians – and I’d sulk off home to read more of the encyclopedia.

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In the West, for much of history, our ideas about monarchy and our ideas of divinity have been closely linked. The Roman imperial leaders were proclaimed Gods. And the divine right of monarchs, the belief that the right to rule was granted to kings by God himself, was an idea that was very closely held throughout European history, perhaps by no one more staunchly than James the First of England, the same King James we have to thank for the “King James” Bible. In fact, the posture we use to pray to God is derived from the posture of supplicants and liegemen in obeisance before medieval kings. Often when we pray, we kneel, as did our medieval counterparts before their king, and we place our hands like so, as they did before the king to make a pledge of allegiance to their sovereign. 

So, there’s been a sort of cross-pollination between our secular ideas about royalty and kings, and our sacred ideas about God – and about Jesus in particular. Christ is king of heaven and earth, we say, and sometimes sing. And it is Christ’s kingship of earth that is behind the celebration of Christ the King Sunday. This commemoration of Christ’s kingship wasn’t added to the liturgical calendar until 1925. World War I was just over and it had been for most of Europe a devastating, soul-killing and faith-destroying event. Christian nation had waged war against Christian nation, with a ferocity and deadliness that only modern technology could have brought about. In the aftermath of the war, a few of the old monarchies gave way to either democracy -- which owed its sovereignty to the consent of the governed, not the divine right of the monarch -- or to Communism, which was officially an atheistic form of governance. The church sought to help restore order and peace (and maybe a bit of its own prestige) by reminding the war-ravaged nations of the world that Christ was indeed king of earth as well as heaven, and that we should govern ourselves, and live together, as if continually in his sight, and under his authority.  

It makes us wonder, what sort of king would Jesus be, if indeed he was to ascend an earthly throne in Westminster Abbey or in the Imperial Palace in Tokyo? It’s kind of hard to tell, really and we get some conflicting pictures from our Scripture readings today. 

In Daniel, we are given a vision of the Ancient One with flowing, snow-white hair seated upon a fiery throne. This is one ruling in majesty and might, and great power. Then comes the one like a human being, ‘one like the son of Man’ in the older translation, who is given power and dominion over us, over all nations and peoples and languages, one whose authority and kingship is to last forever. That idea is echoed in our reading from the Revelation to John. In John’s vision, Jesus is the ruler of the rulers of the earth, to whom belongs glory and dominion forever.

Then we see Jesus himself, from the gospel of John, standing before one of those rulers of the earth, or at least that corner of the earth that Jesus called home. And the contrast between the two rulers couldn’t be more stark. Pilate is very interested in this idea of kingship, and whether Jesus is claiming it for himself or whether the crowd is about to. Judea had a king, Herod, a Roman client king and puppet. If Jesus is a claimant to Herod’s throne, then he is a challenge to Roman authority and stability. If Pilate can get Jesus to admit that, then he can put him to death with all due haste, and we can all get back to the Passover celebrations. 

But Jesus refuses to play along. His kingship, he says, is not from the world. It’s not so much that he’s not claiming to be a king, but rather he’s pointing out that his authority is not like Pilate’s, it’s not based on power and might and conquest. Here is a king who is not a member of a dynasty or an aristocracy, he’s not a member of an occupying army or an empire. Christ’s kingship is not based on an earthly claim, but on sacred and timeless truth.

Christ hasn’t come into the world to take Herod’s throne away from him, and he’s not here to go head to head with Pilate. He doesn’t need an army or a nation of supplicants. He is here for one reason: to testify to the truth, and those who belong to the truth, hear him, hear his testimony and know that his word is truth. And that truth is the truth that sets us free; rather than binds us to a king or crown or any earthly power. 

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What a world it would be if Christ was indeed our king, or if we acting like he was. No more games of Army, with the all the destruction and death that those kind of games bring. No more games of Cowboys and Indians, with the death of peoples and cultures and nature that those kind of games bring. No more games of Kings and Castles, that always result in more power and riches for the already powerful and rich. A world in which the truth that Jesus came to give testimony to was the only sovereign over women and men. And that truth was let loose upon the earth to liberate all people from sin and death and oppression and want. A kingdom of Christ on this earth that might bear some slight resemblance to the heavenly kingdom he has gone to prepare for all who act with mercy, charity and justice. Would that Christ were truly our King and we his most loyal subjects; who hear the word of truth, and are set free to set others free. +Amen.

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins

Fear, Plenty and God's Righteousness: homily for Thanksgiving Day

Preached on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 22, 2012 at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. 

In our reading from Joel, the prophet proclaims, “Do not fear, be glad and rejoice” (2:21) and we are quickly told what it is that should be the source of our joy. The pastures of the wilderness are green; the trees bear fruit, as does the vine. There is abundant rain, early and late. We can expect the threshing floors to be full of grain and the vats overflowing with wine and oil. 

We shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and we will know that our God has dealt wondrously with us. (Joel 2:26)

So we have been told, and so we are to see around us, and to believe.

But then, some 400 years later, Jesus is saying to us much the same thing that the prophet Joel tried to tell us. “Why do you worry, about what you shall eat or what you shall wear?” Then he gives us that wonderful admonition, “Consider the lilies…” (Matthew 6:25ff)

Consider the lilies… when we do, what do we see? Flowers of great beauty, as beautiful in their way as the fields of green and the vines and trees loaded with fruit from Joel.  And it’s true, they neither toil nor spin, but Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one simple, beautiful lily of the field. 

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Why do we worry? Perhaps it is because we have reasons to worry. Not so many weeks ago, a devastating storm took many lives, and took away the comforts of many more, deprivations that remain for some. The insidious storm seemed out of all proportion to storms of the past. 

But there is much else to fear. We fear for our safety from those so angry with us as to seek to kill and maim us through acts of terror. We fear for our economic security, as our financial system seems to be tossed about on unregulated swells of global uncertainty. And we see in our national life, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and it becomes harder and harder to move from poverty to stability to success.

When we consider the lilies, we see that they are not the only flowers of the field. There are others among us, weeds, invasive species, that seek to take over the field and forest and the fruits of the vine for themselves. Rather than give thanks for the bounty that God has provided in acts of charity and thanksgiving, they seek to monopolize all that can be brought under their control. They seek to exploit the bounty of creation, rather than enjoying it, and allowing others to do the same. 

Some of these weeds will dominate entire regions of the world to secure all the energy inherent in creation for themselves, in the process the people that call those regions home come to see us all as Godless exploiters of every advantage. Others exploit that same energy in such a wanton fashion that the earth itself gets warmer and warmer and the storms on the face of the earth get more ferocious, and more deadly. Though there is plenty enough in the world to feed all the world, some would use the basic necessities of life as a means to get gather more wealth to themselves, while others starve. 

Dom Helder Camara, an archbishop and a campaigner for the rights of the poor in Brazil, once wrote, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, when I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” 

Rabbi Hyman Schachtel added, “Happiness is not getting what you want, it’s wanting what you have.” 

Jesus put it yet another way, “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matthew 6: 33)

So let us this be grateful for all that God has given us, and give thanks for it; and let us respect God’s creation, and share it equally and justly with all God’s children. Let us seek after God’s righteousness which we know is righteousness not for ourselves alone but for all the world, especially the oppressed and downtrodden. Then we can let go of fear, and shout for joy, because our Father in heaven sees what we need, and has provided it for us. 

© The Rev. Mark R. Collins