Follow the Leader—A Sermon on Christ the King

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you always.

As American Christians, celebration of the feast of “Christ the King” can feel a little odd. Our historical connection to the British monarchy is really only relevant to us now in these exciting times of Prince Harry’s engagement to Meghan Markle, an American. When we’re not watching royal weddings on television, we’re mostly not thinking about kings and queens. Right?

The feast of Christ the King is officially known as the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. It came about in 1925 during the rise of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator in Italy. Pope Pius XI insisted that supremacy over the universe belonged to Christ alone, not to any earthly leader. Contrary to popular belief in 1925 and in this year of our Lord 2017, no human being deserves our unwavering allegiance—no political leader, no church leader, no celebrity, no king.

We say so, each time we pray the Lord’s prayer—”for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.” True leadership and true power belong to God.

At LEVN night this week, we talked about feeling kind of uncomfy about ascribing Kingship to Jesus the Christ. It feels...patriarchal, and oppressive, and corrupt. The way Jesus wielded power was truly the opposite of the way the Roman Empire wielded power, and so it is very reasonable to feel some type of way about equating the two. But perhaps that’s just it. Perhaps we’re not equating the two, or putting Jesus in the shoes of Caesar. Perhaps, in response to the sin that so easily entangles us in our earthly kingdoms, the feast of Christ the King proclaims that the only, true way to wield power is to wield it like Jesus. To preach good news to the poor, to free the captive, to liberate the oppressed.

The lectionary texts assigned to this day should tell us all we need to know.

Did you notice that Jesus has this whole conversation with himself? He anticipates that it will be difficult for his hearers to understand what he is talking about. The disciples have been with him for a couple of years, at least, and they are often confused. Layers of storytelling often confuse them further, so Jesus leaves pretty much no room for error. He plays both sides of the story and gives out all the possible scenarios. This king that he speaks of has never been hungry or imprisoned, just as Jesus himself has not been, while in the company of his disciples. But he knows that they have not made the connection between their lives and the lives of the least among them.

What might this sound like if Jesus was telling it to us, today?

Someone would ask: “When did we see you hungry and not feed you?” And Jesus would pointedly reply: “When you perpetuated the economic and agricultural system in which 795 million people go hungry around the world each day.”

We’d be a little confused, because Jesus is not currently a starving person, and we cannot feed a billion people out of a soup kitchen. But someone would ask another: “Okay, but when did we see you sick and not care for you?” Jesus would look at us and say, “When you elected a congress who declared that healthcare is a privilege, not a human right.”

We’d start to understand, and avert our eyes. Except for the one person who would ask:  “Okay, but when did we see you in prison and not visit you?” Jesus would not mince words on this one: “When you did not dismantle the prison-industrial complex and the mass incarceration of people of color in the United States.”

In the lives and deaths of the marginalized and minoritized, we are averting our eyes from the face of God. We fail to see Jesus in the bodies that surround us in our everyday lives. We fail to treat each other with the dignity and respect and appreciation that we’re certain we’d treat Jesus with.  

We talked at bible study this week about the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. It was easy for us to place ourselves as the rich man in that story, because we are much closer to his life than we are to the poor man, who lay dying at the rich man’s gate. We may not be the richest people we know, wear the nicest clothes, drive the newest car, or eat the fanciest food—but we are, by the world’s standard, among the wealthiest people to ever live.

We have power. As Americans with good educations (and in the process of receiving good educations) and the right to vote and the freedom to travel and the many choices we make each and every day about the trajectory of our lives, we are powerful. We have varying degrees of power, sure. We understand that there are differences in power between men and women and people of all genders; we understand that white people wield much more power than black people and other people of color; we understand that US citizens have power that residents and immigrants and those in the citizenship process do not have.

And y’all are young, starting out in your adult lives, and you still have a lot of rules governing you and hurdles to make it through before you can feel fully independent and autonomous. But in the grand scheme of things, you have great freedom and great power. Which, as we all know, comes with great responsibility.

Now, church tonight is not meant to add to the laundry list of awful things you’ve been worrying about in the world. You’re not on the hook for solving all of the world’s most humungous problems. You may feel inspired by a particular issue of justice and want to go out full speed ahead and right that wrong. Do it! Go for it! God bless you on your way!

And. Think even closer to home than that. When you are in a position of leadership and power, notice how you use that. Notice how you engage with your peers, your classmates, your coworkers, your roommates, your partners, your neighbors. Notice how you engage with people who work in the service industry; notice how you engage with children; notice how you engage with people you are supervising, organizing, teaching, or otherwise leading. Who do you take your cues from? Kings of this earth, or Christ the King?

When you look for role models in leadership, notice who you admire. Are they dominating and domineering? Or are they servants?

In our Christian life, as we follow the teachings of Jesus, we are going run into a lot of things that don’t match what we hear from other sources. We are going to feel backwards, sometimes. We are going to feel countercultural, sometimes. We are going to feel like the only ones who see a problem with what’s happening, sometimes. We live in a world full of people who see no problem with stepping on others to get more for themselves. We confess that we have sometimes gone along with that way of living, and even benefited from the exploitation of others.

But as we close this church year, and look toward the season of Advent, we are reminded that there is another way. Jesus the Christ, King of the Universe, will come into the world as a tiny and vulnerable baby. The child of refugees, fleeing one oppressive regime for another. From the absolute humblest of beginnings, God will enter into our world to show us what true power and true glory look like. Stay tuned.

Give to God what is God's—A Sermon on Life and Taxes

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.
 

It has been a minute since I’ve been in this pulpit, after a busy month of traveling all over the place. And y’all have been busy while I’ve been gone! The quarter is seriously under way, the LEVN year presses on, and life outside of your programs carries on, too. It’s a big world out there.

If you’ve been here the last few Wednesdays or maybe the last few Sundays, you’ve been trekking through the lectionary as Jesus tells confusing parable after confusing parable. There were mustard seeds, and wedding banquets, and vineyards, and talents. Just as we have been immersed in Jesus’ stories about what the kingdom of heaven is like, his original hearers were putting the pieces together, forming a picture of a new and different world.

Some folks were not as sold on Jesus’ new way of being in relationship with God and with one another—some religious authorities and, of course, the Roman Empire. They, too, were connecting the dots between Jesus’ stories and their reality.

Remember, Jesus and company lived under occupation by the Roman Empire. Everyone was expected to revere and respect the emperor—Caesar Augustus—above anyone or anything else. The coin that Jesus is talking about depicts the Roman emperor as a deity, or as a conduit for the deity. You see, the emperor maintained a relative peace by allowing those under his occupation to worship their God, as long as they also pledged allegiance to him. You can bet that Jesus had a problem with this, because that utmost devotion is not for earthly kings, but for God our Creator, alone.

The tension between Jesus’ movement and those with political power was only growing. And while this week’s story is not a parable, it’s not exactly straightforward. Some of the folks who were opposed to Jesus’ movement tried to trap him, tried to get him to either openly pledge allegiance to the emperor or openly disparage the emperor.

They ask him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Jesus knows what they’re after, and replies with another question, like many teachers do. “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” He says. “Show me the coin.” When they show him the money that is used to pay taxes, emblazoned with Caesar Augustus’ name and title, he tells them “give to the emperor what is the emperor’s and give to God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22)

Sometimes, when we tell this story, we do something a little anachronistic and turn it into a modern question: is it Christian to pay taxes? And that’s sort of an interesting question, because our tax dollars do a lot to build up our communities—pay for our schools, roads, fire departments—and that’s an important Christian value. We provide services and resources to members of our community who would otherwise go without.

But, we don’t all agree about how much of our tax dollars should be allocated to which things, or about which things should be covered by our tax dollars at all. A large portion of our tax dollars goes toward building weapons of war—not so much a Christian value. But we know, as citizens and residents of the United States, that we are accountable to one another and responsible for paying taxes.

So is it Christian to pay taxes? Yes...and no. But is that what Jesus is talking about?

Not entirely. Jesus is pointing us toward a larger question: are we servants of God or are we servants of the empire? And not just in the literal political sense—though absolutely in the literal political sense—but in an even more basic sense.

This is the most fundamental building block of our faith. In the commandments given to Moses, we start at the very beginning: “I am the Lord your God...you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3).

Everything that we have comes to us from God. Yes, we live in a society with a government and with corporations and other trimmings of capitalism, but as Christians we are governed by God first, and by the empire second.

What, that is not our capital-G God, have we devoted ourselves to instead? What do we cling to that is not the triune God?

More than a few things. Money. Power. Status. Security. Institutions—like our governments, our universities, our Churches. National sovereignty. We routinely place our trust and our devotion in things of this earth that cannot possibly sustain us in the way that God can. No human person—charismatic leader, revolutionary, emperor, dictator, or otherwise—provides us that which God provides. Our political leaders are not our saviors.

The commandments given to Moses, the ones that start with “I am the LORD your God,” go on to say, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:4).

When we talk about these “idols” or false gods, it’s important to note that we don’t mean other people’s gods, like the deities of other religions. The idols we’re not supposed to be making are things that the empire would deem holy—namely, itself. “Things we can get confused about that we think are divine, things we believe are of ultimate concern, things we might give weight to above all else that are not really holy.”

“Our institutions are not God; the Church is not God; the American flag is not God; our reputations and our egos are not God; comfort, convenience, and safety are not God.”[1]

Have you noticed that I always say the same little prayer at the beginning of my sermons? Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into, and it’s so simple that you may have stopped really hearing it. I certainly rattle it off unconvincingly, sometimes. But I say it every time because it is the truest truth I know. Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

There are important things in the world around us that we commit ourselves to, yes, but those things are not God. Those things are not eternal. Those things will end. The empire will fall. God will be with you, always.

Remember, beloved children of God, that you—and all of us—were created in the image of God. You, as you are this very minute, are holy. You are not merely a number in a database—the university’s or the Internal Revenue Service’s. You reflect not the shiny gold coin of the empire, but the face of God.

Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s and give to God what is God’s. Give to the empire only that which bears its image, and give to God that which bears God’s image—you. [2] You have been given the gift of this life by the God who loves you. Devote yourself right back to the God who is devoted to you. Remember who you are whose you are. Amen.

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[1] Margaret Ernst, “Say Unto Caesar: Whiteness is Not God” on The Word is Resistance from Showing Up for Racial Justice, showingupforracialjustice.org/podcast, 20 October 2017.

Saints and Squirrels—A Sermon for Francis

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

I was reading about St. Francis of Assisi earlier this week, to remind myself about his story—though he’s certainly one of the saints I’m most familiar with, I have to admit that a lot of them run together in my Lutheran brain. Nice men and women who did unusual things in the name of God and then maybe got murdered for it. Those are more the martyrs, but the lives of the saints are often grisly and rugged, since most of them lived several centuries ago.

Saint Francis, for example, lived at the turn of the 13th century, roundabout the Crusades. Francis had a vision of a world in which the afflicted were cared for—leprosy was rampant at the time, and people lived in irrational fear of its contagion and banished lepers from their midst. Francis, the story goes, embraced and kissed a leper before devoting his life to the service of others. He established an order of brothers—Franciscans—to carry out this work.

You may have heard this before—in a St. Francis Day sermon, perhaps—or maybe you’re more familiar with his other charism, blessing of animals and the natural world. He wrote a wonderful little poem that I want to read for you, now:

“I once spoke to my friend, an old squirrel, about the Sacraments—he got so excited and ran into a hollow in his tree and came back holding some acorns, an owl feather, and a ribbon he had found. And I just smiled and said, ‘yes, dear, you understand; everything imparts God’s grace.”[1]

Part of what I love about this poem, of course, is that he just casually chatted with squirrels, and did so often enough to write of them as his friends. Suffice it to say Francis was an unusual man. But what’s deeper than just the sweetness of this love of God’s creatures is the deep theological truth of that last line—everything imparts God’s grace. 

Francis was not complicated or fancy, and for him, neither was God. Everything that surrounds us in our real lives is sacred; we needn’t dress anything up in order for it to be holy—including ourselves. Francis was born into wealth, but he gave everything he had to the poor and lived on just necessities. He advocated for the fair treatment of all living things—humans, animals, plants, you name it—in a time of social upheaval and civil unrest.

Gosh, I wonder if there’s anything we can learn from St. Francis that applies to our own lives and our own society.

We are living in a time of unprecedented climate change. Animals and plants—and humans—around the world are in danger of habitat destruction and extinction because of human industrial activity. We are clear-cutting forests; we are polluting oceans; we are emitting carbon at irreversible rates; the ice caps are melting; hurricanes are wreaking havoc. Human civilizations are ravaged by war and poverty on every continent; healthcare is only available to those who can afford it; children die of preventable diseases every day.

In our modern religious climate, Pope Francis has moved in the direction of his namesake on a number of these issues. While we wouldn’t call a pope progressive under most circumstances, this one has understood the ways in which humans are connected to other forms of life, and encouraged Catholics around the world to consider their participation in global ills.

Saint Francis of Assisi “was an outspoken and controversial social activist. He was one of the greatest preachers of all time. His concern with poverty and ecology give him a strikingly modern [relevance]. He vigorously opposed the abuse of political power, particularly when it was wielded by the [Pope].”[2]

The reason that Francis is a saint, in my sort-of informed opinion, is in how much he modeled his life in the way that Jesus taught. He listened when he heard the words of Jesus we heard in tonight’s Gospel lesson:

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Both St. Francis and Jesus lived lives of inclusion, bringing those on the margins into the middle. No matter who you are, there are days when you’d self-identify as weary, and label your burdens as heavy. On those days—and every day—your Christian community welcomes you inside. These words of Jesus remind us that, though we may feel overwhelmed and beyond recovery, there is always someone to whom to hand over our heaviness. You can always turn your garbage over to Jesus. You can always come here and tell a friend or me about what’s up. You can always dump out your giant pile of study material and sort through it with a bad attitude, but a handful of candy from the basket. You can always sit here in this room and sing to your God about the truth of the love you know.

So, come. Come to the table, where all are welcome. For both St. Francis and Jesus—lovers of the earth, radical social activists, carriers of burdens—thanks be to God.

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[1] St. Francis of Assisi, translated by Daniel Ladinsky in Love Poems from God