Christ is King

Christ is King

by | Nov 26, 2023

This Sunday, Christ the King, is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite, Sundays of the year, because it’s a day that we as a church plant our flag in exactly what we believe. Today, on the last day of the Liturgical year, looking back at what we’ve already done, and looking forward at what is coming, we say “Christ is King.”

To make that claim, to say that Christ is King, that Christ is Lord, is to at least 3 things. “Christ is King” is a political statement, it’s a personal statement, and it’s a Cosmic statement.

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Firstly, it is a political statement. Even in the first century, especially in the first century, and even now, to claim that Christ is Lord is to claim that he alone sits on the throne. No one else, no Caesar, no emperor, no president, no secretary general, is the ruler over our world or our lives, Christ alone is. Politics is not just about who holds the keys to war or the nuclear codes, or who has the power to drops bombs on people who can’t retaliate, politics is about how we structure society and how lives are arranged in spaces, who has access to what spaces, and how people are systematically organized throughout the world. And the Kingdom of God over which Christ reigns says that the poor and oppressed should be treated with the dignity they’re owed as people who bear the divine image, wherever and whoever on earth they are. The rule and reign of Christ the King sees Christ as the judge of all the nations, and takes their works into account, whether they fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, visited the prisoner, gave a drink to the thirsty; to judge, ultimately, whether his people saw themselves, saw their very lord and King in the faces of those who had nothing. When we claim Christ is King, this is what we’re saying.

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To say Christ is King is also a personal statement. Christ is not just Lord over the nations, but Lord over our very lives. Christ did not come just to make us better people, but to make us new people, to raise us from the dead. In our baptisms this is what we’re saying. Christ becomes the Lord of our Life, the King of our life, when we take on the very death that he died and are raised to the resurrected new life that he himself lives. He’s given us a new community, a new way to be in the world, and in this way, the political dimension and the personal dimension are inextricably intertwined, linked. And Because of this, when we claim Christ as King, our lives ought to change, materially, noticeably change; caring for everything that Christ cares about, showing and sharing the love that has been shared with us. When we say Christ is King, both personally and politically, this is what we ought to be saying.

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Lastly, to say that Chris is King is a undeniably cosmic statement. When I say cosmic I don’t necessarily mean “space and stars” and everything, “out there,”… I mean the whole of reality. Christ is Lord over everything, to say that that is a statement with Cosmic dimensions is to say it lays claim over every aspect of reality. Jesus Christ, the one whom God has “raised from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come, and has put all things under his feet and has made him head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all,” the savior of mankind, and our systems, the very commander of all creation, who even the wind and waves obey, who “sits upon his glorious throne with all the nations gathered before him,” is the same One, who, as Rev. Fleming Rutledge puts it, “at the very apex of his cosmic power, reveals that the universe turns upon a cup of water given to the littlest ones in his name.” That is our King.

When we say that Christ is King, we acknowledge Christ’s moving through and in the world as the only thing worth emulating, patterning our lives after. The One who would go to the cross and submit to the powers and principalities of this world, the ones who had no real power over him, but submit to them anyway, that is our King. The One who would rise up from the grave, shaming those power and principalities, and give us a new life, the only life worth having, in the face of a world that would claim otherwise, THAT is our King.

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We’re lucky enough to have a pretty rare cross on our wall, here at St. Martins. It’s different from most crosses that we see in Churches. Most will either have no body on the cross, or will have the broken, battered, beaten Christ upon it, but here, we have Christ in full adornment of Eucharistic vestments. This cross is called the Christus Rex, or Christ the King Cross. It shows the paradoxical nature of the God who died and who rose up to give himself for us. It shows us that our God is our Great High Priest who can sympathize with us and with everyone, whose nature is not to fix every problem we have by waving his hand and making it all go away, but to be with us in our suffering and in our grief, to give us the sure hope of a future where every tear will be wiped away. It shows us the seemingly contradictory nature of a King who would stoop down to where we are, to be with us, to grant us new life, to show us how we ought to live.

So today, here at the end of the year, take some time to reflect with me on what it means for Christ to be King, politically, personally, and cosmically, and what that might be calling us to do, how Christ our King might be calling us to change. We’re moving into the advent season, a season rooted in watching, waiting, anticipating, hoping, for the return of Christ our King. The King who loves us and gave himself for us, the king who went to the grave and came back for us, who made us as we are and loves us as we are, and is coming once more to this earth to make all things new. All of that is coming, yes, so today we take a moment and plant our flag right where it ought to be, where reality dictates it be, and we say, full-throated and with every confidence in creation, “Christ IS King.”

All Means All Y’all

All Means All Y’all

by | Nov 5, 2023

Well, everybody… it is All Saints Day. Which means that November is here, and we are decidedly in that time of year where I get to wear flannels in the morning and by noon I cannot stop sweating. Thanks, Texas! It means that we are getting to the end of our liturgical year, that it’s coming to a close, and soon it will be Advent and we get to start the whole thing over.

And it also means that this sermon, which I have, of course titled, “All Means All Y’all,” is going to be about All Saints Day. And the question I want us to consider together is, “why do we celebrate All Saints Day?” The short answer is, because we’ve done it since Pope Gregory IV instituted it as a feast day in the 9th century, and we just sort of held onto it after the Reformation.

But, the longer answer, which, I’m gonna get into, cause I need, you know, SOMETHING to say up here, requires that we take a look into our own theology and belief around Saints.

In the Apostles creed, we affirm our belief in the “Communion of Saints,”; this idea that comes from today’s readings in Matthew and Revelation, and some other spots in the scriptures, like where Hebrews 12 calls them a “great cloud of witnesses”. And a great cloud of witnesses is exactly what they are: They’re our Christian siblings, our family in the faith who have come before us and can show us how we are to follow the way of Christ.

It also means that somehow, in some way, that even though these people who have come before us, some of them thousands of years before us, they are still, in some sense, alive. In Matthew’s gospel, in a debate with a group of Resurrection-denying Sadducees, Jesus says “…as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” Jesus identifies Israel’s Patriarchs as those who are biologically dead, but because of their trust in their God, they are still, somehow, someway alive. Because if they were not, God would not be God, as He’s the God of living, and not the dead.

But all this begs the question, what is a saint? And what makes a saint, a saint? Are they only the people who have performed miracles, and feats of endurance and strength and healings? Are they only the people who have shown such fervor in the face of death, that they’re now paragons of the faith?

Now, denominationally speaking, while there may be some requirements for sainthood, in the anglican communion, our tradition, and (I would argue,) in the Biblical witness, any person, ANY person, at all, who puts their faith and trust in Jesus Christ is a saint.

We believe that any person who has “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” from Revelation this morning, they will be found “standing before the throne and before the Lamb,… singing, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’” We, who have put our faith and our trust in Jesus Christ, are they of whom Revelation speaks.

We. are. all. saints.

But, here’s the thing: we also live with ourselves. We know that while this may be the truth of the situation, more often than not, this feels, at best, aspirational, or at least, a long way off, well into eternity, and not a reality for right now.

Martin Luther, the reformer, identified these sort of dual realities as: Simul Justus et Peccator. It means “at the same time” or “simultaneously, Saint and Sinner.” These simultaneous identities, these dual realities, are real because we are human beings, who have put our faith and our trust in God, yes, but this side of eternity—before all things, including us, are made new—, we are also still humans, and that means that we are subject to the realities of sin and death.

We’re sinners because we’re human, yes, but we are still saints. Because, the thing that makes a saint a saint is not some sort of might or vigor, as it is easy to think when we look at the annals of history and see the canonized. It isn’t, as Rev. Fleming Rutledge puts it, “a triumph of the human spirit” that makes someone a saint, but “a triumph of the Holy Spirit.” // And yes that is about as corny as it gets, but we’ll remember it!

And because we are saints positionally by the working and provision of our God, it’s also a guarantee of our destiny! Just as the attaining of our Saintly identity was not of our own power, but the working of God, our ultimate destiny and the retention of the Saintly identity is not of our own power, but the working of God. Again from revelation, We will be raised up and “hunger no more, and thirst no more;”   and “the sun will not strike [us] nor any scorching heat;” because “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be [our] shepherd, and he will guide [us] to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes.” This is the promise of our eternal destiny because of the power of our God.

But, this is is not a license to abscond our identity as saints in God’s family. If anything, it’s an encouragement to live up to the high calling that God has given us! When we look at the saints in the history of our church, we can find encouragement to do the things that God is calling us to do.
And, while the likelihood of us ever being called to be martyred for our faith, like Saints Perpetua and Felicity, or to preach the gospel AFTER having our heads removed like St. Denis, or being called to get into a boat with no oars and just let it take us wherever the seas wishes, like St. Brendan, is very low, AND while that has the potential to make us feel like we aren’t actually living up to the calling of our identity as saints, the reality of the situation is that most of the saints that have ever lived on this earth have not been recorded.
They are people who quietly live their lives everyday, submitted to the working of Christ, living out the fruits of the Spirit, and showing us, the vast majority of Christians, the vast majority of SAINTS, what it looks like to follow the way of Jesus.

In the eyes of the God that we serve, there is no difference. Mother Teresa was once asked if she perceived her inability to “save more souls” as a failure, and she responded by saying something along the lines of, “to God, there is no success and there is no failure, there is only being faithful to that which you have been called.” And Saints, known or unknown, are those who have been called by God, to do the work of God, and have been found faithfully following that call.

These are the sorts of Everyday Saints who have shaped us and formed us into the people that we are. Like my own mother, who is the most faithful person I have ever known. Or my Bible Professor from college, who was so convinced of the radical love and power of our God that he lost his job, rather than be unfaithful to that which God had called him.

These are just two of the Saints who formed me, and like the writer of Hebrews says, “time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets,” time would fail me to tell of all the saints in my life, of Dexter, of Diana, of Cale, of Paige or Rachel, or Eric, or Tabitha who, have helped shape and form me into the person that I am today. The Saints whose faithfulness has spoken more of a sermon and testimony than 12 minutes in a pulpit ever could. The Saints whose faithfulness might never be known to history, but is known to God.

So, why do we celebrate All Saints Day?

We celebrate it to remember; to remember the Saints in the long line of Christian History who came before us; to remember the Saints in our own lives, who though their faithfulness have helped make us in to the people we are today; and to remember our own identities as the Saints of God, not by a “triumph of the Human Spirit, but a triumph of the Holy Spirit.”

So, today, on this All Saints Day, I encourage us to take some time to remember the people who came before us, in the grand scheme of history, and in our own lives, and to remember our identities as Saints. And in that remembrance of our identities, to look forward to the day when we, with all God’s Saints, as all God’s Saints, because “All” means “All y’all,” will be raised up and be numbered among the faithful, and all things will be made new.

Amen.

Laborers in the Vineyard

Laborers in the Vineyard

by | Sep 24, 2023

Matthew 20:1-16

So may of the words in my mouth, in the meditation of all of our hearts, the pleasing and your sight of God and Iraq and my Redeemer. Amen. Well, we probably need to start with some good news and some maybe not so good news. I started teaching in 1999, so I don’t think I’m going to pass out in the next few minutes.

But maybe the not so good news over those years, 24.25. But we’re not really counting. It has become normal that a teaching episode goes for one hour and 20 minutes. So I hope you have a comfortable seat. Now, today, we’re challenged to reimagine what feels normal. And today, we’re going from doing what’s fair over to doing what’s right.

So in those years of teaching, there common questions that come up and the educators in the room know this well. And the first one is usually, is this going to be on the test? Yeah. And soon after that, there’s a roll of the eyes and then a sigh. Well, if it’s on the test, can you tell me exactly what I need to know?

And with this gospel, I think one of those first questions is, are we in government class? Is this political science? Are we in economics? Are we in psychology? And we answer, yes. So Paul’s letter simplifies this for us. So I think we should start there. Kind of have to get past that first paragraph because Paul’s under house arrest under the Roman Empire.

But if we can get to the second paragraph, he’s telling us three things live the gospel, stand firm in one spirit and do it side by side. So we’ve got to learn how to do that in the next few minutes or how to do that at the next level for this week as we think through this in the next few minutes.

So, you know, let’s start with number one, let’s live the gospel and maybe let’s start at the beginning of the parable. Jesus said the kingdom of heaven. Well, already we have to stop. What does that mean? I hope you’re participating in the adult education, because last week Gavin was teaching us about fancy terms like exegesis and Isaiah Jesus.

And what he’s reminding us is that we have to go to the text and we have to understand it in its original context, in its original language. One of my favorite scholars is Amy Jill Levine. She’s professor emeritus at Vanderbilt. And this is her definition of the kingdom of heaven. These are her words. The Kingdom of Heaven is not a piece of real estate for the single saved soul.

It’s a communal vision of what could be and what should be. So I hear my students already communal sounds hard. We’re individualists. I don’t think that’s going to work for me. So then we say, okay, if we don’t start at the beginning, maybe we could go to the end of the story and then we could work our way the other way.

Let’s try that. So we say so the last will be first and the first will be last. Still not quite a multiple choice question with a Scantron form here. If we just take that last sentence, and if I just think about today and how deeply grounded we are in individualism, you know, maybe this afternoon I’ll watch the Dallas Cowboys play football and the last will be first and the first will be last.

Maybe. Maybe that’s on my side today. But, you know, we’re going to spend the next few months figuring out who’s first. And at the end of the Super Bowl, there’s going to be just one team. You know, we’re obsessed over who’s first. Maybe you’re going to watch Gordon Ramsay this afternoon, but spoiler alert, there’s going to be just one top chef at the end.

And maybe Gordon’s a bit abrasive. So you want the nurturing style of the Great British Bake Off instead? They’re quite respectful when they send people home. But still, spoiler alert, there’s just one. When we’re finished, you know, maybe you’ll stop at Kroger on the way home and you got to count what’s in your basket carefully, because if you’re trying to get through that express line with more than 12, there will be people giving you the eye to get you to go to the back of a different line.

And then let’s not even go to the four way stop sign. If you have to go through one of those on the way home. Good luck. The last is not first. Now, these are silly examples, but you can think of many more how we’re shaped into individualism over collectivism. And then to add on to that, not only are we individualistic, but we’re still thinking of Gavin’s teaching from last week where he was teaching on forgiveness, you’ll remember.

And he said, We have to stop keeping score, you know, embrace the balance sheet in our mind where we’re keeping score. So we have to love others with the same forgiveness that we have received. Well, keeping score is what we do as a social group. We’re really good at it. So good. I come from the social sciences, so I tend to talk about socialization quite a bit and dynamics in our social world.

In fact, if you and your family are playing word bingo during the homily, so you want to pick socialize, if I’m the one talking because you’re going to win, there’s a social science theory that dates back to the very end of the 1950s, and it’s called social exchange theory. You might remember this from when you were an undergraduate studying psychology.

The theorists help us to see that being human in their argument is to keep score, that we form relationships based on what I can get out of it and out to maximize my rewards and reduce my costs so much ingrained into us that there’s even an academic documented research theory about this tendency. Okay, well, let’s dig into the middle of the narrative.

If the beginning is too hard and the end is too hard and they’re really not. We’ll come back to it in the middle of the narrative we get. I like to rely on Snodgrass also. He’s a professor emeritus at North Park Seminary in Chicago, and he points out how we’re dealing with everyday materials in this parable hiring day laborers, paying a daily wage.

But he also points out that these are not everyday occurrences. So, yeah, we’re hiring, but the way the story is told, we have multiple hirings to highlight, contrast and to create suspense. So that draws attention to the hirings. And then, of course, the equal pay, which is the very point of the parable, but in the way that Jesus asks that the payment be reversed then is another fluorescent highlight.

If we had highlighter spec, then for this parable, the reversal of the payment heightens the expectation that those early laborers would receive or would expect to receive. So let’s continue on with Snodgrass and let’s go back to that original context. The original people who heard this story were living in conditions where employment, unemployment was a continual problem. In fact, Snodgrass points out that maybe slavery was better because your slave owner would at least provide for you because of a financial interest for the basics to be able to survive.

So we’re talking about working in the Vineyard for again, Snodgrass is saying it’s one denarius and that’s barely enough to survive. In his analysis, 200 per year mark to the poverty line. And this is it’s one for the day. And Snodgrass even challenges us to look within Matthew, to see what’s the point of the story. And in the sequencing of Matthew two, he’s arguing that the parable is addressed to the disciples and the focus of the parable is on envy.

Since frequently there was discussion among the disciples of who was going to be the greatest. So the parable focuses then on the goodness of the owner and the gamblers, the envy of those who thought they should get more. I guess it probably makes sense to stop and think about a contemporary example. I’m still doing my chaplain training and I’m at Harris Hospital downtown in Fort Worth, so I, I tend to look at the world also through our hospital lens a bit.

But, you know, it makes all sorts of good sense. It’s good logical sense that if we hire an associate degree nurse and R.N. with an associates degree, would we provide an amount per hour If that nurse, though, had a Bachelor of Science, two more years of education? Well, of course we’d pay more for that if that nurse had a master of science.

Two more years of very focused training, we’d pay more for that. I mean, this is just such a dumb moment in how we live our life. If that nurse has a doctor of nursing practice degree, not only would we pay her more, she would have a parking spot right next to the door.

We can also, though, hear Jesus in this parable asking us to reimagine what feels normal. Jesus to those hospital leaders would say, Folks, you care for the widow. At the very moment she becomes a widow, it seems like you’d want her to park next to the door. And then we’d go, Oh yeah, the last will be first and the first will be last.

Let’s shift gears back to Amy. Jill Levine. I mentioned her name earlier. She’s professor emeritus at Vanderbilt. These are her words about the parable. The parable could be about salvation, but Jesus was more interested in how we love our neighbor than how we get into heaven. It’s not about eschatology, but economics. It’s not about salvation in the world to come.

But the even more pressing question about salvation in the present, she continues instead of Are you saved, the better question is, do your children have enough to eat or do you have shelter for the night? Levine also underscores the urgency Matthew has with getting our attention on Jesus response to those early day laborers and her argument is that when Jesus uses the term friend, you know, friend, I’m doing you no wrong.

Do you not agree with me or did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? This is not friend as in Hey friend, let’s grab a beer Friend This concept is used only three times in Matthew’s gospel, once at the wedding banquet. And that was friend. How did you get in here? Inappropriately dressed and kicked out.

And the other time was in testimony. Jesus said to Judas, friend, do what you are here to do.

So the grumbles are connected with punishment and betrayal. If we can focus the narrative, then this parable, if we can focus it away from who gets into heaven and over to who gets a daily wage, we can find a message that Challen injures us rather than prompts complacency. We get the challenge to act as God acts with generosity to all.

So we’re back now to Paul, Live the gospel, stand firm in one spirit and do it side by side. And I’m clearly preaching to the choir here because I saw your service Sunday the other day. The the I get choked up, the love in the room. I mean, your work, you could feel it. It was palpable. The energy and the enjoyment about making a sack lunches.

You clearly understand what this is about. Your men’s group. It’s remarkable that on a Saturday morning you can start a revolution. Not only are we Saint Martin in the corn field, and not only is there an overflowing wagon of corn back there, my sending parish is St Luke’s and they are the Beanery. And I imagine the other four Saints parishes are also in the competition.

But what’s next? I think that’s what we’re challenged here. If we follow the on what’s next for us and really the sky’s the limit, I’d, I’d like to see if we could create a parallel here between our Sunday service, our service, Sunday work and our Four Saints work and the condition of the zip code where we do that work.

So this is a bit of a leap, but I’d like to see if I could build a parallel for you that has some early day workers, has some midday workers, and has some late day workers. And remember, the parable is telling us that we provide to all for their basic needs. We’re going to look at infant mortality rates.

And this is from the University of Texas. They have a spiffy online tool where you can search data by zip code. And we’re looking at infant mortality rates because in the public health world, they use this infant mortality rates as an indicator for the overall health of a population. They look at how many babies have died, and that’s an indicator for them for things like is there available transportation, is health care available, Is there proper prenatal care?

Is there nutrition for that mom? And when we look at the zip code where our service Sunday effort goes, the infant mortality rate, this is the the map of it. The infant mortality rate is 19.34. This is zip code 76104. And that’s just to the east of I-35, just to the east of downtown. So 19.34 in that zip code, if we go east and now we’re kind of under I-35, just south of 30, the infant mortality rate is 6.96.

So from 19 down to six, if we go one more zip code to the west, 76109, the infant mortality rate is zero. And Father Allen was helping me earlier in the week and he said, well, what is it where we are seven, 6 to 4 for the infant mortality rate is 5.776248. It’s 4.65. But we don’t study data like these, you know, to feel guilty.

We study these so that we can understand what’s real and so that we can reimagine what feels normal. And, you know, it’s a great time to be the Episcopal Church in North Texas. And this is going to sound kind of silly from me coming from St Luke’s, but when we think about the next Four Saints, we’re not controlled or held back or bound by the building.

You know, think about how many times you’ve thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could? And then somebody said, Yeah, but our building won’t do that. We don’t have enough space for this, or our classrooms aren’t configured in the right way. Here’s an image of the new Four Saints. Currently, it’s an empty plot. We have the luxury of designing the ministry and then building the physical structure to support the ministry.

So to reimagine what it looks like in 76104 so that 19 is the same zero as it is just two zip codes over. And this is where it gets really fun. I’m told that yesterday in the mobile food pantry, you know, it’s the fourth Saturday of each month the semi-truck brings a load of food yesterday, I believe, and I could have the number wrong, but I believe it was 250 households were served.

I’m told that Friday we served 150 at four Saints. Well, if we need concrete to get the semi-truck in there and to get the cars to flow through in a civilized way, that same concrete can hold on a different day. The Mobile Health clinic from Texas Health Resources. On a different day, it can have the mammography unit from Baylor.

Scott in White. We have the opportunity now to build these relationships with our care partners and to build the structure the way it will support our effort to re-imagine and to make sure everyone has what they need that building. Also, we’ll have a commercial kitchen for the support of the of the food pantry and education courses that we’re already providing.

But the commercial kitchen is the expensive part. Now we get to get creative with how we’re going to use that the other days of the week. Why wouldn’t we train culinary arts there? Why wouldn’t we give somebody an opportunity to try a pop up restaurant in that place that way? Thursday night, we can go for evening prayer at 630.

Our restaurant can serve at seven. We have time together and we’re supporting the vision of an entrepreneurial person who’s been denied access. That same parking lot in community college world. One of the visions is to bring education to the people. So if you want to get a welding certificate, there are examples where an 18 wheeler, the trailer for a semi truck can be a welding lab.

We can drive a welding lab there and teach people the skill of welding. So you have a very high paying job with a certificate that they’ve been denied. So, you know, maybe you’re not ready to go knock on the door at Texas Health Resources, and I would understand that. But again, if you can start a revolution over corn, I think I think the sky’s is the limit.

I just get choked up when I when I see when I see your work. So, you know, if you’re not like, well, I don’t know who to call at Baylor. Scott and why. And I don’t quite know how that works. Start at the beginning. We pray for the people we serve for saints. Pray for those who provide the service.

If you want to step out and see it. If you’ve never seen the Four Saints Episcopal food pantry on the first Friday of every month, we gather for prayer. It’s at 6:00 on the first Friday and we pray. And it’s a style. And that may not be everything’s everybody’s thing. It’s a contemplative style. It’s 30 minutes of prayer.

And then there’s social, our following. It’s an easy way to step into the pantry and see what it’s all about and meet some people from the other parishes. So live the gospel, stand firm in one spirit, do it side by side. We have work to do and we have the skills to do it. So I can really only end with a commitment.

You’ve already made a question. We all know. Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being? And to that question, we all respond. I will, with God’s help. And for that, thanks be to God.