The great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman has a wonderful book about the Psalms – the ancient songs of faith collected in the Old Testament book called the Book of Psalms or the Psalter. Brueggeman argues that you can break out the Psalms into three different types, or tones, or perspectives. First, there are the psalms of orientation, which express a sense of order and confidence: The world makes sense, I’m God’s favorite, things are great. Here’s an example from Psalm 16: “O God, you are my portion and my cup; it is you who uphold my lot. My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; indeed, I have a goodly heritage…  I have set you always before me; because you are at my right hand I shall not fall.” 

But life isn’t always like that, right? Which brings us to the psalms of disorientation – when the psalmist discovers that even with God at your right hand, you can still fall. Things are terrible; where are you, God? What gives? These psalms include lament, reproach, cries for help and anger at enemies. There are many such psalms; the most famous is probably Psalm 22, used in Holy Week. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; by night as well, but I find no rest. Yet you are the Holy One, enthroned upon the praises of Israel… Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.”

Among the psalms of disorientation are some known as the imprecatory psalms, which call down God’s wrath upon the poet’s enemies. Psalm 109 is a good example of the genre – 

“Let their days be few, and let others take their office. Let their children be fatherless, and their wives become widows. Let their children be waifs and beggars; let them be driven from the ruins of their homes. Let the creditor seize everything they have; let strangers plunder their gains…” … There’s a lot more. 

And then… there are psalms of reorientation, that describe life and faith after the crisis. God saved me; I’m sadder and wiser now; but I also know that I can trust in God at a deeper level. The chunk of Psalm 40 that we read today is a great example:  

I waited patiently for you, O God;  you stooped to me and heard my cry. You lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay; you made my footing sure. Happy are they who trust in you! (Psalm 40)

Brueggeman maps out all this to help us pray the Psalms – because our lives tend to have moments when we’re deep in the pit, and moments when we look back at hard times from a place of renewal and gratitude. 

The church has a special relationship with the Psalms. It’s the only book of the Bible that’s fully included in the Book of Common Prayer. It’s the only book of the Bible that we read from at every service of public and private worship. Our liturgical tradition invites us not just to read (mark, learn, and inwardly digest) the Psalms but to pray them. 

And: I struggle with that sometimes! Often my mood doesn’t match the mood of the psalm appointed for the day. And there are specific psalms where I struggle to connect with the text prayerfully. But the Psalms teach us something really important about the breadth of what prayer is and can be. About the scope of thoughts and feelings we can bring to God in prayer. 

I want to talk about prayer, today.

I realize that I need to offer 100 words here on what prayer is, although that could be its own sermon. In general, prayer is any way of talking to God, or of listening for God. Prayer could be reading out loud from a book, alone or with others. Prayer could be talking or singing or journaling or knitting or painting. 

Prayer could be hiking or walking the dog or washing dishes or going to a protest. It’s not that everything is prayer. It’s more than anything can be prayer, if you do it with your heart and mind pointed towards God, open to the holy. Let me know if you want to borrow a book on prayer, or if we should gather to talk about ways to pray, sometime.

Last week we had our first-ever Stump the Pastor session after church, and a couple of people asked really important questions about prayer. I do not want those askers to feel singled out; these were both questions I’ve heard from others too, recently. And I do believe what our high school teachers told us: if you’re wondering about it, others are too. These were good, timely, important questions, and I’m taking another run at them today. 

First: What does it mean to pray for a political leader whom you believe to be causing profound harm? … 

Let’s start with what we’re doing when we pray for somebody – for anybody. Is praying for someone an expression of approval? I thought about my personal prayer list, in the Notes app on my phone. Some things on that list are situations I’m asking God to sustain, to keep the way they are. For my parents’ continued good health. For the continued flourishing of our youth program. For my college kid to have interesting classes again this term. 

But many things on my list are situations where I’m praying for change. For somebody to find a new, less toxic job. For somebody’s cancer treatment to be effective. For somebody to be able to move through grief. For a broken relationship to move towards resolution – one way or another. For someone’s heart to be profoundly changed, so that they stop causing harm. 

When I pray about something or someone, there are all kinds of things I might be asking or hoping for. I definitely don’t only pray for things and people I think are hunky-dory; far from it. 

Lots of our prayers are for change, of one kind or another. “Let their days be few, and let others take their office,” from Psalm 109, is a prayer. So is “Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore,” my favorite line from a hymn we’re singing today – a prayer for change in me, in us. 

Regarding praying for our political leaders, in particular… The Church of England, our mother church, was started BY a king, and founded as a national church. It’s not surprising that our way of faith developed with a strong bent towards praying for political and civic leaders. God save the king! The Episcopal church inherited some of that ethos, though we’re not a national church. 

Praying for leaders is Biblical, too. The Old Testament has a strong sense of leaders’ responsibility for the wellbeing and righteousness of the people. 1 Timothy calls Christians to “pray for kings and all in high positions, “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life” – a prayer for boring, stable, non-hostile governance. 

I found a website from the Church in Wales listing all the prayers they needed to update recently from Queen to King: “We beseech thee to hear us, O Lord God; and that it may please thee to keep and strengthen thy servant Charles our King that he may serve thee in righteousness and holiness of life…” 

“We pray thee to guide and direct all who govern the nations of the world, especially our Sovereign Lord, King Charles…, that we and all [people] may be justly and quietly governed.”

“Almighty God, the fountain of all goodness, we humbly beseech thee to bless our Sovereign Lord, King Charles, and all who are set in authority under him, that they may order all things in wisdom, righteousness and peace, to the honour of thy holy Name and the good of thy Church and people.” These are prayers for the King; but they’re prayers for the King to be righteous, holy, wise, and just. And to do his job well. 

There are similar prayers in our Book of Common Prayer – like, “We pray for all who govern and hold authority in the nations of the world; That there may be justice and peace on the earth.”

In the Prayers of the People that we use right now, there aren’t spaces for specific names, but there have been times when our liturgy has had us praying for a Democratic president and a Republican governor, or vice versa, by name, in the same breath. 

Maybe our Prayers of the People needs a few more words, to remind our praying selves that when we pray for our leaders, our prayer is “that thy people may be justly and quietly governed.” 

It’s OK if there are people you just can’t bring yourself pray for. Truly. You can leave it to others. And – but – repentance and transformation are at the heart of the Gospel. It is the responsibility of the Church as a whole to pray faithfully for all people to turn from evil, and towards good; from cruelty, towards mercy; from greed and hunger for power, towards justice and righteousness. As a church, we will keep praying for our leaders – the ones we like and trust, and the ones we hate and fear. 

God save the king. 

The second good question from last Sunday was something like this: Isn’t prayer kind of passive, in the face of everything coming at us and our communities? … 

The question evokes leaders who, in the face of preventable tragedies and atrocities, offer “thoughts and prayers” for those affected. Prayer should never be an excuse for inaction about something on which you have the power to take action. 

Fury at those leaders who offer “thoughts and prayers” when they could offer real change is absolutely justified. I’m willing to call that blasphemy – a sin against the Holy Spirit. 

So, yes, there are people who use prayer as cover for pious passivity. But I’m not going to let those jerks ruin prayer for us. 

Prayer can also look passive in the face of the immoral use of violence. If people of faith praying at a vigil or protest are ignored, or mocked, or tear gassed, or arrested, that’s not the fault of the clergy or the moral order and convictions they represent. It’s the fault of the culture and movement and institutions that have decided that they just don’t care.

It is true, and can be frustrating, that historic Christianity (as opposed to white supremacist Christianity) has a difficult relationship with the use of violence. I took a whole class in seminary on Christian pacifism and just war theory. These are both huge bodies of writing and thought and policy and action. And a lot of it is an argument among Christians: between the pacifist position, that a follower of Jesus should never intentionally cause harm, and the “just war” position, that it’s incumbent upon Christians to be willing to use force in defense of the vulnerable. The course barely scratched the surface of these big issues, but I carried away a sense that pacifism is a fiercer and bolder position than I’d thought. Pacifism underlies the tools for nonviolent protest and organizing for change that have been so influential over the past century. 

Nonviolence is far from passive, and we don’t have to look back at Gandhi or King to see that in action. I watched a video this week from the Minneapolis suburb of Lyn Lake. Picture a cool little downtown corner, older buildings updated with current businesses, traffic flowing by; could be someplace in Madison. An SUV pulls up onto the curb in front of the corner building, under a neon pizza sign; several ICE agents get out. As the video begins, you can see maybe five or six people on the street. 

But within seconds, there are ten, then fifteen, then more, gathering around the agents, blocking the doors into nearby businesses, holding up cell phones to record, blowing whistles, chanting. Cars stop and honk their horns. People come out of the woodwork, rushing towards the scene – just ordinary people, who were just going about their days thirty seconds earlier. 

By the end of the video, there are fifty-plus people on the scene. It takes exactly one minute for that loud, obnoxious, angry, nonviolent crowd to convince the ICE agents to get back in the car and drive away – tossing a can of tear gas as a parting gift. 

If part of you is wondering, well, what if ICE was there to arrest somebody dangerous, one of those worst of the worst we hear about? … Well: the day before, that pizza shop hosted a fundraiser for local nonprofits helping those affected by the ICE presence in the Twin Cities, and raised $83,000. The co-owner of the shop told a reporter, “We probably put a target on ourselves… by helping people.”

Were any of those people praying? I don’t know. Probably. I would be. I will be. Praying for the dangerous moment to pass, unfulfilled. Praying for everybody to come out of this okay. Praying for clarity about what’s mine to do, and courage to do it. 

Nonviolence can be fierce; nonviolence can be effective. And nonviolence can be dangerous. 

Some of you may have seen a clip that’s been circulating of Rob Hirschfeld, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, speaking at a vigil the night after the murder of Renee Good. Bishop Rob spoke about Jon Daniels, a seminarian from New Hampshire who became a martyr of the Civil Rights movement. Then he said, “I have asked [my] clergy to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written. Because now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

When I heard that, I thought, “Yeah, he has a point. We should find a lawyer and make sure we’re up to date.” The reason I can – sort of, kind of – take Bishop Rob’s advice in stride is that I pray. 

What does prayer do? Does prayer act in, or on, the world? Does prayer move anything outside of me? I find it untenable to think of God like a slot machine: if you put in enough prayer-coins, you increase your odds of getting the outcome you want. Many of us also know well that praying really really hard for something doesn’t make it so. There’s no qualitative or quantitative degree of prayer that gets you what you want. Does our prayer change something in God, or in the world? I don’t know. I’m not prepared to say no, but those answers lie in the terrain of mystery. 

But I do know two things. I know that prayer changes something inside of me. It helps me pay attention. It helps me be available to opportunities to say and do what needs saying and doing. It helps me be more grounded, more clear, more brave – which is not to say that I’m notably grounded, clear, or brave; just more so than I am when I’m not praying regularly. 

Prayer does things inside of me. And prayer, when it’s shared, does things between and among people. 

On Tuesday evening, with some of you, I tuned in for the Zoom vigil held by the Episcopal Church’s Public Policy & Witness staff and the Episcopal diocese of Minnesota. It was “webinar”-style, where you can only see the leaders, not everybody else on the Zoom, and the “chat” function, the place over on the side where people can comment and share, was turned off as we began. 

It started out as a pretty ordinary Compline service, and I admit, I was thinking: is this it? We do this several times a week here. Then they got to the prayers, and they had some special prayers read in various languages, for people at risk of deportation, for people living in fear, and so on… those were good; I saved some of them. But still, it felt a little flat. I wasn’t feeling like I was part of something. I was just sitting at the desk in my college kid’s bedroom, staring at a screen, alone. 

And then they opened the chat for our prayer requests. And there was a wash, a waterfall, a fire hose of prayer. In Zoom meetings, once that chat column fills up with comments, you have to scroll down to see more. I scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled, and still there was a little red box that told me, “99+ more comments below.” I didn’t read every word but I wanted to read enough to be in prayer with thousands of other Episcopalians across the country and the world – praying for many, many things, but also praying, over and over again, for peace; for justice; for safety; for courage. For those in power to be just and merciful. For those vulnerable to be protected. For those standing by to be faithful, and brave, and ready. Someone wrote, For all of us trying to carry on with our lives despite our fear and griefs. Someone wrote, Forgive my weariness and fear. Someone wrote, Show us how to be. 

I read, and scrolled, and scrolled, and wept, because I wasn’t alone in front of a screen anymore. I was part of a great fellowship of prayer. I am part of a great fellowship of prayer. 

So are you. So are you. 

A lot of us have friends, family, connections in the Twin Cities; what’s happening there feels close and urgent and weighty. But I know, too, that for many of you, there are struggles on the homefront that have you keeping the news at arms’ length. Somebody’s not well. Money is tight or a job is toxic. A relationship is failing, or loneliness or grief haunt your days. 

I want you to feel prayer wash over you and your needs and struggles, too. I want you to feel grounded in practices of prayer that console and guide and encourage you. 

Prayer is a frustratingly elusive topic. I can’t tell you, Just do this. Nonetheless: this is a time for us to lean into being a people of prayer. Among other things, I hasten to add! But prayer should be near the top of the list.

Episcopal priest and writer Jim Friedrich wrote recently, “Prayer is a refusal to consent to an unredeemed world, and for people of faith it is foundational for an ethical existence…. Prayer breaks the silence, awakens the passive, and cultivates action, both human and divine. So don’t despair, or give in, or give up. Look for the ones who are called into the righteous flow of prayer and action. And join them.”

Amen, amen. 

 

 

The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

In my favorite classic rendition of this scene, painted by 19th century Quaker artists Edward Hicks, two little children play together on a riverbank, watched over by a friendly bear, while another bear and an ox share some corn nearby, smiling at each other. Another child, plump and cheerful, stands with one hand on the head of a leopard and the other on the head of a lion. A wolf gazes at a lamb with profound disinterest. 

In the center of the image, a large ox and a regal lion both have mouthfuls of straw. The ox’s head is turned towards the lion, as if to say, What do you think?  

And the lion… looks utterly disgusted. Like he’s about to spit the stuff out. This lion is thinking, Give me a nice juicy lamb any day. Or a little child…  

What is Isaiah doing here, with this prophetic image, so beautiful and so absurd?… 

Isaiah is a long and complicated book – 66 chapters! It covers perhaps 150 years of Israel’s history, and was composed by at least two and probably three primary voices, building on each other’s words and images.

This text from Isaiah 11 is part of what Biblical scholars call First Isaiah – the voice of the original prophet of that name. He’s writing in Judah, the Southern Kingdom, during the time of the Assyrian Empire’s expansion. Samaria, the Northern Kingdom, has already been conquered, and Judah is under threat. Assyria’s aggression is understood as God’s punishment to Israel for forgetting God’s ways – again. 

Chapters 1 through 12 of the Book of Isaiah comprise a first section, with its own beginning, middle, and end. These chapters trace the same arc as many of the shorter prophetic books: introducing the prophet; describing how the nation and its leaders have gone wrong; calling them to repentance and renewed righteousness; predicting the doom that is coming as a consequence of their unfaithfulness; and promising that there is yet hope, and that God will restore and renew in time. 

So here in chapter 11 we are getting to the hopeful vision, as the text turns from afflicting the comfortable to comforting the afflicted. Here we have the promise of a new King better than any king Israel has ever had, who will have more than human power and wisdom. Who will attend to the needs of the most vulnerable, and not rule to the advantage of the wealthy and powerful. Who will bring righteousness and peace – a new age so transformed and gracious that not only the human world but the whole created order will be restored to the peace of Eden. 

So we’re at the end of that prophetic arc here, in these hopeful prophecies. But these texts take on their full meaning in light of the ten chapters that preceded them. Those chapters include calls to return to God and God’s ways – like in last week’s text from Isaiah 2: Come, let us walk in the light of God! That’s not just gentle encouragement but an urgent call back from the brink of doom. Those chapters have a lot to say about how Israel, and especially the powerful and wealthy of Israel, have gone wrong: over-concentration of wealth, worshipping false gods, violence, injustice, “grinding the face of the poor” (3:15), and general frivolity – listen: “Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant at mixing drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of their rights!” (Isaiah 5:22-23)

Here’s a passage from chapter 10, about the kinds of leaders God’s people are stuck with now, by way of contrast with the righteous leader described in chapter 11: 

“ Doom to those who pronounce wicked decrees,
and keep writing harmful laws
to deprive the needy of their rights
and to rob the poor among my people of justice;
to make widows their loot;
and to steal from orphans!” (Isaiah 10:1-2, CEB)

Those chapters also include descriptions of what it felt like for the people in that time, threatened by enemies without and within, unable to trust their leaders or even their neighbors. Listen to these words from chapter 3, describing a society in which any sense of order, civility and trust have simply dissolved: 

“The people will be oppressed,

everyone by another and everyone by a neighbor;

the youth will be rude to the elder,

and the dishonorable to the honorable. 

Someone will even seize a relative,

a member of the clan, saying,

‘You have a cloak; you shall be our leader,

and this heap of ruins shall be under your rule.’ 

But the other will cry out on that day, saying,

‘I will not be a healer;

in my house there is neither bread nor cloak;

you shall not make me leader of the people.’ 

To paraphrase that last part: 

Someone will grab an acquaintance and say, “Hey, you! We need a leader, and you’ll do!”  But the other will cry out, “I can’t fix this! I have no resources to offer!  Don’t put me in charge!” 

It’s a simple but evocative description of the state of mind of the people Israel at this moment in their history: confused, frightened, angry; feeling unable to trust stranger or friend, wondering where to turn, looking for direction and leadership. 

I understand why the lectionary brings us the texts of hope, like Isaiah 11. But we need the fuller story too – that family story of resilience that encompasses struggle and survival as well as restoration and flourishing. The great Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman once said that church on Sunday shouldn’t be the happiest place on earth, but the most honest place. 

If events in our personal or civic lives lead us to feel confused, fearful, angry at each other, ourselves, our leaders, our God – that’s OK. God’s people have felt these things before. Those states of mind and heart aren’t strange to God. They don’t put us outside the story, beyond the pale. 

Reading the chapters that lead up to the Peaceable Kingdom passage make it both more meaningful – and more absurd. Isaiah is offering this vision of ultimate, creation-encompassing goodwill to people who feel like even families and neighborhoods are divided and shattered. It’s hard to imagine a wolf restraining itself from devouring a lamb, when it feels like every day brings us new ways for humans to devour humans. 

Our Advent collect for today calls us to heed the warnings of the prophets, but Isaiah isn’t warning us about anything, here. Instead he’s envisioning a great big animal jamboree. It’s like a Richard Scarry illustration in a Busytown book. It’s beautiful – I deeply love it. But part of the beauty is that it’s playful, almost funny. 

One of my kids is re-watching the Netflix/Dreamworks show Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts. We watched it as a family when the kids were younger. It’s set in a post-apocalyptic world infested with giant, terrifying mutant animals. Kipo is a human-ish girl who is trying to find her parents. On her long journey she encounters various challenging creatures – megabunnies, giant scorpions, a friendly but manipulative giant waterbear, a race of cranky tree-dwelling cat-people. Kipo’s approach, in all of these encounters, is to try to make friends. To try to understand the needs and motives of those trying to harm her, and see if there’s a way they can work together. It’s a great show; I think the prophet Isaiah would really like it. This week I started to re-watch it myself. 

The stories that comfort us and encourage us and remind us who we are don’t have to be Bible stories. They don’t have to be serious stories. What stories are nurturing your resilience, your responsiveness, this Advent? This season of seeking light as the darkness deepens? What favorite, formative stories – books, movies, whatever – could you dive into or revisit?  Not to escape the so-called real world, but to remember that you’re not alone in your questions or struggles? 

I preached on the Peaceable Kingdom – and, to be honest, said a lot of the same stuff – back in December of 2016. In circling back to what I wrote and shared nine years ago, I rediscovered a short story by the fiction author Catherynne Valente. Valente wrote a series of young adult novels about a human girl who helps free Fairyland from the power of an oppressive ruler called the Marquess. This story is a sort of micro-prequel, about a conversation among some of her characters on the day the Marquess came to power, after a bloody battle. Valente wrote it in November of 2016 – but she recently re-posted the story on her blog, so I’m in good company in bringing it back around. 

In Valente’s story, a wise Leopard gives some advice to a young Dragon about the power he has, even when he feels powerless… 

Catherynne Valente’s short story may be read here: 

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/the-beasts-who-fought-for-fairyland

This is – for me, for many of you – a very familiar Gospel passage.

We hear it twice in Holy Week, in different versions, on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. But on those occasions we get this scene as part of the whole, long story of Jesus’ last night and day. Today we get just this little slice. 

Reflecting on the text this week: trying to peel back the familiarity & many layers of the church’s understanding of what’s happening here, & notice what the text actually says…

Found myself noticing what it doesn’t say. 

First: Notice that it doesn’t really explain what’s happening at all. 

Doesn’t explain what crucifixion is or why it’s happening … or this Place of the Skull. Assumes the readers know.

Crucifixion means tying or nailing someone to a big wooden cross, and leaving them there till they die. Crucifixion was a form of public execution that the Roman Empire used to get rid of people they didn’t like, with the added benefit – from their perspective – of getting other people to shut up & go along with things, so it doesn’t happen to them. 

NT professor Robyn Whitaker: “Slaves, the poor, criminals and political protesters were crucified in their thousands for ‘crimes’ we might today consider minor offences. The types of cross structures might differ, but as a form of execution, crucifixion was brutal and violent, designed to publicly shame the victim by displaying [them] naked on a scaffold, thereby asserting Rome’s power over the bodies of the masses.”

The Romans crucified somewhere between 300,000 and two million people, over the duration of the Roman Empire. 

Being crucified was one of the least special things about Jesus. 

As for the Place of the Skull, it was probably a place outside the city walls that was commonly used for crucifixions. Jerusalem has grown a lot in 2000 years, so the site is now lost. 

The first Christian images of the crucifixion don’t start showing up till around 400 years after Jesus’ death. Scholars think this might be because crucifixion was seen as so shameful. The earliest image of the crucified Jesus we have kind of proves the point. It’s a piece of graffiti from around the year 200. It seems to have been carved by one Roman soldier to bully another Roman soldier, who was a Christian. It shows the Christian soldier, Alexamenos, standing before a crucifix with Jesus on the cross, with a donkey’s head. It has a caption: “Alexamenos worships his god.” So. 

None of the Gospels really explain what crucifixion is or what it meant in that time and place. That silence is an invitation to learn, but it’s also an indication of the horrible familiarity of oppressive violence, of murder by the state for any minor pretext, for the first few generations of Christians. 

Which brings me to another thing I noticed that the text doesn’t say: what the other two men crucified with Jesus had done. Two of the other Gospels actually say they were robbers, using a word that could mean brigands or highwaymen – theft with an element of violence and opportunism, not just stealing a loaf of bread in desperate hunger, Jean Valjean-style. Still, theft is often a crime of poverty, and we don’t know anything about these people except that the local Roman authorities had decided they deserved death.

While reading around about this passage, I read one commentary in which the writer assumed that when Jesus says, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” he is extending salvation to the criminal hanging beside him. That really surprised me – and then made me think about why I was surprised. I realized that It had *never* occurred to me that because these men had been condemned by the state, they had therefore also been condemned by God. I mean, they’re hanging next to Jesus. 

I always assumed Jesus was naming something that was already true – that whatever this man’s circumstances or failures, he would be welcomed into God’s great mercy at his death. 

It’s very easy – too easy – for Christians to equate criminal justice with God’s justice. It’s very easy – too easy – for Christians to forget that we worship a man who was arrested, condemned, and executed by the government. The church’s impulse to put Jesus on a throne definitely doesn’t help. 

Which brings me to the third thing this text doesn’t say: anything about what Jesus’ crucifixion and death mean or do. Someone was just asking me about the Episcopal Church’s view of salvation, and I felt a little bad about not having a clearer answer. Our way of faith tends to let there be mystery around such things, but I know that can be unsatisfying. 

Scripture itself is not definitive about what is accomplished, and how, by Jesus’ death and resurrection. And in 2000 years of Christian thought and theology, many different understandings have emerged. To begin with: Is it the death itself that saves? Or the resurrection, the return from death, the defeat of death? Or is it what happens in between – as in some Eastern Orthodox thought that doesn’t have Jesus lying peacefully in the tomb between Good Friday and Easter, but going down to Hell and fighting Satan and busting out all the dead who have been trapped there for aeons? 

The understanding that’s most familiar to many people – that Jesus had to die to make amends to an angry God for the sins of humanity – is not the dominant view in Scripture. It’s basically a reworking of some Temple sacrificial practices of Judaism, and early Christian writers used it as one *of many* images and metaphors they offered to try to describe what they experienced as the saving or liberating work of Jesus on the cross. 

This short Gospel passage is full of the language of salvation. He saved others; let him save himself! Save yourself and us! 

The Greek word there is sozo. It means to rescue, or heal – to save someone’s life, one way or another. Early on in the Christian movement, Christians start to use it in a more abstract and theological way – that there’s some kind of saving, some kind of salvation, in Jesus that transcends ordinary matters of life and death. But more questions quickly crowd in. What does this salvation mean? Is being saved the same thing as being promised a place with Jesus in paradise after we die? Or is it something closer at hand, some different way of some new way of being or belonging that’s operative in this world, this life? 

Save yourself and us! I think Luke, our Gospel writer, is aware of the irony of these taunts. The hostile crowds around the dying Jesus assume that saving, here, would look like Jesus climbing down rom the cross, his wounds magically healed. But there’s some deeper, larger saving at stake – one that doesn’t mean evading death. Whatever the meaning, the purpose, the efficacy of dying on this cross, Jesus has chosen it. He knew it was going to happen. He faced it with anguish and fear. He walked towards it anyway.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It’s the youngest of our liturgical feasts – it’s actually its 100th birthday this year! It was established in 1925 by Pope Pius XI in the aftermath of World War I. I looked back at the Pope’s statement at the time; there was a lot in it about how there would’t be so many wars if everyone in the world was a devout Roman Catholic, a hypothesis that I’m not sure is borne out by history. 

I do find value in this day and the meaning-making around it – that Christians owe their loyalty to Christ and the Kingdom of God above any national or ethnic loyalties; and that in fact being citizens of that kingdom unites us with people of other national and ethnic groups. 

But: it’s complicated. In the crucifixion Gospels, when people call Jesus a king, it’s a taunt. They’re mocking him. Christians easily get comfortable with power – political, social, economic, cultural – and start to forget the irony, the paradox. 

In the fourth century or so, when Christianity started to get comfortable with political power and vice versa, it was very easy for the church to start making art of Jesus using images of earthly power. Jesus as a king, with crown and scepter. Here’s an example – this is the first cross that St. Dunstan’s used in worship, back when they had church upstairs in the Parish Center in the late 1950s. He looks like a king, or a priest, or both. This kind of image is called a Christus Rex – Christ the King – Jesus on the cross, but all dressed in fancy clothes, and standing upright, not as if he’s actually being crucified. 

These images of Jesus Christ on the cross in royal splendor are intended to show his victory over death and suffering. They’re intended as images of triumph and reassurance. But objects and images always have meanings beyond what’s intended, or what the artist would say they’re trying to do. 

Take a look. Then, if you want, tell me in just a word or two what this image makes you feel…

When St. Dunstan’s built the new church building in 1964, they put a different image of Jesus at the front. A cross with Jesus on it, looking like he’s being crucified, is called a crucifix. This image is pretty familiar if you’ve spent any time in this space. These kinds of images, I think, are intended to call us into this moment in the Gospel story, as witnesses to his suffering. It’s a little unusual for an Episcopal church to have a crucifix at the front, rather than a plain cross. Some people say it it keeps us stuck at Good Friday, when every Eucharist ought to be a celebration of Easter. 

Take a look. Then, if you want, tell me in just a word or two what this image makes you feel…

Christ suffering on the cross, Christ risen in glory, Christ the condemned criminal, Christ the King: Bless us as we live with the questions and the tensions. May our wondering lead us towards you; may we find you eager to meet us, for the first or the fiftieth time. Amen. 

Robyn Whitaker’s article – this was an interesting read!

https://theconversation.com/the-crucifixion-gap-why-it-took-hundreds-of-years-for-art-to-depict-jesus-dying-on-the-cross-202348

I say this a lot, but if you’re new here: I don’t pick our Sunday scriptures – though I sometimes tweak them, or choose not to use one. The readings come to us from a three-year cycle or calendar called the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used by lots of churches and denominations. 

Which is why we have this very odd little reading from the Book of Daniel today. So odd that in looking back in my files, I don’t think I’ve even included it in the service before, let alone talked about it in a sermon. Well: today’s the day! 

This little snippet isn’t that weird, but if you go read the whole chapter, you’ll get descriptions of these strange and terrifying beasts, one of which has ten horns, and then grows an eleventh horn, which has eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that speaks boastfully. And so on. Plenty weird. In the next chapter, Daniel has another strange vision – first he sees a great ram with long horns, and then suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between its eyes comes from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. Fortunately for Daniel, his dreams and visions also include mysterious figures who explain their meanings – though the explanations are also fairly cryptic, like, “The holy people will be delivered into the enemy’s hands for a time, times and half a time.” 

If you’ve read any of the Book of Revelation, this may feel familiar. Biblical scholars call these texts apocalyptic literature. They envision current events in the world as manifestations of a cosmic battle between good and evil, and express them through rich and strange symbolic imagery. There’s overlap with the prophetic literature, but apocalyptic texts are generally a few notches weirder. Their cryptic imagery has allowed them to be interpreted and reinterpreted over the ages, for better or worse. But their real purpose, in their original context, is to give hope to the hopeless in situations of danger and dire oppression. 

The book of Daniel tells the story of several young men – Daniel among them – who live in the time of the Babylonian exile, when God’s people were conquered, taken from their homeland and forced to live among peoples of other languages, cultures, and faiths. Daniel and his friends – the three young men of fiery furnace fame – are such bright young things that they rise to high stations in the Babylonian court. The story just before this chapter is a classic Sunday school tale: Daniel is such an effective administrator that the king plans to put him in charge of everything! But some folks get jealous of his success and contrive to get him sentenced to death, because he insists on continuing to pray to the God of Israel, instead of honoring the King of Babylon as a god. Daniel is thrown into a pit of hungry lions, but he miraculously survives. The king decrees that everyone should honor the God of Daniel. Chapter 6 concludes by noting that Daniel prospered, under the reign of this king and his successor. 

So Daniel is prospering! He’s doing great at work, he’s respected and valued. But… he has these terrifying dreams and visions about what’s happening, and what’s about to happen, in the world. The text tells us how these visions make him feel: Troubled. Terrified. Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Confused – unable to understand what it all means, and how to respond. 

So: We have Daniel – things are going pretty well for him personally, but he can’t shake a sense of impending doom. He’s working, socializing, resting, whatever, but that sense of being troubled is with him all the time. I think there are probably a fair number of folks hearing my voice right now who feel the same.

Compare the prospering-but-troubled Daniel to the person sketched out by the “woes” in Jesus’ sermon from our Gospel. People who have everything they need; people who feel cheerful and contented; people who are respected and esteemed. 

I think these verses are meant to pile up into a picture of a person who is both comfortable and complacent. Kind of like the rich man who steps over the suffering Lazarus every day, in the story Jesus told a few weeks ago. A person who has everything he needs, safe in his bubble. 

I went to a talk last week on politics in America recently, and one of the speakers said that people shouldn’t take politics so seriously,  because while things like elections and laws and policies can make people’s lives better or worse, they don’t represent an existential threat for “the vast majority of people.” 

Now, as a Christian, I feel bound to say that anything that represents an existential threat to even a minority of people should be a concern! And it’s pretty easy to start naming groups of people for whom current politics DO represent an existential threat – that is, a threat to a person’s fundamental ability to live in the world safely: Undocumented folks. Transgender folks. People who may need abortion care, or even help managing a miscarriage. People who may not be able to buy food starting this week. People whose health insurance coverage may increase in cost by five digits in the coming months. People at risk from climate disasters. And so on! 

I don’t want to be overly hard on that speaker, who said other thoughtful things, but that “politics doesn’t really matter” statement sounds to me like the voice of the person sketched out by Jesus’ Woes. I’M fine; so everything must BE fine; and the people who say it isn’t are making a big deal over nothing. 

What does Jesus mean by proclaiming Woe! on these folks? I don’t think he’s saying that they’re doomed or damned. I think he thinks they’re missing out on living the fulness of their own humanity… and that it’s going to hurt when their bubbles burst. 

And then there are the folks Jesus names as blessed! This is more of the upside-down-ness of Luke’s Gospel. People who seem lesser and lowly are actually blessed, precious to God. Even when hungry, poor, grieving, rejected, excluded, reviled. 

So you could say – I’m going to say – that our readings sketch out three groups of people. The blessed and struggling! The be-woed – content in their bubbles. And folk like Daniel – prospering but troubled. I expect all three groups are among our worshippers today.

All three kinds of people may have barriers to feeling like you belong, like you’re part of God’s work in this time and place. 

For the blessed-and-struggling, you just can’t. Your focus is on getting through the day, putting one foot in front of another. Keeping yourself and your loved ones alive and OK-ish. You don’t have energy or capacity to look around or do more. 

For the comfortable and unconcerned, there just isn’t a sense of urgency or need. As we say in the Midwest when somebody offers us something we don’t want, “I’m all set.” But – but! I note that there were such folks in the crowd listening to Jesus; I think there are probably such folks in this gathering today. There can be, if you will, a crack in the bubble. A sense that maybe there is a bigger picture that calls for attention and engagement, no matter how “all set” one may feel. 

For the prosperous and troubled, like Daniel: the barrier is the sense of overwhelm and helplessness. Not knowing what to do – what you even can do, in the face of the boastful horns and cosmic goats of our time. 

Today we honor the Feast of All Saints (though our observance here throws in some All Souls too). All Saints is a major feast of the church, and brings together a lot of different themes and meanings. In a few moments we’ll turn towards the sacred work of remembrance, honoring the saints who have shown forth God’s light in ages past, and our own beloved dead. 

All Saints also calls us to mindfulness of our own sainthood. In the early church – as you hear in our Ephesians reading – all the members were referred to as saints. You can hear that usage in Black churches today, too. At an event last weekend I heard Pastor Marcus Allen talk about his mom and grandma bringing him to church as a child, and how he “just fell in love with the prayers and the Bible and being among the saints.” I love that. 

Later we’ll sing the beloved and extremely English hymn, “I sing a song of the saints of God,” with its theme of everyday sainthood and refrain of, “I mean to be one too!” But in today’s lessons, sainthood isn’t something we aspire to; it’s something given. The reason we have this Daniel reading today is this sentence: ”The holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever—for ever and ever.” Our Ephesians reading leans on the concept of inheritance – that there are things that just come to us because we’re part of God’s family. The word shows up three times in this passage – like in the wonderful phrase,“The riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.”

And here – this is such a beautiful sentence, I wish we could add it to our baptismal liturgy: “In [Christ] you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory.”

Baptism is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people. We are saints and heirs. There is, of course, always a call to live in response to grace – but the grace comes first. It’s not up to us. A few verses later, the author of Ephesians says, “You are God’s accomplishment.” All of us together – the struggling blessed, the all set, the troubled and prosperous – we belong. Named and claimed. We’re given hope. We’re given power. We’re given the riches of divine grace. 

I’m sure there are people hearing my voice who haven’t yet decided if you’re in on this whole church thing, this whole God thing. There could be hubris or intrusion or even a sense of coercion in me standing up here telling you that you’re part of something that you’re not yet sure you want to be part of. My theology puts a strong emphasis on free will, on our freedom to say Yes or No to what God invites us into and asks of us. At the same time, I know that often the barriers are questions of worthiness and belonging. Am I good enough? Do I know enough? Do I believe cleanly or clearly enough? Am I the right kind of person to be here, to be part of whatever this is? To belong to a church; to be loved by God? 

The emphatic answer of these texts and of the Gospel is that God’s welcome is eager and immediate and all-encompassing. The letter to the Ephesians is written to people who aren’t sure whether they fully belong in the church. After today’s reading, the text explores reconciliation between Jews and Gentiles in Christ, then comes to one of my favorite passages – I printed it in our bulletins: “So then you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household… In [Christ] the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.  And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by the Spirit.” 

There are mysteries of belief and belonging. But I feel bold enough to to say that it matters that you’re here. For you; for us; for God. Whatever is going on in our lives and our hearts, God welcomes us as saints and heirs. This is a holy and hopeful mystery: all of us, blessed and struggling, comfortable and woeful, prospering and troubled, the sure and the seeking, the bold and the ambivalent: right here, right now, part of of something beautiful that God is building. 

Read more about apocalyptic literature here:

https://matthewroot.ca/2023/05/03/understanding-biblical-genres-apocalyptic/