Toxic Love (Epiphany 4C)

 

Toxic Love
Reflection on the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
 30 January 2022

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

In last week’s Eucharistic Lectionary’s Gospel, we read about Jesus’ first homily:

 

“Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went, as he usually did, into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:

‘The Spirit of the Noble One is upon me,
    because God has anointed me
        to bring a Happy Announcement to the poor.
  God has sent me to herald liberty to captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to send forth the downtrodden with all debts canceled,
    and to herald the Noble One’s propitious year.’

Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed intently on him as he began to speak: ‘Today this passage of scripture sees its fulfillment, as you sit here listening.’” (Luke 4:16-21; The Ashland Bible)

 

This week, we read of the congregations’ reaction:

 

“And all acknowledged it but were surprised that such gifted speech came from his lips, asking one another, ‘Isn’t this Joseph’s son?’ He said to them, ‘You will surely quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ and say, ‘Do here in your homeland what we heard you were doing in Capernaum.’’ And he said, ‘Believe me—no prophet is accepted in his own homeland. I assure you, there were many widows in Isra’el in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many suffering from leprosy in Isra’el during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Na‘aman the Syrian.’ When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the ridge of the mount upon which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he slipped through the middle of them and went away.” (Luke 4:21-30, TAB)

 

The congregation’s reaction is seemingly positive: they “acknowledge” (Gr. “bear witness to”) the sermon, seeing it as “gifted speech” (Gr. “words of grace”).  But their real reaction is puzzlement at such a homily coming out of the mouth of this man who grew up as a local boy: “Wait, isn’t this Joseph’s kid?” they ask each other.   Mark’s telling of the story makes their concern explicit, in words passed over by Luke: “Where did this fellow get all this? What sort of wisdom has been given him?” (Mark 6:2, TAB).   

 

Jesus reacts to their palpable but unspoken (at least to him) puzzlement by pointing openly to the elephant in the room.   “Go ahead—quote to me that proverb about a sick doctor.  You can’t accept me because you know all my quirks.  You’ve heard of my acts of power in Capernaum, and how people there may think I am a prophet.  But haven’t you noticed?  Prophets are never accepted in their home towns.”   This aggressive naming of the real nature of the congregation’s puzzlement most certainly must have shocked them.  Luke pauses in his narration, and then has Jesus add separately, “Haven’t you noticed that the people most blessed by the prophets were always strangers and foreigners?”  He cites the examples of Elisha and Elijah, two prophetic figures that popular imagination had fixed on for finding the hope for the future that Jesus has just said “is fulfilled today as you sit here listening to me.” 

 

This enrages the congregants, who see it as a grave insult and slight to their town and their nationality: “Since when did gentiles and foreigners get preference?”  They try to push Jesus off the ridge on which the town is built, but he escapes. 

 

Why do they have such a violent reaction?  Jesus has merely told them the truth, pointed out to them obvious elements of stories that they knew all too well.  I imagine he could have ended his criticism of their local-pride induced skepticism by adding, “Just saying.”  Their reaction seems way over the top. 

 

Luke provides a clue to the answer by the way he frames his stories: after the infancy narrative, he breaks his account of Jesus’ ministry into two great sections: the Galilean Ministry followed by the Journey to Jerusalem, the city where Jesus will meet his fate.  Both of these sections start with a story of rejection:  the Galilean Ministry with Nazareth’s rejection of Jesus (4:16-30), and the Journey to Jerusalem with the story of the Samaritan village that rejects Jesus (9:51-56).  The Samaritan villagers reject Jesus because he has set his face resolutely to go to Jerusalem, the holy place of their deepest enemies, the Jews. 

 

In both cases, it is one’s own attachment to tribe and loyalty to one’s own people that causes rejection of Jesus, who is seen as siding with those outside the ambit of one’s own circle.   

 

In a way, it is the otherwise praiseworthy love of one’s own people that causes both the people of Nazareth and the Samaritan villagers to reject Jesus.  Such “love” is toxic. 

 

The puzzlement of Nazareth at its own native son is summed up in the apothegm, “familiarity breeds contempt.” But its anger at Jesus using the blessings enjoyed by outsiders as an example of this is summed up by “unfamiliarity also breeds contempt.”  This is classic case of a structural conflict between two basic moral imperatives:  the obligation of showing special benevolence to those who share your family, religious, and national ties and the obligation of showing general benevolence to all people.  The people of Nazareth and Samaria both may have been motivated by love of tribe, but such love was not praiseworthy. 

 

If we let attachment to our own family, co-religionists, or nation express itself by exclusion or malevolence to those outside, we make a serious error.  We turn something praiseworthy into an ugly denial of our own humanity, into an abandonment of true prophetic witness, into a rejection of Jesus.  That is why White evangelicals who strive to maintain “the old-time religion” and “our honored traditional ways” and in the process bolster White privilege if not White supremacy, are actually working against Jesus and his proclamation of God’s Reign.  It is why “conservative” religionists who prescribe a “separate role of women” actually seek to subjugate them.  It is why those defending “traditional morality” when this means the exclusion, if not the persecution, of LGBTQIA+ folk, are rejecting Jesus and his teaching.  It is why a civil religion that praises Americanism over all other nations is idolatrous. 

 

It is why we must learn true love and benevolence, why we must seek to rid our love of grasping and controlling tendencies that belittle our familiars, and why we must eschew exclusion of “the other” and come to see inclusion as a core daily spiritual practice.

 

Thanks be to God. 

 

 

Participation, Not Substitution (midweek message)

The Crucifixion, Peter Gertner

 

Participation, not Substitution

 The Rev. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

The Evangelical “Alpha Course” asks “Why did Jesus have to die?” and answers, “he died in order to pay the punishment for the sins of those who have faith in him.”  The reasoning behind this is as follows: God is Holy and by God’s very nature must punish sin.  So he sent his only Son to suffer the punishment deserved by others.    

 

This idea of substituted punishment is portrayed as a biblical idea, and its supporters trot out plenty of proof texts from the Bible that supposedly teach it.  But nowhere is it taught as such in the Bible.  The closest the Bible gets to it are phrases like “Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor 15:3) and “he bore our sins in his body on the cross” (1 Peter 2:24).  But these can simply mean Jesus suffered as a result of the sinful way we treated him, or as a way to help us out of our sinful ways through his example and love, without even a whiff of a bloodthirsty Deity demanding punishment inflicted on someone, anyone.  

 

Though the early Church defined an orthodox and catholic doctrine of who Christ is (“Christology”), it never defined clearly what exactly it is that Jesus did for us in his death and resurrection (“soteriology.”) 

 

St. Paul gives us more than a dozen vivid images to describe what Christ did:  he liberated us from oppression, he saved us from danger on the battlefield, he created us anew, he purchased us back out of slavery, he reconciled us to God as one would reconcile friends who had quarreled, he propitiated an angry deity, he declared us innocent as in a court of Law, he transformed us like in the Greek myth of metamorphosis.   Paul is searching for the right image, drawing them from a wide range of human life, but clearly is not completely satisfied with any single one of them.

 

Over the ages, the Church has explained the atonement in different ways. For the first four or five centuries, both Eastern and Western preachers simply declared that Christ was a victor:  on the cross he took on sin, death, and hell in a battle, and on Easter beat them all.  Once feudalism had become the main social arrangement where Christians lived, they used its sense of honor based in social rank and began to say that Christ offered the “satisfaction” to a Deity insulted and dishonored by the failings of mere human beings, who could never repay their debt of honor to such a superior.  In the High Middle Ages, secular-leaning scholars like Peter Abelard argued that the example Christ set encourages us to behave better and thus be freed of sin, while the more churchy ones like St. Thomas Aquinas argued for a sacramental view, directly linking Christ’s death on the cross with Holy Communion, the sacrifice of the Mass as they understood it, directly transformative on those who not only partook it, but merely gazed upon it in reverence.  It was only during the Renaissance, with its greater emphasis on the individual, political economy, and legal reasoning, that Christians began primarily explaining atonement as substitutionary punishment.  The idea has had a profound influence—and not for good—on how most of us moderns experience Christianity. We think salvation is all about being forgiven by God.  When we read about John the Baptist, for instance, we think he preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, though the Greek means something more like “a baptism of changing one’s mind, so that sins may be sent away,” i.e., we may be freed from them.  Focusing on forgiveness alone rather than liberation and healing is part and parcel with the image of an angry, petulant Deity who needs to be placated by punishment or sacrifice.       

How Christ on the Cross frees us from and heals us of sin is deep mystery, far more complex than this wrongheaded but simple idea of a blood-thirsty Deity’s transactional evening of scores.   Christ had to die because Christ was a human being, and human beings die.  We suffer from unjust death all the time.  The cross is part of the incarnation, God taking on human flesh and becoming one of us.

 

The idea of the atoning power of Christ’s incarnation is found frequently. The Collect for the First Sunday of Christmas expresses it this way:  “O God, who wonderfully created us in your own image and yet more wonderfully restored … the dignity of human nature… through your Son Jesus Christ: Grant that as he came to share our humanity so may we share the life of his divinity…” The Collect for the Marian Antiphon for Christmastide and Epiphany says it thus: “Almighty and everlasting God, you have stooped to raise fallen humanity through the child-bearing of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Grant that we who have seen your glory revealed in our human nature and your love made perfect in our weakness, may be daily renewed in your image, and conformed to the pattern of your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.” 

 

Paul in the letter to Romans is pretty explicit:  Christ’s cross rescues  or saves us through participation, not substitution.  He teaches that when we have faith in Jesus, we participate in his death on the cross through baptism and turning aside from sin, and also participate in Christ’s risen life.  He expresses it thus in the passage that provides much of the text for the great Easter Canticle “Christ our Passover”:   

 

“How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in such a death as his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:2-11).

 

The heart of the matter, I believe, is incarnation: God taking on human flesh in Jesus, and becoming one of us.  God made flesh in Jesus had to die as all of us have to die.  He had to suffer all the horrors that the rest of us face, because he lived and died as one of us.  The Romans dished out unjust torture and death to many, as have all Empires at various times.  And Jesus would not let the threat of this deter him from proclaiming the Reign of God.  And so he suffered and died.  And God on the Cross calls us too to take up the Cross and follow him. 

 

The victory of Jesus over horror, suffering, and death opens the way for us to “newness of life,” communion with God and each other.  It turns aside meaninglessness and despair.  As we live in Jesus, we suffer with him, and we are also raised with him. 

 

Christ is a healer and friend who shows us the way, not a policeman, officer of the court, or, worse, a masochistic substitute whose sufferings appease an angry Deity for us. As we hear and read scriptures about Jesus’ death and resurrection, and how this was for our sake, let us remember to place these stories, texts, and doctrines in a broader context than one that assumes wrongly that God demands violence and suffering to make things right.

 

Thanks be to God.   

 

 

 The Nativity with Saints, Ridolfo Ghirlandaio 

Li Tim Oi: Grace and Courage

 

Li Tim Oi: Grace and Courage 

 

Gracious God, we thank you for calling Florence Li Tim-Oi, much beloved daughter, to be the first woman to exercise the office of a priest in our Communion: By the grace of your Spirit inspire us to follow her example, serving your people with patience and happiness all our days, and witnessing in every circumstance to our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

In the Episcopal Church’s calendar, January 24 is the feast day of Li Tim-Oi, the first woman to be ordained a priest in any of the churches claiming the “apostolic succession” of an historical episcopacy.  Though part of our “Lesser Feasts and Fasts,” it is a day we should celebrate big-time, not only for the great blessing of having sister priests, bishops, and primates serving among us, but also because her ordination was a moment of real grace, when the Church despite itself did the right thing and followed the Gospel.   

 

Li Tim-Oi’s ordination was a bit like that great turning point in early Christian history recounted in Acts 8-15 when the Church, again despite itself, reached out and brought in the gentiles as equal partners to what previously been a Jews-only affair:  Philip privately preaches to the Ethiopian Eunuch and baptizes him (Acts 8:26ff).  Then, after Saul’s conversion, Peter openly baptizes gentile Cornelius, against Peter’s native sense of religious duty to God.  It took a dream vision and huge amounts of “coincidence” to bring Peter to do the deed (Acts 10).  Saul, now Paul, preaches widely and succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.  And so the Church must meet and figure out in Council how to manage the new reality, Gentiles as Christians (Acts 15).   The story recounts a brilliant chapter in the Church’s life, one mirrored in Li Tim-Oi’s ordination. 

 

 The Rev. Canon Christopher Hall and his wife in St. John's Cathedral, Hong Kong. 

I know a little bit about Li Tim-Oi because I was ordained in the same place she was made a deacon by Church of England Bishop Ronald O. Hall—St. John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong.  St. John’s still has Bishop Hall’s Chair in the chancel.  The Anglican College where I taught there, Minghua Theological Seminary, is named after him.   (His Chinese name is “He Minghua.”  “Minghua” was Hall’s Chinese given name.)   Many of the older St. John’s congregants remember Mother Li’s ministry.  I have often preached and celebrated at Morrison Chapel Macau, where Li Tim-Oi served for several years.  In October 2011,  I had the great pleasure of meeting and talking to Bishop Hall’s son Christopher in Hong Kong, there on vacation from the U.K. 

 

 

 Li Tim-Oi, her mother, Bishop Mok, her father, Archdeacon Lee Kow Yan after her ordination 
as Deacon by Bishop R O Hall at St John's Cathedral HK. Ascension Day 22 May 1941

 

When Li was born in Hong Kong on 5 May 1907, her father named her Tim-Oi (in Cantonese; in Standard Chinese it is pronounced Tian- Ai): 

添嬡

 

This means “add or give birth to a beloved daughter” because he valued his daughter even if others in his patriarchal culture preferred sons.  She was converted to Christianity as a student at an Anglican school, choosing as her Christian name “Florence” after Florence Nightingale, the famous 19th century English nurse known for her unselfish service.  

In 1931 at the ordination of a deaconess at St. John’s, Florence heard a call to regular orders for herself.  Completing 4 years of seminary in Guangzhou, and was ordained deacon on Ascension Day 1941, and given charge of an Anglican congregation in the Portuguese colony of Macau (about a four-hour boat ride from Hong Kong, now an hour by jet foil or 45 minutes by car through the Hong Kong-Zhuhai–Macau bridge and tunnel system).  Macau then thronged with refugees from war-torn China, as its neutrality was respected even after Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in 1942.  As deacon, Li Tim Oi regularly led morning prayer for Sunday worship.  At this time in the Church of England, Eucharist was celebrated once a month, and, increasingly, weekly in a second Sunday morning service. 

Since there was no way for Anglican priests to get to Macau to serve the community there, Bishop Hall took the emergency measure of authorizing Li Tim-Oi to celebrate “deacon’s masses” using pre-consecrated Eucharistic elements in 1942-45. But this proved unsustainable when travel restrictions imposed by the Japanese occupation forces made pre-consecrated elements unavailable in Macau.  In January1945, Bishop Hall asked Li to meet him in a non-occupied area of South China, where he resolved the priest shortage by ordaining her “a priest in the Church of God.”

 

  

Known in the conservative press as "the red bishop" for his progressive positions 

on social justice, Bishop Ronald Owen Hall served in Hong Kong for 30 years, 

unable to return to the U.K. to serve as bishop there because he had ordained a woman to the priesthood.  

 

Hall had previously been in correspondence and conversation with his fellow Bishops back in England, who had all uniformly told him that by ordaining a woman—regardless of the circumstances and the need—he would make himself a pariah in the Church of England and would never be able to serve as a Bishop in the U.K.  One of the reasons for Hall’s long tenure as Bishop in Hong Kong (30 years) was that he could not return to the U.K. except to retire.  This caused his family great hardship, since they were generally living in the U.K.  

 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, otherwise a social and theological progressive for that day and age, privately expressed his divided mind on the matter: "If we could find any shadow of theological ground for the non-ordination of women I should be immensely comforted, but such arguments as I have heard on that line seem quite desperately futile."  Nonetheless, he publicly condemned the ordination: “I cannot think that in any circumstances whatever an individual Bishop has the right to take such a step which is most certainly contrary to all the laws and precedents of the Church  . . . I do profoundly deplore the action that you took and have to regard it as ultra vires [beyond your legal authority]. ”

 

Bishop Hall knew, however, that it was God, not Ronald O. Hall, who made Tim-Oi a Priest. Later in his life, he joked that at the time of the ordination, he was tempted to give Tim-Oi a new Christian name, Cornelia, seeing her ordination as significant an increase in the scope of God’s grace as the baptism of Cornelius the gentile.  Consistently throughout his life, Hall said that he did not regret ordaining Tim-Oi, and indeed claimed it as one of his finest hours and greatest acts. 

 

After the war, the controversy over Tim-Oi’s ordination forced her, in the interest of preserving peace in the Church, to give up her diocesan priest's license.   She declined, however, to renounce Holy Orders, since she agreed that it was God, not Bishop Hall, who had made her a Priest.  Living in Guangdong Province after the communist takeover and during the Cultural Revolution, she was persecuted bitterly, but later said that knowledge that she was a priest had sustained her during the hardest assaults of the Red Guards.  

 

As the example of her life worked on the Church and times changed, Tim-Oi was able to practice her priesthood again.  She was recognized as a priest again in 1971 for the Diocese of Hong Kong.  When she retired to Canada in 1981, she was appointed a non-stipendiary priest in a Toronto parish, where she spent the remainder of her life.

 

At the provincial synod of the Chinese Anglican Church in Shanghai in 1947, Bishop Hall had tried but failed to get retroactive approval in canon law for Li Tim-Oi's ordination.  One of those attending was Gilbert Baker, who later as Hall’s successor as Bishop of Hong Kong would ordain Anglicanism's first two women priests legally with the blessing of the Anglican Consultative Council, in 1971.   The ordination of women as deacons, priests, and, increasingly, bishops, has now become, thanks be to God, the general norm throughout most of the Communion.   

 

 

 

 

Thank God for prophetic voices in our age.  Thank God for moments of grace when the Church, despite itself, better embodies hospitality, love, welcome, and mercy in its life and practice.  As we consider the divisive issues currently facing the Communion, where names like “Jeffrey Johns” and “Gene Robinson” appear instead of “Cornelius,” or “Li Tim-Oi,” let us remember the centrality of grace in God’s economy.  And let us too be courageous, like St. Peter and Bishop Ronald O. Hall. 

 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

 

Ain't that Good News/ (Epiphany 3C)

 

Ain’t that Good News?
Homily delivered for the Third Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
23 January 2022

10:00 a.m. Said Eucharist
Holy Spirit Episcopal Church

Sutherlin, Oregon

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Ps 19; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

A few years ago, I was waiting along with several other people in the anteroom of a courtroom in Medford to attend a criminal trial involving two people I had ministered to at Trinity Ashland.  I wanted to show solidarity and support to both of them, and was wearing my clerical collar.  A couple of times, people coming from the other courtrooms, on seeing my priestly garb in this secular Temple of Justice, dropped their jaws, shocked or surprised, and then quickly covered their astonishment with a vague look out the windows or across the room.   Once they were out of earshot, one of the people sitting with me asked, “Do you often get that when you dress like this?”  “Not so much the look of shock.  Sometimes people on the street are just more willing to approach me, to ask for directions, say, engage in small talk, or volunteer out of the blue that they are ‘spiritual but not religious.’  Once in Hong Kong just after I had been ordained, an absolute stranger saw the collar, got very angry and spit in my face, muttering something about child molesters.  But this look of surprise is new for me, and I wonder what those people are thinking when they see (pulling at the collar) this (indicating court) here.”  “Oh, I can tell you that,” replied one of the people waiting with me, “’cuz it’s what I think when I see it: judgment, of being examined and being found wanting: Condemnation.  What are we supposed to think when we see it?”   I paused.  “Well I kind of hoped that you would see in it the meaning I have when I put it on.  It’s a sign of God’s love, and support.  It’s a sign that God’s kingdom is here and open for business, declaring reconciliation.  Declaring God’s forgiveness and love is a priest’s main job.  That’s all this collar means for me.” The reply came quickly, “Most of us, though, are used to being condemned by the Church, and so I think that’s what we expect.” 

 

Today’s scriptures all in one way or another talk about our perceptions about God stuff, and the contrast between fear of just condemnation or anger at unjust condemnation on the one hand and joy and gratitude at God’s love on the other.  

 

In the Hebrew scripture reading, the scribe Ezra reads the book of the Law before the people who react by bursting into weeping, totally dismayed at its severity. Ezra’s fellow leaders react:  no weeping or mourning allowed, only feasting shared with the poor, because “LAW IS GOOD” no matter what! 

 

The Psalm says that we can learn much about God in looking at the wondrous stars and planets in the skies above us, as well as by reading the Law, a “perfect” and “sure” teacher that “revives” and “makes wise” the heart by stirring it up to “fear” and prayers that our words and thoughts be acceptable to the God thus revealed. 

 

The Gospel reading is Luke’s portrayal of Jesus’ first public sermon. He reads from Isaiah 61, beginning

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because

he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me

to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,” 

 

But then, instead of the next line, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God,” Jesus ends the reading by throwing in a line from another part of Isaiah (58:6) and saying: 

 

“to send out into freedom those once downtrodden,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

 

He deliberately deletes Second Isaiah’s reference to “the Day of Vengeance of our God” and replaces it with a line from Second Isaiah’s great song about what true worship is:

 

“Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to send out into freedom those once downtrodden,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

 (Isaiah 56:5-7)

 

Jesus applies this all to himself, and thus announces his mission.    By deleting the reference to the Day of Vengeance, Jesus marks a distinction between his message of Good News, hope and forgiveness, with John the Baptist’s more fear-inducing focus on the need to repent before the coming Day of Doom.    Jesus is to break the bonds, and then send out those who were once downtrodden into freedom, as sent ones, or apostles, with his message of liberation to others. 

 

We will read of the congregation’s reaction to Jesus’ sermon next week.  But the story we read today is clear: Jesus’ mission is to bring joy not fear, hope not despair. Jesus’ message is one of joyous gratitude, a Happy Announcement, or Good News. 

 

This is decidedly NOT what my friend in the court anteroom saw as the Christian message.  It was not an Announcement of Joy, but one of condemnation and judgment. 

 

This perception has driven many, especially the young, from what they call “organized religion.”  For many, it is not “Good News,” that Christian Churches proclaim, but rather, “bad news”: you don’t measure up, you need to shape up or ship out, and even if Jesus wants to love you, you are simply not worthy, not up to snuff.  God with a capital G really is annoyed with you, and especially with the fact that you don’t feel properly convicted of your evil ways.  The things that give you pleasure and joy are all forbidden, you yourself are deficient and hopeless, and only by throwing yourself at the mercy of the Church, with its abusive hierarchs, hypocritical congregations, pointing fingers, demands for mindless submission and faith, and constant demands for money and time, you might be able, just possibly, to gain a bit of favor from the overarching, homophobic, woman-hating, sex-hating, drink-loathing, KILLJOY IN THE SKY.  

 

But we need to understand that Jesus’ message is a message of GOOD NEWS, no matter where you are. 

 

I used to sing my children to sleep by singing lullabies and African-American Spirituals.  One of their favorites was this: 

 

I got shoes in that kingdom, ain’t that good news?  (repeat)

I’m gonna lay down my troubles, and shoulder up my cross,

Good God, I’m gonna bear it home

to my Jesus,

Now ain’t that good news? 

 

The other verses followed suit:  “I got a robe in that kingdom,” “I got a house in that kingdom.”  “I got a crown in that kingdom.”

 

The point is that in Jesus, we have a promise for what we need, even things like shoes, shelter, and food.  We have a blessing in him to receive the true desire of our hearts.  It doesn’t mean that all we think we may want is right, or that he has promised bad things for us because we in our brokenness want the wrong things. But it does mean Jesus is good news, not bad.  

 

This is not good news for the afterlife only.    It is about our lives here and now, about who we are, not just about how we should be.  It is about liberation from what binds us, what keeps us back, what holds us down, both individually and communally.   Liberation from addictions, obsessions, fears, and vicious habits.  Healing from illness.  Jesus went out from that sermon and healed people, and called them to help each other.    This is the heart of Christian mission:  Jesus sends out free those who were once held captive, once down-trodden, and aks them to free others. 

 

The Christian doctrine of Salvation is a far broader concept than “transferred Karmic payback for my sins.”  It is being rescued from anything and everything that is the matter.  And different things are “the matter” for different people.  So “Good News” can mean different things to different people.  And yet Jesus is proclaimer of Good News to all, of healing to all, of liberation to all, of deliverance to all.   

 

That is the gist of today’s epistle reading.  Paul likens us to a body with all sorts of different body parts.   The very diversity of the body’s different parts is a good thing, and makes the body strong.   One size does not fit all.  And if it pretends to, it fits no one.    Paul calls on us to get along, and to value and respect—even honor—diversity. 

 

One of the great glories of the Anglican tradition is that we value diversity.  Historically, we are a broad tent, and include both very evangelically-minded protestants as well as sacramentally-minded catholics.  We include liberals as well as conservatives, and have a wide range of worship styles. 

 

As St. Paul notes, the key here in healthy community life in the Church is grounding ourselves in Christ.  It demands not just toleration—holding our noses and putting up with others’ habits and ideas that are not so attractive to us—but rather truly honoring and welcoming difference. 

 

Let us focus on being heralds of Good News—of liberation, healing, reconciliation, and love.   Let us work to set the captives free and break every chain that ties us down and holds us back.  Let us honor and respect all our fellow human beings, and especially each other here, and embrace the glorious diversity that God created us for. 

 

In the Name of God, Amen.