“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” I have had people say to me quite often over the past few years, “why would you choose now to go into the ministry? It is such a bad time to be a priest in the Episcopal Church. Why would you put yourself through that?” I’m sure Scott has heard this too. The short answer is, “I don’t really have a choice – when God calls you listen.” The better answer is that these words of Jesus are as true today as they were when they left the Lord’s lips. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” For me, a life lived in the kingdom means following his will into ordained ministry. For others, the kingdom is given in different forms.
On the surface, those who ask the tough questions are right; things aren’t great. It doesn’t look like the kingdom of God is anywhere close to us. We are all keenly aware of the struggle going on within the Church where infighting, withholding of pledges and legal battles threaten to bankrupt people, parishes, dioceses, and perhaps even the National Church. In our world of 24 hour news we are faced with the grim realities of war, famine, and engineering and natural disasters. The UN’s 2007 Report Card on the mid-point of the Millennium Development Goals tell us that 2015 is coming quickly and we are nowhere near where we need to be.
While it seems easy to live a life focused on the things of this world, it is clear that the things of the world are things that can easily be stolen and destroyed. To live a life that places our treasure in the things of this world is to ensure our heart will be broken. Material possessions, money, relationships, churches, epochs, worldviews, even our lives are not without an inevitable end. But Jesus points us to a world without end. Jesus has been very clear about the problem of worry, the sin of anxiety. His call is to rest assured in the fact that the Father’s pleasure comes not from seeing us living in this world playing by its rules, but instead, the Father’s good pleasure is to give us the kingdom; to see us living a life with no concern for the rules of this world, but focused exclusively on the will of God. Such a life requires sacrifice and servanthood; two dirty words in our world today.
“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit…” The nay-sayers have been right for a long, long time. After nine plagues had all but ruined the land of Egypt, the slaves from the land of Israel could easily have been convinced that life was not going to get any better, despite what Moses and Aaron told them. As they went through the motions by smearing the blood of the lamb on their doorframes that fateful night it would have been easy to believe that they would eat and drink, and wake up the next day in the same situation as the day before. As they ate with their garments pulled up, girding their loins, ready to make a break for it at any minute, surely they laughed to themselves saying, “Things aren’t going to get any better.”
Jesus recalls for his disciples and the crowd this vivid image of the Passover. He sets off in their minds a story that is repeated over and over and over again in the life of this Jewish audience. They recall the despair in the story. They remember that even though they were free from bondage, their ancestors spent 40 years wandering, complaining, nay-saying at every turn. They arrive at some perspective. When life seems to have hit bottom, God intervenes radically. Isn’t that why each of us is here today?
Jesus takes advantage of this teaching moment and nails it home with a parable and a Beatitude. “Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet…” It was not unusual in first century Palestine for a wedding banquet to last up to a week. As the servants watched their master head off to such and event, the temptation to take the afternoon off would weigh heavily. “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes…” Those slaves who were dutiful, not focused on the immediacy of their situation, but rather with their eyes focused long-term would receive the ultimate reward; their master would in fact serve them. The parable of the servants is a statement of the kingdom life in the here and now; not in some long off, far away place. To live a life of service, preparing our homes, our lives, and our world for the master’s return is to work to inaugurate the kingdom of God on earth as best we can until it can exist fully in a fully redeemed world.
This Kingdom life can take many forms. For some, like Saint Clare whose feast we celebrate today, a form of the kingdom is found literally in the call to sell your possessions and give alms. On the 20th of March in 1212, Clare took that call as her own, laying down her rich garments for the tunic and veil of holy orders. From that day forward she lived a life focused entirely outside of this world. She, with her sisters in the monastery, lived a life of prayer and self-denial of penance and contemplation. It is a life that brought Pope Gregory the 9th to write, “It is evident that the desire of consecrating yourselves to God alone has led you to abandon every wish for temporal things. Wherefore, after having sold all your goods and having distributed them among the poor, you propose to have absolutely no possessions, in order to follow in all things the example of Him Who became poor and Who is the way, the truth, and the life. Neither does the want of necessary things deter you from such a proposal, for the left arm of your Celestial Spouse is beneath your head to sustain the infirmity of your body, which, according to the order of charity, you have subjected to the law of the spirit. Finally, He who feeds the birds of the air and who gives the lilies of the field their raiment and their nourishment, will not leave you in want of clothing or of food until He shall come Himself to minister to you in eternity…”[1]
For others, like Jonathan Myrick Daniels, whose annual pilgrimage is being walked this morning in Hayneville, Alabama, the kingdom life took the form of lifting up the outcast, making known to the world the plight of the downtrodden, and living without fear. Having served a week in jail for their role in a picket line in Fort Deposit, Alabama, Daniels and three of his cellmates immediately returned to their work, by attempting to enter a store for whites only. As the Episcopal Peace Fellowship website tells the story, “they were met at the door by a man with a shotgun who told them to leave or be shot. After a brief confrontation, he aimed the gun at a young girl in the party, and Daniels pushed her out of the way and took the blast of the shotgun himself. He was killed immediately.” For Daniels the call to a kingdom life was clear, “I lost fear,” he wrote, “when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God. I began to lose self-righteousness when I discovered the extent to which my behavior was motivated by worldly desires…!”[2] Jonathan Daniels lived a life without fear, knowing that it is the Father’s great pleasure to give him the kingdom.
So why am I not nervous about entering ordained ministry at this time? Why am I here to celebrate with a brother his taking of vows that seem to an outsider as foolish? Why are any of us here? Because we are hopeful! More than that, I am assured that it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. He is eager to share with us in the in breaking of his kingdom on earth today. Those who are willing to take the risk; to both figuratively and literally sell their possessions and make alms; to throw off their preconceived notions of what is possible and enter into God’s kingdom here and now; these people are my hope for the church and for the world. These are the ones whom God has called from before time to do the work that he so desperately wants to see done; to do the work constantly and without fear. You are those people. You have been called by God in the hearing of today’s Gospel to live a kingdom life in whatever form that might take. Some of you might be called to a more simple life. Some of you might be called to social action. God’s call is myriad in its forms. Follow that call.
And Scott, my brother, I turn my attention to you directly, to speak to you in this odd place; a deacon giving charge to a priest. More so, I speak to you as a friend encouraging his brother in Christ. Point people to God through the holy mysteries of Christ. Be ready and willing to do the work of God’s plan for salvation. Show that things which were cast down are being raised up. Help people to see that things which had grown old are being made new. Shine the light of Christ on work of God which brings all things to perfection. Proclaim the Gospel by word and deed to everyone you meet. Most importantly, live a kingdom life, in whatever form that takes, so that the cloud of witnesses here today, including Clare of Assisi and Jonathan Merick Daniels, might be proud, as I am, to call you a brother in Christ. Amen.
1 comment:
(almost) a year later it is even more potent...both hopeful and a call to reform.
Thank you
Scott
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