Sermon — November 20, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

When I was a kid, we spent a fair amount of time in the car, for New Englanders: five-hour drives to visit my grandparents in New Jersey, sitting in traffic on I-95 North for summer vacations, a continuous stream of errands and activities driving around the suburbs. And as the younger of two children, I soon became familiar with some of the phrases traditionally used by parents driving a car:

1) “No, we’re not there yet.”
2) “I will turn this car around.” and
3) “Don’t make me come back there!”

If you’ve ever been a child or, heaven forbid, a parent, you may have heard or said one or two of these things yourself, especially the last one. You’ve got two or three or five kids loaded in the back of the car, and they’re hitting each other and yelling at each other and you’re more than a little focused on not getting rammed by some guy crossing all three lanes of traffic at Sullivan Square and you shout over your shoulder: “Don’t make me come back there!” As in, “if you can’t work this fight out, I’m going to have to come break it up myself, and then you’ll be sorry. As will I.”

If you ever find yourself in this situation, it may be some comfort to know that God knows exactly how you feel. The driver of a car full of children may shout, “Don’t make me come back there!” And the god of world full of adults is sometimes has to say, “Don’t make me come down there!” 

This is the whole point, after all, of our reading this morning from the prophet Jeremiah. “Woe to the shepherds,” says the Lord, “who destroy and scatter my sheep!” (Jer. 23:1) He’s not talking about actual shepherds, of course. And he’s not talking about religious leaders, pastors, the spiritual shepherds of spiritual sheep. “Shepherd,” in fact, was a traditional ancient image for a king.

The god or gods of the city are the owners of the flock. The king is the shepherd, the hired hand who leads and guides the people on their behalf, tending to those entrusted to him and caring for them… or not. And it’s the “or not” with which God is concerned this morning. “Woe to the shepherds who shepherd my people!” They “have not attended to” my flock. (23:2) They have not, it seems, “execute[d] justice and righteousness in the land.” (23:5) And so, God says to these kings, “I will attend to you for your evil doings.” (23:2)

“I myself will gather the remnant of my flock… and I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them.” (23:3, 4) Like all prophecies, it’s one part prediction and one part warning: this is what’s going to happen if they don’t change their ways. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord…” (23:5) and if you don’t get your act together, God tells the kings of the people, “I myself” will come to take charge of the sheep.

 “Don’t make me come down there!”

But they did. And so he did.

This morning we observe the “Last Sunday after Pentecost,” the day sometimes known as “Christ the King.” It’s a kind of hinge between two seasons, between the long season of “Ordinary Time” after Pentecost and the short run-up through Advent to Christmas. And if you look at it in this context, you might think of “Christ the King” as one answer to the question, “Why Christmas?” In other words, “Why was Jesus born? Why did God choose to become human?”

There are many answers to this question, and each one pulls out a different facet of who Jesus was and what he was there to do. Did Jesus come to teach us a new way of love? Yes, and… Did Jesus come to heal our fragile and fallible human nature? Yes, and… Did Jesus come so could finally become King; because the shepherds of the people were letting them down, and God Godself needed to take charge? Yes, that too!

Because if Jeremiah’s prophecy was supposed to be a warning—“Don’t make me come down there!”—then when we read it five weeks before Christmas, it should be clear that it failed. We did not change our ways. We did make God come down here to set things right, and thank God he did.

Because it’s the way God came down here that really changed the world. You can easily imagine things turning out differently. Imagine that the shepherds and kings of the people had practiced evil instead of righteousness, and God was mad. God warned them to mend their ways, or God would come down. And they did not change their ways, and God came down with a punishing wrath, God came down with an army of avenging angels and destroyed those who had exploited the people, casting them into the fires of hell and establishing his throne for ever and ever, Amen.

That’s not what happened. Look at our Gospel reading today.

God came down, not to dispense violence, but to endure it. God came down, not to mete out justice at the end of the sword, but to face injustice and a crown of thorns. God came down to reign as Christ the King, not from a jewel-encrusted throne but on the hard wood of the cross.

God came down and absorbed all the violence and injustice of the rulers of this world—of Roman governors and mocking soldiers and even Death itself—and broke their power over us. God came down not to destroy us, but to be destroyed by us, and in so doing to destroy death for us. God came down to do what our shepherds could never do, and to lead us into greener pastures than we could ever imagine, to “reconcile us” to God, “by making peace through the blood of his cross.” (Col. 1:20) And this is the upside-down kingdom of Christ, in which the good shepherd lay down his life for the sheep.

God came down to where we were, and for a moment our little fists wailed on God, instead of on one another, but God was too big and too calm and too strong to be hurt by us, and God’s love transformed our anger, and showed us a new way of love. It wasn’t a permanent fix. God knows we’ve been violent since, Christians certainly included. But the power of a calm and patient love, in the face of a violent and impatient world, began to show us the way of another kingdom. And God is inviting us to follow that way of self-giving love that Jesus laid out, and to live as though his law of love was the law of our land, as if Jesus truly were our rightful King, as if God really had “rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.” (Col. 1:12)

If you ever feel like that child melting down; if you ever feel the need to rage at God, or throw a punch; if you ever feel the guilt of having whacked your sibling over the head with a toy, and you’re ashamed, or you’re afraid—take heart. Remember that God will come down here, not in anger, but in love. God will come down here, and hold it all for you. God will take whatever you throw at her in prayer, because she is patient with you when all your patience has run out, and then some. God will absorb it all, and, in time, transform it all, for you.

So as you prepare yourself, in this coming season of Advent, to celebrate the birth of our newborn God and king, I pray with Paul that the Holy Spirit may continue to fill you with God’s love. “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience… joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.” (Col. 1:11-12)

Amen.

Sermon — November 13, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

When I walked here last Sunday morning for church, I saw a flatbed truck and a crane being operated by the Department of Public Works right over in Thompson Square. (Did anyone else see them?) Do you know what they were doing?)

If you walk by on your way home you’ll see a new tree. A tall, slender, evergreen tree. One might even call it… a Christmas tree.

And this was on November 6.

But I am not a Scrooge, and the reality is, even if Christmas is still six weeks away, even around church it’s “beginning to look a lot like…” Advent, at least.

Look no further than our readings this morning. If you don’t know much about how churches traditionally observed the season of Advent, they may not seem like they really capture the spirit of “the holiday season” that’s being celebrated in our lovely November Christmas tree. To be fair, our first reading from Isaiah gives you a certain kind of Christmassy feel: peace and joy, eternal life and new creation, the wolf and the lamb feeding together. In this reading from Isaiah you may already start to feel the joy of Christmas: the sweetness of the Prince of Peace lying in the manger, and angels bringing glad tidings of great joy.

Luke, today, gives us something else entirely: destruction and deception, famines and plagues, hatred and betrayal and portents from the heavens: the end is drawing nigh. And this, in fact, a traditional theme of theme, of the season leading up to Christmas. We sometimes associate the four Sundays of Advent and their candles in the wreath with the four themes of hope, peace, joy, and love. But the readings we get during Advent tend more toward the four traditional themes of Advent: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. They prophesy calamity and destruction, peril and alarm. They tell the story of a world being turned upside down. Advent doesn’t begin for another few weeks, but you can already feel the mood start to shift: The long summer where we listened to Jesus healing people and telling parables as he traveled toward Jerusalem is over. Jesus has arrived in the city where he will die, and he’s starting to predict some pretty scary stuff.

The Temple, Jesus says, is going to be destroyed. The center of his people’s religious life, the place where the people come to worship God, where heaven and earth intersect, is going to be dismantled stone by beautiful stone. When the disciples ask him when this will be, he warns them against trying to predict it. And he tells them that first they’ll have to go through trials and tribulations, to endure great suffering, not only the shared social suffering of natural disasters and political upheaval, not only the collective grief of losing the Temple that’s at the heart of their spiritual lives, but a specific and personal process of persecution and arrest. Everything will fall apart, in their lives, in their nation, in their whole world.

And in fact, it would and it did. But not quite yet. Everything Jesus said would in fact come true. There would be wars and insurrections, earthquakes, famines, plagues; his followers would be arrested and stand on trial because of his name. It would take months before his followers were arrested; years before the famines and the plagues. The Temple would survive for decades before it was destroyed at the end of a long war.

But it’s at this very moment—when the disciples are admiring the beauty of the Temple on their trip together to the big city—that Jesus tells them it will one day be destroyed.

And interestingly enough, that same paradox applies to the reading from Isaiah as well. It’s sometimes helpful to remember, when reading the Bible, that most authors don’t say things that go without saying. This beautiful prophecy comes from the very end of the book of Isaiah. It’s likely that it was written a few decades after the destruction of the first Temple, at the end of the people’s long years spent in exile, and maybe even after some of them had begun to return to Jerusalem. When the people began to return, many of them felt joy. They’d been refugees for fifty-something years. But it was mixed with sadness, because the city was not the same. The Temple had been destroyed. The population had been scattered.

And so when Isaiah offers this prophecy of hope, it’s not because the people are feeling hopeful, it’s because they’re disappointed. When he shares these words of eternal peace, it’s because they’re just recovering from the trauma of war. When he promises that he is about to “create new heavens and a new earth,” about to “create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight,” it’s because they’re sorely missing the old Jerusalem and they’re not feeling much joy or delight.

And so just as Jesus delivers his word of warning and woe at the very moment the disciples are feeling most comfortable, Isaiah delivers a prophecy of comfort when the people are feeling their most uncomfortable.

And there’s some wisdom in that. There may be times when you are feeling pretty good. You’re proud of what you’ve accomplished. You’re proud of what you’ve built. You want to stop and admire the beautiful stones and gifts that decorate your life. And it can be tempting to think that it will last forever. But the inconvenient truth is that it won’t. None of it will. Everything we have, and everything we’ve built, will one day be dismantled stone by precious stone. And we might find ourselves in the situation of the people in Isaiah’s day, people cast away in exile, grief, and loss.

But when we find ourselves living among the ruins, wondering where God could possibly be in all of this, that’s when Isaiah’s prophecy is there, promising new things, joyful things, a world without weeping or distress, violence or pain.

This kind of cyclical pattern is common in life, and of course recognizing it can give us a good perspective on things. It’s good to remember, when times are hard, that a better future lies ahead. It’s good to remember, when things are good, that they are not permanent, so we should appreciate and enjoy them while we can.

But the same pattern applies beyond just the scope of this life and extends past our deaths. For many of us, myself included, it’s a difficult truth to accept: nothing that we have can be held onto forever. And this is true whether you believe in Jesus or not. Every human being, of every faith and none, will one day die. Every building, no matter how beautiful or beloved, will one day crumble into dust. Nothing, however good, will last forever.

And yet God makes us a promise, which is a second and perhaps-even-more-difficult truth: that nothing we lose will be lost forever. That God is preparing a new heavens and new earth, like the old ones in many ways but much improved. That when it feels like our lives are being torn down around us, a new home is already being prepared for us, and we will one day reach that land of everlasting peace.

Sermon — All Saints’ Sunday, November 6, 2022

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

“You were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;
this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption.” (Eph. 1:14)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Over the last few years as a freelance web developer, in addition to my work in the church, I’ve learned a lesson that many contractors before me have learned as well: It’s best for everyone involved if you’re paid 50% up front and 50% when you finish a project.

If you’re paid 100% on completion, of course, you spend the whole project working for free. A difficult client who wants to keep pushing for changes or expanding the scope of work has all the power in the relationship; they won’t pay a dime until they’re finally satisfied with what you’ve done, even if it ends up being far more work than the original contract. And if you’re paid all up front, well… There’s not much of an incentive to do the job. If you’ve ever worked with a contractor who disappeared once you wrote the final check, leaving behind a punch-list of small items that would never be completed, you know what I mean.

50-50 is the best of all worlds. And people have known this for generations. Years ago archaeologists found an ancient papyrus in Egypt, from nearly 1500 years ago, describing one such freelance operation. “Regarding Lampon the mouse-catcher,” the author writes, “I paid him 8 drachmae as earnest money in order that he may catch the mice.” More to follow, one assumes, once the mice are actually caught.

It’s the very same word, translated in the letter as “earnest money,” that Paul uses to describe the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the letter it’s translated “pledge,” but it means the same thing. The Holy Spirit that we experience in this life is, Paul writes, God’s down payment, God’s 50% up front toward the promise of our redemption.

This is part of what’s sometimes called the “now and not yet” in Christian life. You have already, Paul writes, “heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed.” (Eph. 1:13) You have already been “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit.” (1:13) You have already received a “pledge,” earnest money, as an advance on the riches of your inheritance. (1:14) But God’s work in you is not yet complete. You do not yet know—we do not yet know—“the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.” (1:19)

Hopefully, this “now and not yet” makes some intuitive sense. You know that your spiritual life is not just “paid on completion,” as if we only experienced suffering and misery in this world, and had to wait for peace and joy in the next one. We already now experience the comfort and love of the Holy Spirit, in many different ways. But we also know that things aren’t perfect yet. We know that that “golden evening,” that “glorious day,” those “pearly gates” are describing some reality that we do not yet inhabit. God has promised us something better, and the promise has not yet been fulfilled. We’re still waiting for that final check.

But here’s where the analogy breaks down. If we’re spiritual freelancers, that initial gift of the Holy Spirit is a mark that God’s earnest about the project, but it’s also an incentive. If we just keep working and working and working, and becoming more and more saintly, more holy and good, if we can just finish our projects of self-improvement, then one day God will reward us with a second check.

This isn’t what Paul means at all. You are not the hard-working contractor. It’s God who is at work in you. “I pray,” he writes, that God “may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation.” (1:17) He prays that “the eyes of your heart” may be “enlightened,” so that you “know” three things: the hope to which he has called you, the riches of your inheritance, and the greatness of his power. (1:18) The Holy Spirit that God has given us is not a spirit of fear or anxiety. It’s not a spirit of inspiration, so that we might go on to do great things for God.  It’s a spirit of comfort and reassurance, not about our work for God about God’s work in and for us. God wants to enlighten our hearts, so that we can see and feel the reality of that promise, so that we can truly know that the thing we hope for is real, and that it is more beautiful than we can imagine, and that God is more than strong enough to bring us there. And that blessed life of God is not a wage; it’s an inheritance. It’s not a reward that we earn by working hard. It’s the gift God has chosen to give us for being who we are.

I think that’s part of what Jesus means when he tells us, “Blessed are you who are poor… Blessed are you who are hungry… Blessed are you who weep now.” (Luke 6:20-21) It’s not that you are blessed because you are poor, or hungry, or weeping. It’s that even though the kingdom of God is not yet yours, even though you have not yet been filled, even though you are not yet laughing all the time, amidst all the pain and suffering of this world you are God’s blessed child, and you will receive the inheritance that is yours.

On this All Saints’ Sunday we remember and we pray for all the people whom we have loved and who have died. And the Holy Spirit’s work of assurance goes on. Every moment of joy or peace or prayer we feel is just a taste of what has been promised to us, of the eternal life already being lived by those who have already died. That doesn’t mean we can’t be sad. It doesn’t mean we won’t miss them every day of our lives. But it is the sometimes-unbelievable promise that they live now in the world we all pray to see, a world of peace and rest; and it’s a promise that we will one day see them again. So I pray, like Paul, that God may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us. Amen.