Author Archives: Greg Johnston

A Kingdom We Don’t Get to See

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A Kingdom We Don’t Get to See

 
 
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Sermon — November 24, 2024

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

Did you notice anything cool about the lectionary today? Something I didn’t think actually happened; or rather, something I had never noticed happened, happened today. We get not one, but two different apocalypses in the lectionary readings for today. What a rare and wonderful treat to preach on. 

The apocalypse genre itself gets a bit of a bad rap; I would say first because of the modern connotations of the term apocalypse. And second, because we don’t get a lot of exposure to the genre. Although it was a relatively popular in the ancient world, we really only get two proper apocalyptic books in the Bible: Revelation and Daniel. 

Although the modern connotation is different, what an apocalypse does at its core is reveal something about God’s intention for the world, for humanity, and history. It often uses elaborate codes and imagery to convey its message. For Daniel, he was writing about a past period of captivity in the Babylonian exile, but the author likely actually lived under a different empire entirely. In any case, Daniel’s wider point that he makes; and the point that he makes in our reading today, is that the people holding him and his people captive are not God’s vision for the people.
In Revelation, the author is struggling under the regime of the Roman Empire. The author is given to us in the text as John of Patmos; he was likely on the island of Patmos after having been exiled on account of his faith and prophetic works. Even so, the vision that got him exiled far from his homeland was one that Caesar is not Lord, and that God has a vision for humanity that does not include the oppression of the Roman Empire. 

In both of these apocalypses, we can see a vague gesture towards the life and ministry of Jesus. For Daniel, we as Christians might read into how Jesus seems to fit the bill of the one who is “like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven…[and] given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” it sounds a lot like how we talk about Jesus. In Revelation, we see not only a repetition and interpretation of Jesus’ ministry, but the hope and expectation that Jesus will come back, and rule the kings of the earth. 

What we hear from Jesus himself today echoes this sentiment, while also turning the idea on its head. If Jesus is supposed to be this great king who rules over the nations, he does not necessarily do a great job [by the standards of the time]: he doesn’t take down any leaders, not even the local ones, much less the emperor. Instead, Jesus responds to Pilate with the basic fact of matter that the kingdom Jesus will rule over is not of this world.  The kingdom of God is, by this Gospel’s account, incompatible with the world Jesus lives in; and the one we live in now. 

As followers of Christ, of a king whose kingdom is not of this world, we belong to a kingdom we do not get to see. We belong to a kingdom where the powers that are important in our world are not the powers that will prevail in God’s ultimate plan: no empire, no government, no nation. None of these powers are God’s ultimate plan, and to none of these powers do we truly belong as Christians. 

As reassuring as this may or may not be, it does not really make the practice of faith that much easier. 

To return to Revelation. The aforementioned author, John of Patmos, naturally brings up what I have come to know as the “John problem” here. There are a number of Johns in the Bible, and it is unclear which one we are named after, and it is unclear exactly how many distinct Johns there are. The general consensus is that our John of Patmos, of Revelation fame, is a different John than the one who wrote the Gospel. If this is true, then it likely puts John of Patmos into a category of people whom I admire greatly: the “second generation” of Christians. People like Phoebe, Silas, and Timothy. A group of people who neither got the chance to meet Jesus, nor got the benefit of having multiple generations of Christian witness to guide them. 

Phoebe appears in the New Testament as the deliverer, and likely first interpreter, of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Silas and Timothy appear as travelling companions, coworkers,  and occasional co-authors of some of Paul’s letters. For these people, and John of Patmos, they followed a ‘king’ they had never met, and travelled far from their homes to witness that to others. With seemingly only the stories they had heard about him, and their experience of faith. This is to say, John of Patmos lives into belonging to a kingdom that is not of this world in a profound way; his vision of a world beyond our own is from a fellow follower for whom faith was likely a very hard thing to have and live into.

One of the silly hobbies I have in graduate school is that I still read for fun in the small amounts of free time I am able to steal away. I was recently enamored with a book called The Bright Sword. It takes place just after the main events of the legend of King Arthur. That is, King Arthur is dead, as are all the other noteworthy heroes from the stories. All those left when our protagonist shows up to audition for a place at King Arthur’s court are the unfortunate dregs and leftovers: knights who nobody remembers, and Nimue: Merlin’s apprentice. 

Similar to John of Patmos, Phoebe, and the rest of the “second generation”, I admire these non-heroes as they grieve the loss of almost everyone they knew, while trying to repair a broken realm, and figure out what it is they should do in the absence of their leader and his magical sword. In about the middle of the book, they attempt to perform a quest that they believe will get Arthur back; or at the very least another magical king to replace him, and get therefore them off the hook for trying to save the realm. The quest, unsurprisingly, does not work. In the end, they end up doing nothing more than fading into myth and legend, left largely forgotten. However, their labor for a king who is no longer there, and for a vision of a brighter world, remains admirable nonetheless. 

Although I find John of Patmos, Phoebe, and my beloved characters from The Bright Sword inspiring. It does not necessarily make the fact of belonging to a kingdom, and to a king, I never get to physically see that much easier. In a theological sense, I have not found a great answer for this aside from pointing to the various others who have lived and also belonged to this kingdom that is not of this world. It is difficult, as we go about our daily lives with our economies, our careers, our nation, to live into the fact that as Chrisitans we are called into a kingdom that moves towards love and community, and away from economy, careers, and nations with human kings. It was likely difficult for those Christians who lived through the Plague; or who lived through colonization; or who lived through any number of strange and tragic historical events. That is to say, if it is hard, we are in good company, historically speaking and today. 

To that end, I will leave you with a story and a poem. In 1820, a sperm whale attacked and sank a Nantucket whaler, The Essex, in the middle of the southern Pacific Ocean. Its twenty-man crew were stranded at sea in open row boats for 95 days; eventually they managed to come ashore on the west coast of South America; five of the twenty survived. In 1847, a poem was written in their memory by the captain of another Nantucket whaler, The Three Brothers. The poem is “row on”

Clouds are upon the summer sky;
There’s thunder in the wind
Row on, row on, and homeward high
Nor take one look behind

Row on, row on, another day
May shine with brighter light.
Ply, ply the oars and pull away
There’s dawn beyond the night

Bear where thou goest the words of love
Say all that words can say
Changeless affection and strength to prove
And speed upon the way

Like yonder river would I fly
To where my heart would be
My barque would soon outsail the tide
That hurries to the sea

Row on, row on another day
May shine with brighter light
Ply, ply the oars, and pull away
There’s dawn beyond the night

But yet a star shines constant, still
Through yonder cloudy skies
And hope, as bright, my bosom fills
From faith that cannot die

In the name of the one who loved us first. 

Five Stars

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People are always looking for good news, for the heart-warming fluff that appears all too rarely in the media these days. So here’s a dose of joy this week: At this year’s Harvest Fair, we accidentally created the world’s kindest system of restaurant reviews.

Over the last couple of post-pandemic years, we’ve had to remember how to serve a Turkey Dinner to so many people at once, and we’ve been refining the process over time. This year, we filled out an order slip for each diner at the door listing exactly what each person was ordering. Our servers brought them back to the kitchen, where plates could be made up, and then sent back out to the diners. Overall, it worked pretty well!

There was just one unintended hitch. On the order slip, we had fields like “Turkey — White / Dark,” “Sides — don’t give me… Potatoes / Stuffing / Gravy,” and “Pie — No Pie / Pie / Pie a la Mode.” And then, at the bottom, the simply-labeled: “Notes,” with a few blank lines. This was, I suppose, intended for things like “Extra gravy!” and so on, any additional random notes that we wanted to the kitchen from the front.

But when people received their meals, the order slips came back. And so what we received, by way of “Notes,” was not “Extra gravy!” or “Please don’t let the cranberry touch the stuffing.”

It was, in fact, the world’s kindest system of restaurant reviews. What was intended for us to write notes about people’s orders became a way for them to write something back to us. Here’s some of what they said:

  • “Nate was an efficient, attentive, and friendly server. Otto was a delightful host—fun and responsible. Turkey—moist, everything yummy! Tx.”
  • “Food was delicious, especially the apple pie. Most notably, the service was incredibly attentive. The whole experience was delightful.”
  • “What a treat! Thank you so much for the fast and attentive table service. You all did a wonderful job!”
  • “Lovely atmosphere with great food and service.”
  • “A splendid meal served by an exceptional crew.”
  • “5 star service. The food was amazing. You did an awesome job. Keep up the good work. Thank you and God Bless.”
  • “Great food thank you!!!” (this was from one of the aforementioned servers, to the kitchen!)
  • “Very fast service and food tasted amazing” (okay, this was also from one of the servers…)

Okay, some of these were patting ourselves on the back. (I’m pretty sure one Vestry member wrote “I will come back!”) But for the most part, I didn’t recognize the names. These were the honest and heartfelt thoughts of our neighbors, given the opportunity to say something. I think the only criticism I read, while leafing through, was “I could have used less mashed potatoes on my plate,” to which I can only say—No, dear neighbor; there is no such thing as too many mashed potatoes on your plate. (Only too little gravy.)

What an contrast to the endless piles of slop we wade through reading Internet reviews, to the well-known bifurcation into the 5-star “This worked great and did exactly what it said” reviews and the 1-star “THIS WAS TRASH!!!” Our social media websites have become consumed with rage-bait and with lies. Our TVs turned on the “breaking-news” chyrons years ago, and never turned them off. The online comments sections of newspapers are so depraved that “never read the comments” has become a truth universally acknowledged.

But the Harvest Fair notes? Pure, unalloyed, gratitude.

I don’t think that’s a mistake. The way we treat one another, in real communities, face to face, is just different from the way we behave online, obscured from one another by usernames or keyboards, shades of meaning stripped away by being transcribed to text. I’m willing to acknowledge the irony of writing this to you in an email newsletter, and I know that many of you read this from far afield. But I also know it to be true that as online communications becomes more and more widespread, our face-to-face, embodied communities become more important than they have ever been.

I’m incredibly grateful to all of you who made a delightful community event like the Harvest Fair possible, but more than that: I’m incredibly grateful for all of you who make a delightful community like ours possible at all.

All Will Be Thrown Down

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All Will Be Thrown Down

 
 
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Sermon — November 17, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

I met a traveller from an antique land,                           (Not me, personally. It’s a poem.)
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The disciples roll up to the Temple in Jerusalem like the bumpkins that they are, gawking at the sights of the big city. As Jesus walks out of the Temple, having just said something wise about a poor widow who gave away her last two pennies there, one of the disciples says, “Wow! Rabbi! Have you seen how big these stones are? And the buildings! Look! They’re… they’re really big, too!” (Mark 13:1)

You might be surprised at this disciple’s surprise. After all, there were three great festivals a year, on which faithful Jews would travel to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. Galilee’s not so far away. It would’ve been normal to do what Jesus’ parents did, and to come down, several times a year and for big family events as well, to offer a sacrifice there. This disciple may not be the most pious; maybe he’s stayed home the last few years, and it shows.

But to be fair, the Temple had been under construction for years, refurbished and rebuilt over the course of decades, beginning during the reign of Herod the Great. Over the course of Jesus’ life, the set of buildings around the Temple was transformed. What began as a few buildings around the Temple itself, which stood ten stories high or more, had been built up into a thirty-five acre Temple Mount surrounded by retaining walls; all in all, about a quarter of the size of ancient Jerusalem. Put another way: While the Temple itself was about the size of this church, the walls around the Temple Mount would’ve stretched to the Whole Foods parking lot in one direction, and up to the Monument in the other.

So fair enough. If you saw a building project of this scope grow over the course of your life, maybe all that you could say would be: “What large stones!”

But Jesus only looks at him and says: “Do you see these great buildings?” (13:2) “Well, yeah,” you can imagine the disciple might’ve thought to himself, “Wasn’t I just saying how big they are?” But Jesus isn’t done. “Do you see these big buildings?” he says. “Not one stone will be left here upon another. All will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2)

Downer. But Jesus was right. Well, particularly pedantic readers of the Bible will sometimes point out that Jesus is actually wrong; that the Western Wall of the Temple Mount still stands to this day, a place of prayer for the Jewish people for two thousand years, ever since the Temple itself Mount was destroyed. But really, this only strengthens the point. Jesus was right: just a few decades after his death, at the end of the failed rebellion against Rome, all had been thrown down but one partial wall. And none of it would ever be rebuilt.

But of course, Rome itself was thrown down soon enough. The Roman Republic had already failed. The old gods would be next, Roman temples replaced as thoroughly as the Temple had been destroyed as new Emperors began to worship the man old Emperors had killed. And then the Empire collapsed, and only the ruins remained of its ancient glory, amid the medieval cities that rose up throughout the West, as nations and kingdoms rose and fell and rose and fell.

Human history, in fact, is an unbroken cycle of things being thrown down and new things being built. Every civilization seems to think that it is the greatest that has ever been, and that the End of History is surely near; and every one declines and falls in turn.

Jesus is right. Sooner or later, “all will be thrown down.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley knew this when he wrote the poem with which I began. Shelley was inspired by tales of ancient Egypt, whose extraordinary culture was only just being rediscovered in the early 19th century when he wrote that poem. “Ozymandias” is a Greek form of the name of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who really was one of the great figures in human history, probably the most powerful person to walk the Earth in 500 years or so.

Shelley envisions a statue worthy of the man, a form that would’ve towered over the crowds with a look of stern command. The pharaohs were worshiped as gods, and Ramesses was one of the greatest of them all. The statue addressed any who might think to challenge his grandeur and his might:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

And as two centuries of English teachers have pointed out, there’s a double meaning here. The statue sends a message to conquered lands and subjugated peoples, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” You will never be as powerful as I. But there’s a message for later times, as well. “Look on my works, ye Mighty.” See the ruins of my kingdom, forgotten for centuries after it crumbled into dust. See my “shattered visage,” as it crumbles into sand, next to a couple of legs, without a torso to be found. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Because if this is what remains of my great nation and my great reign—What will remain of you in 3500 years?

I think that there are a couple ways to take this, one bad, one good.

The bad way, I think, is to respond with despair. I’m sorry to say, your life will one day come to an end. This civilization will also decline. This building, into which so much energy and care have been poured for so many generations, will one day be thrown down, and not one stone will be left. So what’s the point? You might ask. It’s all just going to end up buried in the sand.

There’s half an answer in our reading from Daniel today, and it’s the promise that this world is not the end. That when we are forgotten after a hundred or a thousand years, we are remembered still by God. The world may go through anguish, time and time again, but in the end, “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake… [and] those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky.” (Daniel 12:1–3) The measure of our greatness is not how large our monuments and buildings are. It’s not whether we still inspire fear in the nations of the world. It’s the fact that we still receive God’s love, however great or small, however weak or mighty we are.

But there’s a second half to this good news, as well, and it’s not off in heaven. It’s right here. “Beware that no one leads you astray,” Jesus says. You may “hear of wars and rumors of wars…but the end is still to come.” This is all just “the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13:8)

I myself have never given birth. But I’m told it’s often worth it, in the end.

Yes, the Temple was cast down. And so was ancient Rome. But something else emerged. And that thing fell, and something else came next. Chaos and catastrophe recur. That’s human life. Everything we build will be destroyed. But that’s not a reason not to build it. That’s exactly why we must build, and rebuild, and rebuild again.

Because those buildings are beautiful and those stones are large. Because those relationships give us life and those communities teach us to love. Because when all our monuments have crumbled into dust, nothing can take away the acts of love we left behind. And even in some of the most anguishing times, something new is being born; in fact, nothing new is born in any other way.

So yes, one day this “all will be thrown down.” Our greatest achievements will collapse into the sand. So will our worst mistakes, for what it’s worth. And yes, one day you all will “shine like stars,” and the glory of that heavenly life will reflect the depth of God’s great love. But it is also true that the things that we build here matter, for as long as they remain. They’re temporary, and transient, but so is everything else. Our past has crumbled away, and our future is still far off, but right here, the things we build together remain, and we live in them—because we can try to remember the past, and we can pray for a better future, but we can start building a beautiful present together, today.

Good Timber

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There’s a tree outside my kitchen window that leans way over to one side, at something like a fifteen degree angle. Compared to this tree, the famous tower in Pisa looks like it’s standing straight. The tree stands at one side of an open field, with tall buildings on the other end but a whole neighborhood behind; the prevailing wind really only blows one way. And so over the years, the tree has grown bent, back and back and even further back. And yet it stands, bent but unbroken.

This week I learned an interesting thing: It’s no accident that the tree still stands so strong. In fact, plants need the wind to grow to their full height.

Gardeners recommend that seedlings grown inside be placed outside each day, to be exposed to the effects of the wind and direct sunlight. 17th-century British admirals prized Welsh oak, grown in tough conditions along the Atlantic coast. Biologists have learned that plants pushed by the wind release a hormone called auxin that stimulates the growth of cells that support their stems.

I’m no biologist (that’s Michael) or a therapist (that’s Alice). I have no green thumb (that’s the Rev. Mr. Cutler). I’m not a tall-ship admiral (thanks be to God), and I didn’t even find this anecdote for myself (thanks be to Priscilla!)

But I do know a few things about human beings, in my own small way, and—whether it’s really true of trees or not—it’s certainly true for us.

Of course, there are winds that are too strong, storms that threaten to uproot us, causing traumas that require years to repair. But it’s just as much the case that the sheltered soul that never feels a breeze will fall apart at the first gust of wind. Resilience in the face of difficulty is, in large part, the result of facing hard times again and again, and slowly finding that you can survive.

This is not an original thought. Far from it. But it seemed right to me, this week. In oh so many ways, we bend in life, facing into year after year of wind. And yet those very winds are the thing that make us strong. None of us ends up perfectly perpendicular to the ground. But we keep going, nevertheless, growing toward the sun.

I’m reminded of the words of the poem “Good Timber” by Douglas Malloch (1877–1938), an American poet and—appopriately enough—Associate Editor of the trade paper American Lumberman.I’ll leave you with the first stanza…

The tree that never had to fight
     For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
     And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
     But lived and died a scrubby thing.

(Here’s a link to the rest.)

When You’ve Got Nothing Left

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When You’ve Got Nothing Left

 
 
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Sermon — November 10, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Today’s sermon began with a bit of an extended preamble about prayer in challenging times, followed by a prayer; you can listen to this all in the audio, but there is not a written text. The text of the sermon proper is included below.

I don’t have much to say about the scribes, who like to wear long robes, and have the best seats, who tend—if we’re being honest with ourselves—to say some rather long prayers. I just might risk hypocrisy with that, today.

And I don’t want to say much about the poor widow who comes, and puts her last two coins into the Temple treasury. It’s too easy, on the week before our Stewardship Ingathering, to make this one about giving money to the church; and that’s not really what I want to do today.

But I do want to say something about what to do when you’re at the end of your rope; when you’ve worked as hard as you can, and done everything you can, and it hasn’t worked; and it feels like hope is lost.

Because that’s exactly where Elijah finds this woman who lives at Zarephath, in our first reading today.

It’s worth saying that, throughout the ancient Near East, we have evidence of laws that tried to provide for widows and orphans, that tried to establish some kind of social safety net for those who didn’t have the property, or labor, or the family support to provide for themselves. And it’s not just that this woman and her child have fallen through the cracks; there’s been a drought, and food is scarce, and there simply isn’t enough to go around. She has nothing prepared to offer Elijah. Her pantry is empty, just a cup of flour or so, and a little bit of oil, and there’s nothing else.

We can assume she’s prayed for rain, and so has everyone else. We can assume she’s asked for help, and there just isn’t enough to share. And so here she is, at the end of the line, and her story is deeply sad. Her plan is just to go, and cook what she has left; and then that’s it for them.

And this strange man, this man she doesn’t know, comes to her and says, “Do that; but give me some as well.”

And she does. And that is an extraordinary thing. He’s not her son. He’s not her neighbor. He’s not even her fellow-citizen, because she lives in Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, in Phoenicia; and he’s an Israelite. He’s crossed the border to her, and the only document he has is the word of God telling him to go. And I can tell you, because I have studied these two tongues, that she could understand his words, but she could hear it in his voice that he was not from here. And yet she took a quarter-cup of her last cup of flour, and baked a little bread for him, as well.

And that’s the generosity of desperation, because this is all they have, and then their lives will end; so why not give a little bit away?

And “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.”

Now—Miracles are not a great answer to the concrete problems of the world. Faith alone cannot solve the problems of world hunger, or of drought, problems that have plagued humankind throughout history, however hard they’ve prayed or not. Such concrete miracles are rare. But every day, God works miracles of the heart. And so I don’t exactly want to give you any advice. But I want you to tell how I used my flour this week, and I want to invite you to think, when you find yourself at the end of the line, about how you might use yours.

So like I said, I was up for about half of Tuesday night—which did give me some valuable sermon-writing time, as I lay in bed—and then Wednesday is a day when I’m home with Murray for the day and Alice is at work. And so I got up, on Wednesday, after a couple hours’ sleep, and spent the rest of the day with a child whose sleep had been blissfully undisturbed. We read a chapter of our history book about the Alaric the Goth and the fall of the Roman Empire, and did some single-digit math—this is a humanities family, to be clear—and we went out for a walk on a beautiful, warm day. And at the end of this long and high-energy day, I found that I was not as exhausted as I sometimes am. I was feeling better than I had when I woke up. In fact, I was feeling better than I had the last night when I went to bed.

I had very little left in me on Wednesday morning, and I gave some of it away; and I found that “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail.” And I know exactly why. Not only had I not spent the day entirely in my head, as I had for those sleepless hours at night; but I had spent my day loving someone, in a very concrete way.

I don’t know what it is that has you at the end of your rope today. If it’s not the election, it may well be something else. But I do know that sometimes, when you’re all at of flour, paradoxically it can help to try to give some of it away. Not to give more of yourself away to whatever it is that has you drained. But to spend some of your energy, in a very concrete way, on something else that’s fueled by love.

Because while miracles of bread and oil are rare, miracles of the heart are not, and you just might find a new abundance at the very moment that you give what you have away.