Sermon — November 1, 2020

The Rev. Greg Johnston

“Do this in remembrance of me,” writes Dom Gregory Dix, one of the great 20^th-century scholars of the Eucharist, the 744^th page of his whopping tome on the Eucharist. “Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, from the pinnacle of earthly greatness to the refuge of fugitives in the caves and dens of the earth. [We] have found no better thing than this to do for kings at their crowning and for criminals going to the scaffold; for armies in triumph or for a bride and bridegroom in a little country church… One could fill many pages with the reasons why [we] have done this,” Dix writes — and believe me, I just cut out about three paragraphs of examples — “One could fill many pages with the reasons… and not tell a hundredth part of them. And best of all, week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the pastors have done this just to make the plebs sancta Dei—the holy common people of God.”[1]

“Do this in remembrance of me,” on “a hundred thousand successive Sundays”—until, that is, this March 15.

It’s been a long time since any of us has done this. Eight months ago, I never could have imagined that this is what it would look like to start celebrating the Eucharist together again. I remember having so many conversations in March and April, serious and silly alike, that began, “When we’re all back together again…” It was in that early phase of the pandemic when many of us non-professionals still assumed there would be a switch flipped at some point: yesterday there was a plague, and today it’s under control and we can come back together, and celebrate together, and share this holy food and drink.

Of course, it didn’t go that way. Instead, here we are. A few of us, scattered around the church. More of us, still joining from afar. Gathering once again to obey the command: “Do this in remembrance of me,” but scattered, separated from one another, missing and grieving what life once was.

But every Eucharist has always been this way.

Every Sunday of the past when we gathered for worship in our various churches, we were only ever a fraction of a church. I’m not making a joke about church attendance. I mean that every single one of Dom Dix’s “hundred thousand successive Sundays” has been marked by absence and grief. From the very first time that Jesus’ disciples gathered after his death down to the present day, every Sunday’s congregation has been incomplete. Every Sunday, even in ordinary times, some of us were carrying the memories of departed spouses and parents and friends. Every Sunday, we greet those we love and mourn those we’ve lost. Every Sunday, not just All Saints’ Sunday, we gather with “all [God’s] saints still striving,” and we waited to be reunited with “all [God’s] saints at rest.”

All Saints’ Day, after all, is not a day on which we celebrate all of the people the Church has officially canonized as saints, all at once. And it’s not only a day on which we pray for those who have died. It’s the day we celebrate and pray for all the saints, all the holy people of God, all those who have ever been baptized, past, present, and future, “from all tribes and peoples and languages.” (Rev. 7:9)

When we share the Eucharist, we join in a celebration that’s larger than any of us, larger than all of us together. When we “lift up [our] hearts,” we are “lift[ed] to the Lord.” We “[join] our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven.” We join in that heavenly worship John saw in his Revelation that transcends time and space, and we receive just a taste of that wonderful future, in which we “will hunger no more, and thirst no more… and God will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes.” (Rev .7:16-17) When we stand before this altar, in other words, we stand united with all the saints, and worship God side by side.

So no, not all of us can be in church today; probably not for quite a while. But God has been gathering her people now for going on three thousand years. God’s used to worship we would call “remote.” If God can raise the eyes of St. John the Divine into heaven so that he sees “a great multitude that no one could count,” (Rev. 7:9) from every place and every time, then surely God appreciates a miniature multitude of little Zoom squares from our little patch of the kingdom.

We don’t know when we’ll all be together again. We don’t know when the saints in church and the saints on Zoom and the saints who need a break from Zoom will worship together again. We don’t know when we saints on earth will be reunited to our long-lost saints in heaven. But, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2) Amen.

[1] Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy. London: Dacre Press, Adam and Charles Black (1945), 744.

Sermon — October 25, 2020

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Well, this is it. The heart of the matter. The core of Jesus’ message, the central tenets of Christianity, the two commandments on which, Jesus says, “hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:40)

They’re deceptively simple. For a preacher like me, they’re disappointingly simple. I’m a nerd, after all. I like history. I like to dig into the Biblical text to try to understand what was going on two or three thousand years ago, to parse out the theological differences between the Pharisees and the Sadducees and why it’s one group and not the other who’s testing Jesus with these questions; and then to do the sometimes-difficult work of connecting all that up to our lives today, and trying to understand how one of Jesus’ cryptic parables speaks to us across the millennia.

But Jesus’ message today isn’t a riddle. It’s not an obscure historical reference. It doesn’t need to be unwrapped, or clarified, or revealed. It’s simple: Love God with all you have. Love your neighbor as yourself.

But “simple,” I’m sorry to say, isn’t the same as “easy.”

People often quote the Catholic writer G.K. Chesterton, who once wrote that “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” In other words, Chesterton says, it’s not that people have tried Christianity out for two thousand years, and found that it doesn’t work. It’s that they’ve taken a good look at Christianity, found that it’s too hard, and decided not to try it at all. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself”? That’s a little much. We’ll stick with ordinary life; we’ll say in a vague way that we believe in God, we experience God in the world around us, and we try to help our neighbors in need when it’s not too inconvenient for us. Chesterton was pretty skeptical of your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Christian; he would probably say that most of us had found the Christian ideal hard, and left it untried.

I’m not sure, though, that this is exactly right. It’s not that we don’t try to love God and our neighbors; it’s just that we do it imperfectly. We do try to love God; but our minds are distracted, our souls are divided, our hearts are full of other, beautiful loves. We do try to love our neighbors. But to love our neighbors as ourselves? I have a hard enough time loving myself, and an even harder time loving my spouse as myself, and as much as I love the notion of extending that ideal of unconditional love to the entire world, I know that I will never actually place the good of others on the same level as my own good. Because that, after all, is what “love” means, for Jesus; not to feel warm-fuzzies about another person, but to act on their behalf, to work for their good, to lay down one’s own life for them.

So if the mission statement of the whole Church and of each individual Christian is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself,” then it’s a great mission—but undoubtedly, again and again, even when we admire it, even when we try so hard to live it out, we fail.

Lutherans often distinguish between Law and Gospel, between the hard and imposing commandments God lays down and the merciful love God extends when we fail to obey them. It’s not a distinction between the Old and New Testaments. There is Law in the Old Testament, and there is Gospel; there’s Law in the New Testament, and there’s Gospel. And it’s not a distinction between the bits we like and the bits we don’t of the Bible, between the cozy and kind and the harsh and violent. It’s a distinction, instead, between the standards God sets for us and the compassion God shows when we don’t live up to them.

So this passage from our Gospel reading is pure Law. There’s nothing more cozy and kind than saying that all the law and the prophets hang on these two Great Commandments of love. And yet there’s nothing that condemns us, as a human race and as individual human beings, more. It’s clear that this is a commandment we simply don’t live up to.

But paired, this morning, with this inspiring and imposing Law, I find a hint of relief in the story of the final moments of Moses.

Moses has walked a long road. God has called him away from his ordinary life to become the prophet of God and turned him into a leader. After the miraculous triumph of the Red Sea, Moses has been stuck with his grumbling people for forty years in the desert, condemned to wander because of their rebellions against God. And now, as the forty years draw to an end, they’ve finally reached the River Jordan, and they’re ready to cross over into the Promised Land. And Moses goes up onto a mountain, and he sees the whole land spread out before him, a land flowing with milk and honey, the final destination he’s been trying for decades to reach. And then he dies, his journey incomplete.

It’s the story that Dr. King, quoted with uncanny foresight in his final speech: “We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he told the people of Memphis on April 3, 1968. “But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop… I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” And within a day, he was dead.

Maybe these last words of Moses and of Martin are an odd place to find good news. But I can’t help but find them comforting, these days. We try to love God with all our hearts, and all our souls, and all our minds; and our neighbors as ourselves. And we don’t do it right. We can’t. We try and try and try to grow in love, to keep walking in the Way that Jesus taught us, but we never quite arrive in the Promised Land, in a just world, in a state of spiritual perfection. And that’s okay. It’s not completely satisfying, I’ll admit. But if it’s good enough for Moses and for Martin Luther King, Jr., then it’s good enough for me.

In church life, in personal life, God knows in our national life, we walk a long road together. Sometimes it seems like we’re making progress toward a more perfect love; sometimes it feels like we’re just wandering in the wilderness. And I doubt that any of us will ever enter into that final Promised Land of perfection. That may sound depressing. But it can also be liberating. Because it means that no matter what—even if we never manage to love our neighbors as ourselves, even if we never manage to love God with our whole hearts—each step takes us closer to God’s love. So “walk in love,” as the familiar verse goes, “as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.” Amen. (Ephesians 5:2)

Sermon — October 18, 2020

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Right now we’re experiencing one of those brief windows that rolls around in our national political life everyone once in a while in ordinary times, when religion and politics collide, and politicians and pundits try to figure out how to use the Bible to best bash their opponents into giving way. I call it “Render Unto Caesar Season.”

It’s a venerable tradition. Twenty years ago, when asked during a primary debate who his favorite political philosopher was, George W. Bush answered, “Jesus.” Chris Matthews, shocked to hear such a thing, turned to the Bible: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[1] Two years ago, a sympathetic senator asked Bill Barr whether his Catholic faith should disqualify him from serving as Attorney General. “I don’t think so, no,” he replied, “Because you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God[’s].”[2] Ando so I was delighted—as questions swirled around the role of Amy Coney Barrett’s faith in her conservative legal ideology—to see the headline of a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday afternoon: “How Would Jesus Vote? Nobody Knows—Religious leaders should render unto Caesar and refrain from electioneering.”

Now, don’t worry, I’m actually going to refrain from electioneering from the pulpit! This isn’t a partisan political point. Instead, I want to point something out. In these moments, when they quote this verse from today’s gospel, Republicans and Democrats alike are trying to say that politics and religion shouldn’t be mixed, although they mean very different things. Republicans, of course, say they’re trying to defend nominees like Judge Barrett or Attorney General Barr against what they see as an attack on their Catholic faith; their religious beliefs, they say, shouldn’t be the subject of political debate. Democrats, on the other hand, say they’re trying to defend our secular legal system against being infused with religious dogma; presidents and judges shouldn’t decide public policy, they say, on the basis of their private religious beliefs. These two parties, with their very different approaches, both quote “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.” In other words: politics are politics, religion is religion, and there’s a clear distinction and separation between the two.

But that’s not what Jesus is saying at all.

I’ve preached a few sermons on the Old Testament recently, I think, and so it might help to back up a few steps and take a running start at the gospel. Within the broader storyline of the Gospel of Matthew, our reading this morning actually takes place after Palm Sunday. Jesus has already entered the holy city of Jerusalem. The people have shouted “Hosanna!” and seemed to proclaim him their king. He’s entered into the Temple, driven out the money changers, and begun teaching with the parables we’ve read for the last few weeks.

The powers that be are worried. The Pharisees and the Herodians come to him. They’re rivals, not allies, but both groups are feeling threatened. The Pharisees are a popular religious movement, and the Herodians are the ruling political establishment. But now this supposed new king has ridden into the capital city, and he’s teaching in the Temple. He’s threatened their politics and religion alike. And so they come to him and plan to trap him with a question. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matthew 22:17) If Jesus says that it is, that people should taxes to fund the Roman occupation—he’ll lose popular support and political legitimacy. If he says it’s not lawful, then his enemies can turn him over to the Romans and accuse him of inciting rebellion. And if he refuses to answer the question, he’ll look like, well, a Supreme Court nominee; someone so committed to self-preservation that you could never get a straight answer out of him.

Jesus, unsurprisingly, turns the tables on them. He asks them to show the coin they use to pay their taxes, and when they pull out a Roman denarius, he asks, “Whose head is this?” (Matthew 22:20) Here our translation, in trying to be clear, misrepresents the text a bit. The Greek word is “εἰκὼν” (eikōn), “icon” or “image.” Whose image is this on the coin? Whose icon?

You may remember, way back in the first chapter of Genesis, God says, “Let us make humankind according to our image.” (Genesis 1:26) In the Greek translation of the Old Testament—in the Bible, in other words, as the gospel-writer Matthew knew it, in the language in which Matthew wrote the gospel—it’s that same word Matthew uses: “Let us make humankind according to our eikon, our icon.”

“Whose image is this?” Jesus asks. He’s not ignorant. He’s making a point.

Caesar can stamp his image on as many coins as he wants; but God’s image is stamped on humankind itself, on every human being. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21) Go ahead, Jesus says. Let Caesar have what belongs to Caesar: the largest armies, the finest clothing, anything that he can buy with any coin he’s stamped with his own name and face. But give to God what belongs to God: your whole self, stamped and shaped and molded in the image of God.

So welcome to Stewardship Season! No, I’m just kidding.

There’s a sense in which offering your whole self to God could seem like a burden. Many of you who are listening may already be tapped out. You already give half your energy to your work, and half to your family; and now another half to childcare for kids who aren’t in school, and another half to caring for your parents and another half to anxiety about the state of the world and maybe, like, a quarter to the election and a quarter to yourself. That’s six halves, so far, I think. But it’s okay! Give your whole self to God! Now you only need four of you.

But when I say that “give to God the things that are God’s,” it doesn’t mean that you should give more of yourself to God; it means you should let God into more of yourself. Spiritual life, in other words, isn’t an addition to the rest of your life; it’s the transformation of the rest of your life.

In case that’s not really clear, here’s what I mean. Spiritual growth, progress in Christian life, isn’t a matter of keeping everything about your daily routine the same and adding more and more Christianity on top. It’s a matter of keeping your spiritual life at the top, and letting it seep down into more and more of your daily routine, of letting yourself slowly be shaped more and more into the mold with which you were stamped, letting your life slowly be re-formed in the image of God.

This should come as a relief, because it’s not about doing something new, about adding another thing to your to-do list. It’s about seeing what you already do in a different way, and maybe even doing it in a different way, too. Not slapping a bumper sticker on it, calling it Christian—that’s not what’s important—but reshaping it in line with the two great commandments of love of God and love of neighbor.

So when I hear “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s,” I don’t think about building up the separation of church and state. I think about breaking down the separation of spiritual life from the rest of life. To be a Christian schoolteacher, or a Christian lawyer, or a Christian neighbor, doesn’t mean teaching Christianity to schoolchildren, or enshrining Christianity in law, or pushing Christianity on your neighbors; it doesn’t mean ending the separation of church and state. It means teaching children, practicing law, being a neighbor, in a Christian way, following the Way of Love that Jesus walked. These things are ministries, even if nobody you meet ever knows that you’re a person of faith.

Because God doesn’t need us to do more for God. God doesn’t even need us to do more for one another. God needs us to be God’s, and to know that we are God’s; that we were stamped before time with the indelible image of God, and we belong to God in body, mind, and spirit. “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Amen.

[1] Cal Thomas, “Bush Puts Christ Back in Christmas,” December 17, 1999, https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1999-12-17-9912170215-story.html

[2] Catholic Vote, January 16, 2019. https://catholicvote.org/senator-to-ag-nominee-william-barr-does-being-catholic-disqualify-you/