Being Theotokoi: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Magnificat
Romans 16: 25-27
Luke 1: 26-38

St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI

Fourth Sunday of Advent

"Let it be with me according to your word."

May I speak to you in the Name of the True and Living God, + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

There is a paradoxical reality to God’s might and majesty.  The names of God—The Almighty, The Lord, the Most High, The Lord of Host, Who Was, Is, and Is to Come, The Everlasting, The Ancient of Days, The Alpha and the Omega, all convey great power and cosmic reality.  This is the God who created the cosmos, cast the stars into their course, formed galaxies, nebulae, dark matter, objects of mass that create gravity, quasars, novae, black holes, and the all the deep, dark mysteries of this 14 billion year-young universe.

Have we paid attention though to the messages of the past few weeks, in the season of Advent, and even before?   God’s true might and power is not to be found in the stars, moon, and sun.  God’s true might and power is not to be found in the armies of angels and archangels that surround the Throne.

We await the coming of Christ.  With Christmas around the corner, we might think that the waiting is for Christmas, for the first coming of Christ.  But Jesus has already come; we know how that story was acted out.  There is no great surprise or mystery that Jesus might not actually show up this Thursday, unless the doll goes missing for the pageant.  Instead, in Advent, we await the second coming of Christ.  And yet the story of the first coming of Christ helps us understand his second coming.  This is a two-fold expectation.  The first is the coming of Christ and the end of the age, but then also the coming of Christ within us.  The great signs and wonders of the cosmos mean little if that still-silent voice is not present within us, if our hearts are so closed that we cannot say yes to God.  This is what lies at the heart of today’s Gospel, and why all generations call Mary blessed, because she said yes to God.

The yes Mary gave in response to God was an integral piece for God’s plan for redemption in this world.  In the beginning, God created the Heavens, the Earth, and all life therein from the tiniest of bacteria, to the largest of oceanic creatures.  Over the span of billions of years, from each and every division of each and every cell, new life kept coming forth until one day, until a certain species of hominids began walking on the earth.  And God said that it was good.  Somewhere along the line, sin and death entered into the world, when it is made itself manifest in the world, it came and comes often in the form of Pride.  The pride of greatness, the pride majesty, the pride of might, and the pride that we can be Gods ourselves apart from God, that we can pull ourselves up from our own bootstraps and forge ahead with our own destiny.  This is the very primal sin of our species, whether you believe the stories of Adam and Eve in the Garden to be myth or fact, there is a truth that pride continues as the primal sin of our species.

God never abandoned us though.  Time, and again, God came to us.  God never gave up on us, perhaps out of a sense of love, or stubbornness, or both.  We kept messing up, we always do.  That same pride, that same thought that we can do it ourselves, and alone, without consequence led to catastrophe.  As Christians we believe that God reached out to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to Joseph, to Judges, to Kings, to Prophets, to Priests, to Poets, to Sages, and to Philosophers, to call humanity back to that original, good, relationship.  All the pieces were in place, and all that was left was for the hope that each pointed to in their life, the coming of the Messiah.

The Archangel Gabriel comes to Mary for this next piece in the plan.  There is a certain 15th century hymn that tells the story like this that I’d like to share with you:

Cool, new, hip Annunciation?

He kneeled down before her face;
He said: "Hail, Mary, full of grace!"

When the maid heart tell of this,
She was sore abashed, ywis,
And weemed that she had done a miss.

Then said the angel: "Dread not thou,
Be conceived with great virtue
Whose name shall be called Jesu."

Then said the maid: Verily,
I am your servant truly,
Ecce ancilla Domini.

Nova! Nova!
Ave fit ex Eva! Nova!



Be it unto me according to thy word!
News!  News!  Hail the new Eve!

The sheer magnificence of God’s might and majesty is revealed most in this story of the Annunciation.  The fifth century Patriarch of Constantinople, Saint Proclos describes the Annunciation as:

“Who has ever seen, who has ever heard, that the Limitless God would dwell within a womb? He Whom the Heavens cannot circumscribe is not limited by the womb of a Virgin!”

The infinite becomes surrounded by our own limited human nature, and in this the salvation of the world, and ourselves, comes forth.  The great cosmic dimensions of God’s plan are meaningless in comparison to Mary’s yes though, because that yes came from the very human nature that we have.  Our human nature grants us the freedom to sin, but it also grants us the freedom to be humble before God.  That same human nature that causes so much sin became the human nature to bring forth salvation into this world.  From Mary, Jesus takes on that very same human nature when he became incarnate as fully human and fully divine.

Mary became the mother of God, or, as the Eastern Orthodox Christians call her, the Theotokos—the God-Bearer.  She became the new Eve that gave birth to the new Adam, Jesus Christ.  The rest then, is history.

Ah, but we are not let off the hook so easily, no.  In our creeds, we believe that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.  We have plenty of images that depict the second coming of Christ in a cosmic sense.  But as we’ve noticed, the cosmic sense carries little meaning without the personal sense, and it is in Mary’s yes, in Mary’s acceptance for salvation to be done according to God’s will, that we get a vision of Christ’s second coming in a personal sense.

Through our baptism and confirmation, we celebrate the indwelling of God within us; and in the Eucharist we celebrate a remembrance of that indwelling of God.  In fact, each and every Eucharist is a celebration of Christ’s second coming into our midst in the bread and wine that becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus upon the altar.  But we also need to live lives that make God manifest within us daily, so we to hear from Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary as to what that means; to stay awake and listen, to cry out for justice in the world, and to say yes to God.  When we do that, we prepare the way of the Lord for God to be present within us.

Most of all though, Mary becomes the example for how we ought to orient our lives towards God, and God’s plan for us all, to bring Christ into this world.  She becomes the Theotokos, and shows us how to become Theotokoi, the plural of Theotokos.  We are, each and every one of us, called to be a Theotokos in the world

Of course, here we run into an interesting problem.  Though I am twenty-five years old, I have yet to have an angel show up and tell me “here, do this for God.”  Maybe some of you might have been lucky to have such a visitor in your life, but for those of us that have not had seen as much as a tiny seraphim, we might not be completely sure how we can serve God, how we can be Theotokoi in the world.

I may be young, but one thing I find helpful while waiting for that angelic message of inspiration is to perhaps do the things I ought to do: show kindness to others, be appreciative of to those who help me out, to be forgiving when others make mistakes, to know when to say something to someone who mourns, to know when to be quiet when words fail, being patient with others, and maybe do something generous to someone random once in a while with no expectation for a reward.  Maybe nothing will happen, the heavens may not open, no angel may appear.  You could do this from the first day of your life until the day you die.

Even Mother Teresa went through life with no vision of the divine, no angelic visitor, and during her ministry in Calcutta, she often experienced depression in the midst of her work.  And yet perhaps the beauty that was made because of her actions might speak to something beautiful within her.  All of the great and awe-inspiring magnificence of the cosmos pale in comparison to the God made manifest within through our faith and works .

Even if we never see an angel, we can still be like Mary, and be Theotokoi by making God manifest in the world.  In that, the original hope of creation is to be found because the relationship between God and us, and between each other is restored.  And God saw that it was good.

When we say yes to God, our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis.

Even if there is no Angel, we must say yes to God so our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis.

When we love our neighbor as ourselves, when we love our enemies as ourselves, when follow the commandments of God, we say yes to God, and so we cannot help but have our Kyrie Eleisons become Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

Amen.

Racism, Judgment, and the Coming of the Lord: A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

All Saints’ Episcopal Church
San Francisco, CA

Second Sunday of Advent

+In the name of God

I previously wrote a sermon for this Sunday, however, recent events of this past week have made me realize that I needed to crumple it up and throw it away, because there is something that needs to be discussed.  Even if no one wants to say anything, the voice of too much blood would cry from the ground.

Why are we here?  What is it that we are doing here, in this place, in this time?  I have been coming to All Saints’ for eight months now, and most of you have been here for longer.  For many of this, this is part of the status quo that makes up life.  Sometimes there are disruptions, some major, some minor.  But life goes on, and we enter into a certain complacency of routine and form.

Something has happened though to shake me from my status quo, and I hope I am not the only one to be shaken as well.  We have been hit with a series of events that trouble me deeply to my core.  The police officer that shot Michael Brown was not indicted for that murder.  The police officer that strangled Eric Garner in to death was not indicted for that murder.  Recently, a twelve-year old boy named Tamir Rice was shot by a police officer that believed the child was wielding a gun, when it was actually a toy.

In all of these instances, the police officer was white, and the victim was African-American.  These have been the latest in a string of countless deaths and misapplication of force of African-Americans and other ethnic minorities by white police officer.

With these recent tragedies, along with the murder of Treyvon Martin and the not-guilty verdict of the white shooter, I have become saddened to the point of numbness.  A mentor of mine has said in light of these events:

“Racism is America's great sin. All its faults flow from this.”

It is becoming hard to feel anything because there is so much evil that has emerged from this great sin of ours.  Our society has never repented for it, never asked forgiveness for it, and has never received absolution for it.  We’ve become okay with it; I have become okay with it, because our lives keep moving on.  And yet, Eric Garner’s last words of “I can’t breathe” continue to haunt me.

Today is the Second Sunday of Advent.  Isaiah and the Gospel of Mark tell us to prepare the way of the Lord, to make his paths straight.  But embedded in the Second Letter of Peter is a warning.  When God comes to us, when the day of the Lord is at hand, we will find that it

“will come like a thief in the night, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.”

Everything, everything that we are, everything that we have done will be disclosed.  No secret will be hidden anymore, and every lie will be revealed.  Every edifice that we have constructed to shield ourselves will become nothing.  In Advent, we await with joyful hope and expectation the coming of the Lord.  Some even name the second candle on an Advent wreath the candle of “preparation,” or “hope,” heeding the call of Isaiah and John the Baptist to prepare the way of the Lord.

We await the coming of the day of the Lord, but as the prophet Amos said, it is a day that is to be feared.  God is a God of love, but also a God of justice, and we worship, as Isaiah tells us, a

God that forms light and creates darkness,
A God that makes weal and creates woe;

God will judge these tragedies when the day of the Lord comes.

In recent years, the Episcopal Church, and other Christian traditions as well, have seemingly forgotten that Advent, like Lent, is a penitential season.  Society has rushed to extend the Christmas season to start earlier and earlier.  There is a call for good cheer and celebration.  It seems that, perhaps in an attempt to mirror society, or because we have become uncomfortable in talking about sin and judgment in a personal sense, we have forgotten the very command of the prophets for our Advent of forsaking our sins, as the collect says.

Image taken from SFgate.com

The evils in our society, the events of Furgeson, or Staten Island, and of Cleveland may seem far off in our own place and context, but here in California, in the Bay Area, in cities like San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and throughout the Bay, racism and prejudice are alive and well.  Tragedies like the shooting of Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin occur here in our neck of the woods as well.  Just because we live in a progressive city in a progressive state, it does not mean that we are free from racism in our communities, nor does it absolve us of the sins elsewhere.  In one-way, or another, we are connected to these events, and guilty of these evils as well.

What lies in the depths of our hearts?  What secrets do we carry that we hide?  How do we pretend or delude ourselves into thinking we are not culpable.

The events of tragedies like this, or any tragedy whatsoever, do not exist in a vacuum.  I affirm that all human beings are good at their core, that each and every one of us bears the image of the true and living God.  God calls the creation of humans to be very good.  And yet, we are a people who sin.  Human tragedy is often the result of sin, but rarely is it a one-off event.  A casually racist remark here or there that goes unchallenged, the application of a stereotype on someone while their back is turned to us, and the apathetic response to prejudice and racism in our very midst all bring this human sin into form.

Sure, we seek to cover it up.  We say little things like “everyone is a little bit racist” or that it is okay if it is little things, just not big things like employment, housing, or education.  Here’s the thing though, its those little thoughts and things that when they go unchallenged, help to build the very systemic racism that allows thee tragedies to happen.  A casual comment can lead to an overt comment, and an overt comment can begin to affect our actions, even to the point where we feel justified in committing that which is terrible.  Because we all sin, we are all capable of such evil as what has been committed elsewhere.

I know that I have committed the sin of racism multiple times in my life.  I have said unkind things about my brothers and sisters; I have applied a racial stereotype to people who are ethnically different than me multiple times in my life.  My own privilege as a white person has shielded me for a long time from recognizing my own sins, and told me that it was okay for me to do these things.  I can no longer believe this after reflecting on the Scriptures or Traditions of the Church.  I hope though to repent of those sins.  The question I pose then is this, have you recognized your own sins?

We await the coming of Christ, where all things will be set right, and the righteous and unrighteous will be judged.  Our sins, both known and unknown will be revealed and judged.  We do not know when this will come, the writer of the Epistle cryptically tells us

“That with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.”

But in this waiting, we must trust that the mercy of the Lord is everlasting, but we must also work towards “leading lives of holiness and godliness.”

How though, how can we do this?

The worst thing we can do is to be paralyzed by fear or guilt into doing nothing.  We must also recognize that we can never fully understand the experiences and contexts of those who suffer under racism and oppression in the US.  Finally, we cannot presume that racism, whether personal or systemic, can end with a broad show of power or force by a legislature, court, or be electing an African American president.

Empathy is what is needed.

It is the little things that we do that can hold this evil and darkness at bay.  Correcting ourselves when we make a mistake, showing kindness and compassion to one another, treating others as human beings, and recognizing, for those of us who are white, have been given a great deal of privilege within our lives, and so we need to work to subvert that privilege through kindness, compassion, and empathy to people society has determined to be inhuman because of their ethnicity.

Even a small candle can light up a room of shadows.

As a Christian I believe that our ultimate hope and model for right living is Jesus Christ.  In his incarnation, he showed empathy for the human condition by being born to a poor, dark-skinned, eastern Mediterranean woman out of wedlock in a cave.  In his life he empathized with the poor, the sick, and the foreigner by being present with them and affirming their goodness through celebrating their faith, performing signs and wonders in their midst, and affirming them as models of faith.  He then empathized with the human condition by suffering and dying on the cross, carrying with him our sins and failures.

The resurrection of Jesus is then the first fruit of our hope for a world where suffering and oppression have come to an end.  Whereas sin of all kind, including racism leads to death; love and reconciliation leads to resurrection.  Our Christian hope is that hope love enduring all things because that love comes from Christ.

It might seem like that justice and that hope is far off, but remember that

“The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

The Lord will come, justice will come, and all will be revealed.  That is our hope for Advent.  We prepare the way of the Lord by casting off sin, by casting off racism, and moving towards reconciliation and love by forsaking our sins.

+In the name of God

Why we need to observe the Feast of the Ascension on Thursday

This coming Thursday, May 29, 2014, is the Feast of the Ascension of Jesus Christ.

And, in order to go to Mass on this day, the nearest Episcopal Church that will be observing it is across the bay in San Francisco.

There seems to be an unfortunate trend that occurs with movable Feasts, or Feast Days that just so happen to fall during the week.  I cannot discern if it is ignorance or apathy, but it troubles me that so few parishes even take note of major Feasts, particularly major Feasts of our Lord.  Like with the Feast of the Epiphany, the Feast of the Ascension will either be transferred to Sunday, or forgotten all together.  I understand, and even somewhat sympathize with communities that do this: people are too busy to go to Mass during the week, we want to include the whole of the community to celebrate the Feast, and maybe it is okay to fudge with the rubrics of the Prayer Book in these sort of instances. 

There are two things that concern me about this.  First, we seem to be developing a particular laxness about the Christian life.   Second, parishes are missing opportunities to build a stronger community.

One of the things that troubles me within the Episcopal Church is the growing sense of diluting the Christian and/or Anglican-Episcopal identity.  We see this all too frequently—communities and diocese flaunt canons of the church regarding baptism and communion; we see iteration after iteration of provisional and supplemental material being released for liturgical use that lacks any cohesive theological center; celebrants of the Mass will change language of prayers at a whim (in the name of inclusivity) that either borders on, or is explicitly heretical (for example, using Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier for blessings); and then there is the occasional rumbling that the language of the Baptismal Covenant is too inaccessible, and it should be simplified. 

We are a community that is driven by a story, a story that is ancient and yet always new, a story that though we may hear a million times over, it is always new the first time we hear it.  The story of God’s interaction with the world; the life, death, and resurrection of Christ; and the descent of the Holy Spirit is the story of the relationship between the Trinity and humanity.  It is the story of God that we have been invited to share into.  Just as the Resurrection is the promise that we too will rise from the dead as Christ did, so too the Ascension tells us that we will ascend and join with Christ who is with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  What Christ assumed, we too have assumed.  The feast marks the beginning of a waiting period of nine days for the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.  We are invited then to be faithful, like the Apostles, in awaiting the arrival of the Spirit.

By transferring, or ignoring this feast, we fall into a trap that what it means to be a Christian is something to only be found on Sundays.  Our call is to a constant life of devotion to God.  We are given an opportunity to celebrate the Mysteries of God.  This should not be a burden though, but a celebration, a Feast to celebrate the completion of Christ’s earthly ministry.  We are called to be a part of something different, something better, and sometimes it is a call to sacrifice in order to celebrate.  Sometimes it is hard to get away from work, or family life.  Sometimes it can be discouraging for a parish to have a special service if only a few people show up.  But that is not the point however, we should not be afraid, or wary, or burdened, to have this amazing opportunity to celebrate.  Here is the dirty little secret, we do not only have to go to church on Sundays, in fact our work days might be better if we took an hour or so out of it for something like this, or a weekday Mass in general.

This leads to a second concern I have.  Lately, in the Episcopal Church, there is a desire to build stronger communities.  In particular, in communities that are in decline, there is a desire to build a community that is welcoming to new people.

This is an opportunity to accomplish this, it is staring us in the face, and we do not seem to notice. 

A great way to for a parish to build community is to have a weekday service that is followed by a potluck, barbecue, a trip to the pub, or something like that.  It not only reminds us that Mass is not the sole thing we can do to celebrate the Ascension of the Lord, let alone any feast (mind you, it is one of the most important things we can do), but it allows us an opportunity to meet others in the parish and welcome new people in what might hopefully be a loving and fun environment.  Especially as we approach summer months, and when kids are out of school, this can be a great way to have family activities in the middle of the week.  Again, it gets us out of the trap of thinking that being a Christian only happens on Sundays. 

As I said before, I recognize the challenges that preclude some parishes and people from taking part of this.  I lament that the way modern society seems to sap any free hours that someone has for labor while providing less pay and less opportunity for rest.  To me though, there is no reason why parishes should stop having celebrations on weekday Feasts like this, in-fact it is all the more reason to have celebrations like this.  The church needs to offer and be an alternative to the secular society, and we can do that by celebrating our Feasts mid-week. 

In a society that demands the privatization of faith, we need to celebrate faith.

In a society that extracts more labor for fewer wages, we need to challenge this by resting from our labors.

In a society that dilutes the reasons for our joy, we need to identify more strongly the reason for our joy.

In a society that alienates us from one another, we need to welcome the stranger into our midst. 

In a society that promotes death and decay, we need to proclaim resurrection and ascension. 

May you all have a Blessed Ascension Day.