Creeping Assyria: A Homily for the 8th Sunday after Trinity

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

St Thomas' Anglican Church
Toronto, ON

+In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen

Stele of Tiglath-Pileser III from the British Museum

One of the things I find most interesting about the latter parts of the Hebrew Bible, particularly the prophets, is how the Biblical account interacts with the historical record. The names at the beginning of Isaiah listed here, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah are not just names in the Bible, there are records of them existing, perhaps in the most fragmentary ways possible. In the cases of Ahaz and Hezekiah, we have relatively substantial record of them preserved through the Assyrian Empire. These kings, and indeed the Kingdoms of Judah stood in the shadow of the mighty Assyrian Empire and its great kings, Tiglath-Pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon II, and Sennacherib. Isaiah has a vision where God condemns Jerusalem and Judah’s worship of God in harsh, but somewhat nebulous terms. But if we can understand some of the history of Judah and Assyria, we can then better understand God’s condemnation of Jerusalem.

For the kings and people of Judah, Assyria at first can seem to be far away, a place over there and something not to worry about.* The Assyrian Empire was noted for its brutality in the ancient world as a matter of course, their records of their conquests are terse but violent, the royal palaces were adorned with images of Assyrian conquest over their enemies (some of which are in the British museum). They regularly practiced deportation where conquered and subject peoples in their empire would be moved elsewhere to prevent rebellion and to force a diverse population to integrate to create a homogenous culture (this is something that happened to the Northern Kingdom of Israel). They maintained elaborate cults to their gods, particularly Ashur, Ishtar, and many others where grandiose statues would be lavished with feasts and adorned with finery. Some of these cults according to the Bible, particularly the ones of Canaanite and Semitic origin, practiced human sacrifice.

Why would Assyria act with such violence? Was there a greater purpose to such brutality and violence, to ripping people and families apart, deporting them to places far from their homes, to lavish cults to national deities, and violent spectacles over their enemies? Well no, cruelty was the point. Cruelty was the tool used to create and bind Assyria together. The Kings of Assyria were not gods, but they were the chosen kings of the four corners of the earth, the chosen kings of the universe, to defy them was to defy the will of the gods, and such defiance warranted severe punishment. Though Assyria may be over there for Judah, the reality is that Assyria was a neighbour they could not ignore and could not antagonize lest they risk losing things like trade, diplomatic assistance, or even their own sovereignty. Therefore, they become more like Assyria to endear themselves to them. Little by little, the brutality and cruelty of Assyria could slide into Judah.** If Judah were more like Assyria, then maybe Assyria might leave Judah alone, especially after Israel is destroyed by Assyria. Ahaz in particular adopts the cultic practices of Assyria and brings them into the Temple of Jerusalem and even offered his own son up as a sacrifice. In 2 Kings, throughout the text, there is an ever-present sense of ongoing corruption by Assyria as the people worship not to God in the Temple, but at the High Places and to deities besides God. And though Judah was not perfect, far from it, it too has its own history of violence. But the cruelty of Assyria increased, so too did the cruelty of Judah because neighbours affect each other even if some in Judah believed their worship of God made them more righteous than Assyria.

Image on pithos sherd found at Kuntillet Ajrud below
the inscription "Yahweh and his Asherah”. In the Bible,
El and Yahweh are associated with each other.
In some material they are separate beings,
sometimes they are the same being.

Who could blame Judah for acting like Assyria? It’s one little Asherah pole, one little altar to Moloch, where is the harm in that. Scholars point out that the God of Israel and Judah, referred to as El in the Ba’al Cycle, was worshiped by other Semitic peoples as part of a larger Middle Eastern pantheon, so despite God calling on Israel and Judah to worship him alone, the people could have worshiped God alongside other gods because everyone else did it, and it just makes sense to please as many gods as possible. The more gods on your side, the better off you are. Bit by bit, Judah becomes more like Assyria with all the violence and cruelty associated. Assyria is no longer over there but here.

The problem for Isaiah isn’t that the worship of God had stopped, people continued to worship God. Instead, Judah devotion to other gods, gods which according to Isaiah do not even exist, has a material consequence on the poor and most vulnerable. Food and money are being spent on cults which demand violence and wealth to maintain themselves, which caused suffering among the people and the blame for that violence falls at the wealthiest and most powerful in Judah, namely the king. God does not require human worship to be complete and would rather not be worshipped while people are starving and suffering for the sake of idols and false gods. According to Isaiah, if the worship of God does not honour the poor, the orphan, the widow, the migrant, and the marginalised, and if the worship of God comes at the expense of those most marginalised, then God does not want it! Full stop.

Isaiah’s condemnation can make one sympathetic to the most iconoclastic peoples in history. Why spend so much on beauty and opulence, especially here? As Isaiah says, “incense is an abomination”. Why spend so much when there is so much need. But things like beauty, incense, the festivals, solemn gatherings, and everything that is used for the worship of God was created by God not because God needs these things, but for humanity, for us, to use in common with one another to give praise and thanksgiving to God. Everything was made by the One True God to be used in common to elevate those most marginalized by society but those who are closest to God: the poor, the orphan, the widow, the migrant, the disabled, the LGBT person, and the prisoner. When so much of the world revels and celebrates the cruelty and violence against them, our worship of God must empower us to serve and protect those most at risk in society.

Shrine dedicated to S. Michael the Archangel at All Saints'
Episcopal Church in San Francisco, CA. This shrine was made and
dedicated to the parishioners and friends of All Saints' who
passed away from HIV/AIDS. All Saints' is an Anglo-Catholic
parish in San Francisco, CA.

Isaiah’s condemnation speaks not only to the past, but to communities today. He speaks to our own Anglo-Catholic tradition to remind us that all this (gesture) does not come at the expense of the marginalized but exists for them. Sometimes our tradition has met the call, from the slum and worker priests of London who served the poor of an industrializing city who would otherwise be forgotten by building places of wonder and beauty for them, to the parishes of San Francisco that provided care to HIV/AIDS patients when many were content to let them die. But sometimes our tradition falls short, and we can become more preoccupied with the minutia of liturgy over and against what our worship calls us to do, “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow.” We still worship God when we fall short, but the reason for our worship is distorted and lost. In the end, God does not need our worship to be complete, but God invites us to honour him not only in praise and thanksgiving, but in serving those closest to him.

When you look at the news, look at social media, it can sometimes feel like the world is becoming a more violent place. In a world where violence and cruelty is becoming more and more the norm, where the problems of over there seem to coming more and more here (and were always here in their own ways), it becomes imperative for the communities that gather to worship God to serve those who are the victims of such violence. It is too easy to be drawn into greater patterns of cultural violence through inaction or indifference, or worse by choice, because Assyria is over there. But over there too quickly becomes here, and it becomes easier and easier to lose sight of God. But God continually calls for people to come back to the true worship of him where the poor are exalted, the hungry are filled, and the oppressed are set free. Our God will come and not keep silent, and he call invites us to serve the needs of the people closest to him.

Amen.

* During this sermon, I would occasionally point to the South when referencing Assyria. Coincidentally, by point at the South, I was also pointing to the United States.
** This sermon was inspired in part by reports of Canadian Border Service agents harassing asking for people’s immigration status in Toronto (https://www.680news.com/2019/07/12/advocates-concerned-over-reports-of-random-id-checks-from-immigration-officers-in-toronto/)
(https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/07/immigration-officers-are-conducting-id-checks-toronto-streets-and-people-are-furious/)

A Joyous Apocalypse: A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Easter

Acts 16:9-15
Psalm 67
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 5:1-9

St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

A few weeks ago, I participated in a symposium on apocalyptic literature in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. The first day of this symposium ended with a roundtable discussion over how we define apocalyptic as a genre, and what are some things that we should consider when comparing the apocalyptic literature between Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. One scholar opened up the conversation by describing a painting of demons tormenting different individual people through various devices and tools of torture and punishment in the afterlife. He asked this painting was apocalyptic. Being the precocious and headstrong graduate student that I am, I decided to answer his question. I argued that the image was indeed apocalyptic because it reveals and describes in a fantastic and extraordinary way the final fate of humanity. After a brief discussion the scholar revealed that his question was a trap. The image he was describing could not be apocalyptic because it was actually a nineteenth-century Japanese painting by Kawanabe Kyōsai called the Torments of Hell. He argued that apocalypses were borne out of a particular historical and cultural framework in antiquity shared by Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians that precluded the possibility of an “apocalyptic” work being made outside of that. Therefore, this painting could not be apocalyptic because it came from nineteenth-century Japan and not the ancient Middle East. He further argued that apocalypses are about a communal destiny or the collective destiny of humanity, and not individual eschatology or fate, and again said this painting could not be apocalyptic as it focused on individual torments.

I am a stubborn PhD student, so I pushed back against this distinguished scholar. I argued that his conception of the apocalyptic was overly narrow and precluded the possibility of how the end of days can be presented and understood outside such a narrow cultural and historical scope. Additionally, apocalypses can be both communal and personal. Indeed, most of the apocalyptic accounts in the Bible, Zoroastrian scriptures, and beyond are often mediated, experienced, and recounted by individuals (either as a literary device or to connect the apocalypse to history in some way) such as Enoch, Daniel, or John of Patmos, the author of the Book of Revelation which we have been reading from these past few weeks . I also argued that there are many works that are apocalyptic in nature even though scholars do not treat them as such, including Dante’s Divine Comedy, or even Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower because these stories involve the divine interrupting the human life to reveal the final reality of individuals, communities, and creation itself. We went on like this for a bit before a scholar from Cologne interrupted and changed the subject, but I could tell that this scholar did not agree with me.

I am an apocalyptic kind of person. I read and study late-antique and early-medieval apocalypses. I am fascinated with media and popular culture that plays around with apocalyptic themes and ideas. One of my friends got irritated with me recently once when I tried to argue, somewhat jokingly, that everything is apocalyptic. I firmly believe what we say about the final fate of ourselves and this world says a lot about who we are and what we value in the here and now. Though there are many kinds of apocalypses throughout history and cultures. Christianity is indeed an apocalyptic religion because we believe in a God who exists above and beyond time and space who has crashed into time and space through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. He reveals himself to us now in the Gospels, through writing, art, hymnody, and in these accounts he relates to us what the destiny of creation, society, and ourselves were, are, and will be.

Our word apocalypse is derived from the Greek word ἀποκάλυψις, meaning revelation. This kind of revelation is not about answering a standard question. This word is about the revealing of something hidden or unknown being made known to us. We often associate it with the end of the world, because the Biblical book which we most associate with this idea, the Book of Revelation, discusses the destruction of this world, and the creation of a new Heaven and Earth where God will dwell among humanity in a new Jerusalem. Many texts considered apocalyptic that precede and follow Revelation carry similar themes of destruction and renewal either because Revelation is drawing from older ideas, or because newer texts are drawing from revelation. Of course, this idea of the end of the world is magnified in our culture, and we have a whole genre of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic media that is fixated on just the destruction of the world or destruction of civilization (often neglecting the aspects of renewal or recreation). I argue that this whole contemporary genre of apocalypses comes following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Cold War. The first Godzilla film in 1954 is one of the first new apocalypses in our time.  These apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic themes are magnified in our time in the political climate and coming environmental catastrophes of climate change.

But what marks most of our modern apocalypses is not the hope that undergirds the Book of Revelation, like in today’s reading, but a nihilistic attitude that looks at an inevitable future with dread. We see the crises building on the horizon like an oncoming wave and we stand in fear of it crashing on-top of us. In our fear, we cannot conceive of diving through the wave to consider what lies on the other side. This is what media, scholars, preachers, and society get so desperately wrong with apocalypses—we focus and fixate on the destruction and devastation of apocalypse with a voyeuristic glee rather than considering the apocalypse, the revelation of the Divine crashing into Humanity, to transform not only the world around us, but our very lives. Indeed, apocalypses can occur on a very individual and personal level and can transform us personally just as it transforms the world.

That apocalyptic transformation is not about restoring things to what they once were, but into something new that simultaneously recognizes the past, but transforms that past into a fuller reality. The fruit and leaves of the Tree of Life heal the nations and people of the world, but those wounds borne by humanity are still carried into the new creation and are remembered. Indeed, the Crucified Christ, who is often associated with the Tree of Life, carries with him the wounds of his crucifixion, healed but still present, into his resurrection. And his resurrection is the same resurrection that we will have at the end of all things.

Time does not belong to us; time belongs to God. The end is not for our voyeuristic interests, but for God to manifest within time and space to share the good news to those the world has forgotten: the poor, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the imprisoned, the refugee, and the oppressed. The great revelation of God comes to them because God entered into time as Jesus for their sake, and the Church bears witness to that revelation, to that apocalypse in sacrament and service to the world. Thus, God meets and interacts with creation through the revelation of his presence within creation, society, and the Church. Stories of God revealing himself to the prophets is apocalyptic, Jesus healing others is apocalyptic, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is apocalyptic, Baptism is apocalyptic, the Eucharist is apocalyptic, prayer is apocalyptic, and ministry that makes God’s presence known in the world: ministry for the poor, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the imprisoned, and the oppressed, is apocalyptic. The Church is the herald of the apocalypse, and where God’s ways should be known upon the Earth, and his saving health among all nations should be manifest.

Apocalypse tells us to live in hope, and not fear because though the world is constantly in motion and changing, God does not abandon the creation that he declared to be good at the beginning. The apocalypse gives us the freedom to imagine the world as it could and should be. The presence of God, the teachings of Jesus, and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit gives us the ability embrace that spark of creation to work with God in building that new creation with the knowledge that at the end, the Lord God will be our light, and will reign forever and ever. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid,” trust in God, and walk with him as he walks among this world healing and caring for those whom we have forgotten but are closest to his heart. And in that way, God is revealed to the world.

Amen.

Forgiveness, Trauma, and Moving Forward: A Sermon for the Sunday Sunday after Easter

Acts 9:1-20
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19

St. Thomas's Anglican Church
Toronto, ON

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

The Denial of Saint Peter, an oil-on-canvas painting by Gerard Seghers

If there is a universal constant to human experience is that we all make mistakes. We all do things that we regret, hurt people that we care about, and hurt people we barely know. Sometimes we say or do something careless without thinking about the consequences. Sometimes we say or do something we think is funny or charming, and it blows up in our faces. Sometimes we try to be sneaky and get away with something only to get caught. Sometimes we might be greedy or rude, and in our haste, we run over someone. And sometimes, when we decide to give into the darker temptations of our hearts and minds, we hurt someone maliciously to make us feel good about ourselves, or just because we can.

Human nature is damaged, it is broken. Our capacity to do good is wounded and the qualities intrinsic to our nature given to us by God are distorted by ignorance, suffering, death, and sin. Culturally speaking, we see and think of the battle between good and evil to be acted out on a great and epic scale, but the true conflict between good and evil, sin and righteousness, are more often than not fought on a deeply personal level in the choices we make and the thought (or lack of thought) that go into them. Indeed, it is that very banality of evil that makes the greatest evils possible. “It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it”* because to admit such a fall is to open the door to guilt and from that guilt pain arises over what was damaged and lost because of us. Guilt, pain, and regret hurt, they cut to the core because we see how our actions (or inactions) become two-edged swords. Just as we wound others, we wound ourselves. So, we bury the action rather than face it, and sometimes we keep repeating it because we believe there is nothing else to be done once a person is caught on a particular path.

It can take different things to wake us up from our stupor. Saul received a dramatic vision from Jesus and was blinded which led him to see the damage he was doing. For Peter, it was merely being in Jesus’ presence once again after he denied him to get him to see the error of his ways. The wounded nature of humanity can give us varying limits to both our capacity to do good, and our capacity to recognise evil. But in both cases, Jesus forgives Saul and Peter freely.

However, we inhabit a culture of extreme binary opposites. We live in a world of total depravity or total sanctification—there is no in-between. These ideas have been around for millennia in one form or another, but we best understand them from the European Christian religious reformations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but they now operate beyond Christian discourse, especially as the Church becomes less and less relevant to the North American society. There is a totality in which everything is brought to its extreme. We are cultured to present ourselves as being perpetually-right and perpetually-good. Wrongdoing, mistakes, and sins, whether or not they happen because of malice, are all rendered as instantly unforgivable and a mark of total moral failure on the person. This has been at the foundation of carceral systems throughout history in which the bodies, minds, and souls of people are destroyed not for the sake of rehabilitation, but to utterly destroy them. It feels good to condemn others because it makes us feel good and righteous, and yet the hammer of justice tends to fall the hardest on the most marginalised in society. Consider Jesus’ crucifixion, such a punishment was reserved for those like Jesus who were the poorest and at the margins of Roman society, a wealthy or privileged person would never be condemned to such bodily destruction.

In turn, if someone, particularly someone powerful, is caught doing wrong and apologises, the apology is not always genuine because to admit wrongdoing is to admit to that total moral failure. This is where we get the apologies of “I am sorry you feel that way,” or “I’m sorry you misunderstood that” and it turns the “failure” back onto the victim. Such a practice trickles down to us as well It is never our fault, it’s someone else’s fault. If there is ever a genuine apology, the penalty must be severe and the penance intense and public to demonstrate to others what happens to bad people.

In this mire, it is hard to understand and grasp the kind of forgiveness that Jesus offers and invites us to embody. As hard as it is to break ourselves from the cultural mould, we ought to remember what writers such as Ss. Augustine of Hippo, John Chrysostom, Athanasius, the Desert Mothers and Fathers, Julian of Norwich and many others say regarding humanity—human nature is not totally depraved but only wounded. We see in the Gospels Peter and the apostles doing good while struggling with his own failings. Saul said he was completely committed to the Law of Moses, including the moral and ethical dimensions of the Law, while also actively persecuting others. Jesus points out in the Sermon on the mount that gentiles and tax collectors are capable of doing compassion and mercy while still falling short of the mark he left for us.

I am reminded of what JRR Tolkien once wrote in a couple letters, “one must face the fact: the power of Evil in the world is not finally resistible by incarnate creatures [such as us], however 'good' [we are] … It is possible for the good, even the saintly, to be subjected to a power of evil which is too great for them to overcome – in themselves.” Though we resist evil, and strive to do good, even the best of us will fall short, but that struggle to do good is what is moral. We must however acknowledge the pain and the hurt we have caused, and the pain and hurt within us. We must not allow it to consume us until we lose control and fall apart because it is in that place, that place of recognising our limitations and failings that where the scales can fall from our eyes, and we see Jesus there. Jesus offers forgiveness to us freely, and then we can learn to forgive freely as well.

What is this forgiveness though, what does it mean, and what does it look like? In our totalising world, we misunderstand forgiveness. We think forgiveness is a return to the status quo, and brushing off of anything and all things, to accept the harm done without question. That’s not what forgiveness is. Too often people in positions of power demand victimised people or traumatised communities to to “forgive” the abuse done to them by their victimisers so as the violence against them can continue unchallenged and unabated. Additionally, there are indeed actions that are unacceptable. For example, violence, especially violence in all its forms motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia are unacceptable and people need to be held accountable for their actions. What forgiveness truly is however is the pathway to something new in which people are set free anger, hate, sorrow, pain, fear, and terror are let go. When we are forgiven, or when we forgive, nothing might not seem different, the heavens do not open up and sometimes things do not change dramatically. However, we open up ourselves to a new life and world of new possibilities.

Sculptural relief of the Ascension in Walsingham England.
Note the nail marks in Jesus' feet.

We see in the very resurrected body of Jesus the recognition of what forgiveness looks like. Yes, he died but now is risen from the dead. Though he is embodied in the same body as before, that body has changed because he now bears the marks and wounds of his betrayal and death. The damage that Judas, Peter, and all the disciples who abandoned him and denied him is still there. Jesus bears the wounds of his scourging, physical assault, and crucifixion and are visible to see. The ordeals and traumas he endured are still there. Indeed, he carries those scars and traumas physically into heaven, and the discordance of such trauma are now part of a greater harmony of a new creation. There is no going back to what was before, you can never go back. The damage that is done is done. Instead Jesus offers to Peter, to Paul, and to all of us a new vision of the world and how we can be in it: feed my sheep, feed my lambs, and follow me.

We might not always receive forgiveness from the people we have harmed, despite recognising our failures and genuinely apologising and repenting. That reality can indeed hurt, and we are not owed forgiveness from anyone. To expect it from those we have harmed is presumptuous and can retraumatise people. But we still have hope, “if any sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2). Jesus offers forgiveness freely through his resurrection which we can still embrace to help transform us not only so that we may resist evil more fully and completely, but so that we too can learn to forgive others freely. The victory that Christ won over sin has given us greater blessings than those which sin had taken from us: "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20). We can never go back to what was before, but we can go forward with a new sight and vision of the world remade, restored, and redeemed.

Amen.

*This is a quote from Kreia from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II.