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.

The Saints, Failure, and Star Wars: A Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of All Saints'

Revelation 21.1-6a
Psalm 149
Colossians 1.9-14
Luke 6.20-36

St. Thomas's Anglican Church

Toronto, ON

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

Permit me, if you will, a chance to have a mild indulgence. I am a big Star Wars fan, and I would like to share with you one of my favourite moments in the series:

It is an early scene from the recent Star Wars film, The Last Jedi. Rey, the audience surrogate and protagonist, after a long journey she meets Luke Skywalker, the Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Master who saved the galaxy, defeated the evil Emperor, and saved his father from darkness. She stands before this person, more myth than man, and she extends and gives Luke his old lightsaber. The audience waits, will Luke venture forth once again to save the galaxy from evil? Will this legend continue to build new legends? It is so exciting to be in the presence of such a legend.

And after that moment that seems like an eternity, he casually tosses the lightsaber away. Instead of the legend, Rey discovers a bitter and regretful old man who unbeknownst to her has done seemingly unforgivable things and may have helped to create the evil that the galaxy is facing.

My friends, what does this have to do with the saints, and what does this have to do with the annual celebration of All Saints? After all, these are fictional characters, and Star Wars is just a film series and franchise owned by Disney to make lots and lots of money. Nevertheless, I introduce this to help frame how we might want to think about the Saints, the people who they are, the lives they lived, and the legends about them that can help us understand the role they can play for those of us who are Christian and how we conceptualise these seemingly legendary figures in our minds.

Consider this my friends, there are some who hated this scene and hated this movie. A reason for this is that they expected a legend and found a person, and that was disappointing. And I think we often approach the saints in similar ways. We hold them up as exemplars of faith, workers of miracles, great martyrs who stood resolute in the face of oppression, wise teachers of the mysteries of God, and these near perfect beings that appear as more legend than human.

We memorialise them in art, in film, in music, and in our churches in stained glass windows, icons, statues, and reredos. In the midst of our Mass, even though we are drawn up before the throne of God to worship alongside them, we cannot conceive of them to be like us both because they are super-human, and because we are just ordinary-human. After all, they have the title of saint, and we do not.

And yet, how many of us have read the stories of the saints? How many of us have scratched even somewhat deeper to consider the history, context, or consequences, both good and evil, of the saints, and what that means for us? For many saints, underneath the legends and iconography there is a human being who lives, breathes, and works just as we do, a human being who has doubts, regrets, fears, and pains just as we do. Even though we sometimes treat them like gods, they are not. We like the aesthetics of the saints, but we don’t often think about that, nor do we consider the consequences of their actions following their lives and the actions done in their names.

Whether we our considering the whole shared canon of saints or holy peoples, or the individual saints of Roman Catholicism, Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, or the Protestant churches, when we look to the Kalendars of saints, ancient, medieval, and modern, we can find a number of skeletons in the closets. How do we think about S. Augustine of Hippo, S. John Chrysostom, or Martin Luther and their writings about Judaism in the aftermath of the Holocaust? How do we consider Junipero Serra, the founder of the California missions, the Jesuit Martyrs of Canada, or the first Canadian bishop, Charles Inglis in the light of colonialism and continued oppression of indigenous peoples here and throughout the world? How do we honour the witness of the martyrs of Uganda when such saints are being used to legitimise the dehumanisation of LGBTQ+ peoples in the Anglican Communion? Why do some call Charles I of England and Nicholas II of Russia saints and martyrs despite the violence, and war they brought to the world?

If those of us who are Christian believe that those we call saints are present before God and praying to God on our behalf, how do we reconcile their successes and failures as they stand before God, just as we ourselves will be judged for our own successes and failures.

These are hard and difficult questions to ask. And when we first hear them, we might recoil, and say “how dare you! How dare you even mention these things and besmirch the saints!” while clutching onto these stories as if they are Sacred Texts! But again, how many of us have read the stories, because many of them are not page turners. But when we look into those stories, we see people who have heard the message of Jesus and tried their best to live it out to the best of their ability, to love their enemies, to pray for those who persecuted them, who turned the other cheek when struck, who gave their shirt and coat to those who asked, and served the needs of others ahead of their own needs. It is their humanity that gives us hope that we too can live out the message of Jesus to the best of our ability.

The stories, the hagiographies, the legends, they all point to a reality that we can aspire to, work towards, and build, they teach us, just as Jesus teaches us, how to live our lives in faith, hope, charity, and love towards one another. We ask for the saints to pray for us, to petition God to give us the strength we otherwise would not always have to do unto others as others would have done unto us. They give us hope for the truth of Christ’s redemption, there is no sin that is so great that cannot be forgiven by God.

When we look the stories, hagiographies, legends, lives, and consequences of the saints, we must also look at when there was failure. The saints are not gods or demigods, they are human, and like us they made mistakes, sometimes grave ones, ones that do not materialise until later in their lives or well beyond them, and that have repercussions for generations. But as we learn from the saints and pass on their stories and the teachings of the church, we must, going back to a line from Star Wars, pass on their and our own “weaknesses, follies, and failure also. Yes, failure most of all, [because failure is the greatest teacher of all].”

Those that have held to the faith, those whom we consider to be the Communion of Saints, pray for us to be “filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that we may lead lives worthy of the Lord…as we bear fruit in every good work.” And just as they pray for us, we pray for those who have died and gone before us into that communion to be pardoned of their sins and perfected into the fullness and likeness of God. And the church, united in heaven and here on earth, we honour the triumphs of the saints, we mourn the failures of the church, we teach all that we have learned good and bad to those who come after us, and we remember those who came before. And together, we worship the true and living God until God makes all things new and lives among us, wiping away every tear, and bringing sorrow and death to an end.

Amen.

The Humanity of the Villains: A Sermon for the Feast of S. Matthew

Proverbs 3:1-6
Psalm 119:33-40
2 Timothy 3:14-17
Matthew 9:9-13

St. Thomas's Anglican Church
Toronto, ON

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

One of the themes that is a constant throughout the Gospels is that Jesus chooses to associate himself with unsavoury figures. Not only that, he brings people like them, like Matthew into his inner circle, and makes them integral to his ministry. It is something that is repeated so often that the significance of it is diminished because it is so common. Yes, Jesus interacted with tax collectors and sinners, so what? We hear it and then we move on. Yet when Jesus reaches out to these people and reaches out to embrace the common humanity that they share with each other, we see people being transformed and their humanity being restored. The divine person of Christ who shares our humanity reaches out like a physician to heal the person.

There are plenty of stories of figures who have been transformed by the power of Christ into a new person. We revere people like S. Dismas, the good thief crucified next to Jesus, S. Paul, S. Francis of Assisi, and of course S. Matthew. But consider that these people have a particular honorific attached to them, and when we write their names in a sartorial function, we put an S-T next to their name denoting an almost larger than life status to them because of their saintly status. We cannot possibly be like them, and indeed though we as Christians may celebrate the lives of transformed sinners, we fall into an old habit that seemingly denies the possibility of such an occurrence.

We are enculturated to see people as being defined of varying degrees of impurity and of being marked in some way by who they are and what they do. Though this is certainly a very old thing that we do, it seems that our contemporary society and culture hypercharges this practice. There always has to be the “bad guy”, there always has to be the villain. The villains of our stories and of our lives are always evil, born defective, defined by their evil actions, and will always be considered evil. The criminal is always a criminal, the sinner is always a sinner, and the tax collector is always a tax collector.

And if there is a villain, then there always needs to be a hero! The hero is always good, always right, and even when they do make a mistake, it’s okay because they are good because they were born good and righteous, and they do not carry the epitaph of sinner for they are righteous. When we consider the ways our identities are cultivated by the media, advertising, consumerism, and in the very cultural air we breathe, so long as we have not been marked as a sinner in society, we are the heroes of our own stories. We are perpetually good and correct. In the most perverse way, this model of society makes us the most “Saintly” or “Christ-like” because we are always good just as a saint or Christ are good!

Maybe we need to hear more closely the words Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Jesus came for the sake of those we have labeled as the villains and those rejected by society because he sees in them the humanity that we forget that they have.

Why is a tax collector such a reviled person in the Gospels? They are one of the few visible faces of the otherwise faceless Roman Empire that were contracted to collect the taxes, fees, duties, and customs from the people of the empire. They are part of the mechanism that ensures that the empire kept running, and a visible image seen by the oppressor of conquered and colonised people. Matthew, and other tax collectors, are then the ever-present reminder to the Jewish peoples living in Judea and Galilee that they are a conquered and colonised people. And the job of the tax collector meant extracting the wealth and value of the labour of the person they collected money from.

If we want to transpose this onto our own lives, then a good analogue might be the manager or supervisor at work who has the job of ensuring the value of your labour is extracted for the sake of a faceless and invisible corporate or government entity. And you cannot do anything about the faceless and invisible entity, but you can be mad at the person who is doing this to you, and so you are vindicated, you are the hero and they are the villain

Consider though that the tax collector makes their livelihood from the money that is collected in taxes. The very nature of their job forces them to inevitably take more from people than what is owed to the state because they too need to survive. In this arrangement, the tax collector can easily be incentivised to take a little more here or there, justifying it because there might be some need in their lives, and little by little, the shaving off the bit at the top to survive becomes defrauding and extorsion, and there is nothing to be done. Everyday people cannot stop paying taxes because the tax collector has the backing of soldiers to ensure taxes get paid, and the empire does not care so long as it gets what it needs to administer itself. Sure, the tax collector could stop collecting taxes, but there are few alternatives for them, and they still need this thing called money to survive. There are always reasons to people’s actions, and those actions do not define who they are!

Now let me be clear, this does excuse the hurtful or destructive actions the people do whether that be the defrauding done by an ancient tax collector, or the harm done to us by another person. Nor does this mean we just turn over and accept the harm done to us. We don’t wave our hands and go “oh well”. Jesus calls on them to stop and repent of their wrong doing and to follow him. But if we truly want to understand why Jesus called Matthew to be his disciple, and why he associated himself with tax collectors and sinners was because he saw within them the thing that people blinded by their own righteousness could not—their humanity. Jesus sees that, and offers a new way of being for the tax collector by following him and abandoning their wrong doing

And that is what makes Jesus’ actions so baffling, even today, because Jesus sees the reality that even those branded with the epitaphs of tax collector and sinner, that the victimiser can also be the victim, and that even the most heinous can be redeemed and restored because that person is a person and if we dare call ourselves Christian, then that means we have to believe that empathy, compassion, and love have the power to transform anyone no matter how callous, distant, or even evil because that was what Jesus did. He lived with them, worked with them, and offered a chance for them to abandon those actions which distanced themselves from others while protecting them from those who could not see past the actions of their past.

It is hard work, and it is the labour we choose to adopt if we call ourselves Christian, but when Jesus says that he will draw the whole world to himself, that means the whole world! Everyone shares in the same humanity that Christ brought onto himself, and therefore are granted the same promises of his divinity. This means there is hope, even for those like us who think of ourselves as righteous and the heroes of our own story.

Amen

Tearing Down Idols with S. Bartholomew: A Sermon for the Feast of S. Bartholomew the Apostle

Deuteronomy 18:15-18
Psalm 91
1 Corinthians 4:9-15
Luke 22:24-30

St. Thomas's Anglican Church
Toronto, ON

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

Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by Lo Spagnoletto

The Church remembers and celebrates the lives of the Jesus’ disciples and apostles, highlighting what they learned from him, and in the broader hagiographies, the lives and ministries they led following the Ascension of Jesus. But it must be said that some apostles are known and remembered better than others. Apostles and disciples like Ss. Peter, James the son of Zebedee, John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalene, and Thomas have extensive stories and legends about them in Rome, Spain and Portugal, Ephesus, France and India. But Bartholomew, whom we commemorate today, does not have as many legends or stories about him as other apostles. He only appears in the Synoptic Gospels, and he is not even named in the Gospel reading for the day. What we see are the disciples, which presumable would include Bartholomew, quarreling at the Last Supper about who was the greatest among them, and Jesus educating them on what it means to be the greatest—which is to be one who is like the youngest in a group, and the one who serves that group, namely to follow the example of Jesus by assuming the role of the one with the least status in a group and serving the needs of others.

Perhaps this lesson in some way shaped Bartholomew and the other disciples in their later lives, as in the few stories and legends that tell us of his later life, Bartholomew goes on to serve others by disrupting and bringing an end to what could be called an organised crime ring run by the Demon Astaruth/Astarte who was plaguing the people of a city in “India”.

This legend is in many ways fantastic and unusual. Eusebius and other ancient sources in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Armenian accounts say that Bartholomew went to India, but some of those sources admit that India could be anywhere from eastern Ethiopia and the Arabian Peninsula, to southern Iran, and to the actual Indian subcontinent. According to medieval legends, the demon Bartholomew drives out from the region is a demon based on the Phoenician goddess Astoreth, who would not have been worshipped as a god by anyone in this ancient zone of “India”. But when we look beyond the geographical anomalies and anachronisms, we see the transformation of a society liberated from a dangerous and exploitative relationship with a demon, where demons are rendered impotent and kings are humbled.

For this, Bartholomew was executed by another king by being crucified, skinned alive, and finally beheaded.

In a far-off city, a demon by the name of Astaruth tormented the people with “troubles, infirmities, damage, violence, and much affliction.” The demon would relent from these evils for a time when offered sacrifices, and people were willing to do so not knowing that the demon was the cause of their harms. What other choice did they have: illness and war will take a toll on people, and they came to believe the demon was actually helping them, and so they worshipped him like a god. It can be inferred from the legend that as time went on, it took more and more sacrifices and wealth from people to get the same help from the demon as they became enthralled to Astaruth. Thus, in this parasitic relationship, only the powerful and elite could gain aid from Astaruth, while those without that could only suffer further from the demon because they could not afford sacrifices to him.

Bartholomew came to reside in the temple of Astaruth, and by doing so, God bound the demon so that Astaruth could no longer harm the people of this city. Bartholomew then proceeded to heal those who had been afflicted by the demon, particularly the poor living near and around the temple. The king of the city learned of the apostle, asked Bartholomew to heal his daughter, and she was healed. The king, having lived under Astaruth’s parasitic relationship, attempts to pay for Bartholomew’s help by giving him gold and finery, only for Bartholomew to vanish into thin air. That night, Bartholomew approached the king in secret to explain to him why he healed the king’s daughter, and why he did not expect payment. Then he proceeded to teach him the Christian faith, who God and Christ are, and who the demon in their midst was.

The next day, Bartholomew exposes the demon before the people of the city in Astaruth’s temple and makes him reveal how he was exploiting and harming the people of the city. Together, the people of the city and the king take down the idol of Astaruth and other idols in the temple, and Bartholomew through the power of Jesus drives the demon out from the city into the wilderness to never be heard from again. The temple is rededicated as a church in a miraculous scene where angels come down from Heaven to give God’s blessing on the church, the people are healed of their infirmities and illnesses caused by the demon, they were baptised, and the king abandoned his thrown and crown to live a life of simplicity like that of the Apostle Bartholomew by serving the poor and those in need throughout the city.

In our Gospel, Jesus warns of the dangers of unjust and exploitative hierarchies and relationships and tells us how to avoid them and undo them. He says that “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors.” In relationships of benefactors and clients, and in lord and servant, there is the high potential of exploitation because antagonisms emerge in which the benefactor, in order to satisfy their own needs or desires, must take more from their client than they give. Such is the case in this far off city, antagonisms exist between the demon, the king, and the people. The demon, who created this whole scenario, demands more from the people than he is willing to give. In turn, the king, to help his own daughter, will likely have to demand from the people more than he can give to them so that he can pay off the demon. And as a result, there are people who are in great need, that are tormented by the demon, but are unable to pay the demon for the relief that the demon himself is causing.

Even when Bartholomew cures the king’s daughter, the king goes off to pay Bartholomew for his services because that is what is expected! He never considered the possibility of selfless service to another person. He lived in a society of deeply hierarchical relationships where things like kindness, generosity, service, and loyalty are bought and sold on an open market, not freely given.

What Jesus passes this along to his disciples, and what his disciples embody wherever they went, is that true leadership is one that comes from below, one that actively seeks to serve the needs of others in a spirit of generosity, where one gives fully of themselves to those in need, not because they themselves expect a return or compensation for that service, but because it the right thing to do. It is in this generosity that the kingdom of God is made manifest because in this model of servitude towards others, we are liberated from systems of antagonism, so we can truly embrace others because we no longer need to take from those below us to give to those above us in hopes we get a little back in return. The teachings of Christ allow us to break free from those antagonisms and join with others, where divisions like benefactor and client, lord and servant, no longer exist, and people unite and drive out evil by the power of God. It is in serving others that we ourselves are served, and it is in serving others that we are set free.

For as little as there is written about Bartholomew the Apostle, there is still much we can learn from his life and his ministry, and we too can hopefully work together to tear down the idols that divide us from each other so that we may truly come to love and serve one another in a spirit of compassion and generosity.

Amen.