Condemning Anti-Semitism: A Homily for the Epiphany

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

St Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI

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

There has been a major spike in incidents, crimes, and attacks motivated by anti-Semitism over the past few years. In the United States there were nearly two-thousand recorded anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 alone, and this is a major increase from the 700 recorded attacks in 2016. New York state saw nearly a dozen separate incidents over the course of Chanukah this year. Anti-Semitic crimes have also become more frequent all throughout the world as well. Even Hawaii is not wholly removed from this as a person suspected of vandalizing a Beverly Hills Synagogue was arrested in Kona on December 18. During the Feast of the Epiphany we as Christians should contemplate the meaning of the Gentile Nations paying homage to the God of Israel. As Isaiah says, “Nations shall come to God’s light, and kings to the brightness of his dawn.” We should meditate on the Christians origins from Judaism to better respond to anti-Semitism in our communities.

These past four years have seen an increase in violence against not only our Jewish neighbours. Incidents against black and brown communities have increased, incidents against migrants have increased, incidents against Muslims have increased, and incidents against LGBTQIA people have increased. It seems as if the world is becoming a more violent and dark place. The Church must not only condemn such violence, it must also be a vehicle of reconciliation between communities and a shield for the most vulnerable who face such violence. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry often has called for the Episcopal Church to be a place for people to walk in the path of love with one another.

In our response however we sometimes seek to collapse all forms of prejudicial violence into very simple language—all violence against marginal communities is wrong and needs to be condemned and there is little to no difference between the kinds of violence that different communities experience—hate it just hate. This is overly simplistic and sometimes blinds us to reality. Though all acts of violence are tragedies and require response, hate manifests itself in different ways and different forms for different communities. We must be cognizant of the particularities of the violence and how Christianity has influenced or created these different kinds of violence. Anti-Semitism is a unique problem for Christianity however because it is a virus that continues to mutate within the Church over the course of centuries and millennia and prevents us from fully engaging with and embracing our Jewish neighbours.

The history of Judaism and Christianity is a messy one. Jesus was an observant Jew who lived in Roman Judea and Galilee. Christianity is borne out of Judaism, but the when, where, and why Christianity and Judaism drifted apart is debated by scholars. In places like ancient Syria, Iraq, and Iran, Christian writers were complaining of Christians maintaining Jewish practices and customs as late as the 700s. Can we call these people Christian? Jewish? I do not know. Though Christianity was borne out of Judaism, both Judaism and Christianity continued to grow, change, and influence each other throughout history. The relationship is never a one-way street. The diverse Judaisms of today are different from the diverse Judaisms of antiquity, and yet there are threads of continuity across the millennia. The New Testament, and especially the Gospels, reflect the messiness of Christian origins within Judaism.

The Gospel of Matthew is the messiest of the Gospels in this regard, and the arrival of the Wise Men from the East is emblematic of that messiness. When the Gospel of Matthew was written in the late first and early second century, there was no Christianity. Such a distinction between Judaism and Christianity did not exist. The various Jewish communities in the ancient world were in disarray due to the Roman Empire destroying Jerusalem and its Temple of God in the year 70. Different factions and groups were left to pick up the pieces left by the loss of the Temple. One such faction were the communities of Jews who believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah for the Jewish people. The Gospel of Matthew was written to show how Jesus fulfills that role as a new Moses and a new David, Jesus is the prophet, priest, and king of the Jewish people.

The prophets, particularly Isaiah, are employed by the Jewish author to show how the coming of Jesus ushers in the messianic age for the Jewish people. The magi, magi being the Greek name for the Zoroastrian priests of ancient Iran, pay homage to the Messiah or Christ. They give him the gold of a king, the frankincense of a priest, and the myrrh of a prophet who will die for speaking the truth.However, just as this story highlights the Jewishness of Jesus, it is quick to condemn Jews who do not accept that Jesus is the Messiah. Herod and all of Jerusalem is frightened by the coming of the gentile magi to pay homage to the Messiah. It is Herod’s jealousy over Jesus’ claim to kingship over the Jewish nation that leads to his slaughtering of the children in Bethlehem which follows the arrival of the magi. However, such discordance between Jewish factions is not uncommon in Matthew.

The Gospel of Matthew contains a line that Christians have used to justify their violence against Jews throughout history. During Jesus trial in Matthew 27:25 “the people as a whole answered [regarding condemning Jesus], ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’”. Later generations of Christians believed their violence towards Jews was justified because of stories like that of Herod or the crucifixion—they accuse the Jews of being Christ-killers and say they deserve the violence as a form of human enacted divine retribution.

This is an extreme form of anti-Semitism, but it is congruent with many other kinds of anti-Semitism. It has emerged in many ways and at different times throughout history, but none of it has any place in the Church. However, it is the legacy we have inherited. We as the Gentile nations have been called to the God of Israel through Jesus Christ, but we must not forget that there are communities and people with whom God has formed a covenant with that has never been revoked. Our fore-bearers and ancestors have often deliberately overlooked the unique relationship Jews and Christians have with each other. Such ignorance has led to the horrors of the Inquisition, pogroms, and Holocaust. God will always deliver his people when they cry in distress, but the Church should not be the cause of that distress. Instead, we must cognizant of our common heritage with Judaism, learn how our traditions have grown, changed, and affected each other, and extend a hand of friendship and fellowship with our Jewish neighbors as one family of God.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has called on Christians to express their solidarity with the Jewish community tomorrow, January 6 in response to the rise in anti-Semitic attacks throughout the country. The bishops of the Diocese of Long Island wrote also that “We cannot stand silent before this fresh outbreak of anti-Jewish terror, We call on our fellow Episcopalians now to boost our own spiritual solidarity with our Jewish sisters and brothers. Anti-Semitism is a problem of special concern, not to be overlooked, to Episcopalians and all Christians. … Episcopalians should become a prayerful presence in the face of the fear and vulnerability created by these incidents threatening the Jewish community.

We as Christians are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our Baptismal Covenant commands us to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being.” Just as we stand against all forms of violence and discrimination in the world, we must stand against violence against our Jewish neighbors. In a world which seems so keen on repeating the mistakes of the past. We can build a better world where God’s light can shine brightly.

Arise, shine; for your light has come,
and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
For darkness shall cover the earth,
and thick darkness the peoples;
but the Lord will arise upon you,
and his glory will appear over you.

Amen

The Word's Body: A Homily for the First Sunday after Christmas

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Psalm 147:13-21
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18

St Christopher's Episcopal Church
Kailua, HI

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

The Sundays following Christmas are often the runts of the liturgical litter. After major mid-week liturgies for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the First Sunday after Christmas can be easily overlooked and missed by people. The Readings for the First Sunday after Christmas however help us to understand the events that we celebrate on December 24 and 25. Just as we should not be so quick to rush through Advent in our desire to celebrate Christmas, we should not rush through Christmas for the next thing (even if people are already setting off fireworks before New Year’s, and even if Longs and Target already are putting out Valentine’s Day stuff). We should take time and really look at our Christmas decorations and really listen to our Christmas hymns in order to contemplate and understand the mysteries that we celebrate every year, and the readings today help us to do so.

Baby Yoda nativity. Thanks, I hate it.

We are very quick to domesticate the story of Jesus’ birth. It is the most well-known story in the New Testament: Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem and Jesus in born in a manger because there is no room at the inn. Angels appear to shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus, and they leave their flocks to witness this event. We have many forms of media that retell this, we have pageants to re-enact it the story, and we have kitschy nativity sets that recreate the event. We can also swap out elements in the nativity sets to make it more humorous or precious including cat nativities, football nativities, sausage and cured meat nativities, and Star Wars nativities with little Baby Yodas as Jesus.

To be clear, pageants and other re=telling this story are not bad things in and of themselves (though the Baby Yoda nativity is a problem for a whole set of reasons). However, in domesticating the Nativity of Jesus, we lose track of the cosmic significance of this event—the Creator of the World, the Word of God, has entered into creation itself. He took on the physical elements of this world and became human. The Gospel of John tells us that the immaterial takes on the material, flesh, blood, bone, cells, and all the messy aspects of life. That very matter that Jesus takes on, our flesh and blood, become the very vehicle and garment of salvation, as Isaiah says, “he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.” Jesus takes on a body and takes on everything that comes with having a body, including those aches and pains we all know and love.

Paul says that Jesus came into the world in fullness of time, and in so doing came to a place and time. Psalm 147, in the parts we did not read says, “God is not impressed by the might of a horse and has no pleasure in the strength of a man.” Not only did the Word come into creation, he came in a specific place and time in history and entered the world in the most helpless and vulnerable way possible as an infant. Just as the creator of the world held creation in his arms, now the creator is held by his creation in the arms of his mother, Mary. His body has to be fed, protected, and cared for, and will grow up in a world where life for 99% of humanity is short, cruel, and poor. God chooses to become poor, and he enters into the world as a marginalized and oppressed person.

Though he will grow-up as a carpenter’s child he still grew up as a poor Peregrinus, a non-citizen or foreigner under Roman Law. His home was conquered and occupied by the Roman Empire. Through the toil and sweat of their labour, the people of Galilee and Judea served the Roman Empire under the watchful eye of the Roman Peace or Pax Romana which extracted heavy taxes from the poor to maintain the occupation over the land. The law and order of Galilee and Judea was maintained by the Roman legions who could extract labour or violence from the populace with little to no consequence. The King of the Universe comes into the world as a slave to a world and society that will reject him.

Once again, Psalm 147 says that God “sends out his command to the earth,” and authors the laws that govern creation, but now enters into the world to live as a subject to the commands and laws of creation and humanity. And yet, in the course of Jesus’ life, he causes, as Isaiah says, “righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.” He feeds the poor, he heals the sick and injured, and raises the dead. Not for profit, not for political maneuverings, but because it is the right thing to do. The laws of physics bend to his command because what is good, and right cannot be stopped by human limitations around supply and demand or the laws of physics even. His very presence draws attention and power away from the rich, the powerful, and the elite. He makes to poor, the widow, the orphan, the oppressed, the sex workers, and the most marginalized the centre of a new creation.

He gives freely that which is restricted in his society, health and prosperity exist for the wealthy and powerful, and yet Jesus gives it and more to the poor. “The Lord lifts up the lowly but casts the wicked to the ground.”

The Word of God, who came into the world as a newborn infant will as an adult experience the worst violence and horrors that humanity can inflict on it through his passion, crucifixion, and death because he spoke out and acted against the cruel injustices of the world around him. He is executed for treason and sedition against the Roman state and died as a duly convicted criminal under Roman Law. But once again, in the fullness of time, in human history, Jesus is resurrected from the dead, and ascends into heaven with the very same body that he was born into. He carries the scars and traumas, the aches and pains, and the limitations of that body into Heaven in his ascension. The fullness of the human experience that played out on Earth are now in Heaven. Through Jesus’ body and experience, Heaven and Earth are linked together. All of this was done according to Paul “in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

Our bodies too also bear the marks and scars of our history and traumas. Our bodies may also have been sites of violence where someone has done evil upon us. But that physicality is the garment of salvation. Those who are the most marginalized, and those who have experienced the hardships of human existence are the “crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of God” because Jesus became poor and lived and served among the most marginalized. They are his people. The scars borne by the poor do not go away but are held dearly by God and those who carry those scars become God’s children through the grace of Jesus Christ and become heirs of God’s promises for creation.

All this comes from God entering the world as a human child in a particular place, in a particular time, in a particular socio-economic class, and in a particular way. Each Christmas pageant, conventional nativity set, and Christmas hymn proclaim the story of the infinite entering into the finite world. It is such a small thing, but so often the course of human history turns on the little things. The eyes of a child reflect the eternity of God because the eternity of God was a child, and the incarnation of Jesus as a human being brings hope that there will be vindication for the marginalized in this world.

Come and behold Him
Born the King of Angels!
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
O come, let us adore Him
Christ the Lord

Amen

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.