Last Pentecost (Christ the King), Year C (2019)

Proper 29 :: Jeremiah 23: 1–6 / Psalm 46 /Colossians 1: 11-20 / Luke 23: 33–43

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday November 24, 2019.

 “OF KINGS AND OF THE KING OF KINGS, CHRIST OUR LORD”

We’ve come now to the end of the current liturgical year. Since the adoption of the “new” Prayer Book some forty-odd years ago, this last Sunday after Pentecost has come to be known as “Christ the King Sunday”. We Episcopalians share the same focus of this Sunday with other Christians on this last Sunday of the current year.

The focus of this Sunday allows us to wrap up all that we’ve been considering throughout the previous year, things that have to do with the coming of the Christ, Jesus our Lord. We’ve prepared for His coming among us at Christmastime with the season of Advent. We’ve celebrated the light of His appearing and the spread among the Gentiles of His light in the season of Epiphany, and then we’ve garnered together our strength for the arduous journey of preparation through the season of Lent, getting ready for the Lord’s rising to new life on Easter Sunday morning. Finally, we’ve applied all that we’ve experienced and considered in these preceding seasons during the season after Easter, called Pentecost. Pentecost is a time when we grow the faith (hence, the liturgical color for the season after Pentecost is green).

Since we’ve characterized this day as “Christ the King Sunday”, we ought to consider, at least briefly, what calling someone a king (or queen) might mean. After all, we Americans are proud of our thoroughly democratic nature as a country. We have no appetite for having a king (or queen), even if we are quite interested and fascinated with the British royal family. Though many of us follow the doings of the Brits, we wouldn’t want to have anything to do with having a royal class or family of our own. It’s said that there was a move, early in our country’s history, to try to make George Washington a king. But he said “No” to that idea, very wisely so.

Having a king (or a queen) entails an entirely different way of being a people, a nation. We’d be wise to consider the differences with what we’re used to in this country. Then, we might be able to apply some of these observations to the matter of what it means for us to be citizens of a different country, a group of people called Christians.

We might begin our consideration of the differences with the matter of a king’s (or queen’s) power. After all, a king (or queen) isn’t the head of a democracy, at least not in ancient times. Kings and queens aren’t elected. They inherit their position and status. In ancient times, there was an idea that a king (or queen) ruled with an autocratic hand, being – as it was believed back then – that they ruled because God wanted them to be king or queen. This concept of royalty goes by the name “Divine Right of Kings”.

In more recent times, the idea that a king or queen rules because God wants it that way has faded away. Now, in most places, what has replaced this idea is something that is called a “Constitutional Democracy”. That is to say, some countries still have kings and queens, but those royal people are figureheads, for the most part, a person who symbolizes the entire country. In some cases, the formal name of the nation reflects the fact that it has a king or queen. One couldn’t have the United Kingdom without a king or a queen. So, for example, in the United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, one uses the Royal Mail. The British Navy is known as the Royal Navy. These are just two examples. But the actual running of the country in Constitutional Democracies is left to an elected group, called by various names: For example, the Parliament in the United Kingdom.

Kings and queens are one with the people they lead. So, to continue our consideration of how things work in the United Kingdom, we can say with assurance that Queen Elizabeth II and the entire royal family are citizens of the U.K. But, even though they are citizens, they are different from what are known as “commoners”. Royalty makes them different.

We might get the idea that being a king or a queen or a member of the royal family comes with good things only, and never with any bad things. But that wouldn’t be the case; for a king or queen often has to make difficult decisions for the welfare of the people they represent and lead. And, they might have to make sacrifices for the same reason. Consider, for example, that Queen Elizabeth II worked driving a truck during World War II.

What might these observations tell us about the way in which we ought to consider our Lord Jesus Christ as king, or – as we read in the Book of Revelation – King of kings and Lord of lords?

We might begin by affirming the truth of God’s appointment of the Lord to lead us. We didn’t choose Him to lead us, He chose us to be His followers. So, our faith in the Lord isn’t a democracy, something we can choose to fashion in accordance with our own desires. Instead, we must rely on the revelation of God’s will in the person of our Lord, as that reality is reflected in the pages of sacred Scripture.

Our Lord gives us an identity, for we bear the name Christian, signifying that we are “partisans of Christ” (a wonderful phrase I heard when I was in seminary).

Our Lord is one of us, born of a human mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary; but He is unlike us at the same time, being conceived by the Holy Spirit. This is a truth we affirm each Sunday as we recite the Nicene Creed.

Our Lord willingly makes the sacrifices that are necessary for our welfare. That’s the basic meaning of the events of Good Friday. Our Lord comes and empties Himself in service to us, then rises to new life again, claiming the victory over death that will be ours when our own earthly journey is done.

Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for the abundant gifts you shower upon us, you who are King of kings and Lord of lords.

AMEN.

Pentecost 23, Year C (2019)

Proper 28 :: Malachi 4: 1–2a / Psalm 98 / II Thessalonians 3: 6–13 / Luke 21: 5–19

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, November 17, 2019.

 “THE OLD IS PASSING AWAY. THE NEW IS COMING”

(Homily text: Luke 21: 5-19)

Jesus and His disciples are walking through the precincts of the Temple in Jerusalem, and some of those who were also there marvel at the beauty and the grandeur of the place.[1] In response, the Lord predicts that the time will come when “one stone won’t be left on top of another.”

Jesus’ prediction seems to cause alarm among his disciples, for they ask, “When will these things take place, and what will be the sign…?”

By the time that Luke was writing down his Gospel account, (perhaps late in the first century) Jesus’ prediction had come to pass, for the Temple (and the city of Jerusalem) were destroyed in the year 70 AD, at the conclusion of the Jewish-Roman War (66 – 70 AD).

Returning to the Lord’s comments, we read His prediction that the loss of the Temple will be accompanied by war and tumult. Luke’s record of His comments tracks well with those that Matthew and Mark also recorded. Matthew’s account may be found at 24: 1–31, while Mark’s is found at 13: 1–27. These three passages often carry a superscription, applied by biblical scholars, entitled the “Little Apocalypse”.

With the destruction of the Temple, an old way of worshiping God also passed into history, for the Temple was the only place, where, under the provisions of the Law of Moses, that sacrifices could take place. (The local synagogues, scattered around the Roman Empire and also in the Holy Land, were places were Scripture was read and discussions were conducted. They were not places where sacrifices could take place.) Following the destruction of the Temple, much of the priestly caste that existed under the Law also vanished. In place of the loss of the Temple, Judaism continued without its sacrifices.  But it continued the traditions of the synagogue, being led by rabbis.

Now, let’s do some theological work around the Temple’s role as the place of sacrifice. We’ve just noticed what happened within Judaism with the loss of the Temple. For Christians, however, the loss of the Temple signified something else entirely: It marked the end of the sacrificial system that existed under the Law of Moses. For now, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was the new, enduring and perfect sacrifice. (The Letter to the Hebrews contains an extensive explanation of Christ’s sacrifice, explaining that He was not only the sacrifice, but He was also the priest at whose hands the sacrifice was completed.) Gone were the sacrifices under the Law that had to be repeated again and again, for they were imperfect and lacked the ability to completely wipe the slate of our sin clean. Jesus had perfected those sacrifices, once and for all.

Moreover, now all who had come to faith in Christ had open and complete access to God through his perfect life and sacrifice, for the Temple’s curtain which blocked access to God, whose presence resided in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, had been torn in two on Good Friday.

Continuing our theological inquiry, we also see that, now, those who come to faith in God and who worship Him “in spirit and in truth”, as Jesus said to the woman at the well in Samaria (see John 4: 23), would be able to worship God anywhere, not just on the holy mountain in Jerusalem (Mount Zion).

The old has passed away, and the new has come. Now, all people everywhere, not just those who were descendants of Abraham, could come into relationship with God. Now, they could enter into a holy relationship with God by virtue of Christ’s perfect sacrifice, which wiped away the stain of sin in them forever. Gone was the awful distinction of who was ritually clean and who was ritually unclean.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.

       

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[1]   At the time of this incident, construction on the Temple was not yet complete. Its construction was begun by King Herod the Great in the year 19/20 BC. Its construction took about 64 years. But apparently, by the time Jesus and His disciples were walking through it, it was completed enough to impress its visitors.

Pentecost 22, Year C (2019)

Proper 27 :: Job 19: 23–27a / Psalm 98 / II Thessalonians 2: 1–5, 13–17 / Luke 20: 27–38

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on November 10, 2019.

“IS THIS ALL THERE IS?”

(Homily texts:  Job 19: 23–27a, II Thessalonians 2: 1–5, 13–17 & Luke 20: 27-38)

“Is this all there is?” “Is the world we live in and the things we can see all there is?”

All three of our appointed readings emphatically answer these questions: “No, the life we live now, and the things we experience now, aren’t all there is!”

We must be getting close to the season of Advent, that time of preparation in the Church Year when we spend four weeks getting ready for the Lord’s first coming, an event we celebrate at Christmastime. The Advent season has a two-fold focus: Getting ready for the Lord’s first coming, but remembering that, in the fullness of time, and in God’s good time and in accordance with God’s design, the Lord will come again. This last point is a truth we affirm nearly every Sunday, as the liturgy urges to remember this truth in the Memorial Acclamation, which says, “We remember his death, we proclaim his resurrection, we await his coming in glory.”[1]

How can we know that the question, “this is all there is,” demands an answer that points beyond this present life and this present reality? Three possibilities offer themselves:

·         The witness of the Apostles to the Lord’s resurrection,

·         The witness of Holy Scripture,

·         God’s ability to create, and to re-create.

We should begin with the witness of the Apostles, those original twelve Disciples (OK, minus Judas Iscariot;  but then plus Matthias, who took his place; and then plus Paul…a “baker’s dozen” Apostles). All of them witnessed the Lord’s rising to new life again on Easter Sunday morning. The proof of the reality of the resurrection as an actual, physical, real event lies not in our ability to look into the empty tomb ourselves, but to see the amazing transformation of these original eleven (minus Judas) Disciples’ lives. Prior to the resurrection, and especially after the giving of the power of the Holy Spirit at the Feast of Pentecost, this original group was a bunch of bumblers, uncertain in their role in the things that God was doing, and possessed of an incredible ability to miss seeing what God was about. All that changed on Easter Sunday morning. After the raising of our Lord, the power of God, made known in Jesus’ new and resurrected life, became the overriding Reality (with a capital “R”) in these followers of Jesus’ lives. Not even the specter of a martyr’s death could intervene to overcome their knowledge that Jesus, had, in fact, been raised to new life on that Sunday morning.

Next, we might turn to the pages of Holy Scripture. Here, in our reading from Job, we read the familiar words, “I know that my Redeemer lives…” (Can’t you hear the magnificent soprano aria from Handel’s “Messiah” in those words?)  St. Paul picks up the theme in his second letter to the Thessalonians, “As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him….” Paul wants us to lift our eyes heavenward, to see that God’s got a plan, a wonderful plan, for the future. (Apparently, the early church in Thessalonica was deeply concerned about the unfolding of the events of the Lord’s return, for Paul has to address these concerns in both of the letters he wrote to that group of Christian believers.)

Our Gospel text, appointed for this morning, narrates the interchange between Jesus and a group of Sadducees. (The Sadducees were a group of priests, serving in the Temple in Jerusalem. They constituted the highest of the three orders of priests which were established under the Law of Moses.) Their question to the Lord is disingenuous, however: Luke takes pains to insert an editorial remark prior to the recounting of the interchange between the Sadducees and the Lord, telling us that the Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. (Neither did they accept the authority of the writings of the prophets, by the way…they accepted only the five books of Moses as being authoritative.) No doubt Jesus knew of their beliefs at the outset of their outlandish tale of the woman who is widowed seven times. But, in the final analysis, Jesus affirms the reality that there is a resurrection from the dead. He, Himself, will experience the resurrection, and will offer us, by extension, the blessings and the benefits of life evermore.

The third place we might look for evidence that there is a Reality (again, with a capital “R”) beyond this present world and this present reality lies in the reality which is before us: The created order. The point to be made here is that, if God is the creator of all that is (a truth we affirm each Sunday as we recite the Nicene Creed), then God also has the power to not only create, but to re-create. God’s handiwork, seen in the things that are, point to the reality of the God who stands outside of time and the present circumstance, but who is active within this present time and circumstance. In other words, God has the power to make all things new, as we read in the Book of Revelation, chapter twenty one, verse five.

Our life in Christ has everything to do with training our eyes to see beyond this present time, age and circumstance. Each Sunday, our worship honors the God who created all that is, those things that we can see and those things we can’t. Each Sunday, we come to be reminded that there’s more to our lives than what we have to be concerned with each and every day, the reality that God is present in the here and now, but also in the hereafter.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.

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[1]   Book of Common Prayer, 1979; Eucharistic Prayer B, page 368

All Saints’ Sunday, Year C (2019)

Daniel 7: 1–3, 15–18 / Psalm 149 / Ephesians 1: 11–23 / Luke 6: 20–31

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday November 3, 2019.

“WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH…”

(Homily text: Luke 6: 20-31)

Perhaps most of us could finish this saying: “When the going gets tough….”

The second phrase completes the first: “The tough get going.”

I’m not sure where that phrase came from, but it is a good way for us - on this All Saints’ Sunday - to enter into thinking about the saints of God. We could amend the saying this way: “When the going gets tough, the saints get going.”

It isn’t easy being a saint. For one thing, it means swimming against the tide of the everyday world’s values and ways of living. For another, it means holding always in view the reality of God and God’s will for the saints and for the world….keeping God in our hearts and in our thinking means that living like a saint involves “marching to a different drummer.”

Jesus captures the reality of the difficulty of being a saint in His collection of sayings which is called the Beatitudes. In this lectionary cycle, Year C, we hear the version offered to us by Luke.[1] (In Year A, we hear the more familiar offering of Matthew, from chapter five of his Gospel account.)

Luke’s version of the Beatitudes begins as Matthew’s does, or at least part of the saying that Jesus offered does….The first four sayings begin with the word “Blessed,” which is where the name “Beatitudes” comes from, from the Latin.

Luke tells us that Jesus offered four blessings: To those who are poor, to those are hungry, to those who weep, and to those who are hated.

But then Luke tells us that Jesus also pronounced four woes: To those who are rich in this world, to those who are full, to those who laugh now, and to those who are well spoken of.

Notice that the four woes reverse the four blessings. Whenever we read Luke’s Gospel account, we should look for signs of a reversal of roles, for Luke loves to pass along to us the Lord’s teachings which turn the normal order of things on its head. Here is an excellent example of that theme.

“When the going gets tough, the saints get going….”

It’s easy to live by the world’s expectations. The four woes that Jesus pronounced address values that the world embraces: to be rich or well off, to have enough to eat, to laugh and be merry, and to be liked (or loved) by others. In order to have these things, sometimes it’s necessary for those who crave them to set their convictions of what God would want them to do aside in order to blend into the world’s ways….Put another way, people who crave what the world offers have to be willing, oftentimes, to “Go along to get along.” Sometimes, godly values get pushed aside in the process.

As we look down through time, in many instances the great figures of the faith that we call “Saints” were those who “bucked” the system in some way or another. Take St. Francis of Assisi as a good example: At a time when the Church was in love with wealth and with worldly power, Francis embraced extreme poverty and took a vow to serve the Lord by serving the poor. The contrast between the values that the Church was living in in the early 13^th century couldn’t be further apart from the ways of God that Francis held to. Francis is remembered fondly today because of his totally counterculture sense of the values that God had made known. Francis challenged the status quo of things in his day and time. He lived out the principal that, “when the going got tough, St. Francis got going.”

May it be so with us, by the help of the Holy Spirit.

AMEN.

       

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[1]   Scholars have pondered why Luke’s version of the Beatitudes differs from Matthew’s. Perhaps one reason for the difference might lie in the possibility that Jesus offered this teaching on more than one occasion. Just about every preacher who’s been at the business of preaching and teaching for any length of time will find him/herself repeating some material, but in a slightly different format and with slightly different content. It would be easy to imagine that our Lord did the same thing, depending on His audience and on the circumstances at hand.