Proper 16, Year C -- Sunday Sermon

Isaiah 58:9-14
Luke 10:13-17

In Episcopal Church circles, certain preachers, writers, and church leaders periodically assert that worship, what we do here on Sunday morning, is not the central focus of the Christian life. They argue instead that the essence of being a Christian involves what happens on the remaining six days of the week, where we’re called to do God’s work in the world by serving the poor, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick. This, they say, is what God really cares about.

Those making this argument then proceed to describe Sunday morning worship as an opportunity to regroup and recharge our batteries, so that we may receive in turn the spiritual motivation and energy to get back out there and do the work that God has given us to do.

In my academic work in Christian ethics, I often come across a distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic value. Something with instrumental value is a means-to-an-end, while something with intrinsic value is an end-in-itself. And much of the moral disorder in our contemporary world results from confusing these two types of value. Money, for example, has instrumental value: it is a means to other ends, and we get into trouble when we start treating it as an end-in-itself. People, on the other hand, have intrinsic value; and we get into trouble when we start treating them instrumentally, as means to other ends [such as money].

So, the argument that I’ve described basically approaches the Church's liturgy and sacraments instrumentally, as means to the end of living the Christian life defined in terms of good works in the world. But I want to suggest that this view is fundamentally short-sighted and incomplete. Worship is an activity of intrinsic value. Much as it may help us in other spheres of our life – and valuable as good works in the world undoubtedly are – worship is nonetheless worthwhile and necessary in its own right. It needs no other justification.

Our Old Testament reading from the Prophet Isaiah exemplifies this mindset. The Sabbath is a delight: a day not to go our own way or seek our own pleasure, but to delight in the Lord through worship and prayer.

But then we have the controversy in the Gospel reading between our Lord and the Ruler of the Synagogue. The Ruler of the Synagogue objects to Jesus healing a woman bent over from disease on the Sabbath; and Jesus rebukes him. At first glance, it might seem that our Lord is siding with those who argue that works of mercy are more important than worship.

What’s going on? The Ruler of the Synagogue is clearly not objecting to our Lord’s ministry of healing per se but to his healing on the Sabbath: the period that begins at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday.

The Ruler is concerned above all with the community’s faithful observance of Torah, the Jewish Law. The Law is sacred: God’s gift to his people to enable them to become holy, a people set apart for himself. And a key litmus test of how well you keep the Law is how well you keep the Sabbath: a day set aside for worship, recreation, and rest, and emphatically not for work.

By our Lord’s time, the rabbis have begun to debate the question: Which activities constitute violations of the Sabbath and which do not? With respect to the treatment of injuries and healing of diseases, a particular distinction has gained widespread acceptance between what today we would call medical emergencies and chronic illnesses.

Providing treatment in response to a true emergency, such as a broken bone or an immediately life-threatening condition, does not violate the Sabbath. But chronic complaints are another matter. If someone has suffered from a debilitating disease for years, and is likely to continue suffering for years to come, then there’s no reason why intervention aimed at healing can’t wait another twenty four hours until the Sabbath is over. On this principle, the Ruler of the Synagogue declares: “There are six days on which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.”

It’s a well-thought-out and not unreasonable position. Yet Jesus forcibly takes issue with it, denouncing those who’ve criticized him as hypocrites. To understand why, we need to take a deeper look at the origins of the Sabbath itself.

The key text is Deuteronomy 5:15. In giving the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day and do no work, God instructs Moses: “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”

In other words, the Sabbath originated as a celebration of the liberation of the Israelites from servitude under Pharaoh. Because the people have been freed from bondage, they must not enslave themselves to other gods – particularly the gods of wealth, power, and status, whose demands can become all-consuming. Setting aside a day on which no work is to be done is a sign of this liberation from false gods to enjoy the freedom to worship the one true God.

When Jesus is challenged for healing the bent-over woman of her infirmity, he replies: "And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?" In other words, by liberating the woman from her disease, he has not violated the Sabbath but rather fulfilled its true and proper meaning: liberation from bondage. The Sabbath sets us free to join in the worship of God – and that is precisely what this woman does: "he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God."

In other words, to return to the language of instrumental value and intrinsic value: our Lord’s healing of the woman is not an end-in-itself but a means-to-an-end. The healing is an instrumental good which makes possible the intrinsic good of the woman’s re-integration into the community’s praises of God. Jesus does not come to the synagogue so that he can heal people on the Sabbath; rather, he heals people on the Sabbath so that they may resume their rightful place in the synagogue and its worship!

By extension, the argument that liturgy and worship are means to the end of enabling us more effectively to perform good works in the world gets the means-ends relationship precisely the wrong way round. The true end, goal, and glory for which we’ve been created is eternal life in God’s presence. What we do here in Church on Sunday morning is a foretaste of what we shall be doing in heaven for eternity: joining with all the angels and saints in adoration and praise of the Almighty. Everything else we do in this life is ordered towards that end. We feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and heal the sick in the hope that in doing so we all may be set free to join ever more fully in the worship of God, both in this world and in the world to come.

Finding of the Relics of Saint Stephen -- Sermon at the 10 am Sunday Mass

As Christians, we have a definite orientation to time. We look forward to the future in hope for the coming of God’s Kingdom. And we look back to what God has done in the past as the grounds for this hope. This Christian looking back, this remembering, is not merely nostalgia for some bygone golden age, but rather how we prepare ourselves to meet God in the present and receive his promises for the future.

We remember the Christian past by reading the Bible. Every Sunday we gather to listen to the Scriptures. In the liturgy, we retell the ancient stories of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs. We hear again the letters of the apostles to the Churches. We recount the words and deeds of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This public reading of the Scriptures shapes our corporate memory and identity as God’s people.

We remember the Christian past by sharing in the Sacraments. In English, the Holy Eucharist is called the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection. But the Greek word for memorial, anamnesis, means something more like “making present” or “calling into our midst.”

Christian Eucharistic devotion rightly focuses on the change of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. But no less miraculous is the Eucharistic transformation of time. Both present and future are telescoped into one present moment, and we are there—at the Last Supper, at Calvary, at the empty tomb, in the upper room, and again at the great banquet that awaits us in God’s kingdom.

So, the two primary means of remembering the Christian past are God’s Word and God’s Sacraments. There are other means, secondary to be sure, but nonetheless of vital importance to Christian faith and devotion.

One such means is Christian art. When we walk into a church we often see paintings, statues, and stain glass windows depicting our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints. In the Eastern Christian tradition, icons are understood to be windows into heaven, portals through which their heavenly prototypes are made visually present in our midst.

Another means of Christian remembering is sacred music. Ancient Church music such as plainchant or polyphony offers us a sense of connectedness with all the generations of previous Christians who have worshipped and prayed with this same music. The same goes for church architecture. While it’s true that we can worship anywhere – including contemporary church buildings that look like conference centers – gothic and Romanesque church buildings particularly evoke a sense of the Christian past.

From very early times in church history—the fourth century if not before—Christians have remembered their past by visiting holy places such as Jerusalem where our Lord and his apostles lived and died. Everyone I’ve ever known who has visited the Holy Land says that you return able to visualize the stories in the Bible as never before, because you’ve been in the physical environment where they took place.

And we remember the Christian past by means of relics. We’re all familiar with relics whether we realize it or not. In the purely secular sense, a relic is simply any artifact associated with a particular person or event in history. The Smithsonian is full of relics of our national history, from the original Star-Spangled Banner that flew over Fort McHenry to the gowns worn by First Ladies at Presidential Inaugural balls. In the National Archives, visitors line up to view an original copy of the Declaration of Independence, set in a display case that resembles nothing so much as a sacred shrine. We treasure such secular relics because they visibly and tangibly connect us to our past as a people.

And then there are relics in the sense of human remains—chiefly bones. From the very earliest days, Christians have preserved the relics of the saints. The Bible attests that the Hebrews took great care to preserve the tombs of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the Exodus, the Hebrews brought the bones of the Patriarch Joseph up out of Egypt, so that they could be buried in the Promised Land.

Evidence for the early Christian veneration of relics is found in the second century account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor. Convicted of the crime of being a Christian, Polycarp was burned at the stake. The eyewitness author writes: “we afterwards took up his bones which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place; where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together, as we are able, in gladness and joy, and to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom …”

As early as the second century, then, Christians were gathering at the burial places of the martyrs to celebrate the Eucharist on the anniversaries of their deaths and possibly at other times as well.

After the legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century, great churches such as Saint Peter’s basilica in Rome were built over the sites of the tombs of the apostles. Relics of the saints were brought out of the catacombs and placed under the altars of newly constructed churches in other places. Indeed, it is sometimes said that many of the cathedrals of Europe are best thought of not so much as great churches that happen to contain shrines of saints, as shrines of saints over which great churches have been built.

The departed saints, of course, are in heaven with God. Yet the physical presence of their mortal remains serves as a tangible sign of our continuing spiritual fellowship with them. St. Augustine of Hippo wrote in The City of God that when we pray in the presence of a saint’s relics on earth, that same saint prays for us before God’s throne in heaven. Even if in some cases their authenticity is questionable, they nonetheless remind us that Christianity is not a religion of timeless myths and archetypes, but rather the history of God’s dealings with real live flesh-and-blood human beings, who’ve left us their mortal remains to prove it. The veneration of relics testifies above all to the Incarnational principle at the heart of the Catholic faith.

So, with great joy we celebrate our summer patronal festival of the finding of the relics of Saint Stephen in the year 415 by the priest Lucian in the small town Caphar-Gamala outside Jerusalem. Our joy is multiplied by the presence of a relic of Saint Stephen in this church. After today’s liturgy, those who wish to do so will have the opportunity to venerate the relic in the Lady Chapel following the closing organ voluntary.

As Christians we have a definite orientation to time. We look back to the past and forward to the future. Our relic of St. Stephen links us back in time to the earthly life of the first martyr, our patron saint, for whom our church is named. And it speaks the promise that just as Stephen now prays for us in heaven, so also in the future we shall be dwell together in heaven with him, with each other, and with all the saints of God.

Proper 13, Year C -- Homily at the 8 o'clock Mass

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
Psalm 49:1-11
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

Saint Paul begins today’s epistle reading from his Letter to the Colossians with a curious statement. Urging his readers to leave behind the old unregenerate ways that characterized their lives before baptism, he exhorts them: “Put to death what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

For years, that last phrase always puzzled me. Of all the other vices that he mentions, why does Paul single out covetousness in particular as “idolatry?”

The answer lies, I think, in the respective meanings of the words themselves. “Covetousness” means inordinate desire for wealth and possessions. And “idolatry” means putting something less than God in the place of God as the object of our faith and worship.

It follows, then, that covetousness is idolatry precisely to the extent that we seek in earthly wealth and possessions the fulfillment, happiness, and security that only God can give. Covetousness becomes idolatry when we begin to put wealth and possessions in the place of God as the ultimate object of our trust and hope.

This theme of covetousness as idolatry recurs through all of today’s readings. And this sermon this morning is one of the few in which I’ve ever been able to connect an obvious common theme connecting all three lectionary readings – the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel, as well as the Psalm.

To take the Old Testament reading from Ecclesiastes next, there the Preacher repeats his pessimistic refrain: Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! The essence of the Preacher’s complaint is that he spends all his life toiling to accumulate possessions, but then must die. So, he doesn’t get to enjoy the fruits of his labors, and this seems unfair. Even worse, someone who didn’t work for them gets to enjoy them all—and who knows whether that person will be wise and use the inheritance well, or a fool who will squander and waste it all?

The message of Ecclesiastes is not that hard work and commitment are futile and hence to be avoided, but rather that they are best undertaken for their own intrinsic value in the present rather than for some hypothetical reward in the future. Better in this life to work at tasks that we enjoy, or even better at tasks to which God has called us, than to spend a lifetime working at a job we hate in the hope of a retirement that may never come.

Psalm 49 echoes the theme by reminding us that no amount of earthly wealth can save us from death. Death is the great equalizer. All alike die: wise and foolish, high and low, rich and poor. And once we’re dead it doesn’t matter how much we owned in this life. We can’t take any of it with us.

The farmer in today’s Gospel reading is not a bad man. There’s no suggestion that he’s become rich by theft, graft, corruption, manipulation of the market, or oppression of his workers. Rather, through sun, soil, and rain, God has blessed him with abundant harvests and hence great wealth.

But he’s a fool. And, in significant ways, we’re all like him. Deep down, one of our greatest fears is the fear of death. One way we attempt to deal with that fear is by the acquisition of earthly possessions, whether in the form of material wealth, fame, or power. In other words, as Saint Paul says, we commit the sin of idolatry by looking to our earthly possessions to give us the sense of safety and security that can really only come from God.

And so, when the abundant harvests come in, the farmer in the parable thinks he’s got it made. He says to himself, “You have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” But it’s a completely false sense of security, for his life is required of him that very night.

The rich fool’s mistake is his failure to recognize that both his wealth and his life are gifts of God. Once we recognize that everything we have comes from God—indeed, that life itself is God’s gift to us—then we begin to learn to trust God to provide for us all that we need, both for this life and the next.

Once we have that trust, we no longer need to hoard possessions in the futile attempt to derive from them the security that only God can give us. Instead, we begin to find the freedom to be generous, to share, and to give, just as God has been infinitely generous with us.