Sermon: Christ the King Sunday

The Very Rev. William Thomas Deneke, rector
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Today we come to the end of the liturgical year. Next Sunday we will enter the season of Advent and a new church year.

The celebration of Christ the King is a fitting finale to the gospel readings, the feast days, the fasts and the promises of this past year. The readings for today describe the kind of reign associated with the kingdom of Christ.

Remember the Beatitudes: God’s blessings upon the poor, the reviled, the peacemakers, the humble. These are of great value in Christ’s kingdom. Those on the margin often take center stage in God’s realm. Jesus identifies with those left behind.

In the Mediterranean basin of the First Century, the social norms honored those at the top of the pyramid. There was no significant social mobility. If you were born into the lower layers of society, there you remained. The masses flocked to Jesus because he had a message of hope for those neglected by social norms and institutions.

The message Jesus shared – good news for the oppressed – had deep roots in Judaism. Today we also hear the words of the prophet Ezekiel. He spoke words of hope to a broken people. He, too, said that God would seek the lost, those left behind.

Both the gospel and the words of the prophet not only reveal that God’s mercy is weighted on the side of those left behind but that in dismissing the ways of God’s Kingdom, a choice is being made not to be a part of it. According to Ezekiel, the Lord says,

“I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the
strayed, and I will bind up the injured,
and I will strengthen the weak,
but the fat and the strong I will destroy.
I will feed them with justice.”

The gospel today, with its grand portrayal of Christ on a throne, makes it clear that when we decide to dishonor the values proclaimed in the beatitudes, Jesus’ blueprint for the kingdom of God, we choose not to live in God’s kingdom.

Perhaps this is all pretty obvious. But in the Bible nations and people often make unfaithful decisions and fail to see how this could have an impact on their faith. They seem genuinely surprised when confronted about their behavior.

Maybe the prophet and the gospel overly simplify this matter of separating sheep from goats. The truth is most of us move in with the goats at times and with the sheep at other times. The scriptures no doubt already know this; they are focused, instead, on our need to incarnate the word of God. Our religion is pretty worthless if it cannot lead us to feed the hungry or clothe the naked.

The gospel is all about incarnation. The beatitudes and the Kingdom of Christ are to be lived out in our decision- making.

Left to our own devises, most of us find that hard, very hard, to do. We are equipped for living into the kingdom through the mercy of God. We celebrate that in Holy Baptism.

So here we are, empowered by the Spirit, ready to pray boldly but perhaps still a little unsure of living out the beatitudes.

The gospel story today makes it pretty easy. A cup of water, a hospital visit, an article of clothing. But don’t be fooled. These are teasers, gentle ways to point us in the right direction. The Spirit may call us not only to give a cup of water but also to help build a well in Haiti.

What is so meaningful about the examples that Jesus gives is that they are relationship oriented. They are about building community.

For three years Holy Trinity was in a partnership with the village of Los Hornos, Honduras. Then Honduras Outreach, our sponsoring program, decided to stop all partnerships and send missions groups to whatever village was in need at the time. No more partnerships, no more long-term relationships. After a year Honduras Outreach realized this was a mistake. Churches wanted to be in partnerships. Relationships mattered. Now the partnership program has been revived. And that’s good.

The Kingdom of Christ is built upon relationships, built around community. Sometimes that means a one on one relationship, but it can also mean reaching out to people we will never meet. It means seeing Christ in our next-door neighbor and also in our neighbor on the other side of town or on the other side of the world. Wherever there are people who hunger, wherever people are imprisoned, wherever people suffer, Christ is there. To reach out to anyone in need, anyone left behind is to reach out to Christ.

It is all about incarnating the Kingdom of Christ within us. Jesus in the account today makes it clear that he wants to include us in his kingdom. It could not be any easier. But we have to decide to meet him, to encounter him not only in the abundance of others but also in the needs of others. To see Christ in this way is a gift not only to those in need but to the needful parts of ourselves.

This day we celebrate Christ the King. King of the realm where relationships matter and people are family. The realm where what we do to one of the least of the family members we do to the King. Amen.

Sermon: 27th Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 28, Year A)

The Rev. Robyn Neville, guest preacher

For the Third Servant

I think many of us have heard this Gospel before, the Gospel of the “talents.” A man leaves on a journey, and puts three servants in charge of his property. In the master’s absence, two of the servants increase the master’s property by doubling it; and then there’s that other poor servant – the third one - the one who buries his master’s property in the ground, for safe keeping. When the master returns, the master praises the first two servants, but he condemns this third servant, and orders him to be thrown into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

I really feel for that third servant. I wonder what made him bury his portion in the ground. Perhaps he was just being cautious; perhaps he was simply being ultra-conservative with his master’s money, and instead of investing in markets that he could neither trust nor predict, he simply kept the property safe. Or perhaps he was a fearful man, and perhaps he had had run-ins with robbers before – thieves, after all, were common in Jesus’ day; that’s one of the reasons the Roman army was stationed in Palestine to begin with. Maybe this servant buried the talents because he didn’t want anyone to steal them.

Or perhaps he was just not a very imaginative person, or he wasn’t a very motivated person; maybe he was a dark-hearted man who was jealous of his master’s wealth and refused to invest it out of his own self-loathing. The master calls him “lazy” and “wicked.” Was he? Was he truly a bad servant?

Some of you may already know that in the Ancient Middle East, a talent was an enormous amount of money. It was the equivalent of about 3,000 shekels, approximately 40 kilograms of silver. That’s 88 pounds of silver. Can you imagine burying that much silver in the ground? It would have been quite a job; it would have taken at least a day of digging. This servant, this third of the three, must have been very good at burying things.

The readings from today all seem to agree that God does not take bad servants lightly. In our first reading from the Book of Judges, we read that the Lord lets the Israelites fall into slavery to a foreign king, in a foreign land, a land filled with unclean gods. The Lord allows the Israelites to be taken captive, to be carried off to an unclean place. Now God doesn’t abandon the Israelites altogether; he gives them Dvorah or Deborah to lead them, a woman of great strength, and intelligence, and wisdom and fairness, a woman who eventually redeemed Israel in the sight of God. But still – our reading from the Hebrew Bible this morning reminds us that there is a price to be paid for being a bad servant.

The Israelites were being bad servants. We hear in the Judges lesson that the Israelites were, and I quote, “again doing evil in the sight of the Lord” - and here the key word is “again” – meaning, they were at it again, the Lord had already warned them to stop what they were doing and start doing what was right, and yet, they were at it again. If we were to read back into the Book of Judges, we would see that the Israelites were up to worshipping false idols again. They had forgotten their master. They had forgotten Adonai. They had buried their memories of all the good that God had done for them, they had buried their love for the living God, and they had started sacrificing once again to the fertility gods and the thunder gods of their neighbors. That’s a pretty clear case of being a bad servant of God, right?

But what about our bad servant in the Gospel reading? What did he do that was so wrong? After all, at a time when our own global economy has been through some dramatic changes, and our own markets have been so unpredictable, burying a monetary windfall in the ground may not seem like such a bad idea.

But the Gospel lesson today isn’t about the economy. It is all about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus tells this story of the master and the three servants to help us understand what the kingdom of heaven is all about. The kingdom of heaven, it would appear, has everything to do with being a good servant.

The problem with the bad servant is that he was afraid. The Gospel reading tells us that he was afraid of the master. Now, I don’t think that’s the lesson of the story; I don’t think the Bible instructs us to be terrorized by God – at least, not to be afraid of God’s wrath in that old timey religion kind of way. Jonathan Edwards, the great eighteenth century preacher, once preached a sermon that he entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and he tried to convince his congregation that God was to be feared because God would dangle recalcitrant souls over the flames of hell the way a child dangles a spider over the open flame of a candle. I think that’s a pathological reading of Scripture, and I don’t think that either God or children should be that cruel. That’s not the image of God that Jesus proclaimed.

The third servant from our Gospel reading today is afraid – but in the sense that he is immobilized by his fear to somehow step out and do something great. I wonder about the natural greatness that lies dormant in each of us. Do we ever really know that the God who made us, the God who loves us with that beautiful, eternal love, made us for something great? Do we ever really accept that, or believe that? We might say, “well, God doesn’t make junk,” but do we take it further, do we ever really trust the fact that God made us to be a great people, a community of believers who shine a kind of light and a kind of beauty and a kind of honor that will startle and inspire people when they see it? Can you accept that God entrusted greatness to you?

This, I think, is what our Gospel is preaching to us today. The kingdom of heaven, as far as Jesus was concerned, is something that we’re supposed to create here, now, on this earth, in our lifetimes. The kingdom is supposed to be a place in our hearts, and a place in our world, where fairness and justice reigns. Where love is the great investment. Where peace and kindness and compassion rule our thoughts and our motivations. This is the kingdom of heaven, and in order to be brought to life in this world, the kingdom needs great people. The kingdom needs great servants. Do you know that you have that greatness living within you now? I promise you, if you have the Spirit of God dwelling within you – and if you’ve been baptized, then you do have the Spirit, whether you feel it or know it or not – then you can be great. The lesson today is simply that we can’t bury that Spirit-given greatness deep down and allow it to remain hidden.

But that’s what we do, isn’t it? We bury the kingdom deep down, we bury our own greatness deep down, and we try to ignore it. Instead, we often listen to those little, shadowy, desiccated, raspy voices that whisper to us, “You can never be great. You can never do anything meaningful. All that you do is worthless. If you try to do something great, you will fail. Everyone will see. If you do succeed, no one will notice, and in this day of global media, if no one notices your greatness, then it doesn’t count. You will suffer. You will despair. You will be led to destruction.” This is what those little voices say to us.

I say, shut off those voices. I say to those voices, if they are speaking to you today, be gone. I say to those voices of destruction, you do not belong among God’s people. I say, this is sacred ground, right here, where we are gathered, where we are sitting, and I say to those life-taking voices, you have no place here. You have no power here. These are God’s people, and they were made to be great. They were made to shine. I say to you, Holy Trinity Parish, you were made to be great, and you were made to shine. You were made to be a beacon here in Decatur, and in Haiti, and in Honduras, and in Ireland, and to the ends of the earth. You were made not to bury that shining kingdom within you – no, you were made to make it great in Christ’s name.

Now, I know that this life is difficult. I know that many of us are carrying burdens that are too much. I know that many of us are fearful about what’s next, what else could go wrong. I know that some of us are really struggling.

But today I want to encourage you to take a spiritual shovel, whatever that means to you, and to dig up the great things that you’ve hidden within you. Maybe suffering has caused you to put aside your talents. Maybe you’ve taken the spiritual equivalent of 80 pounds of silver, and you’ve hidden it so well inside of your soul that you don’t even see it anymore. Not today!

Today, I want you to reach into the loamy, rich, good earth of your spirits and find those great things that you buried deep down. Unearth them. Bring them back into the light. Offer them back up to the God who gave them to you. Know that you were made to bring forth greatness. Know that those great things that you’ve hidden within you are worthy gifts, and that it’s time to give those gifts back to God. Know that the living God who loves you doesn’t want you to be wasteful – not even of your own being. God doesn’t want you to waste your self. Know that hope lives in you, dwells in you like the wind of the Spirit dwells in you. If only you would be a good servant, and bring that hope forth, to share with the world.

We can’t build the kingdom if our tools are buried in the ground. We can’t honor God fully if we’ve somehow obscured part of our own being.

We can work together, to bring out each other’s great gifts, and we can offer all that we have – all that we are – to God’s glory.

May God give us the vision and the courage to dig up the hidden talents, those buried treasures of our souls, and to offer our own greatness to God on behalf of the kingdom. The God of eternity deserves our very best, and we deserve to remember that our very best is there because of God, because of God’s extravagant generosity with us. May the living God give us the grace to be good stewards of our souls, to be good stewards of our greatness, so that we may build up the kingdom, and be a shining example of hope for the world.

Amen.


The Rev. Robyn Neville, an Episcopal priest, holds a Th.M. from Harvard Divinity School and an M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary and is working on her Ph.D. in church history at The Candler School of Theology at Emory, focusing on women and gender in the early medieval period. She and her husband are regular worshipers at Holy Trinity.

Sermon: 26th Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 27, Year A)

The Rev. Allan Sandlin, associate rector

I have to tell you, this morning’s gospel lesson (Matthew 25: 1-13) is not my favorite parable. Not by a long shot.

On Monday morning, when it occurred to me that I might be preaching this week, I went on-line to see what the gospel lesson would be for today.

I moaned to myself…
Oh, no. Not THAT one.

I called the rector.
Bill, can’t one of the seminarians preach this week?

You see the problem, don’t you? First of all, there are these 5 bridesmaids
who are unwilling to share their oil with their friends who are running low. Didn’t their parents teach them anything about sharing with others?

They have extra jugs of oil. You’d think they could’ve each spared just a little?

But that’s not the worst of it.

The groom comes late to the party— which is interesting because in my experience if someone’s late to the wedding, it’s usually the bride— anyway, the groom arrives late and then waltzes into the feast with the 5 oil-rich friends of the bride and shuts the door.

When the other 5 arrive, now late themselves because they had to try to find a 7-11 that was still open so they could buy some more oil…when they arrive and plead with him to open that door…what does he say?

"Truly I tell you, I do not know you."

I hate that he said that.

The groom sounds like very disagreeable person, and this parable does not fit my concept of the Kingdom of Heaven at all.

So is it any wonder I just couldn’t get terribly excited about this text?

Especially not this week.

You see, by Wednesday, I was completely exhausted from watching election returns and I was just beginning to focus on the long to-do list for diocesan council next week.

In a pinch, on almost any other parable, I could have resurrected an old sermon. But I’ve managed to avoid preaching on this text for the past few years
and was not eager to wrestle with this challenging parable.

That’s what happens when you belong to a church that uses the lectionary—it’s the luck of the draw. So, changing to a more palatable gospel was not an option.

Let’s see what we’ve got.

It’s clear that this parable is an allegory— that is, the characters and events are symbols for something else.

When Matthew wrote this parable down, he expected that his congregation would be able to unlock the code on the spot.

They would recognize that the bridesmaids represented the church and the bridegroom was, of course, Jesus.

All the bridesmaids have lamps and oil but only the wise ones are prepared for the delayed arrival of the bridegroom.

The folks in Matthew’s church would have immediately said aha when they heard that the bridegroom was coming late—that signified to them that the return of Christ had been delayed, longer than they expected.

That much is relatively plain and easy to decipher. Here’s the thing. I don’t believe Jesus told this Kingdom of Heaven parable to frighten us into acting right or compel us to do more and work harder.

I don’t believe that Jesus is hanging back, delaying his arrival, waiting to see who has stayed up all night, watching for his return, eager to slam the door to the Kingdom in their faces.

And Jesus most certainly didn’t intend for us to be fretting over who’s going to get admitted into heaven and who will find themselves pounding on the gates, begging to be let in.

No. I have a hunch it has something to do with that oil. And it’s not about who has oil and who doesn’t. You might have a cupboard full of oil in your kitchen at home, but did you remember to bring some of it with you to get you through the night?

When you left the house, headed for the election-night party, did you remember to bring along enough oil to keep your lamp lit in case a snowstorm came up and delayed your return home?

It’s not about who possesses the resources and who doesn’t.

So why is this oil important?
What is Jesus trying to tell us?

Anna Florence Carter tells the story of a seminary professor who gave a lecture to her students entitled “the spiritual life of the preacher.”Before she began her lecture,She set an old-fashioned oil-lampon the table in front of her.The kind with real oil and a wick.

She talked about how the job of the pastor is to be a light for others—echoing what Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount.

In the 5th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus said:

"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, left your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5.14-16)

Then the teacher lit the wick and the class watched the lamp burn as she talked. It gave off a beautiful glow.

But the lamp only had a small amount of oil in it and so very quickly the oil disappeared and the flame went out.

What happens when the oil runs out? she asked her students. “Well then your light goes out and you have nothing to give. A pastor with no oil, a Christian with no oil, can’t be the light of the world for anybody, no matter how much they want to be.” (Anne Florence Carter, Lectionary Homiletics, Proper 27, Year A)

I think this is one of the greatest spiritual dangers that clergy face. We work hard (for all kinds of reasons including some that are not so good—
like wanting to keep the congregation happy, wanting to be liked, wanting to make sure we keep our jobs…) but we also work hard because we hope we are doing God’s will, we hope that a flicker of Christ’s light shines through us, visible enough for you to see.

But we don’t always keep our oil lamps filled.

Sometimes we run dangerously low on fuel and if we seem distracted or unfocussed or just plain tuckered out, you could probably take a look at the gas gauge and see that we’re running low.

All of us—you, me, Deborah and Bill—would do well to remember the announcement we hear every time the airplane is taxiing down the runway.

You know, the one where the voice reminds you that in case of an emergency
you should put the oxygen mask on yourself first before helping someone else with theirs?

It’s easy to forget that rule. Maybe you forget it, too, from time to time.

It won’t happen as often if you’ll figure out what it is that fills your lamp
and restores your soul.

I don’t know where you go to fill your lamp.I hope you know where that place is
and that you visit that place regularly.

The church can certainly be one place.

The Eucharist, the prayers, the hymns, the silence and the mystery,
the community…I hope you are fed and fuelled by some of these.

For some of you, I suspect that reaching out to others, taking communion to our homebound members, making sandwiches to feed the hungry, visiting the sick, praying for those who are suffering… these things in themselves can help fill your lamp.

Sometimes I wonder if we don’t need to say no from time to time in order to keep our lamps in good working order.

If you find yourself serving on too many committees, with too much on your plate, and the associate rector calls and asks you to do one more thing,
even if it’s something you love doing, something you’re really good at, something that’s really important…sometimes you might need to say no.
(But not this week, please, and definitely not when a member of the vestry calls you and invites you to make a financial pledge to the church…)

But seriously, if you don’t learn where your boundaries are, your oil just might run out before you even know that you’re running low…You know, I think this is one of those stories Jesus tells us when he needs to get our attention. Sometimes he has to speak quite forcefully or tell us stories that make us snap to attention in order to make sure we are listening.

As challenging as this story is to our ears,he’s not trying to scare us into cleaning up our acts.

He’s encouraging us to fill our lamps in order to be ready when the bridegroom comes and the feast begins.

Fill your lamp so that you can be part of the procession that lights the way in the darkness and prepares the way for the coming of Christ.

Amen.

Sermon: All Saints' Day

Worship @ the Welcome Table
Tracy J. Wells, Communications Coordinator

We saw him every Sunday.

His spot was by the trashcan on the corner of Church and Brattle Streets in Harvard Square, right across the street from the Crate and Barrel. From there, he sold copies of "Spare Change News," a street newspaper on issues of poverty, produced by volunteers, and sold by homeless and formerly homeless vendors on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. From beneath his wool cap, his dark face would light up when he saw us, and we all came to expect the familiar greeting:

"Hello, family!" he would say to us as we approached him, a United Church of Christ minister, an Episcopal deacon, a Methodist seminary student, and me – a graduate student of religion who was absolutely sure that she was NOT interested in ordained ministry!

We would return Butch's greeting, "Hi Butch! How're you doing today?"

"Doin' alright, doin' alright," was always the response. His large grin was unfailing as he picked out which sandwich he'd like from the assortment we brought every week, and gladly took the clean socks that we offered, and always insisted that we all hold hands while he led us in prayer, right there on that street corner, as busy shoppers brushed past us.

Butch was one of our many parishioners in The Outdoor Church of Cambridge, an ecumenical Christian community that takes the church to those who either cannot or will not reach it on their own. Every Sunday for over a year while I was in grad school, I worshiped with The Outdoor Church in Cambridge Common, a large public park right outside of Harvard Square. We held an outdoor Eucharist, a liturgy that began every week with the same passage of Scripture that we just heard sung in the video:

Jesus said, "Come to me, all you that are weary
and carrying heavy burdens
And I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
For I am gentle and humble in heart;
and you will find rest for your souls;
for my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

After the Eucharist, we'd share a simple meal together, usually comprised of sandwiches, fruit, and - of course - cookies. Then we'd load up all the extra food we had into coolers, and we'd set off into Harvard Square, with sandwiches and juice and cookies, and communion, to meet people where they were. Instead of setting up a soup kitchen and waiting for the hungry to come to us, we went to them.

I began volunteering with The Outdoor Church after about a year and a half of trying to ignore this inner constant nagging that told me that Jesus would probably be much more likely to be found hanging out with Boston's homeless population than spending a whole lot of time with the academic intellectuals at my graduate school. The Jesus I met in the Gospels seemed to be more concerned with feeding the poor and reaching out to the disenfranchised than almost anything else.

The Gospel lesson for today illustrates what some theologians (those “academic intellectuals!”) have called Jesus's "preferential option for the poor." In it, Jesus turns conventional wisdom on its head, and calls "blessed" precisely the opposite of the things we usually speak of as blessings. Think about it. Most people use the term "blessed" when they are describing something good that's happened to them. "I'm so blessed to have my good health," or "I'm so blessed that my children are safe." "I'm so blessed that things are going so well for me right now at work." "I'm so blessed to have this house and this money."

But Jesus doesn't say that. Jesus says, "Blessed are you when things are really NOT GOING WELL for you. Blessed are you when you are MOURNING. Blessed are you when you are POOR. Blessed are you when you are HUNGRY."

It's not a coincidence that we read this scripture on All Saints' Day, the day we remember all those saints of the church who have gone before us. For a saint is not, contrary to popular culture belief, a person who is perfect or lives a holy life in such a way that they never have any trouble. A saint is one who recognizes the holiness in imperfection.

The Church hasn't always done a very good job of reminding us of this -- if you think about the icons and such that we have that represent the saints in these sort of statue-like figures, holding out their hands in blessing, with halos, who look very much removed from who we are as living, breathing human beings who make mistakes.

But the Episcopal Dictionary of the Church defines as saint as "a holy person, a faithful Christian, one who shares life in Christ." Notice it didn't say "perfect" anywhere in there. Faithful, yes. Perfect? No.

So what does it mean to be a saint? To be holy, faithful? To be one who shares life in Christ? What does it mean to share life in Christ?

If our scriptures for today are any indication, perhaps to be a saint is to recognize the blessedness in the things that the world often devalues, avoids, or shuns.

I left the Outdoor Church in 2006 when I graduated and moved away from Boston, but I've kept in touch with the ministers - Jed, the UCC minister and Pat, the Episcopal deacon. And in February of this year, I received an email from Jed with some sad news.

"Pat and I have some bad news," he wrote. "Butch died sometime two weeks ago, apparently of a heart attack. Last summer he told us he needed to be hospitalized for a few standard tests, and then disappeared."

Jed and Pat tried to visit Butch in the hospital, but to no avail. They had no contact information, they couldn't find him, the hospitals were unhelpful. They finally learned of his death from Frenchy, one of our other parishioners in The Outdoor Church who was sort of the unofficial "mother" of the Harvard Square homeless community, keeping tabs on everyone and informing us of what everyone was up to if we hadn't seen them in a while.

When I heard about Butch's death, I wished more than anything that I could have gone to his memorial service. You see, for me, Butch was one of the saints. Butch's faith was an example to me. Butch taught me a lot about looking for the best in everything and everybody. About seeing the blessings in those things I might not be inclined to see as blessings. When I think about the great cloud of witnesses, the great communion of the saints, I picture Butch there, with his arms open wide in welcome, and calling out to everyone he meets, "Hello, family." This All Saints’ Day, I am particularly remembering Butch.

Who are you remembering today? Who in your life has shown you what it means to be a holy person, a faithful Christian, one who shares life in Christ? Who in your life has exemplified what it means to recognize the blessedness in the things the world so often devalues?

I invite you to hold those people in your minds and hearts, and please join with me in a prayer of thanksgiving.

Gracious and holy God, we give you thanks for the great cloud of witnesses and saints that have gone before us, of the examples that they have shown us of what it means to live a holy and faithful life in service to you. Grant that we may follow their example and one day enter with them into that great communion of the saints, which worships you for all time, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, Amen.

Tracy Wells is Holy Trinity's communications coordinator. She holds a master of theological studies from Harvard Divinity School and is a postulant for Holy Orders in the Diocese of Atlanta.