Beasts, Saints and Chaos
Sermon
SEEK GOOD, NOT EVIL
that you may live
"But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingly power and shall retain it for ever, for ever and ever." But we are not there yet; neither were the people of the text. Because they were not yet there and we are not yet there, we gather here to reflect that some are already there but the rest of us are not yet there.
We have enough trouble without the troublesome word "saint" - "the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingly power and shall retain it for ever, for ever and ever." "But I'm no saint," someone will say. Another, "But remember that still does not make me a saint."
"Saint" makes us nervous. That anyone would think of us as saints? Some pastors believe their task is to show that they are not saints. I did not think that required a personal campaign. Two weeks scrutiny of any one of us would make that clear.
We sometimes associate an exclusiveness with the word "saint." Perfection, we mean. Even the proud are reluctant to associate perfection with their name or reputation, at least to say so themselves. No matter how common is the misunderstanding of saint, the Scriptures do not so misunderstand it. In his epistles, Paul addresses the members of the congregations as saints, people called as saints; notice, not just to be and become saints, but they are saints even as he addresses them. Even the congregation at Corinth, guilty of a most grievous sin, continuing in that sin even as Paul writes, he addresses as saints.
Do we need more evidence? The list of heroic saints in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is not ours: Noah, who got drunk at the end of the ark trip; Abraham, to save his life once denied that Sarah was his wife; Isaac, who botched the blessing of his son; Jacob, whose very name means deception; Moses, who was both reluctant to be God's servant and then who killed because he misunderstood what he was to be; Rahab, one of Christ's ancestors, was a prostitute; and of David and Samson I need not tell you.
Whatever else the word "saint" may mean to us, in the Scriptures it does not mean perfect, without flaw. Nor does it carry the image of soft but ineffectual; pleasant but unrealistic; good humored but not tough in the clinches. The book of Daniel is not hesitant to use the term saint because it knows what saint means.
"Saints" mean the holy ones of God. Holiness is not an achievement. It is the gift of God himself. Holiness is a gift, notice, not a reward or an award. It is a gift that God first gave baptized ones in our baptism. In baptism he incorporated us into himself and all that he is, all that he means. Our holiness is the gift of the generosity of his Son's death and resurrection. The old hymn says, "Jesus thy blood and thy righteousness, they are my beauty, my glorious dress." Our holiness is the cloak of another. We are made holy by another.
That helps in times of persecution, as was the case at the time of this writing. There was a persecution led by Antiochus Epiphanes. By telling of the resistance, persistance, and the perseverance of people like Daniel and others during one persecution, the writer wants to encourage the people of the present in their perseverance and in their persistence. If others stood up, that should help them stand up.
While Daniel is a person of some heroic proportions, the Festival of All Saints recalls all in the past who persisted and all in the present who do persist.
If the truth be known, the mere recitation of heroes of faith may discourage rather than encourage. "If only the heroes can make it, I can't make it because I'm no hero." All Saints is for the encouragement of the entire church, heroic and non-heroic members of it alike.
C. S. Lewis in his book, The Great Divorce, illuminates how holiness and sainthood have to do with the common and ordinary and everyday Christian, the non-heroic as well as the heroic. People are touring heaven to get a feel of what it is like before making a choice to stay or not to stay. As the tour proceeds, suddenly music fills the air. Lights are dazzling. A parade is underway.
"For whom?" inquires a tourist. "For a general?" answering her own question. (We just love our wars.)
"No," is the answer.
"For an artist?" (There are times when we venerate our artists.)
"No." Again the reply.
"Ah, I should have known. It's for a bishop."
"Most certainly not," is the reply. "Your own experience should have told you that. It's for Mrs. Smith of Golders Green."
"Why for her?"
"Because for an entire lifetime she loved her husband and her cat." (And if you know anything about husbands and cats ...)
An insignificant woman doing the insignificant, but no less holy, no less saint for all that. Martin Luther said that everything from the work of a woman scrubbing a floor to a preacher preaching the gospel becomes a holy action as it is or is not done to the glory of God.
In fact, one of our temptations fed by our culture is that of making the heroic a substitute for the persistent in the ordinary. Almost any person at a given moment is capable of doing the heroic. Recall the men who raised the flag on Mount Surabachi in World War II, an action commemorated in history books and with a postage stamp. Their Mount Surabachi moment was followed by sadness and deep disappointment.
Sometimes the early church made a similar mistake. Heroes of faith were on occasion made bishops, a task for which they were unequal. The steady kind of courage of a Mrs. Smith of Golders Green is a courage which the church needs more of. The special, the unusual, the extraordinary is so highlighted by the world and sometimes by the church that the more needed is too little encouraged. For most of us the temptation of being insignificant, of not making a difference, of not counting for something is strong because that indeed describes most of us.
The passage of time, too, is a great trial for many. The fact that Monday follows Sunday and keeps on following Sunday; for some, eighty years; for some, ninety years, is a greater trial than a dramatic confrontation with an athiest. That is why we hear, "Be faithful unto death." That is why, "Do not grow weary in well-doing." If what we are doing is well, then we are to keep on doing it. You notice that weariness, which is much in our minds, is not at all in the mind of the writer. Instantaneity is our thing, not patience.
This sense of weariness and loss of a sense of worthwhileness is compounded by a sense of isolation. "I, only I in all of Israel have not bowed the knee to Baal," is the immortal expression of Elijah, who has spoken for all of us at one time or another. Our culture, often the church, promotes that sense of isolation with its excessive stress on individualism, of making it on one's own, of failing on one's own, of everything good and bad revolving around the self. The self is a shaky reed at best. Luther's words, "We pray that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or seduce us into misbelief, despair and other ..." When the focus is on the self, the indicator on the dial vacillates between pride and despair. "I don't need anybody or anything," or "Nobody or nothing can be of any help."
How we perceive temptation may determine how we weather it. If God is to help, he needs to remove the circumstances which cause the pain. Such action, and only such action, will mean that he is of any help. And that, of course, is one possibility. There is another: to pray for a double measure of strength to bear the load.
The vision of the Daniel text is the latter: the vision of the sea of chaos, the four beasts ready to devour people. But it's not the beasts, nor the chaos but the saints of the King who will reign for ever and ever. Christ vivifies everything. Could I not call twelve legions of angels? Remember, the moment of the crucifixion then was not seen as the moment of triumph we see it to be now. There was the onslaught of the government, of religion, of the military, of the common people, the desertion of disciples, and at last the desertion by his Father. It may be light now, but then it was darkness. Even though the darkness may not always be dispelled, Christ gives light and is the light in the midst of that darkness. He gives us the courage to enter the most negative experiences with hope.
Daniel, confident and courageous, enters the lion's den; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, confident and courageous, defy a ruthless ruler and enter the burning fiery furnace, not as victims but as kings. They knew they were not alone, no matter how alone they appeared to be.
And that is always the case. We are not alone. It was true of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pastor Hernandez, and Bishop Romero who was assassinated as he celebrated the Eucharist. It is true for Bishop Desmond Tutu and Dean T. Simon Farisani and Pastor Gomez. No matter how much the government and the police try to isolate and intimidate and torture, their intended victims are not alone. They are accompanied. Someone has gone that way before.
Perhaps our self-doubts about our faithfulness are doubts about God's faithfulness. Look at history. God encouraged us, I was with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. If I was faithful then, will I not be faithful now? I was with James and Peter and John. If I was faithful then, will I not be faithful now? I was with the Luthers and the Calvins and the Bonhoeffers. If I was faithful then, will I not also be faithful to you? I am with the Desmond Tutus and the Simon Farisanis and the Gomezes, the African Christians often dying these days by the score. If I am with them, am I not also with you, not only now but into your future?
More than that. He feeds us now as he has always fed us with the body and blood of his Son in the Holy Supper. Chaos and violence threatened Christ on every side and in every moment. This most holy meal, this most holy moment is beset by violence and the language of violence. In the night in which he was betrayed, he without whom nothing was made that was made; in the night in which he was betrayed by violence into violence which ruthlessly violated him and the world he had created; in that night of betrayal when we could have expected him to do anything but what he did do, he took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, "This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." Then after supper when he had given thanks, he took the cup and said, "This is the new covenant in my blood. Drink of it; all of you. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me."
By that action, and the action of submitting to his flogging - until the bones on his back and ribs showed their white - his being jeered, his being stripped naked, his being made to carry the cross, then the nailing of his hands and feet to the cross until his humiliation became his coronation, he made clear that he would be with us to the end and beyond. I am with you. "They may kill you but they can't touch you. Were you to take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth or descend deep into the abyss, I will be with you."
He will be with us here and now in our time. For it is here that his name is to be hallowed; it is here that his kingdom is to come; it is here that his will is to be done on earth, the same earth where he originated that prayer.
Christ gives us himself through the common, ordinary bread and wine, through the common, ordinary means of eating and drinking. We eat and drink together to experience his presence not only in the meal but in each other. If he makes his presence felt in the gift of himself in the unspectacular, he most certainly will make himself felt in the spectacular. And he promises to feed us this meal as long as we draw breath.
Oh, the vision sees the chaos. It sees the four avaracious and malicious beasts, but it says, "The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingly power and shall retain it for ever, for ever and ever."
And with a twinkle in his eyes, the Lord says, "The last time I checked, you had not yet resisted the shedding of your own blood," there's still some space for that. Amen
"When you come into the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it, and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God gives you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place which the Lord your God will choose, to make his name to dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, 'I declare this day to the Lord your God that I have come into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.' Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God.
"And you shall make response before the Lord your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried to the Lord the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which thou, O Lord, hast given me.' And you shall set it down before the Lord your God, and worship before the Lord your God; and you shall rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you."
(Deuteronomy 26:1-11)
We have enough trouble without the troublesome word "saint" - "the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingly power and shall retain it for ever, for ever and ever." "But I'm no saint," someone will say. Another, "But remember that still does not make me a saint."
"Saint" makes us nervous. That anyone would think of us as saints? Some pastors believe their task is to show that they are not saints. I did not think that required a personal campaign. Two weeks scrutiny of any one of us would make that clear.
We sometimes associate an exclusiveness with the word "saint." Perfection, we mean. Even the proud are reluctant to associate perfection with their name or reputation, at least to say so themselves. No matter how common is the misunderstanding of saint, the Scriptures do not so misunderstand it. In his epistles, Paul addresses the members of the congregations as saints, people called as saints; notice, not just to be and become saints, but they are saints even as he addresses them. Even the congregation at Corinth, guilty of a most grievous sin, continuing in that sin even as Paul writes, he addresses as saints.
Do we need more evidence? The list of heroic saints in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews is not ours: Noah, who got drunk at the end of the ark trip; Abraham, to save his life once denied that Sarah was his wife; Isaac, who botched the blessing of his son; Jacob, whose very name means deception; Moses, who was both reluctant to be God's servant and then who killed because he misunderstood what he was to be; Rahab, one of Christ's ancestors, was a prostitute; and of David and Samson I need not tell you.
Whatever else the word "saint" may mean to us, in the Scriptures it does not mean perfect, without flaw. Nor does it carry the image of soft but ineffectual; pleasant but unrealistic; good humored but not tough in the clinches. The book of Daniel is not hesitant to use the term saint because it knows what saint means.
"Saints" mean the holy ones of God. Holiness is not an achievement. It is the gift of God himself. Holiness is a gift, notice, not a reward or an award. It is a gift that God first gave baptized ones in our baptism. In baptism he incorporated us into himself and all that he is, all that he means. Our holiness is the gift of the generosity of his Son's death and resurrection. The old hymn says, "Jesus thy blood and thy righteousness, they are my beauty, my glorious dress." Our holiness is the cloak of another. We are made holy by another.
That helps in times of persecution, as was the case at the time of this writing. There was a persecution led by Antiochus Epiphanes. By telling of the resistance, persistance, and the perseverance of people like Daniel and others during one persecution, the writer wants to encourage the people of the present in their perseverance and in their persistence. If others stood up, that should help them stand up.
While Daniel is a person of some heroic proportions, the Festival of All Saints recalls all in the past who persisted and all in the present who do persist.
If the truth be known, the mere recitation of heroes of faith may discourage rather than encourage. "If only the heroes can make it, I can't make it because I'm no hero." All Saints is for the encouragement of the entire church, heroic and non-heroic members of it alike.
C. S. Lewis in his book, The Great Divorce, illuminates how holiness and sainthood have to do with the common and ordinary and everyday Christian, the non-heroic as well as the heroic. People are touring heaven to get a feel of what it is like before making a choice to stay or not to stay. As the tour proceeds, suddenly music fills the air. Lights are dazzling. A parade is underway.
"For whom?" inquires a tourist. "For a general?" answering her own question. (We just love our wars.)
"No," is the answer.
"For an artist?" (There are times when we venerate our artists.)
"No." Again the reply.
"Ah, I should have known. It's for a bishop."
"Most certainly not," is the reply. "Your own experience should have told you that. It's for Mrs. Smith of Golders Green."
"Why for her?"
"Because for an entire lifetime she loved her husband and her cat." (And if you know anything about husbands and cats ...)
An insignificant woman doing the insignificant, but no less holy, no less saint for all that. Martin Luther said that everything from the work of a woman scrubbing a floor to a preacher preaching the gospel becomes a holy action as it is or is not done to the glory of God.
In fact, one of our temptations fed by our culture is that of making the heroic a substitute for the persistent in the ordinary. Almost any person at a given moment is capable of doing the heroic. Recall the men who raised the flag on Mount Surabachi in World War II, an action commemorated in history books and with a postage stamp. Their Mount Surabachi moment was followed by sadness and deep disappointment.
Sometimes the early church made a similar mistake. Heroes of faith were on occasion made bishops, a task for which they were unequal. The steady kind of courage of a Mrs. Smith of Golders Green is a courage which the church needs more of. The special, the unusual, the extraordinary is so highlighted by the world and sometimes by the church that the more needed is too little encouraged. For most of us the temptation of being insignificant, of not making a difference, of not counting for something is strong because that indeed describes most of us.
The passage of time, too, is a great trial for many. The fact that Monday follows Sunday and keeps on following Sunday; for some, eighty years; for some, ninety years, is a greater trial than a dramatic confrontation with an athiest. That is why we hear, "Be faithful unto death." That is why, "Do not grow weary in well-doing." If what we are doing is well, then we are to keep on doing it. You notice that weariness, which is much in our minds, is not at all in the mind of the writer. Instantaneity is our thing, not patience.
This sense of weariness and loss of a sense of worthwhileness is compounded by a sense of isolation. "I, only I in all of Israel have not bowed the knee to Baal," is the immortal expression of Elijah, who has spoken for all of us at one time or another. Our culture, often the church, promotes that sense of isolation with its excessive stress on individualism, of making it on one's own, of failing on one's own, of everything good and bad revolving around the self. The self is a shaky reed at best. Luther's words, "We pray that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or seduce us into misbelief, despair and other ..." When the focus is on the self, the indicator on the dial vacillates between pride and despair. "I don't need anybody or anything," or "Nobody or nothing can be of any help."
How we perceive temptation may determine how we weather it. If God is to help, he needs to remove the circumstances which cause the pain. Such action, and only such action, will mean that he is of any help. And that, of course, is one possibility. There is another: to pray for a double measure of strength to bear the load.
The vision of the Daniel text is the latter: the vision of the sea of chaos, the four beasts ready to devour people. But it's not the beasts, nor the chaos but the saints of the King who will reign for ever and ever. Christ vivifies everything. Could I not call twelve legions of angels? Remember, the moment of the crucifixion then was not seen as the moment of triumph we see it to be now. There was the onslaught of the government, of religion, of the military, of the common people, the desertion of disciples, and at last the desertion by his Father. It may be light now, but then it was darkness. Even though the darkness may not always be dispelled, Christ gives light and is the light in the midst of that darkness. He gives us the courage to enter the most negative experiences with hope.
Daniel, confident and courageous, enters the lion's den; Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, confident and courageous, defy a ruthless ruler and enter the burning fiery furnace, not as victims but as kings. They knew they were not alone, no matter how alone they appeared to be.
And that is always the case. We are not alone. It was true of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pastor Hernandez, and Bishop Romero who was assassinated as he celebrated the Eucharist. It is true for Bishop Desmond Tutu and Dean T. Simon Farisani and Pastor Gomez. No matter how much the government and the police try to isolate and intimidate and torture, their intended victims are not alone. They are accompanied. Someone has gone that way before.
Perhaps our self-doubts about our faithfulness are doubts about God's faithfulness. Look at history. God encouraged us, I was with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. If I was faithful then, will I not be faithful now? I was with James and Peter and John. If I was faithful then, will I not be faithful now? I was with the Luthers and the Calvins and the Bonhoeffers. If I was faithful then, will I not also be faithful to you? I am with the Desmond Tutus and the Simon Farisanis and the Gomezes, the African Christians often dying these days by the score. If I am with them, am I not also with you, not only now but into your future?
More than that. He feeds us now as he has always fed us with the body and blood of his Son in the Holy Supper. Chaos and violence threatened Christ on every side and in every moment. This most holy meal, this most holy moment is beset by violence and the language of violence. In the night in which he was betrayed, he without whom nothing was made that was made; in the night in which he was betrayed by violence into violence which ruthlessly violated him and the world he had created; in that night of betrayal when we could have expected him to do anything but what he did do, he took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, "This is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." Then after supper when he had given thanks, he took the cup and said, "This is the new covenant in my blood. Drink of it; all of you. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me."
By that action, and the action of submitting to his flogging - until the bones on his back and ribs showed their white - his being jeered, his being stripped naked, his being made to carry the cross, then the nailing of his hands and feet to the cross until his humiliation became his coronation, he made clear that he would be with us to the end and beyond. I am with you. "They may kill you but they can't touch you. Were you to take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth or descend deep into the abyss, I will be with you."
He will be with us here and now in our time. For it is here that his name is to be hallowed; it is here that his kingdom is to come; it is here that his will is to be done on earth, the same earth where he originated that prayer.
Christ gives us himself through the common, ordinary bread and wine, through the common, ordinary means of eating and drinking. We eat and drink together to experience his presence not only in the meal but in each other. If he makes his presence felt in the gift of himself in the unspectacular, he most certainly will make himself felt in the spectacular. And he promises to feed us this meal as long as we draw breath.
Oh, the vision sees the chaos. It sees the four avaracious and malicious beasts, but it says, "The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingly power and shall retain it for ever, for ever and ever."
And with a twinkle in his eyes, the Lord says, "The last time I checked, you had not yet resisted the shedding of your own blood," there's still some space for that. Amen
"When you come into the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, and have taken possession of it, and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God gives you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place which the Lord your God will choose, to make his name to dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, 'I declare this day to the Lord your God that I have come into the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.' Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God.
"And you shall make response before the Lord your God, 'A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried to the Lord the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which thou, O Lord, hast given me.' And you shall set it down before the Lord your God, and worship before the Lord your God; and you shall rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given to you and to your house, you, and the Levite, and the sojourner who is among you."
(Deuteronomy 26:1-11)
