Love thy Neighbor as Thyself

Epiphany 7, 2017

Lev. 19.18                         

       Along with Genesis 1.1: “In the beginning God created...” and the 23rd Psalm which begins, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” Lev. 19.18: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is probably the best-known verse in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, John 3.16, which begins, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son," notwithstanding, Jesus's repeating “love thy neighbor as thyself” is perhaps the best-known verse in the Bible. For many that one verse sums up the entirety of Jesus’s teaching.

        I do not agree that that one verse sums up the entirety of the gospel; the gospel of the coming of the kingdom of God is about more than ethical behavior. The gospel concerning God’s son (Rom1.3) is about the forgiveness of sins and the redemption that Christ secured for us on the cross, the redemption that we access through faith by grace. The message of salvation through faith in the redemptive death and resurrection of Christ is the essence of the New Testament.

       But the message of the Old Testament, Jesus said, is summed up in one golden rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Mt.7.8), which is another way of saying that the heart of God’s message to humankind handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai is, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” When asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus replied, “The first and great commandment is this; Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul, and the second is like unto it, Love thy neighbor as thyself.” In other words, Jesus taught that we show our love for God by showing love for others. Where love for others is absent, there is no tangible love for God.

       It is no wonder then that the name of Jesus has become synonymous with love of others. Jesus not only preached "love thy neighbor" but he practiced what he preached. He proved his love by going all the way to the cross to secure our redemption, thus backing up his words with actions, “No greater love has a man than this” Jesus said, “that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15). If we wonder what love is, we don’t have to look far for the answer. Love is revealed fully in Christ on the cross. Christ who in his divine nature possessed everything and was in need of nothing, nevertheless emptied himself of everything in order to share the infinite wealth of his eternal inheritance with us who rejected him and showed ourselves utterly unworthy of anything. We nailed him to a tree. And yet as he took his dying breathe he prayed to the Father, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He loved us. Despite our lack of deservingness, in order to save our souls from eternal separation from God, he loved us to the end.

      And that is what the saying means, “ Be imitators of God as beloved children; and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5.1-2). Those are the marching orders of the church militant. Go into the world like an army and conquer all nations with humble love.  Jesus commanded his church on the night before he died, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Anticipating his passion and crucifixion, he was saying to his apostles—the future bishops of his church—“ Watch me and learn, for tonight and tomorrow morning I am going to show you what love is, and I am going to show you how to be my witnesses in the world. For those who torture you pray; to those who abuse you turn the other cheek; when they steal your coat give them your shirt as well; when they insult you and call you all sorts of names, like a lamb before its shearers is mute be meek; and when they pour evil upon you bless them, bless them and do not curse or plot revenge. When life puts a cross on your back, carry it for others, as I will carry it for you, and do not grumble. Be ye kind one to another. Have the patience of a saint. Be aglow with the Spirit. Be good to those who burden you with trouble as God is good to you and by your goodness some will be converted. Then God will smile and say to you, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Come into my kingdom.’”

       If we take this message to heart and make it our aim in life to be as loving of others as Christ is of us (1Cor 13.1), which is absolutely how it’s intended, not as an option for some but as a commandment for all, then we begin to see what a serious task God has set before us. Being truly Christian is no easy thing. I dare say many treat it as though it were nothing more than child’s play. But actually, if we recognize the power of temptation and sin that ravages human souls like fire, and how quick we are to retreat when the heat is on, we may begin to see that the army into which Christ has called us holds us to a standard that makes Navy SEALS training seem relaxed. The SEALS have to endure and survive to fight another day, but to be worthy of the name “Christian” we have to “be holy as your heavenly father is holy, be merciful as your heavenly father is merciful, be perfect,” Jesus said, “as your heavenly father is perfect.” In other words, there are no part-time Christians, not really. You’re either in this army or you’re not. You’re either committed to the cause or you’re faking it.

       Romano Guardini, a Catholic priest in the early 20th century, who wrote one of the great Christian books of that century, simply enough called The Lord, penned one the most poignant statements about Christian faith and life I have ever read. He wrote, “I “am” not a Christian; I am on the way to becoming one—if God will give me the strength. Christianity is nothing one can have; nor is it a platform from which to judge others. It is movement. I can become a Christian only as long as I am conscious of the possibility of falling away. The gravest danger is not failure of the will to accomplish a certain thing; with God’s help I can always pull myself together and begin again. The real danger is that of becoming within myself unchristian, and it’s the greatest when my will is most sure of itself. I have absolutely no guarantee that I shall be privileged to remain a follower of Christ save in the manner of beginning, of being en route, of becoming, trusting, hoping, and praying.”

       In other words if we think we're holy and perfectly merciful, we are not, and until we are then we keep working to acquire the virtue of humble love in our souls, devoting ourselves to prayer as Navy SEALS do their pushups at four in the morning, until maybe we start to understand that being Christian isn’t about us, it’s about Christ living his life in us and us getting out of the way so that he can fully and uninhibitedly do that.

       Prayer opens our souls to receive direction and counsel from the Spirit and the great prayer of the church, the Holy Eucharist, is the spring from which the Spirit, like a stream of living water, is poured into our hearts. Those who are most serious about becoming truly loving souls are serious about prayer. They are, therefore, devoted to the Eucharist, that great encounter with the real presence of the living Word. The world is full of people who think they are spiritual. The world is filled with good guys and gurus and wise old souls who serve as spiritual guides. But, Jesus warned, the world is full of blind guides. Genuine spirituality is a gift from God. It is only by grace that we are conformed to Christ. That is not a virtue we just acquire by living. That is a virtue we acquire, if we acquire it at all, by surrendering to the Holy Spirit, who is the bearer of Christ’s love. True spirituality begins in baptism when the Spirit is given and is fueled by the Holy Eucharist in which that gift is renewed. And it is strengthened by suffering. We go into the world armed only with the weapon of forgiveness and shielded by the wisdom of the gospel. We show kindness even to our enemies. What becomes of it? Our love is rejected. What becomes of that?  We love even more.

     As Teresa of Avila put it in her classic work, The Way of Perfection, “What profit then can come to us from being loved ourselves?...For however dearly we have been loved, what is there that remains to us? Such persons (true Christians) care nothing whether they’re loved or not. …Do you think that such persons will love none and delight in none save God? No; they will love others much more than they did, with more genuine love, with greater passion and with a love which brings more profit; that in a word is what love really is.” In other words, love is nothing, if it’s not loving those who reject you, loving even more when your love is not returned.

      Looked at in this way, I’m surprised that anyone would choose to be a Christian. Becoming as Christ is is a tall order. Maybe that’s why so much of the church today has taken a short cut. There are thousands of sermons being preached this morning on the theme of, “Love thy neighbor and join the fight for social justice, be the resistance, welcome the aliens no matter how they got here or what they do and open the borders; love demands it!” That sounds genuine enough, and is often sincere. But when it’s served up, as so many churches today serve it as the main course, it’s nothing but stone soup. The gospel is not a political agenda and simply substituting a canard called social justice for the hard but ultimately satisfying work of being filled with the Holy Spirit is a cheap counterfeit for real spirituality.

     We all want America to be great. We want our community to be great again. When the people begin to hunger and thirst again for the Word of God, life will return to these streets. Congress can’t do it; the President can’t do it. The churches have to come to the rescue. The only weapon the church has is the gospel. The gospel is more than enough. But the gospel is only effectively proclaimed by those who take the life of Christ to heart and live it. And his life transcends politics.   

A Light to the Nations

January 15, 2017—2 Epiphany

Is. 49.7

       About 500 years prior to his coming to the earth, God announced to his beloved Son: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

        God privileged the prophet Isaiah to overhear this announcement. Isaiah in turn shared this inspired word with the people of Israel. It was a word of great hope. It was a great promise. The promise implicit in this prophecy was that God would send someone to Israel who would not only inspire and enlighten the Jewish people, but whose wisdom would enlighten the whole world. It would be through Israel that the entire pagan-idol-worshipping world would at last see who God really is. It was the mission and honor of Israel to be the home of God’s servant, the one through whom the entire world would at last be blessed with knowledge of the one true, eternal, and living God. God would do this and Israel would be the nation to whom he would come.

       Jesus identified himself as the servant of God to whom this prophecy was addressed. “I am the light of the world” he said as he stood in the Temple, “who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8.1-2).

        A man who could make such an exalted claim about himself would have to be one of two things. He would either have to be who he said he was or he would have to be insane. You can’t make a claim like that lightly. You can but it would be ridiculous. I could say, “I’m the light of the world” to which I can imagine my wife replying, “Well, that’s wonderful, but it’s Saturday and you have Christmas decorations to take down so, Light of the World, let’s get going.” Just because you say you’re the world’s true light doesn’t require anyone to take you seriously.

       So unless you are crazy, conceited, intent on embarrassing your family, or you just hunger for attention, why do this? There are only two possibilities. Either Jesus really was the servant of God to whom God said in heaven, “I will give you as a light to the nations” or he was insane. If he was who he said he was then he was God’s man in our midst. If he was not God’s man, he was a madman, because who but a madman would say, “I am the light of the world,” expecting to be taken seriously and believed if he wasn’t? Was Jesus insane? Those who deemed him guilty of blasphemy thought so. But does anyone really believe that the man who preached the Sermon on the Mount, whose many sayings from that sermon have inspired millions of people the world over to live better lives, was nuts? Was the man who proclaimed, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” insane? Was he, who by the power of his personal charisma alone restored movement to the legs of a paralyzed man, out of his mind? His critics charged that he was wrong to forgive that man his sins. “God alone has authority to do that,” they said. But what if he was God’s servant come down from heaven, what then? Was he out of his mind when he called Lazarus to come out of the tomb? Some at the time thought so, until Lazarus, four days dead, walked out of his tomb. So who was Jesus if he wasn’t insane? There’s only one possibility: he was who he said he was.  He was the one appointed by God while he was still in heaven to be a light to the nations, the servant prophesied by Isaiah whom God had promised to send to earth, through whom all the people of the earth would come to know God.

       That’s who he was. And yet, many then and many today find it hard to believe that a man from Nazareth could be God’s man. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” the incredulous Nathaniel asked (John1.46). Implicit in his question is an intellectual skepticism that transcends the centuries. There are many thinking people in every age who cannot believe that God would stoop so low as to come into the world through its back door. How could a peasant from a small rural town in Galilee, a man of no distinction, be God’s man, the world’s savior? On its face, it’s preposterous. And yet, that is what God did. “He has put down the mighty from their thrones,” his mother said, “and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away” (Lk.1.52). If the intellectuals would think about it just a little longer, they might realize that it’s as preposterous for us to anticipate God as it is for a turtle to imagine what the hawk will do next. God is so far above us, what could be more pretentious than for men to judge him who judges us? “My thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways” says the Lord. We learn about God by listening to Jesus, not by tuning him out.  

        When Jesus was executed, Pontius Pilate nailed a sign to the wooden beam on which he was being crucified. And the sign that hung above his head read: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John.19.19). This was to indicate the crime of which he was found guilty: treason. The irony in that sign is that he was not guilty of treason; he really was the king of the Jews, the chosen one foreseen by Isaiah who was anointed by God in heaven to discharge that office on earth. He was not conceited. He was not a megalomaniac. He was not a madman. He was what every prophecy fulfilled inherently is: hard to believe, but true nevertheless. He was who he said he was: the king of Israel whose authority to rule came from heaven. Pilate mocked him and thought he was mad. But that is just the point, he was not a madman. It was therefore Pilate who committed the crime. Pilate was guilty of judging him who, by divine right, is the judge of us all.

         It is a crime that governors and kings, presidents and the nations of this world commit day after day after day, whenever we ignore Jesus Christ and fail to pay homage to him who is the true king of all mankind. He is the one to whom God expects us to look for true religious wisdom and for moral leadership. That is what the saying means, “I will give you as a light to the nations.” God’s expectation is that men will be guided by the light; that every nation will look and listen to Jesus Christ as to a true light. He is the one who has made God known. God has revealed himself in Jesus. You wonder who God is and what God is like, look to Jesus on the cross. There God is visibly suffering to fulfill his scriptures, keeping his promise to save us from our sins, and praying for our souls—“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” His gospel is not the personal opinion of a marginal Jew. It is the word of him of whom God said,“This my beloved Son. Listen to him!”

       We live in a very wealthy and amazing nation, a nation that has done some great things and aspires to greatness. We defeated the Japanese Imperial Army and the Third Reich and we compelled Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” That’s some major stuff. But those aren’t even our finest accomplishments. We invented the World Series, the NFL Playoffs, the Hersey bar and buttered popcorn. No wonder almost everyone wants to live here. This is a great place. But after we put our patriotism and cultural pride aside, we see that there is in God’s eyes only one measure of true greatness. A nation is only great to the extent that its people and its leaders look to the world’s true Light for guidance. A people that believes every man is a light unto himself and every woman a reflection of the Great Spirit that animates the Universe is a people lost in darkness. But this witch’s brew of religious pluralism and syncretism that characterizes faith in the modern age only proves that what the Psalmist said of the ancient pagan world is still true today: “all the gods of the peoples are idols; but the Lord made the heavens” (Ps.96.5). The secular humanist culture in which we live preaches to us relentlessly that an enlightened mind is an open mind and that a free nation is one that is free to draw upon the wisdom of every deity. Saint John said of a man who looks at life this way, “the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John2.11).  God has spoken and his Word is light and there is no question as to who that true Light is, “the true light that enlightens everyone has come into the world” (John1..9): the Light of the nations is Jesus Christ. And great is the nation who sees him for who he is.

The Baptism of Christ

January 8, 2017—Epiphany 1 

Matt. 3.13-17                                                    

       Baptism is something that I fear a great many Christians take for granted. Most Christians today, having received baptism in infancy, were not aware of what God was doing for them at the time. And many of them still, decades later, are no more aware now of what a great gift they were given at baptism than they were then. You would think that children growing up would have a burning curiosity and desire to learn about the sacred mystery of his or her baptism and to explore the full range of its meaning. But seldom is that the case. All too often baptism is greeted with a yawn; few seem to take much interest in it. Many think that baptism, or the “christening," as some call it, is nothing but a rite of initiation into a club called “the church."  To many it’s just an ethnic custom, something parents do for their children because it’s expected of them. Their parents did it for them, as their parents before them. We carry on a tradition. And by participation in this ancient rite we indicate that we are, nominally at least, Christians.

         But few, I think, really understand the magnificence and the grandeur of this supernatural event; that it’s not something we do to each other, it’s something God does to us. In one sense, I have never baptized anyone. Yes, as the priest, I pour water on the person’s head and pronounce the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt.28.19). We do it that way, using those words because that is how Jesus instructed his church to do it. But still, all I can do as a minister is pour water and offer a prayer, God gives the grace. And it’s the grace of God applied to our souls that makes baptism more than a rite of initiation into a human organization. Grace makes it a sacrament of the church, a holy mystery by which the human soul is washed clean of original sin and restored to primal innocence we had with God in Eden.

       Baptism effects a new beginning in the most important relationship each of us has with God, our Creator. By it, we who were from birth marked with the sin of Adam and Eve on our souls are marked as Christ’s own forever through baptism, our second birth (John3.1–8). The mark of Adam’s guilt is washed away in baptism and we are “born anew," as Jesus put it “through water and the Spirit." And the new life given to us in baptism is the life of God’s only begotten son, without which, Jesus said, no one “cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John3.5).

        As we share his life, we share his privileges. The chief privilege Christ has is that of calling God “my father”; a privilege Adam originally had but lost because of his sin. Through baptism it becomes our privilege also. And just as God looking upon Jesus proclaimed, “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased, today I have begotten thee” (Mt.3.16; Psalm2.7), so too in baptism God pronounces us to be in relation to him as Christ is. In other words, through the miracle of baptism the privilege of sonship that belonged to Christ by virtue of his divine nature becomes ours by grace. This is why Christians have always prefaced the Lord’s Prayer by saying, “As Our Savior taught us, we are bold to say, Our Father…”. We have no right to call God “Father” apart from Jesus, the Son, who by making us his own in baptism has given us that right.

        We exercise this great privilege through faith, provided we have faith. And by faith I mean not just a sentimental feeling that God adores us but a conviction strengthened by knowledge and experience that the revelation of God in Christ is true: not true in the sense that Bach was a greater genius that Brahams but true in the sense that the sun rises always in the east. You can count on it. Sadly as we go through life many of us lose faith. Many poo-poo baptism as a lot of hocus-pocus—Christian superstition and nothing more. Others insist, like pagans, that we are all children of God by birth, that there is no such thing as original sin and that we do not need “the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” of which Paul reminded Titus (Titus 3.5). What we need, they say, is to use our inner potential to become like gods. Still others think the religion that bears Christ’s name is just too exclusive for a modern inclusive society. Many think its offensive to claim that we need the baptism of Christ to be saved. “What about Jews? What about Muslims? What do you say to them?” they ask. Jesus had an answer for them. “Blessed are you who take no offense at me,” he said. They didn’t like his attitude then, they like it even less today. But Jesus never said that everyone would accept baptism. And indeed, many will not.

     But many do receive baptism and many take it as they take their marriage vows, as a sacred bond in the most important of all relationships. So for those of you who take your baptism as a precious gift, I wish to encourage you this morning to keep the faith and to keep your baptismal vows. The best way to do that is to remember what God has done for us. Jesus’s baptism served God’s purpose as a revelation of Christ’s divine nature and a fulfillment of prophecy. God did not give to Jesus in baptism something he lacked, because he lacked nothing. But God does give us something in baptism that we lack. He gives us the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins. “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2.38). It is the Holy Spirit that allows us to call God Father (Rom.8.14-16), a privilege we claim only because Jesus, the only begotten son of God, claims us in baptism as his own and shares with us the privileges of his sonship. In other words, when it comes to our relationship with God we are nothing without Jesus. We owe him everything; a debt we can never repay. But in giving us the Holy Spirit he has given us everything we need. And thus, paradoxically, he even helps us pay the debt we owe, a debt we pay by receiving the Holy Spirit and allowing the Spirit through faith to guide us in everything.

     There is one way to honor our baptism and it is this: “Do not get drunk with wine,” Saint Paul admonished the church, “but be filled with the Spirit!” (Eph.5.17). And then, “Be imitators of God and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph.5.1-2) and so as we have been comforted by him we may give comfort and consolation to others (2Cor.3.1). Christ did not run from our suffering but took up his cross and embraced our human sorrow; so we must also take up the sorrow of others and not run from the suffering of others but in empathy and solidarity embrace them in their suffering. Have no fear of others in their suffering. The Holy Spirit is perfect love and perfect love casts out fear (1John4.8).

       Do you see where I am going with this? With Christendom now, like Camelot, a memory; with a secular nation now engulfed in a guerrilla war with an ancient foe; and with new ISIS-inspired slaughter making headlines each week at home or abroad, the world needs the Spirit of Christ more than ever. Our greatest weapon in the war against evil is the Holy Spirit, the agent of the grace of God. A divine grace that is powerful enough to cleanse a human soul of sin can foil a jihadi plot before it is even hatched.

       But the Spirit only responds to faith. If America would be great again, if we would be safe and sane again, and drug-free again, we must have faith.  Faith can move mountains, Jesus said, when nothing else can. We are facing a mountain range of troubles: of twenty trillion dollars of debt, drug dealers in every alley, ISIS cells in every state, and decades of such flagrant disobedience to God that virtually every institution in this nation is corrupted. This nation has to change or God is going to say, “To hell with it. I don’t need these people.” God doesn’t need us. We need God.

       We can’t do much about our neighbors, but we can change our minds and our ways of being in the world. The number one change we all need in this country is to value our baptism above everything else and resolve each day to keep the faith and be filled with the Spirit. The spirit will do for our nation what ten-million police can never do. The Spirit will return peace and dignity to our chaotic airports and our blood-soaked city streets and to our broken homes and to our agnostic schools, to our decadent theaters and our foul-mouthed concert halls. America, look to the Spirit to lead you and guide you and pray for the churches. As the pews fill up marriages will strengthen, crime will dry up, debt will dwindle down and terror will retreat. God who gave us the Spirit in baptism will do this. But God responds to faith.