Bearing the Image of Christ as the Economy of Salvation

Sermon Preached for Zion Episcopal Church

Year A Proper 24 – October 22, 2017

Oconmowoc, Wisconsin

(Lectionary Readings: Exodus 33:12-23, 1Thessalonians 1:1-10, Matthew 22:15-22)

         
I have to admit, when I first looked at the readings for this Sunday, I thought “You have got to be kidding me.” At first I was brimming with nervous excitement at the thought of sharing the word with you – my brothers and sisters – here at Zion.

Yet here we are, left with a passage in which Jesus talks about taxes. Great.

Someone thought it was a good idea for a millennial in his mid-twenties to get up and talk to Christ’s beloved about the economy… (My brothers and sisters) We’re off to a great start…

Thankfully, while a reading of economic responsibility and good citizenship is certainly one possible reading of this text – I’m not entirely sure that was the main point that Jesus was trying to make. 

Though the Pharisees and the Herodians of today’s lesson were indeed challenging Jesus about the payment of taxes to the Roman state, we once again find our Lord turning the question around to discuss something much bigger – an economy that far surpasses the economic systems of our world – a Divine economy – the very economy of salvation.

          Allow me to provide a bit of context for today’s gospel lesson.  At this point in the gospel according to Matthew. Jesus has already made his triumphal entry to Jerusalem (on the back of a donkey), he has already caused a rukus in the temple by flipping tables and disrupting the daily life of the people in that Holy Place, he has told parables which directly challenge the authority of his people’s religious leaders – those same leaders who are, at this point, infuriated by this man who deliberately seems to be upsetting the status quo;

This man who claims to be teaching the ways of righteousness, yet whose actions seem to be irreverent at best, and, at worst outright blasphemous.

The opponents of our Lord now sought to trip him up in some way; so as to either discredit him in the eyes of the people, or (perhaps better yet) get him into trouble with the Roman authorities.

Now our scene is set…

As Jesus is teaching in the temple, the Herodians and the disciples of the Pharisees present him with a question:

“Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor?”

The question may seem simple enough to our ears, but is in fact loaded with both political and theological implications. The Roman Emperor was both a political and religious figure. Not only was he the leader of the Roman state, but he was also considered a quasi-god by the Romans.

Therefore, if Jesus would have answered, “Yes, you should pay taxes to the emperor,” he would have been seen as a blasphemer and a Roman sympathizer – one who supports the occupation of their homeland by an Emperor who calls himself God.

By answering “yes,” Jesus would have been discredited in the eyes of the people, who, if stirred up enough, could have easily been aroused to violence against him.

If he would have answered “no” – then his opponents could have simply handed him over to the Roman authorities as a traitor to the state… The Romans would take care of the rest.

So in truth, there was really no good answer to this question.

Instead of answering, Jesus immediately calls out the hypocrisy inherent in the trap they have set.

 He asks for a denarius, the official coinage of the Roman state. 

On it you would probably find an image of the Roman Emperor Tiberius and proclamations of that emperor’s divinity – to possess such an image within the Holy Precincts of the Temple would be considered absolutely blasphemous.

In asking for the coin, we are to assume that Jesus did not have a denarius on his person; but, lo and behold, his opponents were quickly able to produce one.

Our Lord then has them identify the person depicted on the coin to which they reply, “Caesar.”

With that answer, Jesus completely dismisses their original question.

“If it obviously belongs to Caesar, then you should give it back to Caesar.”

At that point the issue isn’t even about payment so much as it is “giving something back.”

“If you want to bear Caesar’s image and participate in his economy, then you should follow the rules of that game.”

This answer alone would satisfy the requirements of the question that was originally asked, but Jesus keeps going:

Give “to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and give to God the things that are God’s.”

Remember, the emperor claimed to be Divine – there was no separation of Church and state as we understand it today.

Yet here we have Jesus making a sharp distinction between the worldly economy of the emperor and the Divine economy of God – inviting us to shift our focus from the affairs of worldly empires towards participation in an economy that truly leads to our salvation.

And so, rather than spending our time focused on the monopoly money of our human society, and bearing the image of Caesar(s) (and little moustached men with monocles and top hats). Christ calls us to consider the Image already imprinted upon us.

We are made in the very Image of God.

That Image (whatever that is) is pressed into the very fabric of our Human existence. And while the grace of God seeks to constantly renew and refine that Image within us, we also have the ability to deny that grace and allow our Image-ness to tarnish be covered up with the grime of sin.

Yet in Jesus Christ, who is the Second Person of the Trinity and the True and Perfect Image of the Father, we find the Image of God restored in us. In some fundamental way, we are called and empowered, as Human Beings, to display something of Who God Is.

But as “Bearers of God’s Image,” how are we to “give to God what is God’s” ?

God already knows who God is, so our Image-ness doesn’t really serve to show God any more than God already knows. 

God is also the only one who can ever really know who God is, being that God is necessarily infinite and more glorious than we can ever fathom.

Consider our reading from Exodus:

After his prayer of intersession, Moses asks God to appear to him in the fullness of Gory. God grants his request, and says that he will indeed pass by, yet will not reveal his Face to Moses, only his Back.

“For no one shall see me and live.”

 Even Moses, “the Law-giver,” the one who spoke to God “as with a friend” could not look fully into the face of God without perishing. Yet still God comes, proclaiming the Divine “I AM” and pronouncing grace and mercy as hallmarks of His Divinity. 

As finite, mortal beings, we cannot possibly hope to gaze upon, let alone comprehend, the Face of the infinite God. Yet in the Incarnation we are given the Way. 

In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God and humanity meet and are irrevocably united. By allowing ourselves to be united to Christ in Holy Communion, we are constantly renewed into ever more perfected “Images” of Christ. Becoming truer images as we draw ever closer to the One who is the Truest Image of God.

It thus becomes the human project (the human “role” in the economy of God), to constantly have the Image of God refined within us as we seek to embody an ever deepening understanding of who God is (gracious, merciful, self-revealing).

And part of what it means to bare the Image of Christ (and therefore the Image of God) is manifesting the self-revealing love of God. The drive to make the transforming love of God known in all the world, so that all the world might participate in His life.

 This is what we owe to the One who imprinted us with His Image in the first place.

 While there are countless saints and Holy men and women who have borne the Image of God and acted as true Icons of Christ throughout history, my mind keeps returning to one particular individual.

After the events of the past week I can’t help but think of Daniel Westberg. As many of you know, Fr. Westberg passed from beyond our midst after a boating accident which occurred less than a week ago. The suddenness of the event sent a shockwave throughout the Nashotah House community. For us and for many others, Father Westberg had borne the Image of Christ in his love, in his wit - in his constant pursuit to know God more and more; and to reflect the love of the God he knew.

The morning before his death, the residential community was privileged to see Father Westberg at his absolute finest. He was both the celebrant of the Eucharist that day as well as the Preacher.  We were privileged to see a man fully living into his vocation as a priest of Christ’s church.

Fr. Westberg, in his very Fr. Westberg-ness, revealed something of God to us in such a way that we are all better off for having known him and for having interacted with him. And yet, at his passing, there is also a great feeling of deficit. It is as if a treasure has been plucked from among us, leaving a great vacuum in the Divine economy of Christian community.

It’s as if something of God has left us.

And yet, in the midst of this tragedy I watched something beautiful take shape over the course of the week. In the wake of this deficit, in the face of this loss, we all strove to bear the love and compassion of God for each other. Though we all felt debilitated, to some degree - that something had been taken from our community - we attempted to inhabit that void with our Love for each other. Our communal desire to reflect the loving and healing presence of Christ to each other in such a dark time.

Beloved we all know that there are times when God seems particularly far away. But in all times, it is our vocation as Christians (or “little Christs”) to bear the Image of God for each other and to ever draw more of the Image out of each other.

This is how we participate in that Divine Economy.

My beloved brothers and sisters, we are (each of us) called to be Icons of Christ and bear the restored Image of God to the whole Created Order.

Pray that we may ever seek a better understanding who God is and a deeper knowledge of His Love for us, that as we grow in our understanding of God we strive to become ever more refined bearers of His Image. Amen.

Sermon Delivered to All Saint’s Episcopal Church – Moline

Proper 14 – August 13^th 2017

(Lessons referenced: 1 Kings 19: 9-18, Matthew 14: 22-33)

Brothers and sisters, Pray with me:

“Heavenly Father, in You we live and move and have our very being: we humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget You, but may remember that we are ever walking in Your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”   Amen.

I would first like to thank you all for the opportunity to preach here at All Saint’s.  Worshipping with you this summer has been a weekly breath of fresh air in the midst of an intense CPE process.  For those of you who don’t know “CPE” stands for Clinical Pastoral Education.  It is a traditional and crucial part of priestly formation as seminarians (like myself) are thrown out into the world to be chaplains for a time. To go beyond the walls of what we normally consider “The Church” and meet the people of God where they are: in hospitals, in nursing homes, in prisons.

I had heard stories of how impactful and challenging CPE had been for others. I had heard how the program would force me to look deep into myself, and how those depths would impact my ministry. Despite all of the stories I had heard, nothing could really prepare me for the experience itself.

I now find that I can relate to Peter in today’s gospel lesson: “If it is really you Lord (and if this is really the path that you have called me to walk), tell me to walk out onto those stormy waters – Tell me to come to that place where you are.” 

I now also realize how insane that prayer is: “Lord, if you are who you say you are, call me to walk into the most difficult situations so that I can find you there.” Like Peter, I quickly found myself to be out of my own depth.

One of the aspects of my summer chaplain experience was our weekly “on-call” assignment.  About once a week I would be given overnight responsibility for both hospitals in Davenport, Illini in Silvis, and the Genesis hospital in DeWitt until 8am the following morning. This generally meant that I would wait in Davenport until something terrible happened at the hospital: a heart attack, a stroke, a trauma, or a death.

My very first night on-call was the Saturday night proceeding Father’s Day.  I was anxiously waiting all night for something to happen, but after several hours of nothing, I finally fell asleep with the pager on the table next to me. 

At 3:47 AM on Sunday morning I was paged to the ER for a heart attack which quickly escalated into a “Code Blue” (meaning the patient had lost his pulse).  When I arrived I found the patient’s 70-something year old mother and 20-something year old daughter in the waiting room, completely bereft. As the Medical Team worked to get a pulse back the daughter just asked “Why?”

The family had been having a barbeque less than twelve hours before and her dad had been completely fine. Yet here he was, dying from a heart attack. The patient’s daughter had lost her mother on Mother’s Day a few years before and might very well now be losing her father on Father’s Day.

“Why would God let this happen?”  I didn’t have any answers, I didn’t pretend to. I merely sat there with them and let them know that they were not alone in their grief.

Once the doctor had declared the patient dead, I went back to see the body with the family. At his mother’s request, we prayed over our lost brother and committed him (and ourselves) to God’s loving mercy at that moment – and it was in the Holy silence that followed (that “sound of sheer silence”), that I found myself overwhelmed with God’s presence in that room. In the midst of chaos and distress God had been with us at every moment: in our grief, in our anxieties, and in the midst of every question we had. God was there, speaking to us in those moments of silence.

As more family arrived in the hours that followed, the grief was mingled with laughter as family members shared stories about this man and the life he had lived- and as I listened I was able to reflect on what joy and love God had manifested in and through this person’s life.

But that moment of Holy Silence will always stick with me -That moment where God broke through.

I am thus reminded of Elijah’s experience in our Old Testament Lesson.  For a little bit of context: Elijah was at this point on the run from a Queen who wanted to have him horribly killed. In a state of profound fear and anxiety, Elijah’s turns to God for direction and comfort. God then sends Elijah to Horeb where he is to wait for God to pass by. When then hear the familiar passage of the great wind shaking the mountains, followed by a great earthquake, which is then followed by a ferocious fire.

Yet none of these things was God. God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake. God was not in the fire. God was in the piercing silence that followed.

It was in that silence that God spoke to Elijah and said, “I am here, in the midst of these things; and you still have work to do.”

It is in the midst of life’s tempests and tremors that we find God; not in the distressing event itself, but in the silence between heartbeats. God never leaves us in those moments to face life’s difficulties alone, but stands with us at every twist and turn. And in those moments of silence the Voice of God speaks.

It says: “I am here. I am with you. Keep going.”

         

          In our Gospel lesson we find that it was not until after Peter noticed the wind and became afraid that he began to sink. If he had kept his eyes on Jesus, he would have seen that there was nothing to be afraid of. Yes the winds and the waves were there and yes they represented a real danger; but still Jesus called him into the midst of these things.

Seeing Peter’s faith, Jesus asked Peter to trust him and join him the midst of the storm. Even when Peter became afraid and felt that the task ahead of him was too much, Jesus was still right there pulling him up from the waves.

I can’t help but picture a little smile on Jesus’s face as he says “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” As if to say, “Peter, I called you out onto the waves and in the midst of the storm; did you not think that I was going to be right there with you?”

My brothers and sisters, that is where Christ is; in the midst. It is in the midst of the storms of life, of the tremors and fires that God breaks through in the silence between heartbeats. It is those times when God says “I am here, I will not leave you (whether you like it or not).”

As Christians - as those who bear the image of Christ in this world- that is where we are meant to be as well; in the midst of life. This isn’t only a call for plucky young seminarians or for those in the ordained ministry, but a call on the life of every (.) single (.) person (.) who calls themselves “Christian.”

As the Children of our Heavenly Father we are called to bear the life and love and peace of Christ in a world of storms and anxieties. We are to be Christ’s hands and feet as we walk out onto the water and lift up others who have begun to sink. 

When life becomes chaotic and we don’t know what to do – when we don’t know where to turn - we must inhabit that Holy Silence in the midst of the storm and fire; in the knowledge that God is there.

For it is in that silence (in the midst of the storm and the earthquake and the fire) that the Voice of God Speaks.

And it says: “I am here. I am with you. Keep going.”

Amen



(All Saints Episcopal Church)

My Summer at the Crossroads

Where to even begin?

So much has happened in the last year that I almost find it difficult to think of myself as the same person that set out for Nashotah last August. I've been privileged to study with incredibly knowledgeable theologians, been lifted in the air by thousand-pound cast iron bells, traveled to Kurdistan and back (which shall be my next blog post), and sat with families in the face of death and suffering the likes of which I've never known.

This past summer I was able to participate in a long-standing, traditional aspect of seminary formation known as Clinical Pastoral Education (or CPE). For those who don't know, CPE is a program in which seminarians attach themselves to an institution (usually a hospital or prison) and act as a chaplain for a time under the supervision of a staff chaplain.

For my own CPE I was accepted into the program offered by Genesis Health System in the Quad Cities (spanning Illinois and Iowa). The 11-week program consisted (weekly) of one and a half days of "Group Session" and three and a half days doing clinicals in the hospital to which I was assigned. There was also a weekly "on call" assignment in which one of us students would take over accountability for all four Genesis hospital campuses. When "on call" we only had to be at the hospital when needed; but when the nurses needed me at 3 am, they really needed me (as they would only call me in for a trauma, heart attack, stroke, or a death). During the day things were a bit easier in the hospital; I would make rounds, visit with patients, and try to be a compassionate and pastoral presence. Then we would process our encounters as a group (with my four fellow CPE students) in our group sessions.

Whilst in the Quad Cities I was blessed to stay with my Great Aunt Sheri and Great Uncle Bob, who live at a crossroads in the middle of a cornfield somewhere East of Port Byron-Illinois. Because of the location of their property (and my own difficulties with my cell provider) I neither had regular internet access nor even data for most of the summer unless I was in the hospital. I'd like to say I was able to turn this into some magical monastic experience, doing chaplain work during the day and going home to a secluded farm on the crossroads where I was able to shut out the wider world. In reality - I was a bored, tech-starved Millennial for much of the start of summer.

Yet in my disconnection from the digital world, I found myself relying more on my ability to make real connections with my local friends and family. With my lack of a viable cell signal/data access, I found myself tuning into something deeper and tapping into something greater.

Though my days would be busy, and stressful, and heart-breaking, I could always count on that Holy Silence waiting for me on "God's Little Acres" at the crossroads as the wind rolled out over the corn and bean fields.

I could also count on playing 30-questions with my Great Aunt the moment I walked in the door.
 "So how was it? I know you can't tell me anything but... what happened today? can you tell me?"
Everyday, without fail, she would grill me about the day's experiences. I could never really give names or details, but she would always have me debrief her if something particularly interesting (or heartbreaking) happened that day.

My Uncle Bob was far less interested in the program (except when he found out that I was paying for it rather than being paid for my work, that just didn't register with this nearly 80 year-old retired plumber). He and I would simply sit out on the porch and shoot the breeze until the cows came home (literally, they have cows). If we ran out of things to say the conversation would become the occasional "yeeepppp...." and that was all that was needed.

CPE, meanwhile, was forcing me to plumb the depths of my soul and emotional reserves. In the group session we dove into our deepest personal traumas and life-experiences to uncover how these things influence our ministries; but it was during on-call shifts that I was able to actually put these ideas into practice. We can talk all we want about "pastoral presence" and "being there" for people in times of pain and death in the hospital; but no one can teach you how to "be" with the family of a seven year old who is dying of a brain hemorrhage - you just have to do it.

As I neared the beginning of this program this past spring, my parish priest, Fr. Ralph, kept emphasizing that CPE is an excellent thing to "have done." Now, being on the other side, I can't agree more. There were times over the summer when I hated everything about the program (and certainly didn't want to "share" in group time), but every experience, every patient, every death taught me something about ministry as well as my self. And for that I thank God.

CPE became, for me, a kind of crossroads. I place where I crossed paths with people of various backgrounds, creeds, and dispositions. It also became the place where I crossed paths with the resurrected Christ in the silence between heartbeats.  I found that there was never a situation in which I felt truly alone or completely out of place, even in times of trauma and death. When things were chaotic, when outlooks were bleak and all seemed hopeless, I found myself experiencing a Presence in those brief moments of "sheer silence," as if some "still small voice" were reaching out to us and saying "I'm still here, I'm with you. You are not alone." As a chaplain it was my job to embody the truth of that still, small voice; and while doing so was rarely "easy," I learned much about God's love for us and the need for each of us to manifest that love in this world.

To say the least, my summer was enlightening. I was put in situations that were completely out of my depth and faced things in myself that have been covered up for a long, long time. Indeed I can already tell how the summer has affected my approach to ministry and my ability "to pastor." That being said, I'm glad to get back to normal seminary life (as if there is such a thing) and that CPE is something I "have done."

(The picture is of my makeshift, personal shrine at Aunt Sheri and Uncle Bob's)