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| Photo from Sojourners (sojo.net) |
For those unfamiliar with the Episcopal Church, we often begin our services with a hymn, a short prayer (called the Collect for Purity), another short song of praise or "the Gloria" and then the priest offers a prayer out of the Book of Common Prayer that is called "The Collect of the Day."
The "Collect" (and we pronounce it CALL-ect, not co-LECT) is a prayer that is supposed to set the scene or at least summarize the themes of the Scripture readings we're going to read that morning. These collects are assigned as the "proper prayer" for whatever Sunday we're in this long season of After Pentecost. I have my favorites, and there are those which are just kind of "meh" in my opinion.
But the one for this past Sunday...to be read at the Sunday closest to August 31st (which happened to be Sunday's date)...seemed to call for me to do some teaching. Especially in this time where white Christian Nationalism is on the rise in the country.
See what you think.
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Texts:
Collect for Proper 17; Luke 14:1, 7-14
I don’t often find myself guided by the
words that are in our collect of the day when I write a sermon.
But there is a phrase that comes up in
this one that always grabs my attention.
I should’ve known it was coming because
it’s always the one we read right around Labor Day.
At the beginning of our worship… we
prayed:
“Graft in our hearts the
love of your Name; increase in us true religion;”
The first part…”Graft in our
hearts the love of your Name” is a play on words found in the First chapter of
the Letter of James.
But it’s that second
part—“increase in us true religion”—those words always make me pause.
So…I went looking for some
explanation…and pulled out my very worn out copy of Marion Hatchett’s
“Commentary on the American Prayer Book” which has the extended history behind
everything the committee studied and looked at as they created the Book of Common
Prayer we now use.
Thomas Cranmer…the
Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of King Henry VIII and author of our
first two Books of Common Prayer in the middle of the 16th Century…wrote
this collect.
According to Hatchett…this
idea of “true religion” was likely Archbishop Cranmer’s reflection on the state
of the times in the English Church back in the middle of the 1500s.
Those were bleak and
dangerous times of struggles between the Roman Catholic Church with its
adherence to the Pope and its beliefs about what happens at the Eucharistic
table when the bread and wine are blessed… and Henry VIII’s desire to be the
head of his own Protestant Church of England…taking over Catholic Church
property as he divorced and killed his wives.
When Henry died…and his
sickly son Edward took the throne at 10 years old…Cranmer and others solidified
England as a Protestant country.
But when Edward died only
about seven years later…and his half-sister Mary became Queen…she not only
turned England back to the Roman Catholic Church…she went on the warpath
against Protestants…including Cranmer.
There’s a reason she was
called “Bloody Mary.”
Cranmer was forced to recant
his protestant reformation-minded theology…but then…while in prison…he
stiffened his spine and refused to deny his beliefs.
Queen Mary ordered him
burned at the stake…and he famously insisted on putting his writing hand first
into the fire as a further sign that he was sorry for ever having signed off on
recanting Protestantism.
So…for Cranmer…”true
religion” was about “church as state politics”….and “who was the more
theologically correct Christian” in the struggle for national power.
We have come a long way from
burning each other at the stake in Christianity.
But we still have our own
version of churches splitting…and personal prejudices masquerading as church
doctrine…and pursing earthly…nationalistic goals…
All in the name of “true religion.”
None of it seeming to pay
attention to the actual teachings of Jesus…our Lord and Savior who shunned such
power.
For Jesus…what makes any
religion really “true” is whether we are treating creation…from the earth and
the sea and the animals all the way up to our fellow human beings…as the
beloved of God that we all are.
That’s what we’re hearing in
this morning’s Gospel.
Now…once again…the reading we’ve
heard is not complete.
The diviners of the
lectionary have left out a portion of the scene.
So let’s fill in some
blanks.
First thing to know is that
before Jesus shows up to a sabbath meal at the home of one of the leaders of
the Pharisees…a group of Pharisees went to Jesus to warn him that he faced
serious danger from Herod if he went into Jerusalem.
I think it’s important to
mention that because too often…we tend to see the Pharisees as “the bad guys.”
And like so many groups of
people…they weren’t all bad.
Jesus encounters the
Pharisees so much because they were the predominant Jewish group at the time that
the Gospels were written.
In this case… there was this
group that worried about Jesus and what was going to happen to him if he took
on the Roman power structure.
Jesus isn’t deterred by this
news.
He says some sassy things
about Herod being a fox…and then laments over Jerusalem…which was the center of
Jewish worship that had been so corrupted by Rome.
As he’s entering the house
of the leader…he sees a man who has terribly swollen legs…dropsy or edema.
There all these Pharisees and
lawyers at the house…so Jesus asks if it’s lawful to cure on the sabbath?
They don’t say anything…but
Jesus does.
He heals the man and sends
him on his way.
And then he looks around at the
group and wants to know if one of their children or an ox fell into a well on
the sabbath…would they not rescue them?
Still…they all look at him
without answering.
We might imagine Jesus
shaking his head at their silence as he goes inside for the sabbath meal.
Once inside…he sees that the
guests of the Pharisee leader are taking all the choice seats.
Still fresh in his head that
he just saw this same group standing by silently as they saw a man suffering on
the sabbath…Jesus decides to do a little schooling.
And that’s where we come
back to our Gospel reading…with this parable about where to sit at a wedding
banquet.
The custom in ancient
Palestine for a wedding was that men reclined on couches…with the couch in the
center being the place of honor.
The place of honor was
reserved for those with wealth and status.
If someone of a lesser
station took a seat too close to the center and someone with more privilege
were to show up…the lesser man would have to move…and it would be an
embarrassing faux pas.
So he’s looking at this room
of those who have presumed a place of honor…and warns them not to be so sure of
their station.
As one commentator
notes…this isn’t so much about Jesus giving First Century Miss Manners advice
to his audience.
Rather he’s telling them
something about the kingdom of God.
That one should not presume a
more lofty place in God’s kingdom.
And then he talks about the
host…and who should be invited to this meal.
Should it just be those who
might be able to turn around and invite the host to equally wonderful spread?
Nope.
Blessed are those who are
the forgotten…the easily ignored…like that man with dropsy who Jesus just
healed and nobody knew what to say or how to appropriately respond.
Again…this is about the
kingdom of God.
We can’t presume that
because we have a particular status in society that we are automatically the
favored ones of God.
That’s why the whole
“prosperity Gospel” business…that God somehow rewards people with lots of
money… is a bunch of bunk.
We see throughout Jesus’
ministry…and even here in this Gospel…that God isn’t interested in our economic
systems.
God is always and forever
looking to expand and widen the circle of inclusion….and is always about siding
with those who have nothing to give but themselves…their brokenhearted…worn-out…overworked…and
yes…even joyful… selves.
And God’s commandment to us
is to put our efforts into the building up of people…to look for those whom others
are rejecting and invite them to the literal…and even the metaphorical…table of
God to experience what means to be loved beyond all measure.
Getting to know the stories
of others…meeting and greeting people who aren’t our “kinfolk”…is an important
part of that building up process.
The more we know another’s
story…their history…and the more we openly swap our stories with one another…the
stronger the foundation of community.
Both out in the world and
inside the church.
I’ve mentioned before about how
in an Education for Ministry seminar…one of the first exercises is sharing our
spiritual autobiographies.
I can tell you that so often
I would listen to someone else’s story… a person completely different from me
in all kinds of ways…and yet as I listened to them talk about their experiences
with God…I could hear things that made me think, “Oh, yeah: I get that!” or
even a “Wow! You, too?”
Sometimes…one of the most
religiously…and maybe even politically…conservative men in one of my groups would
come up to me afterward and take me aside to express gratitude about things
that I had shared about myself and my journey.
Like me…they could hear in something
that I had said a word or a phrase that broke past all the artificial human
barriers that keep us divided from one another to understand a simple truth: we’re
all children of God…created by God out of Love…for the purposes of Love…with
mission to share that Love with others.
Which brings me back to
“true religion.”
“True religion” isn’t about holding
the right belief for political power.
It isn’t about controlling
the earthly levers of government…or even about asserting some kind of Christian
supremacy.
“True religion” is about hope.
Hope which is found in the
God who is Love.
Hope for a world where we care
enough about each other…have enough empathy for those who are the
have-nots…that we seek mercy…compassion…and justice for all.
The rest of our collect for
this morning asks for God to “nourish us with goodness…and bring forth in us the
fruit of good works.”
May we carry that prayer in
our hearts as we meet the many challenges of our world.
In the name of our One Holy
and Undivided Trinity.
