The Bishop of Laodicea is both larger than life and as large as life. He has one natural leg and the faith of Dorothy Day mediated by Loyola or perhaps vice versa . He also apparently spoke on the unpleasantness in the Forum, but I was not feeling well that morning and so missed the Forum.
Speaking of Episcopal Visitations
As he lay dying, John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, was in great pain, but he fought through his pain to give some advice to Francis Cuming, a young priest, who attended him during his last hours in the rectory of St. Peter's Binghamton, where he had been stricken in the midst of a visitation. The key advice was this, "Be sure that in all your preaching the doctrines of the Cross be introduced: no preaching is good for any thing without these." Now there has been some discussion of what these doctrines are over at Canterbury Trail. I made a little epitome of Athanasius on this account, in which the doctrines of the Cross might be summarized as:
1. The resurrection of the body incorruptible and heralded by Christ.
2. The perfection of humanity restored in Christ Jesus incarnate and humanity restored in part and then in full through Christ Jesus.
3. Friendship with God extended to both Jews and Gentiles through friendship with Christ. Recall that Abraham was a friend of God by faith according to the Epistle to the Hebrews.
4. The power of Satan, Hell, and Death broken by Christ.
5. The curse occasioned by the primal and continued disobedience removed by Christ.
Now, I happen to have an evangelical pastor of some sort in his pajamas in my living room, so I am tempted to ask him what he would say the doctrines of the Cross are, but I think I'll demure for the moment.
The interesting point came up in discussion at Canterbury Trail that younger preachers and writers are more traditional in their doctrine. My name was cited under the lay heading by bls, though she's never heard me preach. The question I had to ask myself was whether points 1-5 appear in any of my sermons.
So let me provide some example quotes out of context:
[From a sermon on the Feast of St. Anselm]
"The Good News of salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is universally relevant."
"Through the covenant with Israel, the Psalmist and the writers of the Wisdom Literature did learn definite truth about what God knew would keep them from death and ensure a decent living. They learned through the minutiae of the Law and their inability or difficulty in following it to the letter the deep sinfulness of man and recoil of our being against the commandments of God. What they missed was this business was an imperfect solution, requiring that some human beings would lose their dignity in the eyes of their fellows for reasons other than sin. Before he healed a man born blind, Jesus was asked, “Did this man sin or his parents?” and He said to them that he was blind so that God might be glorified. This did not just mean that God would be glorified by healing but is a general statement on why we all are born. We are born so that our Maker be glorified in us: some works of nature are common grace, falling on the good and the wicked alike. The Law says that some choose otherness from God and death through their own fault. Jesus and the Psalmist suggest that some who appear dead, other, ignorant, and stupid in the eyes of wise are as suffused with God as much as the wise and intelligent and the righteous of the world according to the Law. And likewise with the Greeks who observe nature and seek God but achieve no knowledge of the truth that can be explained as easily as the redemptive message of Jesus Christ
And our certainty that this surprising God will be benevolent to us is his past actions and this is also the justification for our faith. These acts are generous beyond our deserving. Anselm was one of the great exponents of the atonement theory of Christ’s death, that bloody, messy, and “primitive” doctrine that I keep seeing criticized everywhere these days. That’s another sermon. But Paul and Anselm challenge our assumptions in these days of grace by reminding us that though filled by the Holy Spirit presently, we were all enemies to God who required justification through the blood of Christ. We were all dead to sin and yearning even to bring God to the same death. And God was still there. God did not say, “Ooogh, I can’t stand those sinners. I shall not endure being in Sheol. I’m going over here now. or I’m not going to Earth, it’s dirty and messy and risky and surprising.” He came, He left the place much better than he found it, He’s coming back. And it’s going to be very surprising. Amen.
[5 Easter, 2003]
"His dying and rising to life was small in scale and His resurrection at least was witnessed by very few, yet He destroyed death and changed the entire nature of the created universe."
"Yet Jesus promises that he will dwell in the Father, and we will dwell in Him. Hence, we also will dwell in the Father. At the least, this is a most wonderful promise of eternal life. Before Christ and the Spirit’s outpouring, all died according to the flesh because of the decree of God in Genesis, “My Spirit shall not remain in a man forever.” In former times, our alienation from God made it both necessary and easy for God to take His breath from us. Yet Christ now promises that we can be in God in the same way God is in us. Hence, though we will die according to the flesh, His Spirit can never be taken away from those who dwell in Him. Therefore, Christ is not just promising the Spirit to the apostles, he is giving them deep insight into eternal life."
[Last Sunday after Pentecost, 2003]
Next, when Pilate asks if he is a king, Christ responds “you say that I am” or another translation says, “‘King’ is your word.” No, Christ doesn’t say, well, king is a word that might make you understand me according to your experience. But the way Christ is speaking here is common to the Passion narratives. Admittedly, he occasionally admits being the Messiah, but as he approaches the tomb, who he is becomes much less clear. Being Messiah, by all contemporary interpretation, would imply kingship and priesthood. But not victimhood. This is a sacrificial narrative. In these few hours, the Book of Hebrews and Paul claim that Christ managed to perform the Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) sacrifice at the same time as the Passover sacrifice. Thus, by his apparent surrender to Death, the times of religious festivals are altered. In these few hours, Jesus, Judas, and a man named Jesus Barabbas all will be male yearling sheep led to the slaughter. Christ will be sacrificed both to Azazel, the demon of the desert and to God, being both the representation of human sin and its atonement. If Christ agreed that he was a king, he would be denying the wonder of his nature: the universal brought into the world for through him the world was made. He would be saying that he was just a king instead of the complexity that has driven his followers mad since his leavetaking from us.
[Vigil of All Saints, 2004]
"The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that those faithful to God have lived stories with a similar choice of outcome. By faith, David sought the kingship and by faith he won it. Daniel’s faith cast him into the lion’s den and brought him safely out of it. But not everyone has been so lucky. The faithful have been tortured to death, flogged, imprisoned, sawed in half, and exiled to the wilderness. Their costume in the older sense of the word has been the “skins of sheep and goats.” Indeed, “The world was not worthy of them…” And while many of these tortures would have been familiar to this letter’s early Christian audience, the sufferers here are all Jews before the coming of Christ. These horror stories are all from the Old Testament. But the writer assures us that all of these faithful have won “resurrection to a better life” and “God’s approval because of their faith.” Mysteriously, we are told that these sufferers of the Old Testament “did not receive what was promised” “that only with us should they reach perfection.” It doesn’t matter. It’s clear enough that whatever a Macabee knew after he was dispatched by the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes, he knows the joy of victory in Christ offered to the presently suffering Christians.(Note: This is very 2 Peter and Christus Victor of me. It's not the unambiguous reading.)
And I am also reminded of the reading tonight from Revelation in which we are told that the blood of the Lamb has “bought for God people of every tribe and language, nation and race.” The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that all those who were faithful to God were made perfect through Christ and the Church even if they did not know Christ and the Church.
Tuesday is also Election Day. And the Word of God illumines this secular feast as well as the sacred three days that will be completed on the same day. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that by faith kingdoms rise and fall. It is by faith and not by suffrage that the powers and evils of this world are most strongly opposed. And if we are still not satisfied by that promise, let us also remember that the regimes of this world are impermanent: that the victory that Christ won for us was not limited to eternal life with Him. Revelation promises us that the saints “shall reign on Earth.” In the end, Christ, as divine and supernatural actor, will sweep away the world driven by the analysis of reality. He will also sweep away the world driven by the activity of the powerful. He will sweep away all of those objects that do not endure that we call the world. And he will send the faithful who we commemorate on these three days to execute the commission described by the Psalmist, “to wreak vengeance on the nations and punishment on the heathen/ binding their kings with chains, putting their nobles in iron/ carrying out the judgment decreed against them— THIS IS GLORY FOR ALL HIS LOYAL SERVANTS.” Amen.
(Yes, this is my eschatological commentary on the "reality-based" kerfluffle. It sounds strange out of context).
[4 Epiphany, 2003]
"In that light, the readings today encompass time and professional vocation in order to vindicate a kairotic view of time within the full record of God’s creative and salvific acts. Not so far from Paul or the Evangelist Mark’s minds, I think, is Plato’s Republic in which we are told that each profession achieves the greatest success when the right things are done at the right time. The word for right time is, you guessed it, kairos. For Jesus, now is the right time for him to begin his ministry. Indeed, his apparent political ineptitude is intentional, for it puts him on the radar of the political authorities and will lead him to Jerusalem and the cross, the most important events to occur since the creation of the universe."
[Maundy Thursday, 2004]
What then are we doing here? Transcending the loathsomeness of feet? Forgiving? I argue that this ritual is significant for one reason. It is a ritual of true ecclesiastical discipline. This element is best seen in the dialogue between Peter and Jesus. First, Peter is confused why Jesus, the Master and Teacher of the group, is doing the washing. He does not want to humiliate the person he respects most in the world. Jesus says, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” We are inclined to put our religious leaders, whether bishops, priests, deacons or wardens, vestrymen, and Sunday School teachers on pedestals. In this ritual, the entire Church is leveled, even her Head. One cannot have a friend who is not in some way an equal. Peter, by refusing washing is refusing equality with Christ and friendship with Christ. He is refusing the love that the woman who washed Jesus’ feet is said to have in Luke’s Gospel, the same love that will make Jesus lay down his life for his friends tomorrow.
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Hmm...6 out of 8, though I admit some of them are rather passing references. Oh, I also should mention that if some of the references seem unusually erudite, I was preaching to college and graduate students, who would have some familiarity with these texts.
The question I want to ask is how do you preach the Cross. Do you do it intentionally, looking for some place to insert a relevant excursus on the resurrection of the body? Or do you let it flow from the Scriptures? Because I can tell you, even after reading the Scriptures even more heavily than I did while I was preaching, sometimes the Cross isn't there.
One of the common memes at ILEOS is that most preaching elsewhere neglects hard Scriptural truths about war, money, and sex. But what I don't hear at ILEOS and elsewhere in the Episcopal Church (I do leave Laodicea sometimes) are hard truths on "eternal punishments, on rivers of fire, on the venomous worm, on bonds that cannot be burst, or exterior darkness." (Chrysostom, Against the Jews, Homily 2). OK, maybe, that would be a little too much, but I think preaching closer to this vein is a part of our tradition. Is there a happy medium?
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