That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

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Of God and Dwelling Places – Sermon for Proper 16, RCL Year B

August 24, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Again this week as last, our first reading today is from the First Book of Kings and like last week’s, it is a prayer spoken by King Solomon. Last week, it was a private prayer spoken in a dream late at night. Today, it is a public prayer. As long as it was, this reading is just a small part of the dedicatory prayer that Solomon offered when the Temple was finished and consecrated. In it, Solomon asks an important question, “[W]ill God indeed dwell on the earth?”[1] More specifically, Solomon is asking if God will dwell in the Temple, and the wise king immediately answers his own question: “[H]eaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!”[2]

The building of the Temple in 957 BCE[3] marked a very significant change in the Jewish religion. Well, really, let’s not call it the Jewish religion because it wasn’t that, yet. Let’s just say, “The religion of the people of Israel.” These people were not, though we often imagine them to be, strict monotheists. Even in this prayer, Solomon leaves open the question of whether there might be gods other than their God: “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath.”[4] There might be other gods, lesser gods perhaps, demigods, or even demons, part of a heavenly pantheon of gods, but this God, the God of the People of Israel is greater than any of those others.

At this time, the ancient Semitic peoples of the Near East were what sociologists call “henotheists.” Each nation, sometimes even each clan or family, had its own belief system, its own religion, its own god, which it believed to be supreme over the gods of their neighbors. And nearly all of these religions believed their gods to be sort of tied to the land. If you moved from one place to another, you stopped worshiping the god of the first place and took up the worship of the god of your new residence. If a woman married outside of her family or tribe, married into a different clan, she would give up the religion of her family and take up that of her husband.

The People of Israel’s God, however, was different. Their God was not tied to a particular place. Their God was connected to a holy object, instead. God was associated with the Ark of the Covenant which they had created in the desert to contain God’s holy relics, the tablets of the Law given to Moses at Sinai (together with a pot of manna and Aaron’s staff). They carried the Ark with them, actually before them, as they traveled through the desert, as they crossed into the Holy Land, as they conquered the Canaanites and took possession of the country.

Initially, the Ark and its tent, called “the Tabernacle,” was set up at the Canaanite worship center in Shiloh.[5] It seems to have stayed there for about 300 years, until the Battle of Aphek, when the Philistines captured the Ark and took it away. On hearing about the capture, the priest Eli immediately died and his daughter-in-law, voicing the belief that God traveled with the Ark, exclaimed, “The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”[6] Capturing the Ark turned out not to have been a good idea for the Philistines; wherever they took it bad things happened. So, they sent it back to the Israelites who put in a place called Kiriath-Jearim where it stayed until King David brought it to Jerusalem.

We know that David wanted to build a permanent location for it; he wanted to build a Temple. But God refused. He told David, through the prophet Nathan,

Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.[7]

So David did not build the Temple, but he did build a a new Tabernacle in Jerusalem and brought the Ark there. We are told
David danced before the Lord with all his might;

David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet. . . . They brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it.[8]

David was inspired to design the Temple, but he never built it.[9] His son Solomon was the one to do that.

So that is where we are this morning. The Temple has been finished, the sacred implements from David’s tent have been moved into it, the Ark of the Covenant has been installed into the Holy of Holies where only the High Priest is allowed to go, and Solomon offers this long prayer of dedication. In it he asks that very important question: “[W]ill God indeed dwell on the earth?” By building the Temple, Solomon sought to provide God a place to dwell on earth and, in so doing, he made the religion of his people more like that of their neighbors than it had been.

Remember those other religions had tied their gods to particular places whereas the God of Israel had moved about the countryside with his People. Now God had a permanent home, at least for a while. About 300 years later, in the latter half of the Seventh Century BCE, during what’s known as the Deuteronomic Reform, the Jews would centralize God’s worship in a the Temple, interpreting a decree in the Book of Deuteronomy to mean that the cultic part of their faith could only be performed in that place. Sure, people could gather anywhere for prayer, they could go synagogues for religious instruction, but they could only offer sacrifice and perform the cultic rituals in the Temple at Jerusalem. God had become tied to a place.

In the first years of the Sixth Century BCE, Babylonia conquered Jerusalem, took the Israelite leadership into captivity, and destroyed the Temple. The Ark disappeared and, to this day, no one knows where it is; the Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to have it, but not many people believe that. During the Exile, the Jews refused to follow that earlier Semitic tradition in which you worshiped the god or gods of the place where you lived. Instead, they looked back to Jerusalem where the Temple had been, where God had become tied to a place. Psalm 137 reflects this:

By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
when we remembered you, O Zion.
* *
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill.
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.[10]

By the time of Jesus, Solomon’s question had been firmly answered for the Jews. Yes, said their religious leadership, God will dwell on earth, in this place, this Temple in Jerusalem. Even now, although Solomon’s Temple was destroyed and a second one built and destroyed, even though Jews live throughout the world and gather in many places to worship, they still look Jerusalem. The Wailing Wall, the western wall of the Temple Mount, the only part of the Temple complex to remain standing, is the holiest site in Judaism. God dwells in the Temple, even though it is in ruins.

In the birth of Jesus, however, God gave a different answer: God will not dwell in a building in a particular place. John’s Gospel begins with this affirmation, “The Word became flesh and lived among us.”[11] Will God indeed dwell on earth? Yes, God will live among God’s people as one of us. God lived among us as an infant who was born in Bethlehem and grew up to become a rabbi. God lived among us as an itinerant rabbi who had no home and was accused of being a rabble-rouser. God lived among us as a rabble-rouser condemned to die a criminal’s death. God lived among us as a criminal executed on a cross and risen to new life. God lives among us now.

On the night before he died, Jesus gathered with his friends for a Passover meal. There is some debate as to whether it was a Seder, the sacred meal of Judaism, but if it was he radically changed its nature, just as Solomon building the Temple eventually changed the nature of the religion of Israel. In the Passover meal, Jews become one with their ancestors; the Hebrews of the Passover story are brought present to them in the ritual of the Seder and they, in turn, live the Passover story through the meal, but the meal does not bring God into their midst. When Jesus took the bread of affliction and said, “This is my body,” when he took the cup of blessing and said, “This is my blood,” when he told his followers, “Do this when you remember me,” when he promised, “Where two or three gather, I am there,” Jesus gave us a power and an obligation unlike any given before to any people by God. We have the privilege to bring God present among us in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, the Christ’s Body and Blood. As one of our oldest Eucharistic Prayers says, in words which recall the promise of today’s gospel lesson, when we receive Holy Communion we are “filled with [God’s] grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with [Christ], that he may dwell in us, and we in him.”[12]

Will God indeed dwell on earth? Yes, God will and God does dwell on earth. God dwells with the followers of Jesus when we gather and feed on his flesh and drink his blood, in word and sacrament, wherever that may be.

You all know, I’m sure, that on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on moon. I’m pretty sure that if you were alive back then, you remember exactly where you were on that day at that moment when Armstrong stepped out of the lunar lander and became the first human being to walk on another world. What almost nobody knew until a long time afterward was that something else happened on the moon that day. Buzz Aldrin, a devout Christian and an ordained elder in his Presbyterian congregation, had taken a communion kit with some bread and wine to the moon. In the Presbyterian Church, the lay elders of the church who serve a function similar to our vestry members, are actually ordained by their congregation, and that ordination empowers them to bless the elements of Holy Communion. At the time Aldrin and Armstrong landed on the moon, the pastor and members of his Presbyterian church were watching TV but unlike most of us, they were also celebrating communion. Armstrong joined them across space, blessing the bread and wine on the moon and partaking there of Holy Communion.[13]

In the act of Holy Communion, we are joined with Christians everywhere and everywhen — with all those in every place who also take part in the Eucharistic feast, with all those who have done so at every Eucharist since Christ’s last supper with his disciples, with all those who will celebrate Communion in the future. We are joined with them because God dwells in all of us whenever we eat of Christ’s Body and drink of Christ’s Blood, no matter where we are.

Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Yes! Will God dwell on the moon? Yes! God dwells with God’s People who feast on the Word Incarnate, and God will dwell with us across time and across space wherever we may go. Amen.

====================

This homily was offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 25, 2024, to the people of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Berea, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was guest presider and preacher.

The lessons for the service were 1 Kings 8:[1, 6, 10-11],22-30,41-43; Psalm 84; Ephesians 6:10-20; and St. John 6:56-69. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.

The illustration is a re-creation of Solomon’s Temple from Free Bible Images

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Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text.

[1] 1 Kings 8:27 (NRSV)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Temple of Jerusalem, Encyclopedia Britannica, updated August 18, 2024, accessed August 24, 2024

[4] 1 kings 8:23 (NRSV)

[5] Joshua 18:1

[6] 1 Samuel 4:22 (NRSV)

[7] 2 Samuel 7:5-6 (NRSV)

[8] 2 Samuel 6:15, 17 (NRSV)

[9] 1 Chronicles 28:11-19

[10] Psalm 137:1,56 (The Book of Common Prayer 1979, page 792)

[11] John 1:14 (NRSV)

[12] The Holy Eucharist, Rite 1, The Book of Common Prayer 1979, page 336

[13] Buzz Aldrin, When Buzz Aldrin Took Communion on the Moon, Guideposts, October 1970, accessed August 24, 2024

Of Wisdom and Eating the Word – Sermon for Proper 15, RCL Year B

August 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Our gospel reading this morning is taken from the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel according to John, which I’m sure you know is the sort of odd-man-out of the gospels. The other three gospels, the so-called Synoptic Gospels (a Greek word meaning that they see the Jesus story in the same way), pretty much agree and present the events of Jesus’ ministry in the same order over a one-year time-line. John tells the story in a completely different way, with a three-year time span and a different order of events.

This sort of makes sense because Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all believed to have been written at about the same time, probably around the years 50-60 AD, and Matthew and Luke even seem to use Mark’s gospel as source material for their own versions. John, on the other hand, was probably written 40 to 50 years later and seems to use different source material. Furthermore, John seems to have a very distinct purpose in mind for his writing. Bill Countryman, who taught New Testament at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, argued in a book entitled The Mystical Way in the Fourth Gospel[1] that John’s gospel “parallels the structure of the ideal Christian life. Just as the Christian life ideally begins with conversion and goes on to baptism, first communion, and more advanced stages of spiritual growth, so the Gospel of John has a section on conversion, then one on baptism, then one on eucharist, and so forth.”[2]

So we have to read John’s gospel, much more so than the other three, as a literary creation rather than as a history of any sort. When John’s Jesus says something, we have to ask not only, “What did Jesus mean by that?” but also “What did John mean by having Jesus say this in this setting?” This is especially so with stories like today’s where Jesus says something very similar in the Synoptic Gospels but in a very different setting or context. When we hear Jesus say today that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, being good Eucharistically-oriented Episcopalians, our minds immediately flash to Holy Communion, to the Lord’s Supper, and to the Passover meal in an upper room in Jerusalem. This is where the Synoptics have Jesus say these sorts of things, but that is not the setting or context of these statements as we just heard them from John’s gospel.

When Jesus says here “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you,”[3] he is not breaking the unleavened bread of the Passover nor sharing the cup of blessing at the end of that meal. There isn’t any sort of meal or food of any kind anywhere in sight! This is happening on the day after the feeding of the 5,000 on a hill over looking the Sea of Galilee. Those who had been at that miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fishes have come looking for more, but that’s not what they get. They seem to have found Jesus at worship on a Saturday morning, at sabbath service, because John tells us (immediately after the ending of our reading), “He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.”[4]

So a sabbath morning service attended by people looking for nourishment…. We don’t know what the Torah reading for that day was (John doesn’t tell us) nor do we know what other parts of the Hebrew Scriptures may have been read, but this is Jesus’ sermon on whatever those scriptures were. Our current lectionary gives us two choices of what to read from the Old Testament with this Gospel story. One is from the book of Proverbs and describes wisdom, personified as a woman, inviting passersby to come feast with her. She says:

Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Lay aside immaturity, and live.[5]

The other choice is the one we heard, Solomon’s prayer for wisdom.

The youthful King Solomon describes himself in today’s passage as “only a little child,”[6] but scholars believe he was about 20 to 24 years of age when he took the throne following David’s death. Not too terribly old to have already developed the insight to realize that he doesn’t yet know everything. One cannot accuse of Solomon of suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect, that cognitive bias which leads people to believe they are smarter and more capable than they are. Solomon is wise enough to know that he’s not wise enough yet to govern, and he is wise enough to understand that wisdom is is relational. One can only be wise “in the midst of the people.”[7]

Both of these Old Testament passages remind us that for John, Christ is God’s Wisdom incarnate. This is the central meaning of his Prologue with its great Logos hymn: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”[8] For John “Word” and “Wisdom” are synonymous. As John Calvin wrote in his commentary on this Gospel in the Institutes of the Christian Religion, “‘Word’ means the everlasting Wisdom, residing with God, from which both all oracles and prophesies go forth… [and which] was at the same time the cause of all things, together with God the Father.”[9]

When John’s Jesus declares himself to be “the bread of life” which “came down from heaven,”[10] it is a direct reference to his being Wisdom incarnate. Like the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus draws the image of bread from the Exodus story. However, instead of linking himself to the unleavened bread of liberation by referring to the consumption of his flesh and blood as a sort of Passover meal, he links himself to the manna the Hebrews received in the desert of Sinai. In last week’s gospel reading, which comes right before what we heard today, he says: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This [referring to himself, to his flesh and blood] is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.”[11]

We all know the story of the manna, right? How it appeared with the dew, looking like coriander seeds, and had to be gathered each morning, how each person was allotted an omer (which is about 3-1/2 pounds), how it could be made into a sort of bread or cake, and how it couldn’t be kept overnight. We all know it as a story of God’s provision for the Hebrew refugees. What isn’t often mentioned in Christian teaching is the allegorical interpretation of the event that is part of the Jewish understanding of their history. For example, a contemporary of John the evangelist, the First Century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, in his treatise On the Changing of Names, wrote that the manna represents “heavenly wisdom which is sent from above on souls which yearn for virtue.…”[12] According to the Kabbalah, the mystical teaching of Judaism whose origins are lost in antiquity, the consumption of manna was “a method for internalizing divine wisdom.”[13] In the Zohar, a principal kabbalistic text, we read that the manna represents wisdom which enters and becomes part of the person who consumes it.[14] So what John’s Jesus is saying is that he is a sort of super-manna, a wisdom that surpasses the wisdom provided by that earlier form.

As John Calvin explains, “[R]eferences to eating and drinking are taken as figures for receiving divine teaching and thereby entering into an everlasting covenant.”[15] We find examples of this idea throughout the Scriptures. When the prophet Ezekiel is commissioned he sees a vision of God in which the Almighty “said to me, O mortal, eat what is offered to you; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel. * * * Then I ate it; and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey.”[16] In the Book of Revelation, an angel gives a scroll to St. John of Patmos saying, “Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.”[17] In Psalm 119, that long hymn praising the God’s law, the psalmist exults: “How sweet are your words to my taste! They are sweeter than honey to my mouth.”[18]

We still use this metaphor today for studying and learning. A few years ago, when the series Downton Abbey was running on PBS, the New York Times ran an article about how book publishers were cashing in by coming out with various histories, travel guides, memoirs and such, betting that fans of the series were “likely to devour books on subjects the series touches.”[19] More recently, Dartmouth College published note-taking tips for incoming freshman urging students to give most attention to a lecturer’s main points saying, “Concentrate on the ‘meat’ of the subject and forget the trimmings.”[20]

The late Presbyterian scholar Hughes Oliphant Old, relying on John Calvin’s exegesis of John’s gospel as I have done, writes that we feed on Christ in worship in two ways, both by hearing the Word and sharing the Sacraments: “If it is true that the Word of God is a sacred food and drink which nourishes unto eternal life, it is also true that this food is given both in the reading and preaching of Scripture and in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.”[21] But we also do so beyond the four walls of our worship space! As theologian Jan Heilmann puts it, “[B]elievers’ need to eat, to drink, and to chew—in other words, to incorporate completely—the incarnated logos of God that has become flesh and blood”; the Wisdom of God “reveals itself only if readers chew and drink the words of Jesus in the text through an intensive and repetitive reading process.”[22] In other words, we must study the Bible again and again and again, and incorporate the example and teachings of Christ into our lives.

There is much to be done in this world. As Jesus both taught and modeled, there are sick people to be visited, cared for, and if possible healed; there are people in prison who need to be visited; there are hungry people who need to be fed; there are thirsty people in need of refreshment; there are homeless people in need of housing; there are people in conflict in need of peace. There is much to be done and we are called to do it, but as followers of the Way of Jesus, the way of love, we must do so wisely. We must know why we are doing it and we must know from whence our power and authority to do it comes, and to know those things we must be grounded in and fed by the Wisdom of God.

We began our worship this morning with a prayer which acknowledges this dual nature of the Word Incarnate, praising God for giving Christ both as a sacrifice and as an example to be emulated, and praying for grace to learn from him daily. This echoes the metaphor of manna, which you remember had to be harvested every day. The rabbis tell us that the story of the manna teaches that a “daily [remembrance] of God’s blessings and their significant presence in our lives has the potential to elevate us,”[23] and that the Wisdom of God provides comfort and guidance only when it is “hardened on the forge of actual living” and “refined in the bellows of daily practice.”[24]

So let us follow Solomon’s example and seek wisdom through prayer, through worship, and through studying Scripture and following Jesus every day. In the words of the prayer which we offer on Bible Sunday when we celebrate it in November, let us not only hear the Holy Scriptures read in worship; let us daily “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” Amen.

====================

This homily was offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 18, 2024, to the people of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Berea, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was guest presider and preacher.

The lessons for the service were 1 Kings 2:10-12 & 3:3-14; Psalm 111; Ephesians 5:15-20; and St. John 6:51-58. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.

The illustration is an image of Ezekiel eating the scroll is a detail from a 12th-century Latin manuscript, BNF MS Latin 16744, fol. 81r, from the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

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Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text.

[1] L. William Countryman, The Mystical Way in the Fourth Gospel: Crossing Over into God (Fortress Press, Philadelphia:1987)

[2] Scott Gambrill Sinclair, The Past from God’s Perspective: A Commentary on John’s Gospel (Dominican Scholar, San Rafael, CA:2004), page 4

[3] John 6:58 (NRSV)

[4] John 6:59 (NRSV)

[5] Proverbs 9:5-6 (NRSV)

[6] 1 Kings 3:7 (NRSV)

[7] 1 Kings 3:8 (NRSV)

[8] John 1:1 (NRSV)

[9] John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, I, xiii, 7

[10] John 6:35,51 (NRSV)

[11] John 6:49-50 (NRSV)

[12] Philo Judaeus, On the Changing of Names (De Mut. Nom.), 259-60, quoted in Joel Hecker, Manna and Mystical Eating, TheTorah.com, undated, accessed 6 August 2024

[13] Joel Hecker, Manna and Mystical Eating, TheTorah.com, undated, accessed 6 August 2024

[14] Ibid.

[15] Gabriel Williams, Wisdom Christology and the Bread of Life, reformation21, September 28, 2017, accessed 6 August 2024

[16] Ezekiel 3:1,3b (NRSV)

[17] Revelation 10:9 (NRSV)

[18] Psalm 119:103 (BCP Version)

[19] Julie Bosman, If You’re Mad for ‘Downton,’ Publishers Have Reading List, The New York Times, January 11, 2012, accessed 2 August 2024

[20] STU 100 – East – College Study Skills: Notetaking (Note Taking Tips from Dartmouth), Pima Community College, July 16, 2024, accessed 2 August 2024

[21] Hugh Oliphant Old, Biblical Wisdom Theology and Calvin’s Understanding of the Lord’s Supper, Sixth Colloquium on Calvin Studies (Davidson College, Davidson, NC:January 1992), 111-136, 118

[22] Jan Heilmann, A Meal in the Background of John 6:51–58?, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 137, No. 2 (Summer 2018), 481-500, 496-97

[23] Lisa Gelber, Filling Ourselves with Gratitude: Beshallah, Jewish Theological Seminary, January 15, 2011, accessed 9 August 2024

[24] Bradley Shavit Artson, A Summary of Judaism: Beshalach, American Jewish University, January 30, 1999, accessed 10 August 2024

Of Amos, John, and White Christian Nationalism – Sermon for Proper 10, RCL Year B

July 13, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The United States is, at least ostensibly, a very religious country. Nearly two hundred years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that “there is no country in the world where … religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”[1] While recent polling data demonstrate that the influence of religion seems to have declined, it remains a powerful force.

According to an average of all 2023 Gallup polling, about 75% of Americans identify with a specific religious faith, and 71% say that religion is either “important” or “very important” in their lives; over 40% attend religious services at least monthly, more than half of those weekly.[2]

But there is “important” and there is “important”; there is “religious” and there is “religious.” Is a religion “important” to someone in that that person spends a good deal of time observing its outward rituals, or is it “important” in that its moral precepts form a significant underpinning of his or her social behavior? Is a person “religious” because they make large donations or sacrifices and frequently attend significant rituals and ceremonies, or because he or she is an ethical and compassionate person who stands for justice and equity?

In de Tocqueville’s observations of America, it was the latter. He praised American religion for its comparative simplicity and its elimination of ritual: “I have seen no country,” he wrote, “in which Christianity is clothed with fewer forms, figures, and observances than in the United States.”[3] For the Prophet Amos in ancient Israel, the problem was the former. As biblical scholar and professor of Old Testament F.B. Huey, Jr., has noted:

Amos appeared on the scene in Israel during the reign of Jeroboam II, a time of relative peace and prosperity in both Israel and Judah. Some of the people enjoyed great wealth, but others experienced crushing poverty. The poor were oppressed, cheated, and exploited. Their rights were ignored. Immorality of every kind was openly and unashamedly practiced. Drunkenness, adultery, licentiousness, and self-indulgence had rotted the moral fiber of the nation.

However, the people could not be accused of neglecting religion. Ritualistic practices abounded. High places for worship of other gods were tolerated. Idolatry was not suppressed. [Professor John] Paterson’s classic statement best sums up the situation: “The people were oozing and dripping with religion of a kind.”[4]

About 170 years before Amos, around the year 930 BCE, the People of Israel had divided themselves into two kingdoms. The ten tribes whose territory was north of Jerusalem revolted against King Solomon’s son Rehoboam and formed a new kingdom, taking the name Israel, under Jeroboam I, who had been the official over Solomon’s public construction programs. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin, together with the Levites who served the Jerusalem Temple, remained loyal to Rehoboam and formed the southern Kingdom of Judah.

The northern kingdom established two centers of worship; one at Dan and the other at Shechem. The temples that were built at these places displayed statues of golden calves as symbols of God; they were even emblazoned with the four-letter ineffable name “YHWH”. Worship and sacrifice were performed by non-Levite priests appointed by the king.[5]

Jeroboam I was succeeded by several kings, nearly all of whom, according to Scripture, “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, walking in the way of Jeroboam and in the sin that he caused Israel to commit,”[6] some worse than others. And after 170 years, Jereboam II took the throne. His reign was one of military success and triumph against Israel’s enemies and neighbors, and of extraordinary wealth for the king and his aristocrats. Jewish tradition records

The triumphs of the king had engendered a haughty spirit of boastful overconfidence at home. Oppression and exploitation of the poor by the mighty, luxury in palaces of unheard-of splendor, and a craving for amusement were some of the internal fruits of these external triumphs.[7]

It is against this profligate extravagance, and the injustice and iniquity that accompanied it, that Amos spoke out.

Amos was a native of Judah, from the town of Tekoa, ten miles south of Jerusalem, but he was sent by God to prophesy in the Northern Kingdom. The central message of his prophecy is summed up in four verses in which God says:

I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings
and grain-offerings, I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.[8]

Amos testified to what has been called the “seamless relationship between ethical behavior and true worship, between justice and piety.”[9] The latter without the former is hollow and worthless. It’s no wonder Amaziah the priest told him to return to Judah and never prophesy in Israel again. I’m sad to say that I suspect that Amos would receive no better welcome in parts of modern-day America, for all our reported religiosity. In any event, for its injustice, its corruption, and its ritualistic but morally bankrupt religion, Amos prophesied the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel, and it came to pass.

Nearly eight centuries later, Judah had also ceased to exist and the whole of Palestine had been absorbed into the Roman Empire. The last king of anything that could be called a unified Jewish nation, Herod the Great, King of Judea, had died and the Romans (confirming instructions in Herod’s will) divided his client kingdom among his children. His youngest son, Herod Antipas, ruled, under the title of “Tetrarch,” a portion of what had been Jeroboam’s kingdom and, like Jeroboam, he had to contend with a prophet condemning the morality and injustice of both his political reign and his personal lifestyle.

Luke rather white washes or sugar coats John’s social justice prophecy, making it sound like an adult Bible Study class:

[T]he crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax-collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”[10]

But remember, John was also talking to the religious authorities, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and “all the people from Jerusalem,”[11] the same people he had just addressed as “You brood of vipers!” and called a bunch of rotten trees producing bitter fruit which God plans to chop down and throw into the fire![12] I would think the conversation was a little more heated than the polite Sunday School class Luke describes.

It was not John’s concerns about neglect of the poor, excessive taxation, or military oppression that got him arrested and beheaded, however; it was his criticism of the Tetrarch’s marriage. History tells us that Antipas occasionally paid heed to the outward norms and forms of contemporary Judaism: “[H]e is known to have celebrated Passover and Sukkoth in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, his subjects were not convinced by their leader’s piety.”[13] He’d been educated in Rome, venerated the Emperor Tiberius, and in his personal life, especially it seems in regard to marriage, he was pretty much culturally a Roman.

Initially, he was in a political marriage to Phasaelis, daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea, a neighboring country. But then he met Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Archelaus. They fell in love and each divorced their current spouse so they could marry the other. While marriage to the ex-wife of one’s living brother was not against Roman law, it was not acceptable under the Law of Moses. On top of that, Herodias was also his niece, the daughter of his other half-brother, Aristobulus. Again, marriage to one’s niece was permitted under Roman law, but outside the bounds Jewish propriety. John called him out on it, and this is what got John arrested and eventually beheaded.

Like Jeroboam and Amaziah, Herod Antipas and the religious leaders of Jerusalem adhered to the outward trappings of religion, but within those rituals there was little or no ethical content; worse, there was unrighteousness, injustice, and immorality. They were, as Jesus would later say, like whited sepulchres, “which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.”[14]

Amos of Tekoa and John the Baptizer were followers of the God of Israel who called those who claimed to be their co-religionists to task. They sang from the same hymnal as all the prophets who called on God’s People to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with … God,”[15] and they invite us to sing from that hymnal, as well, for we also have co-religionists to correct.

There is, as you know, a growing movement in our country and within the church called “dominionism” or “Christian nationalism.” It is, primarily, a phenomenon of white evangelicalism. It is quite simply a heresy. Dressed up in the rituals and ceremonies of the Christian faith, it promotes something very different from the love, justice, and humility taught by Jesus and all the prophets before him. But we cannot, as many have tried, simply dismiss dominionism as “not Christian” anymore than Amos or John could wash their hands of Jeroboam, Antipas, and their religious leaders as “not really following the religion of YHWH.”
As historian Jemar Tisby says:

[W]hite Christian nationalism is Christian, not because it resembles Christ but because it’s in the church.

White Christian nationalists attend church. They may not be the kind of churches you would want to join, but they are there.

White Christian nationalists look to the same sacred text, the Bible, that other Christians do. It may not be how you interpret scripture, but it’s the same book.

White Christian nationalists would largely claim the resurrection of Jesus, the Trinity, and other core, historical Christian doctrines. They may not derive the same meaning from those theological principles as you do, but they believe them.

White Christian nationalists use Christian symbols and rituals—crosses, prayers, spiritual songs, and fasting. These may not soften their souls in the ways we’d expect, but they are present nonetheless.[16]

No, Christian nationalism does not “soften the souls” of its adherents; on the contrary, it rather remarkably hardens their hearts. As described by Evangelicals for Democracy, Christian dominionism

treat[s] minorities and non-Christians as second-class citizens [and promotes] voting restrictions on a massive scale; more aggressive police tactics targeting black and brown communities; prohibiting interracial marriage and transracial adoption; ending protections for the religious liberty of Jews, Muslims and other non-Christian faiths; … enacting policies that are hostile to immigrants and refugees [and] the belief that women should be subservient to men.[17]

Dr. Tisby argues that the dominionists’ “misuse of the term ‘Christian’” imposes on other believers, that is us, “the duty to set forth an alternative witness of the faith.”[18]

The message of the prophets, of Amos and John, is clear: the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, demands morality, ethical conduct, justice, and equity. When de Tocqueville described the contribution of the Christian religion in America he wrote that it “impos[ed] some degree of humaneness on [the country’s] competitive, materialistic society.” His description of religion in the early days of the Republic differs dramatically from the program of the Christian nationalists; he observed religion that “placed mankind’s objectives beyond the treasures of earth and the soul above the senses,” that “imposed on human beings some responsibility for the welfare of others and compelled them to contemplate concerns other than their own.”[19] This religion, with its “seamless relationship between ethical behavior and true worship, between justice and piety”[20] is and has always been the “alternative witness of the faith” in this nation that we, like Amos and John before us, are to proclaim to the rulers and the people of our time.

Amen.

====================

This homily was offered by the Rev. Dr. C. Eric Funston on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 14, 2024, to the people of Harcourt Parish (Church of the Holy Spirit), Gambier, Ohio, where Fr. Funston was guest presider and preacher.

The lessons for the service were Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; and St. Mark 6:14-29. These lessons can be read at The Lectionary Page.

The illustration is an 18th-century Russian icon of the prophet Amos from the Iconostasis of Transfiguration Church, Kizhi monastery, Karelia, Russia.

====================

Notes:
Click on footnote numbers to link back to associated text.

[1] Quoted in Norman A Graebner, Christianity and Democracy: Tocqueville’s Views of Religion in America, The Journal of Religion 56:3 (July 1976), p. 263

[2] How Religious Are Americans?, Gallup, March 29, 2024, accessed 11 July 2024

[3] Quoted in Graebner, op. cit., p. 265

[4] F.B. Huey,, Jr., The Ethical Teaching of Amos, Its Content and Relevance, Southwestern Journal of Theology, Vol. 9, Fall 1966, quoting John Paterson, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets (Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York:1948), p. 25, online at Preaching Source, accessed 11 July 2024

[5] See 1 Kings 12

[6] 1 Kings 15:34 (NRSV)

[7] Emil G. Hirsch, Jeroboam, Jewish Encyclopedia, undated, accessed 11 July 2024

[8] Amos 5:21-24 (NRSV)

[9] Eldin Villafane, To Live in Justice: The Message of Amos For Today, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, October 24, 2016, accessed 11 July 2024

[10] Luke 3:10-14 (NRSV)

[11] See Matthew 3:7 and Mark 1:5

[12] Luke 3:7,9

[13] Herod Antipas, Livius: Articles on Ancient History, August 4, 2020, accessed 12 July 2024

[14] Matthew 23:27 (NRSV). The term “whited sepulchres” is taken from the King James Version.

[15] Micah 6:8 (NRSV)

[16] Jemar Tisby, Is White Christian Nationalism Christian?, Footnotes by Jemar Tisby, January 17, 2024, accessed 11 July 2024

[17] The Truth About Christian Nationalism, Evangelicals for Democracy, undated, accessed 12 July 2024

[18] Tisby, op. cit.

[19] Graebner, op. cit., pp. 269-70

[20] Villafane, op. cit.

Of “Why?” and “Yes!” – Sermon for Lent 4, RCL Year B

March 9, 2024 / / 0 Comments

There is a graphic artist named Brian Andreas whose work I can’t really describe to you. He uses a lot of primary colors, representational but non-realistic images, and words to create prints called “StoryPeople.” In one of them that I saw a while back is this quotation (I don’t know if it’s original to Mr. Andreas or quoted from someone else):

I had no idea that when I invited life to take over that it actually would and now I’m somewhere miles away from any place I know and life keeps waving its arms and grinning like a crazy person saying “This. Is. So. Great.”[1]

I thought of that when I encountered, again, what may be the most famous verse from the Gospel of John in today’s lesson: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”[2]

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Of Lent and Social Action – Sermon for Lent 3, RCL Year B

March 2, 2024 / / 0 Comments

When I was about 8 or 9 years of age, my grandparents gave me an illustrated bible with several glossy, color illustrations of various stories. They weren’t great art, but they were clear and very expressive. My favorite amongst them was the illustration of today’s gospel lesson.

I know it was John’s version of the cleansing of the Temple because in that picture Jesus was swinging a whip. John’s is the only version of the story with that detail. The rest of the picture was filled with movement. Jesus was whirling about like a dervish, his long hair and the hem of his rob flaring out. Men were scattering, tables and cages sailing through the air, birds fluttering away, and coins flying everywhere.

A couple of decades ago, when several of my friends were wearing “WWJD?” (What would Jesus do?) bracelets, I’d think of that illustration and wonder, “Have you considered that time with the whip in the Temple courtyard?”

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Of Temptation and Self-Discovery – Sermon for Lent 1, RCL Year B

February 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments

What is Lent all about?

Some say it’s a time when we are supposed to find the presence of God in everyday life. The Most Rev. Dr. Jonn Sentamu, Archbishop of York from 2005 to 2020, suggested as much in his 2015 Ash Wednesday meditation when he said, “Lent is a time to get to know God better.”[1] The metaphor of keeping Lent as being a journey during which we search for, find, and come to know more of God is so widespread and prevalent, one cannot find its origin.

It seems to be the most common way to think about Lent. But that way isn’t working for me this year, especially as I contemplate Mark’s description of Jesus’ baptism and its aftermath. If in our Lenten discipline we are to be, in some way, doing what a Lenten hymn attributed to St. Gregory the Great says — “keep[ing] vigil with our heavenly lord in his temptation and his fast”[2] — then we should pay particular attention to what really was going on there and seek to do during Lent what seems to be going on with Jesus in the wilderness.

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Of Thomas Jefferson, Ricky Bobby, and Archie Bunker – Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, RCL Year B

February 10, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Here we are at the end of the first period of what the church calls “ordinary time” during this liturgical year, the season of Sundays after the Feast of the Epiphany during which we have heard many gospel stories which reveal or manifest (the meaning of epiphany) something about Jesus. On this Sunday, the Sunday before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, we always hear some version of the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration, a story so important that it is told in the three Synoptic Gospels, alluded to in John’s Gospel, and mentioned in the Second Letter of Peter.

Six days before, Jesus had had a conversation with the Twelve in which he’d asked them who they thought he was. They had said that other people thought Jesus might be a prophet and that some thought he might even be Elijah returned from Heaven or John the Baptizer returned from the dead. Jesus put them on the spot, though, and asked, “But who do you say I am?”[1] Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”

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Of Healthy Skepticism – Sermon for Epiphany 2, RCL Year B

January 13, 2024 / / 0 Comments

In the Episcopal Church, when we baptize a person, we pray that God will “give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will, and to persevere, a spirit to know, and love, [God], and the gift of joy, and wonder in all [God’s] works.”[1] Similarly, in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the prayer is that the baptizee will receive “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord, [and] the spirit of joy in [God’s] presence.”[2]

In both traditions, our prayer is that the new church member will live a life of faith, in which he or she will develop and exercise the faculty of discernment, which is “the ability to make discriminating judgments, to distinguish between, and recognize the moral implications of, different situations and courses of action.”[3] In today’s readings, we have two stories of discernment.

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Of the River Jordan and Jesus – Sermon for the Baptism of Our Lord, Year B

January 6, 2024 / / 0 Comments

There’s a story about a pastor giving a children’s sermon. He decides to use a story about forest animals as his starting point, so he gathers the kids around him and begins by asking them a question. He says, “I’m going to describe someone to you and I want you to tell me who it is. This person prepares for winter by gathering nuts and hiding them in a safe place, like inside a hollow tree. Who might that be?” The kids all have a puzzled look on their faces and no one answers. So, the preacher continues, “Well, this person is kind of short. He has whiskers and a bushy tail, and he scampers along branches jumping from tree to tree.” More puzzled looks until, finally, Johnnie raises his hand. The preacher breathes a sigh of relief, and calls on Johnnie, who says, “I know the answer is supposed to be Jesus, but that sure sounds an awful lot like a squirrel to me.”

My best friend (another retired priest) and I often ask one another, “What are you preaching about on Sunday?” and our answer is always “Jesus.” For a preacher, the answer is always supposed to be Jesus. We’re supposed to take Paul as our model; he wrote to the Corinthians, “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”[1] So we are to do the same, preach Christ and him crucified, or perhaps today preach Christ and him baptized.

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Of Mary and Personal Agency – Sermon for Advent 4, Year B

December 23, 2023 / / 0 Comments

When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness
she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be[1]

I did not begin this morning with “Happy Christmas” or “Merry Christmas” because, although it’s December 24th, it’s not Christmas; it’s not even Christmas Eve yet! The rest of the world may want you to think it’s Christmas and that it has been since mid-October, but the Episcopal Church insists that it is not yet Christmas. In fact, there’s still more than nine months until Christmas if we believe the good news we just heard from the evangelist Luke! We still have some time to wait for trees and carols and packages, for festive dinners and “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” and the “holy infant so tender and mild.” We still have some of the Advent season to complete and so on this, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we focus our attention on Mary and consider not the end of her pregnancy, but its beginning, that moment when the Angel Gabriel told her that she had been chosen to be the mother of the Messiah.

Visual artists depict the stories of the bible in many fascinating ways and their works can help us explore scripture’s meaning. Often their images capture or suggest nuances in a story that we might miss just hearing the words. This morning, I’d like to tell you about three paintings that particularly speak to me about the Annunciation. They are the Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s Ecce Ancilla Domini painted in the 1850s, Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli’s late 15th Century Cestello Annunciation, and a contemporary piece by American artist John Collier.

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