Reign of Christ Sunday
Colossians 1
11 [Be] strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and [give] joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
I don’t want to go all Dan Brown in you, but we’re surrounded by powerful symbols.
Take your bulletin, for example. First notice the fold is perfect, done by a highly-qualified expert. Then look at the overall shape of the bulletin, taller than it is wide, like a window, or a book, or a portrait painting. And here is where it gets interesting: if you take one of the bottom corners and fold it to meet the opposite side of the page, you will have something that begins to resemble paper airplane—but it’s not. Next, fold the upper portion over, and then unfold. You should see that the line across the page creates a proportion of one to point-six. Taken overall, the bulletin had a patio of one to one-point-six. And this, according to everyone including Dan Brown, is called the golden ratio, or the golden mean, or what some have called it the divine proportion.
And now, without dragging you down the rabbithole of the Fibonacci and a sequence of numbers that will blow your mind, we can simply look around us and see the divine proportion. Faces have it, except for those two Russian guys arrested in connection to the impeachment investigation (Lev and Igor, if you’re following the news). You can see the divine proportion in the way the shell of a snail spirals outward, or the way sunflower seeds are arranged on the face of the flower. We live in a galaxy that takes the shape of the divine proportion, and even the double-helix of our DNA has it too. Think of a well-proportioned building, like St. Lawrence Hall at King and Jarvis. Each window has the divine proportion, 1.6 over 1. Take four of these windows, two over two, and the shape is the divine proportion. Take nine windows, arranged over three stories, and the effect is the same—the divine proportion.
Maybe your mind is blow even without discussing Fibonacci (you can google him later), but let’s add one more: the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant, instructions given by the Most High to create the symbolic vessel of God’s presence in the tablets of Sinai—which match the divine proportion, two-and-a-half cubits by one-and-a-half cubits. And just because, one more: look up in your mind’s eye at the Creation of Adam, Michelangelo’s masterpiece, and measure. From Adam’s shoulder to the tip of his finger, then the tip of God’s finger to the tip of God’s toe—the divine proportion of one to one-point-six.
The thing about things like the divine proportion is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The ratio between the length of your hand and the length of your forearm—it’s obviously hard to stop. Where was I? Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Something invisible has become visible, something seemingly undisclosed has been disclosed and then cannot be hidden. St. Paul said so himself:
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
It’s such a simple thing: Jesus is the visible image of an invisible God. Want to know what God is like? Look to Jesus, before all things and in all things, the firstborn of creation. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood (Peterson).
But how does it describe Christ the King, the Reign of Christ in our time? Well, hidden in plain sight is the order of things: “whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” Students of history may wince that this point, thinking of the so-called ‘divine right of kings,’ and the kind of turmoil caused when rulers ignore the will of the people. But the verse says no such thing. The verse reminds rulers that they are uniquely obligated to follow the direction of the King of Kings—to rule his way, and follow his will.
And the letter doesn’t stop with kings and other rulers. Paul turns his attention to the church, insisting that Christ “is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.” Not the pope, not the moderator, and never the minister—Christ is the head of the body that he himself personifies. He is the ‘first born from among the dead,’ at the head of a long line of saints from the beginning down to today. When Paul begins Ephesians and Philippians with “to all the saints” he is inviting us to add our name to the list: to all the saints in Weston, God’s holy people, faithful in Christ Jesus.
And while we’re on the topic of seeing the unseen, this is still another layer of making visible the invisible, namely seeing Christ in others. See how it works? When we see Christ, we see God. When we see Christ in others, we see God. So whether we see Christ or whether we see Christ in others, we are seeing God. The visible image of an invisible God is manifest everywhere we look, and within everyone God favours—the poor who are first in the Kingdom, and those who mourn, the vulnerable, those who hunger for justice, the merciful and the pure of heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted, who are very often one and the same.
And just when the poetry of seeing God seems to have reached a conclusion, Paul says ‘just one more thing.’ And the one more thing might be what someone practical person might call ‘the point of the exercise,’ the place where this conversation is leading—and that would be incarnation:
19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
And while I said incarnation, you would be correct if you said ‘yes, but I heard atonement.’ Making peace through his blood is certainly one way to describe the way we are reconciled to God, but I think Paul is saying more. I think he is giving us two options here, two options in the face of a mystery that will only be revealed in time. This is why you only ever hear the phrase ‘atonement theory,’ because there are a few.
In one theory, Christ wins a cosmic battle over the forces of evil, bridging what separates us from the divine. In another, humanity is rightly convicted of malfeasance, but Christ pays our penalty. In yet another, the story itself, on a hill far away, is enough to turn hearts of stone to hearts of flesh for God alone. And then one more: “pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him reconcile all things to himself.” In other words, incarnation.
Obviously, this topic will come up more than a few times in the next few weeks. And when it does, I hope you can see what can often go unseen: God in Christ, pleased to dwell. Christ in others, blessed to reveal. And God in each of us, in some sort of divine proportion, allowing us to be Christ to one another. Amen.
Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 21
5 Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, 6 “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
7 “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
Uh-oh, now you have an earworm. You know, those sticky how-will-I-get-this-song-out-of-my-head moments that can stretch into hours? And you’re not alone. According to researchers, 98% of of us get earworms, and they tend to involve snippets of popular songs between 15 and 30 seconds long. Only 8% of us get instrumental earworms, and I expect they now regret buying the Star Wars soundtrack.
Oddly, the research shows that for women, earworms last longer and irritate them more (I’ll let you construct your own clever comment here). The good news is that there are cures, including chewing gum, Sudoku and other puzzles, or finding another song to replace the song in your head. I think we know how that ends. The ultimate cure, it would seem, is to avoid popular music, the source of most earworms. Alas, I expect it’s too late for most, since you’re already down to the last verse:
But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be
All right, all right, all right
All right, all right, all right
All right, all right, all right
All right, all right
Curiously, the young radicals of 1968, protesting in the streets of Paris and Chicago, saw the song as a betrayal. The New Left Review call the song a "a lamentable petty bourgeois cry of fear,” and another publication suggested the Beatles had become enemies of the revolution.
Meanwhile, John explained that he began writing the song in India while studying Transcendental Meditation. He “would later say that the phrase repeated in this song, ‘it's gonna be alright,’ was borrowed from something the Beatles learned during the course. They were taught that God would take care of the human race no matter what happened politically.* Amen to that.
Meanwhile in Jerusalem, another revolution is brewing. Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
“Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”
They got the when and the what, but they didn’t ask the how. The actual destruction of the Temple happened late in the summer of AD 70. The conflict is called the First Jewish-Roman War, when the Romans besieged the Holy City, eventually destroying the Temple and altering the course of Jewish history. It seems the Roman general Titus had no intention to destroy it, instead wanting to rededicate the Temple to honour the Roman gods.
The fact that the Gospel of Luke was written after the destruction of the Temple remains an important point in our look at this passage. What was Luke trying to say by giving the Temple such a prominent place in his telling? The destruction of the Temple was top-of-mind for his audience, and remains an important part of Jewish consciousness. Maybe Luke wanted to underline the events of AD 70 as he promoted the Jewish-Christian movement that would become Christianity. Or maybe he just wanted to signal the start of a revolution.
“Watch out that you are not deceived.” Jesus said. “For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”
Jesus goes on to describe conflicts and famines, “fearful events and great signs from heaven.” He describes persecution, and trials, and in an obvious reference to a post-70 timeframe, he suggests people will be “handed over to synagogues and put in prison.” In other words, it seems Luke is trying to do two things at once: comfort his audience in the midst of trouble, and point to the dawn of a new age.
And this might be the moment to meet N.T. Wright once more. I had occasion to hear him speak back in 2015, and his message was all about understanding the times and recognizing that we live in a new age that began on the Day of Pentecost. Let me explain.
Dr. Wright began his talk with this: “The God who made heaven and earth intends to draw them together at the last.” He argued that the petty squabbles that divide Christians get in the way of the real story that God wants to tell: the creation of a new Jerusalem here on earth. When Jesus said “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” he was expressing his entire project, that God’s realm and our realm someday become one.
So how does it begin? Wright argues that this is a story with five acts. It begins with creation, the first act of our life with God. Then disaster strikes in Act Two, as we are forced from the garden and reminded to never trust a talking snake. Act Three is the the call of Israel in two very unlikely people—Abraham and Sarah—the father and mother of three great religions. Act Four is the sending of Jesus, including his death and resurrection, and finally Act Five, the time after Pentecost—the time defined by the work of the disciples. According to Wright, we are in this last stage, the fifth act of God’s story of us, disciples acting for God in the world, seeking to ‘put to rights’ all that is wrong.
And based on N.T. Wright’s telling, our opening dialogue about the Temple can be either speculation about the end of the Temple-cult or a message about the age to come. Both are revolutionary. Judaism will reinvent itself and find new ways to honour the Most High, and Christianity will enter a pentecostal age, beginning with the Acts of the Apostles. We often speak of finding yourself in scripture, but Dr. Wright is more direct: the Book of Acts continues, and we are simply the latest characters in an unfolding story.
Now, I expect that if we took our roving microphone out to Weston Road and asked people to name the age we live in, the Age of Pentecost might not come up. We might hear Age of Terror, Age of Environmental Crisis, or (Lord help us) the Age of Trump—all sorts of names and ideas that are top-of-mind, much like the first readers of Luke thinking about the destroyed Temple. And I must confess I might be the first to say Age of Populism or Age of Disruption or some such rather than the age that God would claim for us.
What we need (what I need) is some good old-fashioned Lennonism—that would be John Lennonism—and the belief that ‘God would take care of the human race no matter what happens politically.’ And here is how I know: throughout the Acts of the Apostles there are shipwrecks and setbacks, conversations and conversions, baptisms and believers coming to Christ and changing the world. And at the same time, there are governors and emperors, world events and political episodes, but they play virtually no part in the unfolding story of the age as recorded in Acts.
Yes, the apostles seek to ‘put to rights’ all that is troubling, and yes they seek to promote God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, but their primary job is to love and serve others, and live with the confidence that God will take care of the human race, no matter what happens. The revolution they represent is a reunion, standing with the God who made heaven and earth and intends to draw them together at the last. It is a revolution of the age to come, and ‘don’t you know it’s gonna be alright.’ Amen.
*https://www.mprnews.org/amp/story/2018/05/30/beatles-music-inspired-by-transcendental-meditation
Remembrance Sunday (Proper 27)
Luke 20
34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’[a] 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
If you’re gonna argue, you should do it right.
Okay, then, what’s right? Well, doing to right means avoiding some of the countless false arguments that people tend to use. So now we need a list, and almost every list of fallacies or false arguments begins with the ad hominem argument. It sounds trickier than it actually is.
An ad hominem argument attacks your opponent rather than the substance of what they are saying. “Crooked Hillary” is a classic ad hominem attack. When you attack someone’s character, their motives, attack their friends, or compare their current stance with something they said in the past, it’s an ad hominem attack. Some argue (successfully) that we live in an ad hominem age.
The next and very common argument is the strawman, attacking a simplified version of your opponent’s argument, or an intentional misunderstanding of the same. If the topic is the science of evolution and someone says ‘my opponent would have you believe that we all came from monkeys,’ then you have just witnessed a strawman argument. It’s an unfair characterization.
Of course, I would be betraying my roots if I didn’t mention the ‘red herring,’ both an argument and the somewhat smelly fish. Seemingly, the phrase came from the practice of using herring to train hunting dogs away from needless distraction. And so, a red herring is an attempt to distract you from the matter at hand. From this point forward, any talk about the whistleblower is a red herring—a topic has been eclipsed by subsequent events, but still serves as a way to distract.
My final example is the bafflement argument, sometimes called an ‘argument by gibberish,’ where someone constructs an elaborate and seemingly technical scenario in order to baffle their opponent. Imagine a group religious thinkers who don’t believe in the resurrection of the dead. In order to further their argument, they construct a complicated and highly unlikely scenario where seven brothers each marry the same woman in turn, and then face the awkward possibility of a crowded afterlife. According to the Sadducees, this bit of bafflement proves that there is no resurrection of the dead.
Until they meet their match in Jesus. But before we learn again why it’s no accident that Jesus is called the “master,” we should close the circle on the art of arguing. Taking the ‘seven husband story’ as an example, it could fit other false arguments too. Here are a couple more:
Misleading Vividness is another, adorning your argument with so much detail it begins to seem plausible.*
And Argumentum ex culo, which I’m going to politely translate as “pulling an argument right out of your imagination.”
Jesus, the master, has heard it all before. You might even argue that he understood the weakness of their argument before they made it, but that would only serve to distract from the logical response he gave. He said five things:
The dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage.
They are like the angels.
They are God’s children.
Even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to God all are alive.”
This five-point response is the perfect counter-argument to the classic bafflement he’s met with. Jesus creates a thesis (“The dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage”), adds some salient notes, and reaches a tidy conclusion—all in four verses. It has internal logic, it’s progressive—building one point on another—and it moves from the literal to the metaphorical, revealing truth.
Yes, I said truth. One of the sad realities of our time is that people have conflated factual and truthful. In our overly literal minds, we tend to forget that metaphors can be true, even if they are not factual. Let me give you an example: Time is money. On the face of it, it’s not factual: money is money and time is time. But it’s also truthful, because anyone who has ever received a paycheck knows that there is a relationship between the time worked and the money received. Further, we know that both time and money are scarce, part of the reason that the metaphor ‘time is money’ rings true everytime.
So Jesus begins with a literal statement, a statement of fact—said with the kind of authority we expect from the teacher, master, or Son of the Most High: “The dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage.” That’s our starting point, the literal foundation of a dicussion that will now shift to the symbolic and figurative.
“They can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.” This is metaphor. Angels, children of God, children of the resurrection—this is a creative way of saying that the dead belong to God in a unique way. Notice Jesus says it three different ways, three ways that we can ‘try it on’ to see what fits. Obviously, symbolic language speaks to the individual, it reaches each of us in different ways. At different times we will find ourselves and others in one of these metaphors—angels, children of God, children of the resurrection. They are all true, and some are more true than others, depending on what’s happening inside you at the moment you hear it.
And then Jesus appeals to the story of Israel, a perpetual touchstone for people of faith, but even as he reaches in this direction, he remains in the realm of metaphor. “But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’”
Now, I’ve preached this passage more than a few times, and this time I found a new metaphor I hadn’t seen before: Jesus summarizes the story of receiving the covenant at Sinai as “the account of the burning bush.” Titles tell you what the speaker thinks is important, and in this case the presence of God in the bush that burns but is not consumed is an important element to the story, and perhaps in the story of God too. Something to ponder.
Back the dead, it’s all in the tenses. Jesus points to the use of language, noting that when Moses speaks to God it’s ‘you ARE the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,’ never ‘you were the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ And then his conclusion: ‘God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to God all are alive.’ Jesus has taken us from divine certainty, through symbolic language we can make our own, and concluded with a vision of the living and the dead, alive together in eternity, forevermore.
Remembrance Day gives birth to more stirring metaphor, and we use these words to express how we feel about the events of the past. One example is describing the dead as “the fallen.” The fallen can continue no longer, but encourage others to pick up the struggle and carry on. It recognizes the sad irony that sometimes you have to fight to further the cause of peace.
We also speak of the sacrifice made in war, both the men and women who left home and family behind, and those who made the ultimate sacrifice—giving their lives. Entering harm’s way, setting aside personal needs, fighting to protect others—these are best described using the language of sacrifice.
Even the word remembrance itself, is loaded with more than memory: remembrance is an active endeavour, fusing commemoration and commitment, the desire to remember and the willingness to continue the cause of peace.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. Amen.
*https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/a-conservative-guide-to-rhetoric
