November 6, 2011: All Saint's Sunday

The Gospel lesson for All Saint’s Sunday is challenging throughout, though not – it must be noted – as challenging as in Year C, when Luke’s less spiritualized version is read. It is the very last verse, however, which poses a particular difficulty for those of us who enjoy being liked by others. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Jesus’ call to a disturbingly counter-cultural way of life, and its inescapable political ramifications were the subject of John E. Smith’s “Serving the Word” commentary in the 1 September – 23 November 2008 issue of Homily Service.

Yes, we are to turn a cheek or two, to be forgiven and to practice forgiveness, to practice peace even before the emperor, and to do it as a community together – again and again and again, without giving in, hanging on like a terrier to a sock… Because there must be saints, and because they must actually live in the world, building communities seeking to be faithful to Jesus, and because the vision and hope they possess is for all of humanity, there will be tension with the emperor and the culture... they will appear to be revolutionary, and sometimes provoking. The church has to remember to represent itself politically, proclaiming again and again that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Saints may vote for different candidates than their neighbors do and for different reasons. They may even talk about their different reasons for so doing. They may say “peace” when other say “war,” while claiming the right of self-defense... Christians may speak from strength and piety because the saints have received and do possess something in which they can be glad and rejoice. They may be reviled, falsely accused, even persecuted, but it will be because they have received what is worth gladness and rejoicing.

So, will you be mentioning the Occupy Wall Street protesters in your sermon this Sunday?

Homily Service: An ecumenical resource for sharing the word; Vol. 41, no. 4, p. 110.
John E. Smith is pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

In next Sunday’s gospel lesson, Jesus takes aim at the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day. In the 1 September – 23 November 2008 issue of Homily Service, Melinda Reagor Flannery reminded readers that that the church has rarely failed to turn the flashlight of this text toward Christian clergy.

As early as the third century, the church fathers (sic) uniformly made the leap of seeing Jesus’ words about the scribes and Pharisees as applying to Christian leaders. An early anonymous work … says of the seat of Moses, “The chair does not make the priest, but the priest, the chair…Not every priest is holy, but all the holy are priests.” The phylacteries and fringes are compared to Christian holy objects to which people cling without any true or deeper piety. Yet as for following flawed leaders’ teachings, “[Y]ou must honor good priests and bad, lest you condemn the good on account of the bad…Remember that wretched land may produce precious gold.” But laity are competent to judge the priests on their behavior, while honoring their teachings. Origen says that deacons loved to get the best places at church, and that priests and bishops were worse. John Chrysostom says that a truly good pastor should be the opposite of those described here, “a rigorous and severe judge in things that concern himself. But in the matters of those whom he rules, he ought to be gentle and ready to make allowances.”

Before 1999, members of the clergy were usually ranked first among the professions in terms of their honesty and ethics. Since 1999, they have dropped to 7th place. How can the church improve ethical standards of accountability among the clergy, while still affirming the gospel call to forgive the sinner?

Homily Service: An Ecumenical Resource for Sharing the Word, vol. 41, no. 4, p. 120.

Melinda Reagor Flannery is Assistant University Librarian: Technical Services at the Fondren Library of Rice University.

What shall we render to Caesar?

In much the same way that the Christian churches and the secular culture of the United States use the word “Christmas” to refer to two vastly different phenomena, we find ourselves in the midst of a long-running dispute over the definition of the word “marriage” and the identity of the institution which has the power to define it. In 2005, Donna R. Techau invited readers of Liturgy to reflect upon these conflicting definitions, and the way in which they muddy the waters of the Church’s witness to covenant relationships.

By pushing for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage (as he sees it), Dobson has removed the definition of marriage from the hands of the (apparently inept) church, and has instead placed marriage squarely in the realm of jurisprudence – wherein infidelity or rupture or breach of contract is assumed as the bedrock for protective laws. A clearly post-lapsarian view is assumed, as well as a fidelity to the state as the proper arbiter of marriage. “It has never been clearer,” Dobson said, “that the FMA is our last, best chance to preserve marriage for future generations.” Is it possible that Dobson has rendered the church mute? Is it possible that the state is being asked to take over the goods most properly belonging to the church? Who makes a marriage? The church or the state?
…Both of these men [Dobson and Falwell] bolster their political rhetoric with theological claims to the god-ordained status of marriage, apocalyptic biblical references against homosexuality, and Pauline admonitions against the same; none of which are under debate within this present article. There is more at stake in the current discussion than sexual acts. What does finally belong to the state? And what does ultimately belong to God?

Liturgy, vol. 20, no. 1, p. 48.
Donna R. Techau is Senior Operations Manager at Kaplan University. She is the author of Blessed are the Violent: Towards a Postmodern Hermeneutic of Violence.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

In the 1 September – 23 November 2008 issue of Homily Service Fritz West offered the following reflection on this Sunday’s gospel lesson.

Jesus commands us to love God and neighbor at the same time. It would be easier if these two were distinct, separable, and consecutive. It would be easier if we could first love god and then love neighbor, or vice versa. But that is not what Jesus wants us to do. He means for us to keep God and neighbor simultaneously in mind. That is rough. For example, how does one love a drug addict? Keeping our eyes on God, we might see a woman who is blaspheming god’s creation and judge her. God created her body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and she is using it as a chemical dump. Do we then punish this woman and – as we do in the United States – imprison her? Or, we might see a man in distress. Do we love him as neighbor, sympathizing with the pain he is using drugs to mask? Do we forgive him his every sin, all the harm he has inflicted on others? Jesus says, “do both!” We are to love both God and neighbor. That means there is no simply either/or – only a complex both/and.

This essay seems to intimate that love of God demands the incarceration of drug addicts while love of neighbor demands the provision of treatment. Do you agree?

Homily Service: vol. 41, no. 4 p. 96.

Fritz West is the pastor of St. John’s United Church of Christ in Fountain City, Wisconsin. He is the author of Scripture and Memory: The Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-Year Lectionaries, and is the Presiding Member of the Steering Committee of the Association for Reformed & Liturgical Worship.

Liturgy & Elections

As another presidential election cycle kicks into high gear in the United States, we are again confronted with the peculiarly American way in which Church and State interpenetrate, and with the bizarrely liturgical nature of much of what happens on the campaign trail.
In 2005, William T. Cavanaugh invited readers of Liturgy to reflect upon the ways in which public State liturgies often come to fill the mental and emotional space previously occupied by our increasingly privatized Christian liturgies.

There is a longing in nationalist ritual that bespeaks a desire for communion that is at the heart of Christian liturgy. Patriotic liturgies have succeeded in imagining communities because Christian liturgies have failed to do so in a fully public way. As the church expanded after Constantine, Christian worship was not centered on the parish but on the whole city. No Roman or Greek assumed a city could exist without a public cult. The church sought to replace the pagan cult of the city with the Christian liturgy. Christian worship on the Lord’s day and other feasts therefore generally took the form of a series of services in churches and public spaces, linked by public processions, totaling six to eight hours. Here was the church taking itself seriously as nothing less than “the embodiment in the world of the World to come.” Much of this way of imagining the world has been lost as the liturgy has shrunken to a short, semiprivate gathering. If the Christian liturgy is to reclaim its centrality to the imagination of a redeemed world, we must look with a critical eye on liturgies that compete for our allegiance.

If we take Dr. Cavanaugh’s insights to heart, what would that look like? As a modest proposal, ought Christian clergy refuse to offer the prayers which (since 1937) have been included in Presidential inauguration ceremonies?
The Liturgies of Church and State, Liturgy, 20:1, 29-30.
William T. Cavanaugh is Professor of Theology at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. He has authored a number of articles and books, most recently Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church.