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The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, who knowest our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion, we beseech thee, upon our infirmities, and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, mercifully give us for the worthiness of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (Proper 11)
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The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Amos 7:7-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
on
Amos 7:7-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29
✛
Voices in the wilderness
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In 1978, the great Roman Catholic Liturgist and musician, Joseph Gelineau, wrote these words:
‘Solemnities are vain,
words are empty,
music a waste of time,
prayer useless and
rites nothing but lies
if they are not transfigured by
justice and mercy.’
How tragic it is when the words of the liturgy become formulaic or, worse, when the liturgy becomes disconnected from the Church’s mission and the values of the Kingdom of God.
Of course, none of this is new; it is found at the heart of the message of the prophets. Time and time again, they called people to repentance and especially those concerned with the law and the ritual embodiment of that law in worship. In our first lesson from the prophet Amos, the priests had had enough and suggested that Amos should be silenced once and for all. Why? Well, we only have to turn back two chapters to find the answer; the word of the Lord, prophesied by Amos, was unequivocal:
“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.” (Amos 5:21-24)
The words of Joseph Gelineau echo the words of Amos:
Solemnities are vain,
words are empty,
music a waste of time,
prayer useless and
rites nothing but lies
if they are not transfigured by
justice and mercy.
Justice and mercy is to be at the heart of what it is to be in covenant relationship with God.
John the Baptist stood in that tradition; he called his hearers to repentance – to integrity and justice – so he challenged the self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees; their worship made no difference to those in need. When he saw the Pharisees and the Sadducees coming for baptism at the Jordan, like Amos before him, his words were stinging:
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
In that same spirit the Lord, himself, lost his patience with those whose ritual observance did nothing to deepen their relationship with the Father: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!”
(Matthew 23:23-24)
There is a cost to this kind of standing up for justice and mercy and faith, but the option for the poor, for the marginalized, for the widow and the orphan, for the stranger and the alien, for the voiceless, is not an optional extra in the Christian life. It is a biblical principle just as John the Baptist became a voice for the voiceless:
“This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ ” (Matthew 3:3)
Only a few days ago outside a detention center, our Presiding Bishop said these words:
“We come in love. That is the core of our faith. That is the heart of it. And we come, because we are Christian and the way of love calls for us to be humanitarian. It calls for us to care for those who have no one to care for them.”
Amos, like Elijah before him and Jeremiah after him, said uncomfortable words to the religious establishment and so they tried to silence him just as they had tried to silence Elijah and Jeremiah and the other prophets. John the Baptist was imprisoned and his death was a sport by an unjust and cruel leader who used corrupt power to silence him. Jesus recognized this theme in his own ministry and after seeing the hypocrisy of religious leaders wept:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
(Matthew 23:37-38)
So, in the same fashion, the religious and political establishment tried to silence Jesus also. He was arrested in the night; detained with no substantive charges; received a mockery of a trial and with no one to defend him; he was tortured and he was humiliated publicly. His execution came quickly so his imprisonment came, poignantly, after his death. As the old Easter carol puts it so beautifully,
“Had Christ, that once was slain,
ne’er burst his three-day prison,
our faith had been in vain;
but now hath Christ arisen!”
This time, everything changed.
The Resurrection changed everything; the established order failed to silence the Lord of love; we are an Easter people and alleluia is our song. He is not dead, he is alive and will come again in glory to judge both the quick and the dead. It is what we proclaim in the creed; it what we proclaim in our baptismal covenant; it is what we proclaim in this church’s mission statement – ‘to worship, love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ.’
Listen to these words of Archbishop Oscar Romero, someone the establishment tried to silence; words to his own Church:
“A religion of Sunday Mass but of unjust weeks does not please the Lord. A religion of much praying but with hypocrisy in the heart is not Christian. A Church that sets itself up only to be well off, to have a lot of money and comfort, but that forgets to protest injustices, would not be the true Church of our divine redeemer.”
Somewhere in the world today, my friends, a Christian is being persecuted and we, here in Manhattan who take going to church for granted, should be in solidarity with those persecuted for their faith. Somewhere, as we worship, someone in the world is being silenced and we, who in this great country take freedom of speech for granted, are called to give that person a voice, and, perhaps, for all the voiceless around the world who still need the Church to continue to preach the transforming power of the Cross of Christ.
St Paul impressed on the people of Ephesus their calling, “God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.”
We also have that calling so, my friends, let us put our faith into practice.
