Easter 4A 2017
Good Shepherd Sunday
In his first letter to the
Corinthians, St. Paul stated that preachers are to offer words that instruct, encourage and comfort. I hope this homily will reflect
this today.
I wrote a condensed history
of St. James Church with contributions from several of our long time members
and hopefully most of you have had a chance to read it by now. I believe it was
important to get it to you folks prior to our vision dinner last night. We are
beginning a new chapter in our church history. It is like beginning a journey.
It is always important to know where you are at before you start out. In
navigating the wilderness, I always mark a waypoint on my GPS to indicate where
I began.
St. James not only moved as a
visible congregation. A great cloud of witnesses’ accompanied us and continues
to surround us. We are a part of the communion of saints. We bring our story
with us just as the Israelites brought their stories and the Ark of the Covenant
along with them as they journeyed in the wilderness. Why do I say these things?
It is because St. James is not a collection of individuals. We are individually
members of a body; the Body of Christ. We are joined to one another.
We were not any more secure
in our St. James campus than we are now. While we have temporary shelter in a
building we are no longer secure in our culture.
The Episcopal Scholar Ephraim Radner recently stated, “There is no safe place
in the world or in our churches [my
italics] within which to be a Christian.” That is a rather telling admission on
his part. I am not so pessimistic because I believe our Anglican Christian
Tradition provides both hope and a rough blueprint for us to follow.
The Arian Heresy was that
Christ was not divine. I believe we have descended one more step in our modern culture
even in the modern church by saying not only that Christ is not divine but also that the individual is divine. That is idolatry. I have heard it said again and again
by modern church leaders that the church should focus on “Human Flourishing”.
That is human focused not God focused and that is idolatry.
What St. James Anglican
Church must continue to hold on to is the basic knowledge passed down to us by
the saints who preceded us. Christ is
divine. We are not divine. God is the Creator and we are God’s created
creatures. We, as the Body of Christ have comforting immutable knowledge in a
world that is increasingly confused, individualized, fragmented and
floundering. We have 2,000 years of context as a church.
Some families have a lengthy
recorded history. For example my wife Sharon has an album that goes back many
generations on both her mother and father’s side of the family. She lives
within the context of that story. It is a place of comfort and security. As a
school psychologist I worked with many children who didn’t even know the name
of their father. Those children were adrift, floating isolated and alone. That
is the culture we find ourselves within today.
When I interviewed graduate student
prospects as the director of the Fresno Pacific University school psychology
program, I would ask them to tell me their story. What became clear to me over
the years was the different worldviews the students brought to the program.
Almost all of the Hispanic students told their story in the context of their
family and culture. They did not see themselves as individuals distinct from
the family, which included the grandparents. Sometimes it would take an hour
for their stories to unfold. Often, I would get lost in the lineage.
In our society today, individualism
has now been raised to the level of idolatry. Human rights translated in
today’s terms is, “I’ve Got To Be Me” (A song popularized by Sammy Davis Jr.)
Today, the individual is free to do whatever he or she wants in the pursuit of
their uniqueness. It is me absolving myself of a responsibility to my neighbor.
Ignoring my neighbor is failure to love my neighbor as myself.
Eventually, the individual
comes to see herself only as an individual with personal goals to be
accomplished and a resume’ to be embellished. They don’t have skills or jobs
but the educational system has ensured that they have self-esteem.
Life lived in a collaborative
fashion produces richer results, affirms and empowers others and draws us out
of the hell of self-absorption. There is no such thing as a self-made person.
Each person begins with a genetic endowment from ancestors just for a starter.
Hyper-reflection
is a preoccupation with self. Kierkegaard called it “extravagant subjectivity”.
Some just call it “navel gazing”. Our contemporary society caters to and
assists this self-seeking narcissism. Smart phone “selfies” are encouraged and
applauded on social media. The term used
for our present age now is “Liquid Modernity”. Zygmunt Bauman, who introduced
the idea of liquid modernity, wrote that its characteristics are about the
individual. “It is a kind of chaotic continuation of modernity, where a person
can shift from one social position to another in a fluid manner. Nomadism
becomes a general trait of the 'liquid modern' man as he flows through his own
life like a tourist, changing places, jobs, spouses, values and sometimes
more—such as political or sexual orientation—excluding himself from traditional
networks of support.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_modernity Probably the best way to understand Liquid Modernity
is that liquids, unlike solids, take the shape of their container. In our society we can be whatever we call
ourselves. Objective reality no longer matters. Our culture has descended to
subjective emotional individualism.
This individualism
contributes to the symptoms of anxiety, hypochondria, depression and character
disorders. At its most pathological point, it is the Schizophrenic collecting
his urine because his bodily functions have become the sole focus of his
attention. An individual in isolation may succumb to hyper-reflection, dryness
and desperation.
In contrast, a life lived
interconnected to the community does not threaten the loss of individuality; it
nourishes it. Family, friends and the Church are groups that provide structure,
nurture faith, provide service opportunities, and direct us toward God and away
from ourselves. The older I become, the more I see individualism as a
pernicious modern malady.
It is in knowing Christ that we truly know
ourselves. "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who
live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live
by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal.
2:20, NASB)
According to Rod Dreher
author of the recently published “The Benedict Option”, the modern church is no
longer preaching Christ. He calls the belief system of the young people in the
modern church “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” (MTD).
1.
A God exists who
created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2.
God wants people
to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and most world
religions.
3.
The central goal
of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself.
4.
God does not need
to particularly be involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a
problem.
5.
Good people go to
heaven when they die.
Dreher further states, “Every
single congregation in America must ask itself if it has compromised with the
world so much that it is compromised in its faithfulness.” I believe this is
not true of St. James that is a congregation in exile because of its
faithfulness.
Dreher states, “Nothing is
more needful today than the survival of Christian culture. He claims we need to
rediscover the past including the writing of the early church fathers and the
traditions of the church. The “Evangelicals did not reject them [the church
fathers], they just ignored them.”
Can you see where Dreher (who
is a convert to the Greek Orthodox Church) is headed here? The Evangelicals are
now looking at the Liturgical churches as a role model for the future. It is
more than the liturgy of the Word, the Gospel message. It is also the Liturgy
of the Table, the Eucharist. In this rediscovering, Dreher wants the
Evangelicals to “Recover Liturgical Worship”. “There is a connection between
neglecting to take Liturgy seriously, or giving up Liturgy altogether and
abandoning Christian orthodoxy. If we are to maintain these truths over time,
we must maintain our Liturgy.” Agreed!
Dreher borrows from Han
Boersma “…who identifies the loss of sacramentality as the key reason the
modern church is falling apart. If there is no participation in the eternal-that
is if we do not regard matter, and even time itself as rooted firmly in God’s
being- then the life of the church can scarcely withstand the torrents of
liquid modernity.”
Can you see here how the best
selling book, the “Benedictine Option” is offering church renewal by
rediscovering what we at St. James already have? We are deeply rooted in
Anglican Christianity. Just as our salvation was bought with a price; the blood
of our Savior Jesus Christ, our steadfastness and faithfulness were bought with
a price too. We lost what we had but we still have the only treasure that
matters, the Pearl of Great Price. Our faith and tradition remain in tact.
Knowing this how should we conduct ourselves?
Dreher states, “The first Christians gained
converts not because their arguments were better than those of the pagans but
because people saw in them and their communities something good and beautiful [my
emphasis]--and they wanted it. This led them to the Truth.” Finally, Dreher
states, “Instead of being seeker friendly, we should be finder friendly,
offering those who come to us a new and different way of life.”What do we at St. James have to offer? We have Truth in Doctrine, Beauty in Liturgy, Goodness in the hearts of the people and the One as the many made one in the body of Christ.
In
our Epistle Lesson today we hear, “For this is the will of God, that by doing
good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people
who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as
servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God.
But if when you do good and
suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to
this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an
example, so that you might follow in his steps. He himself bore our sins in his
body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his
wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now
returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” As we look to the
uncertain future, we must keep in mind the opening verse of todays Psalm on
this Good Shepard Sunday. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want.”
Amen
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