summum bonum

 a sermon, based on Micah 6.1-8, Matthew 5.1-12, and 1 Corinthians 1.18-31, preached with the people of Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, SC, on the 4^th Sunday after Epiphany, January 29, 2017

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?”

This word of the prophet Micah is the Hebrew Bible’s magna carta, great charter of life, supreme expression of the summum bonum, “the highest good” of human living.

Amazingly, though scriptural, it’s not especially religious; as religion may be conceived as the creedal declaration or ceremonial possession embodied by (or, worse, entombed in) some sacred institution.

Not for Micah. A “good” life, a “good” religion always involves action, therefore, is always less about what we confess with our lips or symbolize in our ceremonies and always more, in accord with our confession and our rituals, what we profess with our lives.

We “do justice.” Knowing our human longing for fairness, we act equitably toward others. We “love kindness.” Knowing the nature, the reality of human suffering, we act compassionately with others amidst their travails. We “walk humbly with God.” Knowing our personal strengths and weaknesses, our bright lights and dark shadows, we act humbly, with little sense of privilege, even less entitlement, striving to live at one with our Creator, the creation, and all creatures.

At the heart of Micah’s prophecy, this idea of moral instruction as fruit, not seed; in other words, as the articulation of what already is, not the expression of an ambition for what ought be is a lens through which we can view the Beatitudes – Jesus’ description of blessedness, the Christian magna carta, charter of life, summum bonum, verily, the Christian way to fulfill, to do Micah’s word…

To be poor in spirit is to recognize the nature of life in this world – so fundamental that it is the first state of blessedness from which all else flows – that there is little to nothing of circumstance, chance, even our choices (always in response to circumstance and chance) that we command or control. Thus, we, knowing our constant need for God, walking humbly with God, act; mourning with others who grieve, for always with someone, sometimes ourselves there is grief, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, for always somewhere there is evil and within us, the temptation to do evil, making peace, for always, both without and within us, there is conflict, even being persecuted on the side of the suffering against the will of the strong, for always someplace there is oppression.

But back to Micah. For grander epiphanies await us!

This great teaching, “do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God”, is set within the context of conflict. A trial. God calls the people to answer for their failings of disobedience, which are so severe that God summons “the mountains…and (the) foundations of the earth”, creation itself, to listen.

Yet God, in making this divine case against the people, is not wrathful, wanting to punish them. Verily, in a stunning reversal, God is not the plaintiff, but the defendant raising a question about divine conduct, asking the people to voice their complaints, “What have I done to you? How have I wearied you?”

This is a God who, in calling the people to account, wants, wills to be held accountable. This is a God as judge who wants, who wills to be judged.

This is a disruption, a destruction of all legal tradition, all juridical convention! This is beyond any traditional, conventional institutionalized, religious understanding of God’s nature, God’s being and behaving. This, therefore, is outside of any customary conception of the divine-human relationship.

What is “this”? God rises to the summum bonum, telling us, showing us the highest good! God does justice, loves kindness, walks humbly with us! The chiefest epiphany, revelation of which, as Paul proclaims, is “Christ crucified.” Our God ascends to the summum bonum by being raised on a self-sacrificial cross of crucifixion and death for us.

It is this God, our astounding, worldly-wisdom-defying-and-destroying God to whom we in the awe of gratitude would make offerings, the greater, the better – from a “burnt-offering of one young calf” to “thousands of rams” and “tens of thousands of rivers of oil” to “my firstborn.” And our God answers, “No, I don’t want your gifts. I want you.”

So, then let us do justice, love kindness, walk humbly, which is Micah’s way of echoing Jesus, indeed, Micah’s way of our fulfilling, doing, being poor in spirit, mournful, meek, hungering and thirsting for God’s righteousness, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaking.

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This was the original end of this sermon…until a sleepless late last night into this morning as I pondered President Trump’s executive order banning travel to American shores of folk from seven Muslim-majority nations – an act that heartened his supporters and horrified his detractors and sparked protests at airports around the nation of many proclaiming welcome to immigrants and refugees and provoked judicial temporary restraining orders to stay the implementation of the ban; this last, ensuring legal jostling and jousting for some time to come.

I recognize and accept the risk of saying anything that, for some of us, may cross the line from spiritual to political matters. However, I believe that politics, from the Greek polis, city, and, by extension, the human community, is concerned with how we, in the words of the prayer, “live and move and have our being” – think and feel, intend and act – together. Moreover, as a Christian pastor and preacher, as your pastor and preacher, I also recognize and accept my responsibility to share counsel with you from God’s Word of how we “live and move and have our being” in this world.

Now, I never will tell you what to think. I entrust that to your individual, inner spiritual and ethical bearings as guided by the illumination of God’s Spirit. I will share with you a view, a vision of how to think.

And based on this day’s scriptural passages, I submit to you that the tension has heightened excruciatingly between border security and national safety and our anthemic American identity as “the land of the free and the home of the brave”; a land and home, from inception, save for our Native American sisters and brothers, populated by immigrants; some arriving of their free will and others brought captive.

And though here in Laurens, South Carolina, for most of us, the subject of immigration and the concerns of refugees may not rise to the apex of our lists of daily pressing issues, perhaps even of our mildest interest, the values, the virtues of justice as unconditional equality and honoring the God-given dignity of every human being as our Baptismal Covenant bears witness always call us to act wherever we are with whatever we have and however we can for the least, the last, and the left out.

How you, I, and we do that is for your, my, and our discernment. But, in the spirit of Micah, do it, we must.

 

Photograph: me preaching at Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, SC, by Pontheolla Mack Abernathy

Illustrations:

Micah exhorting the Israelites to repentance, Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

The Sermon of the Beatitudes (La sermon des béatitudes) (1886), James Tissot (1836-1902)

our name is “Christian”

a sermon, based on Luke 2.15-21 and Galatians 4.4-7, preached with the people of Epiphany Episcopal Church, Laurens, SC, on the Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, 2017

“After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus.”

In Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger.[1] Eight days later, following tradition, he was circumcised, bearing on his body the mark of God’s ancient covenant with Abraham, the outward and visible sign that he was a member of a people. Also, in accord with the custom of many ancient peoples who conferred names upon their children to indicate the roles they would play in the life of their societies, this child was called “Jesus”, the outward and hearable sign of his life’s labor. Jesus, the Greek form of the Hebrew, Joshua, and the Aramaic, Jeshua, means, “God is salvation” or more succinctly, “God saves.”

Thus, the angel Gabriel’s prophetic word to Mary was fulfilled: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.”[2]

This Feast of the Holy Name, coming on the first day of the calendar year, reminds us who we are and whose we are. We, children of God, belong to God as revealed in Jesus and in his prophetic life of love and justice. A life of compassion for all without condition and a life of challenge to the comfortably self-satisfied to act on behalf of the marginalized and disenfranchised.

So, we can understand why in our practice of baptism, the rite of initiation into the church, the community of Jesus’ followers, only the first name of the one to be baptized is spoken; never the surname of one’s earthly family. The reason (historically well known that it went without saying, now, long left unsaid, not well known) is that in baptism one is given a new surname of the universal, spiritual, and eternal family into which one is adopted by God through the Spirit: “Christian.” (So, the Apostle Paul testifies, “God sent his Son…so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”)

In baptism, one is christened. Named for Christ, who we are bidden not so much to worship, that is, stand by or sit back and adore him, for he, in saving us, has done it all and there’s nothing more we need do, but rather to follow, to continue his life and labor. As he was and is, as he did and does, we, bearing his name, are to be and do in the world.

My sainted Baptist grandmother, Audia Roberts, often said to me, “Remember your name.” She was referring neither to my familial surname, Abernathy, nor the name she bore and bestowed as my middle name, Roberts, but rather my baptismal name, Christian. She desired that I remain ever mindful of whom I represented in the world, whose life I was to reflect, whose labor I was to do. (Honestly compels the confession that I failed more than I succeeded. Still do! Nevertheless, as then, so now, the call abides!)

The words of our Baptismal Covenant express what this life and labor, our life and labor look like:[3] Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

After eight days, the child was circumcised and named Jesus. In this, may we hear our calling in this New Year. That our minds and hearts, souls and spirits be circumcised. That we allow ourselves to be cut to the quick, cut to the core of ourselves with an awareness of our name, Christian, and its meaning and, thus, the proclamation of our purpose. That we are to have compassion for all people and to challenge the comfortable to care for all even, especially when, most uncomfortably, it is we ourselves whom we must confront.

 

Photograph: me preaching at The Washington National Cathedral, Friday, January 27, 2006 (by Walt Calahan)

Illustration: Circumcision of Jesus (1503), Mariotto Albertinelli (1474-1515), Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

Footnotes:

[1] Luke 2.7, paraphrased.

[2] Luke 1.31

[3] The Book of Common Prayer, pages 304-305; my emphases.