December 11 - Anglicanism and John
Anglicanism and John the Baptist
St. Mark’s
The Rev. Maryetta Anschutz
Almighty God, Uphold thou me that may uplift thee. Amen.
The great question of this gospel… would John the Baptist be an Anglican??? the wild eyed-locust eating vagrant… NO! Definitely not. Nonetheless, he is an inspiration to us Anglicans.
In my family… holidays are those moments when you are reminded for better or for worse- who you are and where you came from… the heroic characters and the addicts, the successful nieces and the lost nephews… the wildly fun uncles and the conflicted aunts…
John the Baptist reminds of that we need to be very clear about who we are, where we came from (our roots), what we stand for, most importantly, what we believe.
On this cold crisp winter morning… let’s spend a little time preparing for the Messiah by remembering who we are in this church community:
You are a Christian: You are a part of a community that has always been and will always be a counter cultural institution. Do not forget those words “counter culture”. And do not sell them short. For the first three hundred years of our life and even in some parts of the world today- the experience of Christians was and is one of hiding in the cover of darkness, taking refuge with any soul that would allow them in, worshipping by candle light, quietly, secretly, in fear… an Advent experience.
No matter what the church may look like today, no matter the Byzantine systems and councils it has developed over the last 2000 years, your church has and will always be called to question the common culture, the culture of society, the culture of money, the culture of politics, the culture of human nature.
The gospel message, the work and ministry of Jesus Christ is intended not to make us feel badly about the things we do or our submission to society. It is intended to give us stories, scenarios, points of reference against which we can evaluate our own lives. The gospel message is not intended to break us down- inform us we are bad people- but rather build us up, allow us to a deeper understanding and self-awareness of why we do what we do…
You are a Christian: You are a part of a community that has been persecuted and has been the persecutor; a community of faith that has made mistakes and sat on the sidelines. From the Crusades to the Jewish Holocaust- we have and continue, as an organized body, to have done those things we ought not to have done and not done those things we ought to have done. And yet you also have a heritage of refusing to worship inanimate objects, political leaders, money, power, sex or any thing that would draw you away from the love of God in Jesus Christ…. Your common heritage is of a people whose faith has the price tag of death and of eternal life.
You are a Christian: You have a heritage of being the outcast, the untouchable, the rabble-rouser, and the martyred. And you are called to be all of those things. Not unrelated is the fact that you are also a part of a community of fools. These are the people whose “foolish” behavior is intended to remind us of the scandal the Christian life… a child born of a lowly woman, a man who walked the earth persecuted for the blessings he brought, and most of all, the scandal of the cross. In the category of fools:
X There was St. Simeon Salos of
X St. Andrew in the 7th century who walked naked through the streets of
X St. Francis who in the 13th century threw away his trust fund and place in society stripped naked in the public
X St. Basil the Blessed in
o There is a great deal of nudity involved in the Christian tradition!!
X In modern day there is the bishop of Rhode Island who some would say is a fool in that she took a month of her sabbatical to live as a homeless person in the cities of New York, Providence and Boston. She grew her hair long, put on large dark sunglasses and layers of thick clothing to the point where not even her clergy recognized their bishop.
These are people who shook up complacent times in the church and remind us through their wildly outrageous behavior, that being a Christian, by society’s norms is a wildly outrageous thing… It requires an openness to doubt things we might easily accept, to challenge ideas we might take at face value, to live a life that might not be acceptable according to society's standards.
You are a Christian: You are a part of a community that is defined by the cross… In that crushed and broken victim upon the cross, we see our hope, our only hope, in a world which continues to crush and break the children of God.
You are a Christian: You are part of a community of faith that believes that in death you are given eternal life… You are a part of a community that believes death is not the end… there is something more, something larger than we can understand… something better than what we know. You are part of a community that believes that even in death, you will be all right.
What’s more?
You are an Anglican: You are a peculiar part of the Christian Church, you are Protestant and reformed and you are catholic. You come out of this complicated history of church growth and reformation.
You are an Anglican: You are made in the image of God. You are a fundamentally good person that is called to move towards God in identity, action, and ministry in the world. Because you are fundamentally good, you have tools to make decisions for yourself, you will not be told how to act, what to believe and how to live.
You are an Anglican: You are a people who are called to make your confession to God- in this confession you are called to seek God’s forgiveness and the church’s blessing… you are called not to beat yourself up over your sins and omissions and you are called in confession to leave your sin behind and move forward.
You are an Anglican: You are called to read scripture and to process that scripture in your own lives. You are different from other faiths and denominations in that you are not told what to believe about what you read and study. The church’s role is to offer information and ideas, to ground you in a basic understanding of scripture, history, reason, and ethics and to enable you to make your own decisions in light of what you understand in your own free and intelligent mind, is the right decision in your personal relationship to Jesus Christ Our Lord.
The great advantage you have is that for you- the bible is not stagnant- it is a living and breathing document:
I was reminded of this one day a few years ago when I receive a four thousand-word letter written on yellow legal pad in response to my 300-word parish press article, I met a Sadducee.
You might be reminded of this when you greet your brother or sister who has just resurfaced after years of distance to watch your father battle the last stages of emphysema- you have encountered the Prodigal Son.
When you have a friend who has tried for years to get pregnant to no avail- you are grieving with
When the vestry talks about stewardship with people who are genuinely and deeply afraid that they too will be on the next downsizing list in their company- they might meet that nameless rich young man who denied Our Lord and at the same time perhaps the great heroin of the New Testament- the widow with her mite.
When you see that woman who stands on the street corner every day raising a commotion- she’s dirty and a makes you nervous because you don’t know what it is that inspires her to stand there- you meet that mysterious woman who washes Jesus’ feet before the disciples- that woman who as far as everyone else is concerned is an undesirable…
When you go 18 rounds to make a point with a committee and they still don’t quite get the vision, you have met the disciples.
When you sit in the hospital with a child who suffers from an eating disorder or any form of depression, you will meet the leper.
When you struggle to know what to say to that woman who watches her child suffer in the last stages of leukemia- that woman who curses God and is angry and broken, you have encountered the Canaanite woman.
There are people in this world that believe that the Word of God does not grow and change with the world we live in. They are limiting the Word of God.
You are an Anglican: You are not a part of a heavily doctrinal church. You will not find prescriptions for behavior or belief. You are blessed and you are cursed. It is harder to be an Anglican. You are challenged to think deeply and pray about issues and to make up your own mind. You will not be given simple answers to complicate problems. You have to struggle with the unknown, things that cannot be quantified. The closest thing the Anglican Church has to prescription is its pastoral letters and its sense of a dispersed authority. It can be frustrating for people who want prescription.
The mission of the church is to educate people about issues, to empower them with a greater understanding of the gospel message and to trust them to make decisions for themselves.
PAUSE
John the Baptist… no, he would not have been an Anglican I imagine. Will you be “the voice that cries out in the wilderness?” probably not, but for us, John pushes us to understand what kind of light and witness we Anglicans bring to the Christian life. And this is central to the Advent season as we prepare the way for Our Lord and we open ourselves up to faith.
This is my last sermon until sometime after the New Year so I bid you farewell, a peaceful advent and a shamelessly early merry Christmas, and leave you with a simple prayer of Advent:
May you have
The loyalty of the shepherds
The wisdom of the magi
The obedience of the animals
The radical hospitality of the innkeeper
The faithfulness of Joseph
The courage of Mary
The hope of the Christ Child.
And may the blessing of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit rest upon you always!
Amen.
