The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
Category: Sermons
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Sermon at Christ Church Cranbrook ~ July 13, 2014
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On Memorial Day
Today we remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country. Their sacrifice contributed to the preservation of our national life and, in many cases, the peace and security of other nations. Whether they enlisted or were compelled to serve does not matter. When human beings failed to resolve conflicts by other means, their lives were set apart and sacrificed in the service of their contemporaries and future generations of Americans. That is why we consider their memories sacred.
We denigrate their sacrifice when we take our liberties for granted or use them in self-serving ways. We cheapen their sacrifice when we tolerate people seeking and holding public office using freedom to propagate misinformation and disrespectful behavior to advance any interest. We disrespect their sacrifice when we allow oppression, marginalization, and persecution of members of our society. Every time a member of the American military dies in the line of duty, the value of those freedoms increases and the more determined our generation must be to find more effective ways to wage peace. The government we elected sent them into harm's way. We ignore their sacrifice when we do not insist that our government provide adequate services for the families they leave behind as well as for their comrades who return from the field and their families. That is costly, but it is part of the cost of making war. Hard-won liberties must be exercised responsibly and protected daily by each one of us. That is costly too, yet it is the price of making peace.
When we even glance at human history, it is pretty clear that warfare is the result of somebody wanting something that is not theirs, somebody else defending what is, and utter failure to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Memorial Day is not a time to glorify warfare. It is a time to mourn those whose lives were cut short by the failure of humanity to fulfill our God-given potential for living in ways that make wars unnecessary. Christians, Jews, and Muslims, in particular, have yet to set an enduring example for peacemaking for the rest of humanity. While we have been given the vocation and the teachings to bring peace and lasting freedom to the rest of the world, we have listened to other voices and followed other precepts.
Central to the message of the Bible is the belief that Almighty God created human beings to live in freedom. Just as central to the message of the Bible are examples of how people acting in the Name of God thought combat was the way God wanted to accomplish the liberation of humanity. Jesus repeatedly confronted whatever interfered with freedom and he paid the ultimate sacrifice to secure that freedom for all people in all times. His own disciples had difficulty understanding that he was instituting a kind of liberty that could not be won by warfare but, if embraced, could make wars to cease forever. St. Paul summed it up for those early Christians in the Roman province of Galatia. He wrote to them in their own unique context, but his words are universally applicable: “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).
The Episcopal Church has for many years given a special service medal to its members who are
deployed in military service. I have personally presented them to members of my parishes and will continue to do so as long as necessary. The Episcopal Church Service Cross was the first cross to be approved by the U.S. for wear by military personnel. Its circular shape prevents injuries from the ends of the arms of the cross during strenuous physical military activity. It weighs less than a quarter of an ounce. Written on the bars of the cross is the inscription, “Christ Died For You.” If I were facing armed combat, that message would comfort me. But there is a sad irony in it, isn’t there? The same Christ who died for me also died for my enemy. The same Christ who died for me died to keep us from having to kill one another. The same Christ who died for me is revered as “The Prince of Peace.”
Peace and freedom for humanity are God’s desire. Christ came to secure the reign of peace and freedom. You and I are called to live our lives in harmony with God’s reign and God’s desire. We have to learn to so effectively wage peace, with God's help, that warfare will become obsolete. "It is God who makes war to cease in all the world; God breaks the bow, and shatters the spear, and burns the shields with fire" (Psalm 46:10). Can we trust God enough to join God in making war to cease?
I submit to you on this Memorial Day that whenever we are faced with opportunities to wage peace instead of war – in our homes, our families, our communities, our nation, or across international boundaries – we stand upon the shoulders of all those who have died in military operations and under the protection of the Savior of the Nations, Jesus Christ, who died and rose again so that all people in all times might live in peace and freedom. So, I commend two prayers from The Book of Common Prayer for your use today as we remember those brave women and men and as we renew our commitment to the One who calls each of us to participate in the divine peacemaking initiative.
For Heroic Service
O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
For Peace
O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I'll see you in Church!
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Managing Our Fear in the Pursuit of Faith
Last weekend, Dr. Richard Blackburn, Executive Director of the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center, was at Christ Church Cranbrook to lead a Healthy Congregations Workshop. The guiding principles of this workshop are derived from the work of Dr. Murray Bowen and Rabbi Edwin Friedman in family systems theory.
“Family systems theory postulates that the operation of the emotional system reflects an interplay between two counterbalancing forces – individuality and togetherness.” Of particular significance is their study of how anxiety affects any emotional system and the individuals in it.
Anxiety is the response of an organism to a real or imagined threat and is present in every person and relationship. Acute anxiety is a response to a real threat and most people usually adapt fairly successfully to acute anxiety. Chronic anxiety occurs in response to imaginary threats and often strains people’s ability to adapt to it.
An emotional system may be a family, a company, a sports team, a governmental entity, or a congregation. Individuals find ways to adapt to the anxieties of the family systems from which they come and bring those behaviors into other emotional systems.
Two key objectives of the workshop were to help each person explore and manage the anxiety in his or her life and to learn to recognize and appropriately respond to anxiety at work in the emotional systems in which they are involved.
An example from the story of our faith is the reaction of the Hebrews when Moses was on the mountain and did not return to them as soon as some expected (Exodus 32). Aaron was left in charge of the people while Moses was away. The people gathered around Aaron and expressed their anxiety about the delayed return of Moses. Instead of responding to the anxiety of the people from grounding in the divine values and principles that shaped them as a people and him as their leader, he reacted by abdicating his leadership role and instructed them to make a golden calf, which they could worship. As a poorly defined leader, Aaron let the anxieties of the herd take charge and proposed a quick-fix solution to the imagined problem they brought to him. When Moses confronted Aaron about what he did, he blamed the people instead of accepting responsibility. He even went so far as to give a completely passive explanation for the idol’s existence: “So, I said to them, ‘Whoever has gold, take it off’; so they gave it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!”
Moses himself failed in leadership in the face of the fears of the people at Kadesh-barnea. When the spies brought back a fear-laden report from the land God had commanded them to enter, the people said, “Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear” (Deut.1:28 NIV). Instead of responding to their fear of an imagined threat from the reality of God’s promise of protection, Moses reacted by caving in. The result, as you know, was that the people had to wander around in the wilderness until that faithless generation had died and Moses was not permitted to enter the Promised Land.
Contrast these two examples with the leadership of Jesus during his temptation in the wilderness, where he responded to Satan by managing his own inner being, during the occasion at Caesarea Philipi when Peter urged him to take another path than the one that would lead to the cross, and during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane when his struggle with anxiety was so intense that he sweated blood.
Maybe Lent can be a time for us to search ourselves and discover the anxieties that interfere with our life in community and our ability to remain calm when others around us are losing their heads. When we do that, the life of the emotional systems of which we are members become healthier and we become more human, because we make better use of the uniquely human part of our brain that allows reason to overcome the reactions that come from the more primitive parts of our brains.
I am aware that many of the things that emerge from those more primitive parts of the human brain are necessary for survival. But when we are faced with imaginary or even potential threats, we have the God-given resources and opportunities to more fully express our humanity. And, as St. Irenaeus once said, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.” It is God who calls us to live our lives from divine values and principles so that we can build up the Church, advance God’s reign on earth, and embrace God’s vision of a creation restored in God’s Son.
That’s a worthy objective for the observance of a holy Lent.
I’ll see you in Church!