11/05/2023 ~ Proper 26 ~ Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost ~ Joshua 3:7-17; Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37; Micah 3:5-12; Psalm 43; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23:1-12 ~ 11/01/2023 ~ All Saints Day ~ Sometimes observed on first Sunday in November ~ Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12 ~ Communion Sunday ~ VIDEO OF FULL SERVICE: https://vimeo.com/showcase/7960701/video/882585966

The Crowds and the Disciples

“Jesus saw the crowds and went up the mountain. After Jesus sat down there, the disciples gathered around and Jesus began to teach them…” — Matthew 5:1-2.

One of the thoughts for meditation today in part says (quote:) “…early communion services did not center on the passion, but rather on the victory through which a new age had dawned. It was much later— centuries later— that the focus of Christian worship shifted toward the death of Jesus.” (Slight pause.)

I have said before. In early Christian art there is nothing resembling a cross until the middle of the third century, no sign of a cross with a body on it, a crucifix, until the middle of the fourth century. Further, that first crucifix displays Christ dressed in regal attire, a sovereign, wearing a royal crown instead of a crown of thorns, Christ resurrected, levitating off that cross, free from the bonds of death.

This cross, this art, is a statement about liberation, about the love of God. It will be another century before the kind of crucifix with which we are familiar today, a battered body with a crown of thorns, becomes common.

So it takes five to six hundred years for Christ suffering on a cross to appear in Christian art. For a long, long time the church did not see— be ready for a $64 term here— the church did not see substitutionary atonement as a way to understand what God did for humanity in the reality of the Christ.

Here’s a simple, less imposing way of saying “substitutionary atonement”— Christ died for our sins. Now I need to be clear about this on several counts.

First, the idea of substitutionary atonement did not push to the front of church thinking until about the year 1,000 of the Common Era. Can the concept of substitutionary atonement be found in Scripture? Yes it can. But so can a justification for slavery.

But remember this. Given the post resurrection stories in Scripture, for people who have seen the risen Christ and for a long, long time after that it seems the resurrection of Christ rather than the death of Christ was central to and for the Christian faith. The resurrection was at the center of Christian faith.

In fact, Eastern Church thinking focuses on the resurrection as a mystery which is central to the faith. The resurrection invites us to a leap of faith— faith… in… God.

That raises the obvious question. Clearly a shift in how we Westerners think about Christ happened. Why?

There are a multitude of reasons but contrary to populist belief, history is not about specific episodes. Full histories, real histories pursue multiple paths, not specific episodes, single stories.

But and however, prime among the aforementioned multitude of reasons for the transition to substitutionary atonement in the West is what theologians define as the overwhelming influence of the culture on faith. This is a given: the culture of medieval times was often both harsh and transactional.

Saying Christ died for our sins is about a harsh transaction. So how the culture thought about the resurrection became altered. It became a transaction, not a mystery.

The East did not succumb to this choice. But we in the West decided the culture, a harsh and transactional culture, should be more prime for our understanding of the Christian faith than the clearly non-transactional free gift of the love of God defined in and by the mystery of the resurrected Christ.

So, does substitutionary atonement have any role? Yes. But I question its primacy, because it seems to stem less from Scripture than from the culture. And a primacy of culture which proclaims a transactional way of life cannot be allowed to supercede the primacy of Scripture which proclaims the free gift of God’s love. Simply put, did Christ die for our sins… or was Christ raised for our sins? (Long pause.)

We find these words in the work known as Matthew: “Jesus saw the crowds and went up the mountain. After Jesus sat down there, the disciples gathered around and Jesus began to teach them…” (Slight pause.)

I think on many levels the culture can be a factor which becomes too important, a factor which diverts our attention away from what is truly and deeply important. Indeed, the culture inappropriately effects even how we translate Scripture.

David Hart, a translator of the New Testament, has written that many passages need to have more accurate translations. One verse often translated, “Blessed are those who are poor in spirit:…” is more accurately translated as: “Blessed are those who live into perfection….”

Here’s another obvious mis-reading but we can’t blame the translation. Perhaps the culture is at fault. Scripture does not say the Sermon on the Mount was preached to a crowd. That is an a cultural image, not found in Scripture. Scripture clearly says Jesus left the crowds, went up the Mountain and spoke to the disciples, not the crowd. So let’s look at what Jesus said up on that mountain.

Given the word images Jesus painted about what the Dominion of God looks like, to what have these disciples been called to do because of the teaching Jesus offers? The sermon contains teaching about what the Dominion of God needs to look like right now, here, today. These are among the points made by Jesus: ‘Blessed are those who are gentle, who hunger and thirst for justice, who show mercy, who work for peace.’

We need to recognize two things. First, these images, these lessons are not reflected our world today. And second, ‘to whom are these lessons being taught?’

Jesus educates a small cadre as to what the Dominion of God needs to look like. Is Jesus writing off the crowds? No. But some are called to spread the word.

So, then we need to ask, ‘who are we?’ – ‘who am I?’ Am I simply a follower but a member of the crowd? Or am I a disciple of Christ? (Slight pause.)

I want to suggest if we buy into a cultural vision of Christianity, we are not disciples. But if we adhere to what is found in Scripture then we are and need to be what we Protestants call the Priesthood of All Believers. We need to be disciples of Christ.

We need to listen to help everyone willing to listen to the message of Jesus to understand the Dominion. And those willing to listen need to know that buying into cultural Christianity is not a place to which God calls humanity.

Further, living into perfection is something to which the Beatitudes calls us. Those words do not describe a static, cultural, way of life. The words call us to live into perfection, call us to understand perfection is not a singular, unchanging state.

And if we live into the teaching of Christ, we grow and change as we constantly listen for the call of God. I suggested this last week. We can be the church. We can be re-formed by the reality of the living Word, God’s gift to us through the resurrected Christ. (Slight pause.)

So we are called to live out our lives as Christ would have us live, loving one another, serving one another, sharing with one another, with gladness and with generous hearts. Now I might be wrong, but I do not hear too much about loving, serving, sharing or gladness and generous hearts in the transactional culture we know today.

Perhaps what we need to do is simply leave the cultural Christianity, transactional Christianity behind. Perhaps what we need to do is to try the way of life recommended by the Christ in the words of the Beatitudes. Amen.

11/05/2023
Elijah Kellogg Church, Harpswell, Maine

ENDPIECE: It is the practice of the Pastor to speak after the Closing Hymn, but before the Choral Response and Benediction. This is an précis of what was said: “A requirement when we examine Scripture is that we concentrate on not our culture nor on the culture over the course of many centuries which has effected how we read and hear Scripture. It requires us to read and to listen to the message of Christ and then ask, ‘what would the Dominion of God need to look like here, now, today?’ Then we need to strive to emulate the ethic of Christ, as we work toward a sense of the perfection God might seek.”

BENEDICTION: Go from here in the Spirit of Christ. Dare to question that which holds us captive. Count it a privilege that God calls upon us to be in covenant and to work in the vineyard. And may the peace of Christ which passes all understanding keep our hearts and minds in the love, knowledge and companionship of God the Creator, Christ the redeemer and the Holy Spirit the sanctifier this day and forever more. Amen.