Thanksgiving and our RoleAnd we all say, "Amen!"
While preaching my extempore sermon for Thanksgiving Day, just prior to feeding the hungry in our parish hall, I realized I'd picked the Gospel for Year B insead of Year A (I'm already thinking next Sunday!) Perhaps this was a serendipity, though, for it struck me how well this Gospel about not worrying about what you will eat, drink, or wear fits in with this past Sunday's Gospel of judgment upon those precisely who failed to provide food, drink and clothing to the least among the king's family. God provides most of us with so much. Yet others have nothing. Isn't it then, through us, that "God provides" them with food, drink and clothing?
It is a scandal that today — this very night — people will starve to death while others scrape wasted food from their plates that they are unable to eat for surfeit and satiation.
Lord, have mercy. Even in thanks, remember. And more than remember, act! (My emphasis)
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
I have taken Tobias' post in its entirety. I hope he doesn't mind.
From Kirkepiscotoid:
I always find it interesting that the most common barb thrown by the "unhappy atheists" is always along the lines of trying to distill Christianity or any religion down to "where you end up when you die," when I would tell you that is the part that is rarely on my mind. I'm far more interested in Christianity teaching me how to live. (My emphasis)Do I hear another "Amen!"?
Kirke's longer reflection is inspired by her mother's years-long battle with emphysema, and I urge you to read the entire post for it is very good.
"Christianity teach[es] me how to live"?
ReplyDeleteUh, "Take no thought for the morrow"? "Go,sell all that you have"? Some selection and adaptation necessary. Yes, "Love your neighbor as yourself"-- good. Christianity is part of our culture, and we all, of different religions and none, get operating principles from the common sense around us.
I would keep quiet and let you in-groupers natter amongst yourself, if you hadn't called for an "Amen," Grandmère. In fact, Christianity taught me to treat my desires for love and connection as temptations and matters of guilt, and to bring them to church as occasions of shame. I learned how to live from the gay community. The Christian tradition was silent on sexual orientation for 1800 years, and you were supposed to make it as invisible in your life as it was in church. The church is erratically and reluctantly opening up to reality, but I find an institution that was unhelpful and wrongheaded for so long an uncertain guide.
[wv: ingoup]
Murdoch, I was taught the same as you, and I passed many years carrying much guilt before I grew up and out of the mindset. I have no doubt that the lessons were far more hurtful for gay folks.
ReplyDeleteThe church is erratically and reluctantly opening up to reality, but I find an institution that was unhelpful and wrongheaded for so long an uncertain guide.
True. The church is the people, and the people don't always get it right
That was then, and now? Well, at least some of the churches preach the Good News that includes everyone. Let us rejoice and be glad, even as we remember the many who were hurt.
Murdoch has a point, but I've never seen the church and Christianity as the same thing - well, not for many years, anyway. If you'd said "the church teaches us how to live" that would be different. But then, I didn't grow up in the church and I get that people who did feel otherwise.
ReplyDeleteAs I see it, each church has a part of the truth. Taken altogether we have more of the truth, but we won't see the perfection of the church till Kingdom come. Our work is to live the Gospel as best we can, right here and right now, to build the Kingdom which is right now, but not yet.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's compartmentalization, but I do the same thing as Cathy. The Church and the Christian Faith are not synonymous for me. The Church is yet another worldly institution as self-serving and corruptible as all other worldly institutions. It is as selfish, ambitious, and corrupt as the fallible mortals who make it up. Only somewhere underneath all the giant piles of foul offal dwells the Holy Spirit always ready to inspire.
ReplyDeleteThis passage from William Blake's "The Everlasting Gospel" has been much on my mind lately:
"The Moral Christian is the Cause
Of the Unbeliever & his Laws.
The Roman Virtues Warlike Fame,
Take Jesus' & Jehovah's Name;
For what is Antichrist but those
Who against Sinners Heaven close
With Iron bars, in Virtuous State,
And Rhadamanthus at the Gate?"
It depends upon what you mean by church. I distinguish between the church as the Body of Christ and the institutional church, which can and has gone very wrong throughout its history.
ReplyDeleteI love Blake's poem.
This life's five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not thro' the eye
That was born in a night, to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in the beams of light.
The Church is not one thing, neither is Christianity one thing. Each includes different traditions and worldviews. Definition of terms is often a good way to begin.
ReplyDeleteI wince when someone on a website says, Just preach the Gospel! I don't think they mean that the world is possessed by demons and devils, and will come to an end within a generation -- as Jesus and Paul seem to have assumed. IS there a modern Gospel? What is church FOR, other than community? (And community is no mean thing.)
Murdoch, I agree a definition of terms would be helpful.
ReplyDeleteRather than preach the Gospel, I prefer the words attributed to St Francis of Assisi, which he probably never said: "Preach the Gospel. Use words if necessary." From the Two Great Commandments and the Beatitudes, we learn much of what we need to know in order to live the way of the Gospel.
Community is, indeed, no small thing. From the beginning of the Hebrew Testament to the end of the Christian Testament, God called a people. When God calls individuals, God calls them to serve the people of God. The regular gatherings of believers are for the purpose of worshiping God in our community of faith.
My 2 cents, anyway.
The Daily Episcopalian posted a sermon by Bill Carroll on community to which I will probably link.
Thanks for the "citation" Mimi. I really do think they should move the T-Day gospel to year A -- it resonates so well with Proper 29a.
ReplyDeleteTobias, you're very welcome. "They" didn't, but you did move the Gospel, and I say all to the good. Sometimes "mistakes" are not mistakes at all.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout-out Mimi. It's much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteKirke, you're quite welcome.
ReplyDelete