As Christianity became the religion of empire, it became a religion, too, of stability. To be a Christian is almost synonymous with being lawful, orderly, polite, and very much aligned with worldly authority. This is not what we see in the Early Church.
The first generations of Christians were sure that the parousia, the second coming of Christ, was not far off. The spiritual life was their priority, and they lived in the image of the Kingdom. They shared with one another, they lived in close-knit communities, and they struggled to live well together. Many were martyred, and early Christians had to be firmly instructed not to seek martyrdom too eagerly.
Those early Christians, in their untidy and ungovernable little communities, at some point began to undergo a change. While Paul, in his authentic letters, urged Christians not to be too unruly because it would only make things harder for them, in the pastoral epistles, such as our reading from First Timothy this morning, they are trying to figure out how to actually live well with the world, rather than expecting to see it pass away. Pray for authority, maybe even accept it, because it does not seem likely to change any time soon.
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What a gift it is to have friends from Orcas Island here with us this weekend, and some parishioners from Emmanuel Episcopal Church worshipping with us this morning. While the great and the good of our island have turned their arrival into an occasion for great festivities, I see in their journey something of the spirit of the Early Church. There may be lines on a map which try to separate us, but the map is not the water that stretches out before us. Our minds divide up the world so easily and so tidily, and it is good to remind ourselves that reality is something else entirely. Reality is slow shifts in the waters between two places, changes in currents and winds; the trees are a little different from place to place, and rather than radical discontinuities, we find gradual differences, and radical continuities.
The Christian calling is neither to become ungovernable nor to become governable, but to rediscover reality. Living in the world constantly floods us with illusion, with faulty abstractions and mental models of how things work, and God’s Creation is always just at the tips of our fingers, and planted impossibly deeply in our bodies. There are always continuities between us and everyone and everything else. As Christians, we are called to relationship.
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“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” (Jeremiah 8:20, NRSV)
This line haunts me as we awake on this perfect autumn morning, and hear that our government has recognized Palestinian statehood. This may change something in how our government acts, or at least in how it talks, but no one in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank is any different because of it. Those who suffer were just as worthy of salvation before this collective change in language and thought as they are after it. I include in those who suffer, also those who create suffering for others: they need salvation, too. There are many in the world who must be saved by not being allowed to harm others; we ought to keep our loved ones from reckless sin.
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The early Christians had no establishment institutions, no settled interpretations, they had only one another and the messiness of relationship. In that messy space, I imagine teachings like that in our Gospel this morning would have actually been rather less challenging than they are for us. Surely, we would tell ourselves, we ought to be dutiful and honorable and lawful. We must, though, let ourselves be challenged by the fact that relationships are far more important than ledgers. Treating other people like human beings, and loving them well, is far closer to our salvation than adherence to rules, especially those which exist to protect wealth and stability at the cost of humanity.
When Jesus says we cannot serve God and wealth, he is not wrong; and he does not just mean money, but all those worldly things by which we try to accrue and control, rather than to love.
This is a direct challenge to what many of us think it means to be a Christian, and I think we have to let ourselves be disturbed and challenged, so that we might recover our connection with that which is real: our relationships with each other, and the spiritual sense of our lives. God is real, and Creation is the site of our encounters with God; what we know of love for each other, we know of God’s love, also, for us.
Everything else is an illusion, everything else is passing away.
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May you serve the God who calls you in your heart to be fully alive, and to fully love all those whom God loves. May you see beyond the things which would divide us, and help, and even save, all those whom Christ would save, too. May you be faithful with the greatest gifts, and turn away from the fleeting ones. May you know that God is with you, wherever you may go.