[Sermon for St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Phoenix, Arizona, the Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 7, 2023]
✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in Essence and Undivided. Amen.
Christ is Risen! [Indeed, He is Risen!]
Yesterday we had many Americans tune into a ceremony across the pond in London. Enshrined within the unmistakable context of the Anglican Mass was the consecration and crowning of a man to a position of high authority over many millions of people…just not most Americans, for whom singing “God save the King” borders on the slightly treasonous. Now, there are some, like myself, who carry multiple citizenships, at least one of which makes them a direct subject of Charles III, king not only of Great Britain but also of our northern neighbour Canada (whence I hail), Australia, New Zealand, and quite a few other “realms and territories.” What this creates for us a double loyalty, the question arising to whom we owe our allegiance. American law is very clear on that point, but should we leave American soil for other territory in which we hold citizenship, which becomes very dicey.
Every Christian also falls under that same dichotomy with similar conflicts. We participate in the life of the nation in which we live, but like people who travel abroad and assume the citizenship of another nation, like I did a few decades ago, once baptized into the Church Christians become dual citizens, but without leaving the former country even though we have adopted a higher allegiance. We become part of the Kingdom of God, our primary allegiance shifting from an earthly realm to the Kingdom of Our God and of His Christ. The former nation still holds a claim on us, requiring us to abide by its laws and fulfilling the obligations of its society, but we still also hold citizenship within a Kingdom not of this world, whose Lord requires us to still hold true to Him while we live in temporary exile within our former homelands. Being thus technically a people in diaspora, we congregate and work from “embassies” and “cultural centres” scattered across this planet, like this one in which we meet today. Like any embassy, even though it is on host territory, it operates as if it were home territory, but it is only a symbol of that land, an outpost, a representation of a larger thing, and is highly impermanent.
After all, who has not heard this statement? “The Church is people, not a building.”
We often hear then when a parish is shuttered, or a building sustains a catastrophic event, whether it be natural disaster or an accident or an act of hostility. Sometimes the host country revokes the property’s status and either seizes the property for secular purposes or razes it to the ground like any other enemy embassy (and history is full of such acts of ill-will, even in this country). Still, no matter how painful the loss of the building is, the statement above is true. We members of the Kingdom of God sometimes forget this because many languages make the Christian assembly, the diaspora of God’s people, the same word as a Christian temple or meeting hall, the embassy of the Kingdom of God. That is not to say we the Church do not have a home, a building that belongs to us, but it is not what we commonly think it to be. It is a vast edifice, with room and space more than sufficient for all of us. The building stones which compose it, however, are not blocks of granite, or sandstone, or marble, but instead are people, you and me, built around the foundational cornerstone, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Here is where we turn to our Gospel passage today, taken from one of St. John’s Farewell Discourses, a collection of Our Lord’s teachings presented as His final lessons to the Disciples the evening before His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. Here Jesus of Nazareth had just told these Disciples that one of them would betray Him, that He Himself would be leaving them, that St. Peter would before the night is through deny Him, and that the rest would scatter to the four winds. Imagine the bewilderment, the hurt, the distress among the Disciples. They had thought the Kingdom of God was about to break forth in Israel and instead of operating as a foreign agency it would take actual control of the land and supplant the laws and obligations of Rome with an exclusive and physical and legal and military authority. Here they had thrown everything in with Him, they had pledged to follow Him, and even now have sworn to die for Him. Yet He said that He would be betrayed, abandoned, and disavowed, not by the occupying power (none of them would have batted an eyelid at that statement), but by them, His companions, His students, His friends.
Many read the opening of Chapter Fourteen as a general exhortation not to let anything become worrisome, but in this context we see that the words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled,”[1] were anything but general. The Disciples had just been strung tighter than piano wires by what their Master and Teacher had just told them and were close to emotional breakdown. In fact, later that night they would be stretched beyond their tolerances as the Enemy closed in around them, just as their Lord had foretold, but now, right now, warned about the trial to come, they needed reassurance, a seed planted in their hearts to sustain them and to keep them from despair. In preparation, He provided comfort for their bereavement; He told them that He would come back for them, and they would never be separated again. While they would abandon Him, not only would He not abandon them, but have the Father provide a place for them with Him, not just because they were Disciples of Jesus, but because by knowing Jesus they also know the Father, and the Father, in turn knowing each of them because of this, would ensure them a place in the Kingdom.
In all likelihood this message would have gone over their heads, and Jesus would have known that. His intent was to plant this into their hearts, to have it lie dormant when the Enemy seemed to triumph, and to burst forth and grow when the beyond their wildest expectations their Lord returned from the Dead, delivering the decisive blow against the Enemy. Because they believed, they became part of the story, because they believed they enjoyed a share in the work He had come to do, because they believed Him, they believed the One who sent them. This was no rationalized knowledge that would be knocked out and trampled in the mud at the foot of the Cross when Jesus’ enemies would arrest, try, and execute Him, but a deep-seated and visceral trust that although laid low by the Passion and Crucifixion, would rise with Him when He rose from the Dead, much like desert plants seared away by the punishment of the dryness and unrelenting sun spring to life and flower abundantly when the rains return.
As part of this hope, Jesus told them, and in turn tells us, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.”[2] We have a picture in our minds of a sprawling manor with many rooms and apartments, dwarfing the White House or Buckingham Palace on an unimaginable scale, a building whose scope is beyond anything designed and committed to blueprint, prepared by Our Lord, a vision of which St. John the Apostle echoes in Revelation:
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It has the glory of God and a radiance like a very rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal.[3]
This is clearly allegory. Here, the Holy Apostle tells us that the New Jerusalem, the City, is the Church, the Bride of Christ, us, symbolized by precious stones and metals, bedecked not by silks and brocades but our deeds of mercy done in His grace and in His Spirit. This collection of buildings in His Father’s house is not some grand exercise in stonemasonry but the construction of the lives of the citizens of the Kingdom of God. The Holy Apostle Peter reinforces that in our Epistle today when he writes to the Church Universal, that is, to us, the following:
“Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”[4]
This building we are in today, run down, burned, rebuilt, still in various stages of reconstruction, is not part of the New Jerusalem. This land on which we tread is not our Kingdom, even though we once thought it so and even though we still live and work here. No, this is our embassy, this is our posting, we are strangers in a strange land, we are both emissaries and foreign agents for the real Church, the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom made up of those freed from the clutches of Sin and Death by the Grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Together we make up the edifice of Our Father’s house, we are the building blocks arranged around our Cornerstone, the Lord Jesus, bringing the good news of God’s Kingdom with every act of mercy, every intercessory prayer, every proclamation of the Good News. Kings may come, Presidents may go, each may lay claim to our allegiance and exercise authority over us, but in the grand scheme we truly belong to another, and we belong to the Father whose Kingdom shall not end. Let us never lose sight of that.
✠ Through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, Holy Dominic, and all the saints, Saviour save us. Amen.