Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC

The Very Rev. Dr. Michael Shaffer
Year B – Eighth Sunday after Pentecost– July 14, 2024
Amos 7:7-15, Psalm 85:8-13, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:14-29
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church – Charleston, SC
 
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them….
 
    My friends, these are the words of our Collect for this day of worship, words prayed to God, giving purpose to our gathering this morning. This is what we ask the lord to grant us this day…that we may know and understand what things we ought to do and may also have the grace and power to faithfully to accomplish them. So, I’m going to take that seriously, and invite you to do the same, as perhaps this plea to our Lord to let us know and understand the things we ought to do and that he give us the grace and power to accomplish them, takes on even greater importance in light of last evening’s attempted assassination of former President Trump.
    Last Sunday I preached on Mark’s gospel passage that reminded us that Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kind and in their own house.
    In reflection on this scripture, I shared with you that in my opinion, we are challenged to consider how we may either be encouraging or inhibiting God’s work in our lives, our communities, and our world, as the result of our own blindness and prejudices.
    So, what does that mean for us in the world in 2024?
    What does that mean, in the face of everything going on today when we as the community of St. Mark’s pray, O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them?
   Now, fair warning. There are pastors, priests and even Christian denominations which do not believe it appropriate to preach politics from the pulpit. Preachers are criticized and sometimes even disciplined for getting too political in the pulpit. And, if we’re talking democrat party vs. republican party politics, I might agree that those issues are better addressed in the public square rather than the pulpit. But if one thinks the politics of his day didn’t inform and direct Jesus’s public ministry, then that person is not reading the same New Testament I am.
    I think it not only appropriate, but a duty for pastors and priests to always proclaim the social gospel of Jesus Christ from the pulpit, and if in whatever day or age that has political ramifications, so be it. We who follow Christ live in the world and we are his voice. And under no circumstances did Jesus preach hate or that violence be perpetrated on another.
    My friends, our world is in a hot mess, and I am reminded today, and empowered by the prophetic voices of the past crying in the wilderness, to stand up and speak out, resisting evil by proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ by word and example, stiving for justice and peace among all people, while respecting the dignity of every human being.
 
    Last Sunday, following our service, I spoke with a number of you on the front porch, and many of you shared with me your concerns about the current state of our nation and world, and our politics. And I must confess that your voices resonated with me as I contemplated today’s appointed scripture readings, especially the Gospel lesson recalling for us the price paid by John the Baptist, that prophetic voice who boldly proclaimed God’s truth to a world that desperately needed to hear it but was not ready to abide it.
    And now I speak to you one Sunday later, and the shooting of a Presidential Candidate, one of the potential concerns we shared last week, has happened, and we Christians are being tested.  
    John the Baptist is one of the heroes of the Christian faith. Yet, few people wear What Would John The Baptist Do buttons or bracelets, like they do What Would Jesus Do buttons or bracelets, because we aren’t sure we want to be like John. Preaching about how we should follow the example of this guy who dressed and ate so strangely, preaching in the wilderness, crying out, doesn’t fit into what preachers are taught in seminary about how you grow the Church.
   For centuries, fortunately, beheading has not been something we as a society have seen as fit punishment for any offense, as we have also been fortunate for centuries that almost any form of religious expression, no matter how bizarre it seems, has been tolerated in the United States. No matter how crazy you dress, or what you eat, or loudly you speak, so long as you didn’t hurt anyone physically or create that risk, your right to expression has been respected. But then in truth, John the Baptist wasn't beheaded for his diet or his choice of clothing. He was beheaded because he took on the ranks of oppressive power.
    He dared to speak out against the king and although King Herod tolerated his rants, the royal household and those who followed Herod most loyally, like a cult, did not.
    It was deadly dangerous for John the Baptist to take on the powers that be and it is becoming deadly dangerous for us to do so today in this country. 
   But what is our prayer today?
 
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
   So, let’s be real about our fears or whatever keeps us from faithfully accomplishing those things that by his grace, our Lord and Savior calls on us to accomplish.
    First, when we speak out on public issues from the vantage point of our faith, there are those who will tell us that we should keep our religion private and out of politics. But Christianity is as much about how we live together as people as it is about our relationship with God. And the political arena is where most of the issues are settled which concern how people are going to live together. The first four of the Ten Commandments deal with our relationship with God and the next six are concerned with community life, the sixth commandant being “Thou shalt not kill.” And let’s get real.
    Jesus summed up all the law and all the prophets by telling us to love God with our whole hearts and our neighbor as ourselves. That’s not complicated, but it takes determination, conviction and discipline.
   No matter what others say, we can't get away from dealing with social issues if we are true to our religious heritage and to the example of our Lord. And we can't deal adequately with the social issues of our day unless we apply gospel values in our living. All of this has to take place within the political system if we are going to be effective at all. Just remember, we are disciples of the one who marched into Jerusalem and turned the tables of power and commerce over in the temple marketplace. We are disciples of the one who not only forgave sins but fed the hungry. We follow the one who turned upside down the social structures by eating with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. If we are really to follow him, Christians must take political action, even if it means offending some people. 
    We also will have to face the fact that we are going to offend a lot of people by the stands we take on issues. Although Christianity has no allegiance to any political party, it definitely has a huge interest in seeking justice for those who are without the means to obtain justice without our help.
    When we do nothing when people are denied the right to vote, the church does not stand with the disenfranchised. When the grocery stores in the poorest part of Charleston receive the out-of-date food from the stores in the more affluent areas, then the church does not stand with the hungry and needy. When schools continue to enroll students based on the color of their skin, rather than their God given belovedness and abilities, and the church does nothing, the church has a bias in favor of white supremacy and is not striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.
     These truths will not set well with some people, especially many who profess to be Christian. It may not be popular, even among some Episcopalians, and as an individual, it may cost you. But I think it time we stand in the line of John the Baptist and the other prophets who faced the evils within their communities and called for them to change. As Christians we must always align ourselves on the side of those who are being denied justice. As human beings who have grown up in different homes with different experiences and differing perspectives, we may not always agree on the means by which injustice must be changed. We may not even always agree whether or not it is a case of injustice.
    But we must love and respect one another in our differences, always seek justice and bring about change.
    For we in the church cannot tolerate allowing ourselves to be drawn into supporting systems that foster hate and injustice, and my friends, like it or not, some in the church are perpetuating hate and injustice, in the name of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, the One we follow! And that cannot stand unchallenged.
    What we are experiencing in the United States at this time is a group of misguided professed Christians who are attempting to use faith as a tool for political manipulation. Some are using Jesus as the cheerleader for their particular political ideology. For them, instead of Jesus informing their politics, they use Jesus as a cheerleader or worse yet, the reason that everyone else should conform to their politics; because after all, it is Jesus who is saying it! You need to believe like I believe, worship like I worship, pray like I pray and of course, vote as I vote, or you and the whole world will go to hell! This is wrong, sinful and a bastardization of our call in Christ and baptismal covenant.
   
    Two weeks ago today, on Sunday, June 30 North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, the Republican Candidate for Governor in North Carolina, spoke from the pulpit at Lake Church, in White Lake, North Carolina at the invitation of the pastor. From the pulpit Robinson said:
 
"Some liberal somewhere is gonna say that sounds awful. Too bad. Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It's time for somebody to say it. It's not a matter of vengeance. It's not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It's a matter of necessity."
 
    Unbelievably, in an interview following the service, the pastor of the church admitted he knew what Robinson was going to say from the pulpit and defended his comments. To me, this is incomprehensible.
    We in the church need to remember that in the Gospel according to Matthew Jesus said, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”
    And my friends, if you really look at the fruit of many of these people of which I’m speaking, or their churches and organizations, that spew these dictates in the name of Christianity and Christ, you won’t see the poor being served, the oppressed being liberated, or humility or the fostering of a community in which all of God’s beloved are truly welcomed and embraced.
    Rather you see a hunger to destroy the diversity of Gods’ creation and desire to create a nationalist society to which everyone should pay their primary allegiance. If you believe that in your life, nothing is more important than that, fine, just say that, but don’t proclaim that in the name of God.
    Because in truth, you can’t live that way and honestly proclaim to be a follower of Jesus, because Jesus always has and always will lead us in the way of welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and downtrodden, and walking in the way of non-violence over violence. Christ never leads his followers into a nationalist society that values the nation over the people who live in it. That is not the Way of the One we follow. This is not the way of Love.
    When I think of John the Baptist in our day and age, I think of Rep. John Lewis. In 2020, as our country grappled with a global pandemic and a renewed social justice movement that had its roots in Lewis’s youth, his legacy took on renewed meaning, emanating for his lifelong notion of a "beloved community" for which he vowed to keep fighting. That was the “good trouble” he often spoke of, as he did in Selma on the 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, just a couple of months before his death.
   “Speak up, speak out, get in the way,” Lewis urged the crowd from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
    It is not easy to be a prophetic voice crying in the wilderness, like that of John the Baptist or James Baldwin or John Lewis, especially when we are called to face the powers that be and stand with the poor, the oppressed, the other and live in a society in which we risk our very lives by doing so.
    But if we remember that Jesus numbered himself among them, it might help us understand our only true duty as Christians, a little more clearly, and perhaps, give us the courage to accomplish the tasks our Lord expects of us. Amen.
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