18th Sunday after Pentacost 9/27/26 1st Homily
Updated: Oct 4
Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32
G. Miles Smith+
When you are a priest…you may enter into peoples’ lives and places…in ways that…when I think about it…can be extra-ordinary.
Sometimes the familiarity of priestly things obscures…just how extra-ordinary it really is. We have all heard plenty of priests talking in different scenarios and doing liturgical things…so we are not surprised. But perhaps it would serve us all well…to consider just how unlikely…all this really is.
Yesterday morning I stood by the hospital bed of Anne Zavertnik Young with her husband Neal and his daughter Sarah….following Anne’s completely unexpected injury only a week and a half ago. I gave Anne “last rites”…traditional prayers and scripture to honor her life…and blessed Anne as we let her go fully to God. It was of course a moment of great feeling and great gravity. |
It is not necessarily so…that there would be a person like me…set aside to give something like last rites for the dying and the dead. And I want you to realize just how not-necessarily-so it actually is…so that you can know Christ more clearly and dearly. |
In the ancient world--and in plenty of times since then and still even now--the dying and the dead were not given such attention and dignity. Unless of course you were the lucky few of power and wealth. And there was no reason to believe that the gods cared one whit about you…regardless of who you were. The gods cared about themselves…and sometimes wanted this-or-that from you… but otherwise… you were fodder for their fickle and selfish amusements and petty schemes for vengeance. In other words, you were irrelevant…and your life and your death were meaningless.
[But of course, those closest to you would mourn you at your death…family and neighbors would usually do so. But often enough, you would just disappear…lost in the endless wars conscripting men and leaving them dead on battlefields for bonfires and mass graves…never to be seen again…no funeral…no nothing. At least the women and the children and the old and infirm…who frequently died close to home…in childbirth or illness…could be properly mourned by those close by. But other than that…the dying and the dead…did not matter…it just was what it was.]
But something happened…something truly momentous happened…in the course of history…and in the invisible realms nearby…that would soon result in raising up congregations of people…and priests in their midst…who would actually tend to the dying and the dead whom they were not even related to…who would recognize their lives as significant… and proclaim that there was a god…a supreme God in fact… “who knew every hair on your head”…who attended to each and every person…in their living…and in their dying…and in their life after death.
And so, such a something…happened in both history and the invisible…involving a mysterious man named Jesus…who not only told a different story of divinity…but who was himself that story.
Jesus paid attention to people who were not supposed to matter at all: the poor…the poor in spirit…the mournful…and the meek. Jesus paid attention to those who hungered for what was right in a world that did not care…the merciful in a world where there was so much wrath…the pure in heart in a world of vileness…those who desired peace in a world of endless wars by the powerful…and those who were persecuted for any of those reasons or more. Jesus noticed them. When no one else noticed them. And he noticed with the eyes of God…when the gods…definitely did not notice.
This was a revolution in human experience…which quickly issued forth revolutions in what people noticed…in their thinking…their human imagination…their relationships…their art and music… and on and on it rippled…making possible a completely different sense of self…as seen…and loved…and made responsible…in God.
The apostle Paul spoke of this revolution flowing from Jesus in one particularly striking way. He wrote a hymn…a poem…to Christ in his letter to the church in Philippi. Whether Paul composed that hymn-poem himself…or was quoting it from other Christians…this is one of the oldest forms of a creedal statement about Christ in the New Testament and in Christian history...far predating both the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creed. And it is, as we will see, a completely unexpected, wild, and wonderful revelation of God never before known or experienced. Listen to that hymn-poem again:
Paul wrote:
“Let the same mind be in your that was in Christ Jesus:
who, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with Godas something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,taking the form of a slave,being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,he humbled himselfand became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross.
Therefore, God also highly exalted himand gave him the namethat is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesusevery knee should bend,in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confessthat Jesus Christ is Lord,to the glory of God the Father.”
This is beautiful and shocking at the same time…an image of God’s humble descent into God’s world. And countless people have recognized that it is true…naming the deepest truth of divinity…when we would never have imagined otherwise.
And so we have been called into being as a community with a priesthood…with churches taking so many different forms across the world. Our very existence as such is far from ordinary even in all its familiarity. We come from the ancient revelation of God’s gracious humility. We are called to have the mind of Christ and pay attention differently…even as the world continues very much in the ways of the gods of old…full of power, wrath, and meaninglessness. And we will find ourselves drawing close—in body and spirit--to those who suffer and who are brokenhearted, even as we ourselves are brokenhearted. Because such is the mercy, and ultimately the glory, of God.
