Matthew 4:12-23
SERMON Hippo What?
The process of forming and authorizing someone for a Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the United Church of Christ, the kind of ministry that generally requires ordination, is complicated. Someone needs to feel a call to ordained ministry, a call that is affirmed by their own congregation, by the Committee on Ministry of the local association, by an Ecclesiastical Council representing all of the congregations in the local association, and a body, a congregation or a chaplaincy, that calls the candidate into service. There are many other boxes to check along the way, educational and clinical, but these are the theologically essential checkpoints, this shared sense of a call.
There are guidelines from the national setting’s Office of Ministerial Excellence, Support, and Authorization, MESA, but implementation is local, because we are congregational and covenantal. Some local associations have a reputation for being harder than others, including Metro Boston, where I was ordained. Though somewhat reduced with the closure of two of the local theological schools, there are still way too many academics serving in the Boston area who find their way onto the authorization committee.
So it was that I found myself sitting before the Metro Boston Association Committee on Ministry’s session to determine if I was theologically prepared for ministry. I had submitted my ordination paper, one of many gateway texts I was churning out those days, and the committee was asking questions, when a hotshot newly-minted university chaplain began a long rambling question that contained the words “hypostatic union.” One committee member, a local church pastor, was knitting through the meeting, but I did catch her eye roll.
When bright young chaplain finished his question, indicated by silence, I tried to figure out exactly what it was he wanted to hear from me, if anything, or if he really just wanted to hear from himself, so I asked him to repeat the question. Cue a subtle snicker from our knitter. There followed another long-winded exploration of theological minutia.
Finally, I responded. “I think you are asking if I have a low Christology. Yes, I have a low Christology.”
I am sure it was grace that carried that local church pastor, knitting needles in hand, though my response, as she did not fall out of her chair or put out an eye. The very smart young chaplain was possibly flummoxed, though I did ultimately pass that portion of the screening process.
Now, to be honest, a better question for someone who intended to serve a local church might have been “What will you do when the organist quits on Saturday night and the coffee pots fails on Sunday morning?” Local church ministry has always been practical, even without our particular Park Church emphasis.
But for the record, Christology means your understanding of Jesus, high if you lean into Jesus as all-knowing God, low if you lean into Jesus as mostly human. The hypostatic union is the compromise of the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E., when the matter for intense debate was how Jesus could be fully human and fully divine at the same time, in one person, never mind how that one person was one of three persons in a Trinity that was one God.
None of that math maths, not trinity, not hypostatic union, but with competing patriarchs taking sides, for Rome was not yet supreme, with an interfering emperor who had an army at his disposal, and with hundreds of bishops gathered outside of Constantinople who really just wanted to go home, the Council of Chalcedon managed to produce a statement which is Christian orthodoxy to this day, and absolute nonsense.
You want to know who Jesus was? He was out there with real people. He was not sitting in an ecclesiastical council, in Chalcedon or in the suburbs just outside of Boston.
His story was transmitted orally after he was executed, written in early texts that we no longer have, before being written down in the texts we do have, the four narratives we call the gospels. In those, he makes a handful of statements that have produced centuries of questions and centuries of problematic answers, statements like “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” These are the questions that have obsessed and divided Christianity for centuries, leading to councils that argue about the hypostatic union or homoousios, which is orthodox with a little “o”, not homoiousios, which is heresy. Or maybe filioque, which was part of the schism between the Orthodox churches, with a big “O,” and the Catholic Church, whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father or the Father and the Son.
And while people were arguing about these known unknowables, there were folks who were actually doing the things Jesus did, when they could, and the things he commanded, which have always been possible for those who had the will.
Feed the hungry. Love one another. Forgive that you might be forgiven.
There are more, but you get the idea. Jesus is not in Jerusalem debating speculative theology with the priests and scribes who pile sins on the people that the people might pile offerings on them.
Jesus is in Capernaum recruiting people to his movement who know how to mend a net and gut a fish.
Not that there isn’t theology in the teachings of Jesus. There absolutely is. Its just that belief without action is meaningless, and action without belief is chaos. Jesus spends a lot of time trying to drive home this simple idea.
The showy religious who make a big deal of their giving and pray in public so everyone will see them? Jesus doesn’t have five minutes for them, unless it was the five minutes he needed to flip over their tables in the Temple Courtyard as he rejected the ancient equivalent of grifter evangelists and prosperity theology. He taught the opposite of the prosperity gospel, which suggests that God intends for you to prosper, which is to say, God will make you rich.
Doing what was righteous, the radical love Jesus modeled, came with a cost, because love has a cost. Those who followed the rabbi in Galilee, who dropped their nets and practiced revolution, risked mockery and even violence. “Blessed are those who are reviled and rejected because they follow my teachings!” Not “Follow me and get rich.” This is a king on a donkey, not riding a golden chariot or a Qatari jumbo jet.
And yes, fish for people, but not because they are going to mutter some magic prayer that will open the doors to paradise, or because some human, maybe me, is the gatekeeper to forgiveness, but because believing in what might be, hope, is way better than misery and pessimism, because if we are going to err, we choose to err on the side of love, because this truly is the day God has made, and we choose, together, to rejoice and be glad in it.
And as far as the hypostatic union, how Jesus could be fully God and fully human? It is enough for me that those who followed him experienced him as more than human. Besides, I am convinced that there is something holy and mysterious and yes in all of us, and that is good enough for me. Amen.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE concluding with the Lord’s Prayer
There are words I never imagined saying, words like: Yesterday, regime forces executed another American in a state governed by the opposition party. This morning, we hold the family and friends of ICU Nurse and Patriotic Witness Alex Pretti in our prayers.
Let us pray.
Most Amazing God,
this world you created is an exuberance of diversity,
ever changing and branching,
blooming and bursting.
This is what passes for a plan,
naturally selecting and surviving,
but also coded for beauty,
from the serpent so maligned
to the Somali immigrant in Minnesota.
Then there is us,
as diverse as the rest of creation,
fragile and fickle and finite,
and insanely at work,
taking a chainsaw to the branches,
sledgehammering stakes into the heart of life,
drawing lines and borders
and building cages.
Teach us to trust in your freedom
and in your call,
to love and to nurture,
to resist cruelty with courage,
as did Jesus,
who claimed you as Father,
and taught us to pray saying:
Our Father,