Sermon Notes from September 18th
Society is destabilized. Mechanisms of power and governance are ripe with corruption. Every dependable dimension of social and political order heretofore considered unshakable has been undermined. Religious participation is shifting and in decline, and violence seems to thrive in every city. I speak, of course, about Rome, in the years that followed its sack by the Visigoths in the year 410 AD.
When Rome fell, a pernicious rumor emerged. It was said that the destruction of such a mighty empire was vengeance - retribution from the Roman Gods for the shift away from pagan loyalty and toward the practice of Christianity. This was embraced by the exiled pagan elite: surely, indeed, this was the Christians’ fault. Christians themselves began to wonder if this was true. But just as light extends outward to fill the farthest shadows of a room, the saints of God have a way of illuminating times of spiritual darkness, and this was true of Saint Augustine of Hippo. By this time in the early 5th century, Augustine was a bishop and quite a well-regarded scholar, but he remained - first and foremost - a pastor. He was keenly aware of the suffering of his flock, and as travel was difficult between cities, he wrote to them.
If you pick up Augustine’s City of God today, you’ll have to stretch your hand around over 500 pages -more, if you’ve got a copy with a good appendix. It is a work of theology, to be sure, but at its heart, it is a pastoral letter. Christians, Augustine wrote, did not need to worry that the sack of Rome or the destruction of any other place meant anything about their worthiness or their faith. Earthly cities might grow and die around them, but Christians reside in another city all together. Even on earth - in these mortal years of life - they could become full citizens of the City of God.
The distinction between the two cities is simple enough. The earthly city is built upon love for the self. The heavenly city is built on the love of God. In the earthly city, power and corruption spread freely, wealth and superiority are prized above all else, and success depends on dominance and violence. In the City of God, the humble are exalted. Truth, beauty, peace, and grace draw people together in their songs to the Almighty. It is a city ripe with thanksgiving and fully alive with praise.
But this question of citizenship isn’t always as easy as we might like to think it is. Even Augustine knew that there were borderlands. We might like to think we belong in the City of God, but it doesn’t take much reflection for me personally to be quickly reminded of all the times I’ve chosen not to live there. We want to think of the earthly city as an evil place we’d quickly pass on by. We’d like to think that the heavenly city is the only homeland we need. But most of us are intimately familiar with the borderlands: the places where we can see the light ahead but still cling to a shadow or two to cover the parts of ourselves we’d rather no other could see.
I share this bit of history class with all of you, because it has been a helpful lens for me in thinking through the strange parable of the dishonest steward that we find today in the Gospel of St. Luke. It occurs to me that this is a borderland parable. In the Bible, the parables of Jesus always teach us something about the kingdom of God. They reveal something about God himself. And while they may seem to be simple, the parables of Jesus are all windows into the mighty work of salvation. In many of the famous parables, we encounter a decently clear portrait of the nature of God. The parable of the “prodigal son” comes just before this one. The father in that story is merciful, embracing his younger son even after the son has disgraced him. God is merciful. God’s love is abundant. I like this one.
But this parable of the dishonest - sometimes called the “unjust” - manager is very odd. If we were to follow our instincts here, it would seem that the rich man - when he found out about his manager’s dishonesty - it would seem that he would be angered by being cheated. But he commends the manager for acting shrewdly. Does this mean that God endorses shady business dealings? Jesus’ explanation of the story is odd too, but it draws our attention toward the key to the parable. The rich man sees that the manager has recognized that something is more important than money: relationships. Charity. Interdependence with others. Yes- all of these things were prioritized for selfish gain, but something good emerges here from something wicked.
This is still very tricky to think through. Biblical scholars and commentators have struggled with this parable for centuries, and so if you are too, you are in very good company. But we can see here that Jesus is telling us something important about the ways of God. God’s economy is not our economy. God’s riches are not what earthly cities prize. In the great outworking of sanctification, even these odd stories of the borderlands can draw us closer to the City of God.
In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verse 11, Jesus says to a crowd: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” This sounds very like Jesus talking about the children of this age acting shrewdly. While the children of this age might be in the borderlands, they are - whether they know it or not - participating in God’s economy. If we who are evil still know how to give good gifts to our children, just imagine how much more wonderful still are the ways of God.
This parable is a parable of the borderlands between the earthly city and the heavenly one. This is a parable from the place where most of us live most of the time. And while it may seem strange and a bit ominous, it is filled with good news. Jesus encourages us here: if we are faithful in little things, we can become faithful in big ones. If we find grace even in the midst of chaos and corruption, we are attuning our hearts to be receivers of the grace that never stops searching us out. If we start to recognize truth, beauty, and goodness in the hidden places of the earthly city, we start to strengthen ourselves for the journey through the borderlands and ever closer to the place where Jesus calls us home.
This was the stunning project of Augustine’s writing: he wrote to show that the heavenly city was never separate from or away from or above or beyond the earthly city at all. It has always been right here in the midst of things. God has always been breaking open the closed places and pouring in fresh air, fresh light. He is always planting seeds where nothing should grow. God walks out into the borderlands to find us - meeting us precisely where we are and reminding us, as often as we need to hear it, that we are beloved. Holiness is always in the midst of us.
And so we receive a dispatch from the borderlands: a message of bizarre hope and radical redemption. Jesus is not endorsing shady business deals. He is revealing the magnitude of God’s power to call salvation even from what looks like death.
Preached by Mother Brit Frazier
18 September 2022
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia