The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C) (Sexagesima)
February 23, 2025
O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Ghost and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever.Amen.
Genesis 45:3-11, 21-28
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about John Keble’s Assize sermon, “National Apostasy,” which he preached in the University Church of Saint Mary at Oxford on July 14, 1833(1) – you know, as you do. Recent events on both sides of the Atlantic have led me to reflect upon the relationship between the church and the state or, perhaps more generally speaking, the church and civil society.
In Britain, it is all a bit more straight forward, at least from a constitutional point of view. The archbishops and about twenty-four diocesan bishops sit in parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, and form an integral part of the deliberative process of Britain’s democratic, constitutional monarchy. Indeed, the presence of the Lords Spiritual in parliament, and to whom they owed allegiance, was one of the most important considerations for Henry VIII when he did the first Brexit in 1534, as hitherto the head of a foreign state had the power to make these appointments. It was – perhaps naively – surprising to me, then, that the press (both on the left and right) got all bent out of shape when, in 2023 and 2024, several bishops spoke up quite strongly against the government’s plan to ship asylum seekers off to Rwanda. “What business is it of bishops to express their opinions on these sorts of political discussions?” politicians, pundits, and journalists declared. Well, they have every business to do it, and that is what Keble is saying and doing, speaking to judges at the beginning of the court’s session at a moment when he believed the nation – especially the government of the day – was straying from its foundational Christian principals. In word and deed he declares the Church’s duty to the nation to speak out, when the government acts in a way contrary to the Christian faith. Now, I have to admit that the events that inspired Keble to declare National Apostasy and write his sermon – the passage of several reform bills, including ones that gave Catholics and protestant dissenters more rights, and moves to control the Irish Church – may not seem as dire to us as they did to him. However, I would argue that his point still stands, even here in the United States where we have that pesky First Amendment.
And here’s the rub. All the First Amendment to the United States Constitution says is, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” That’s it. It says that there shall be no single established church, let alone an established religion, and that everyone must have the right to the free exercise of their faith. What it does not say, is that the churches, religious folk, religious leaders, especially, should keep their noses out of politics. The state must not favour one religion over another, but religious leaders like me and all the rest of us, are free to do what the rest of that Amendment says we are free to do: exercise our freedoms of speech and free assembly. It is, in fact, our duty to do so.
Indeed, this is the question Keble sets out right at the beginning of his sermon, as he poses the question, “How may a man best reconcile his allegiance to God and his Church with his duty to his country, that country, which now, by the supposition, is fast becoming hostile to the Church, and cannot therefore long be the friend of God?” He goes on,
Should it ever happen (which God avert, but we cannot shut our eyes to the danger) that the Apostolical Church should be forsaken, degraded, nay trampled on and despoiled by the State and people of England, I cannot conceive a kinder wish for her, on the part of her most affectionate and dutiful children, than that she may, consistently, act in the spirit of this most noble sentence.
When we see the State acting in any way that is contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ – and here I explicitly mean in ways that are contrary to the spirit of justice and love that Jesus preaches in today’s Gospel – it is our duty to stand up and respond. This is why, when Bishop Budde preached at the prayer service at National Cathedral before the inauguration, I wasn’t particularly fussed. I neither thought she was behaving in a particularly heroic manner, nor an inappropriate one. What I saw was a bishop of the Church doing her job. She was presenting the Gospel’s vision of social justice and reminding those in power that they had a responsibility to protect all the people, especially the most vulnerable.
Indeed, I know that many people in our community, in this city, and in the nation at large are very concerned by the course of events unfolding in Washington under this new administration, and indeed about the conduct of government in our own city. So, what are we to do? What is our responsibility? And whence do we seek guidance?
The Gospel lessons for the past two weeks are a very good place for us to start, as they explain for us how we are to respond in a world where justice and love are trampled. Today we pick up right where we left off last week. Jesus is in the midst of the discourse we call the Sermon on the Plain. He has spoken about the real-life conditions in which the people of Judea, of the world, find themselves and has described a radical reordering of priorities that takes place in this new era of the Kingdom of God. Those who are now living in conditions of poverty and hunger, those who are persecuted, have been proclaimed blessed, and these are to be days of woe for the rich, the sated, the self- satisfied.
This next section, our passage for today, provides practical instructions for how we are now to act, given what Jesus has just said about the injustice we find in the world. Jesus tells us, perhaps especially those who find themselves on the side of those to whom the “woes” has been declared, how we are to act. It is, in fact, a new standard of behaviour that, as we shall see, is out of step with the generally held ethics of that era, and, indeed, ours as well.
In this new era, Jesus gives us explicit instructions:
... I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.
It is a radical command. We are to meet those who stand in opposition to the Gospel, those whom we stand to oppose with an attitude of love and forbearance. Love – this kind of divine love, agape love – however, is not some mushy emotion. It is an attitude, a stance, an approach to life. Love is to be our orientation towards the world, and as such it demands action. And in those actions, we are to go beyond what might be reasonably expected of us. This is what Jesus means when he says we are to give not only our coat, but our shirt – an undergarment, which makes the point even more emphatic. (2)
While Jesus says, “as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them,” Jesus makes it clear that this is not our rationale for such action. He continues,
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.
We are to exercise love without expectation of reward, and Jesus knows he is asking for something radical, something beyond what we have been brought up to think. Giving without expectation of return was an unusual concept in Jesus’ world. The usual rational for generosity, for giving or even for loving, was so that one might do the same for you. In Latin, it is the idea, do ut des, “I give so that you might give”. (3) Here, such utilitarian reasoning may be good enough for the wicked, but it is not good enough for us.
In generosity without expectation of reward, in loving our enemies even if they will not love us in return, we are opening ourselves up to relationship with God, as God’s very children. God is “is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish,” and we are called to
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.
God’s standard is the one to which we are to be held in the Kingdom, not the standards of men. This is “the proper understanding of the law of love by which the community lives” in these Kingdom times. “God’s behaviour to humans is positive even when they are undeserving.” (4) We learn this throughout the Gospels, most notably from Jesus’ himself upon the Cross. Although this is an extremely high ethical standard, we are to strive to imitate that divine posture. Indeed, this is a tall order as we learn here that this attitude is supposed to be “the norm for those who are in fact hated, scorned, set aside, reviled, and cursed.” (5)
In difficult times, God see our struggles, our suffering, and sojourns in them with us. In these times, we are to do whatever it is we can in the face of obstacles and confront the evils we see in the world, not with more evil, but with the attitude of Love that Jesus describes here.
And this brings us back to our friend, the Rev’d Mr Keble. When we see the State falling away from the attitude of Love demanded of us in these Kingdom days, we have a number of resources available to us. The first is prayer, “intercession,” as Keble puts it. We are to pray for those who stand as enemies to the Gospel, which leads us to the second avenue open to us. He says:
the first duty of the Church and of Churchmen, INTERCESSION, sincerely practised, would prepare them for the second; which, following the words of Samuel as our clue, we may confidently pronounce to be REMONSTRANCE. ‘I will teach you the good and the right way.’ REMONSTRANCE, calm, distinct, and persevering, in public and in private, direct and indirect, by word, look, and demeanour, is the unequivocal duty of every Christian, according to his opportunities, when the Church landmarks are being broken down.
We are to call the Nation to account for its actions by every means open to us, even with side eye, it would seem. We have the ability in our nation to exercise our freedom of speech to take our leaders to task for their sins, for their faithless, heartless actions. We must not hold back from remonstrance, speaking out for the Christian principals that we see discarded by the state.
Finally, we can act. Keble was an instinctive conservative, much as am I. He was not advocating armed rebellion or revolution. Those things would have shocked him, as I am sure the Continental upheavals of his day shocked him. What he did say, however, was that we have scope for action as we pursue our daily lives, and engage in our occupations and other pursuits. It is in practising the values of piety, purity, charity, justice in everything we do that we are in fact advancing our cause in those spheres where we can have a real impact.
I know I have covered a great deal of ground today, but in the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus presents to us a vision of a world very similar to our own. He presents for us a situation to which we can relate and he tells us in no uncertain terms that the old ethics of “do for others so that they might do for you,” no longer obtain. We must now adhere to a new standard, a divine standard, that will expand the reach of divine love and bring us into deeper relationship with God and each other as God’s very children. In days when it looks like the powerful might be succeeding in pushing aside the Christian values we hold dear, we can be reassured that we are empowered to act in whatever sphere we inhabit and help show forth the Kingdom of God into our world.
Andrew Charles Blume ✠
New York City
Feria, 22 February 2025
1. John Keble, “National Apostasy,” preached at Saint Mary’s Church, Oxford, on July 14, 1833 (ed. London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., [s.d]). Accessed: https://anglicanhistory.org/keble/keble1.html
2. 2Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagnia Series, 3 ed. by Daniel J. Harrington (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), 109.
3. Johnson 1991, 109.
4. Johnson 1991, 109.
5. Johnson 1991, 112.
© 2025 Andrew Charles Blume