Sermon Library
“On Earth As It Is In Heaven”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
April 06, 2008
Service Theme: Easter III - 2008
Easter III-2008 April 6, 2008
On Earth As It Is In Heaven
By Gregg Anderson
Jesus, the Revolutionary
I have been talking about the political revolutionary role of Jesus a great deal over the past six weeks. There have been thousands of books written on the politics of Jesus and there are hundreds of books written with the title Jesus the Revolutionary. I have recently readdressed this theme because Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan wrote a new book, The Last Week, which contributes a great deal more context and history toward this premise of “Jesus the Revolutionary.”
If Jesus were just interpreting the scriptures and talking about love and peace, he probably would never have been crucified. But Jesus was far more direct and confrontational. For example, when he was talking to the scribes and Pharisees, he says, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.” (Matthew 12: 33 – 35) Resurrection was not just about a resurrection for eternal life, but a resurrection of love and good deeds and an introduction for the kingdom of God not only Israel, but on earth.
The Power of God For Christians and Jews
Last week I tried to preview another new book just coming out this next week that is written by two Harvard professors, one Catholic and the other Jewish entitled Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews. From what I understand from the reviews of their book is that the concept of “resurrection” was certainly not just a “Christian” invention and the theology of resurrection existed deep within Judiasm. Actually resurrection has been a concept in many religions and, of course, in Greek and Roman mythology. The Phoenix is just one well known example. But this new book apparently details various understandings of resurrection within historical Judaism. One of the interpretations of this Jewish resurrection is a physical restoration of Israel from the Roman oppression, the very same oppression which crucified Christ.
Interpretation of Resurrection
Whatever our interpretation of resurrection maybe within a wide range from literal to metaphorical, the theology of resurrection has indeed kept Jesus teachings and message very alive. One of the significant messages of Jesus was freedom, equality, and liberation from greed and tyranny. Interestingly, three hundred years after Jesus crucifixion by the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire embraced Christianity by Emperor Constantine. The fall of the Roman Empire is complex. There have been some arguments that Christianity played a role in the fall of Roman aristocracy and oppression. It was mostly a military collapse, but some have suggested Christianity had its influence after Constantine. As the Roman Empire fell, the Roman Catholic Church emerged to prosper. The Age of Western Christendom was in place.
Jesus as Perfect
Classically speaking we refer to Jesus as the perfect human being and his message also one of perfection. Unfortunately we are imperfect people often striving for perfection. It is not that Christianity is imperfect, but trying to be a Christian often ends up with revealing imperfections. In spite of Christian people’s imperfections, Christianity has flourished. Christianity has influenced a great deal of compassion and goodness in this world along with giving people meaning and purpose in life. I would also and immediately include all the other religions of this world which emphasize love and compassion and hope in this statement as well.
The Great Influence of the Reformation
I would like to think Christianity and other caring religions are evolving toward greater good and justice. I again remind us that the Reformation changed the Western world for the better unlike any other movement over the past millennium. The Reformation set the many seeds for freedom of exploration and expression. It made a paradigmatic change in science, all the arts, mass education, politics and society in general. The Reformation may not have been the birth of democracy, but it gave democracy its most magnanimous platform to begin. Judeo-Christianity has everything to do with the founding of this country. It is many people’s prejudice, mine included, that if we forget this as a country it will be part of our fall.
Is Christianity Improving?
Is Christianity still evolving today for the better? I think that is a good question for today. I certainly hope so. There is still a lot of evil out there in the world. Greed, self serving power and oppressive regimes still exist. They are still often confronted with Christian convictions. Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God on Earth over and over again. It seems like we need to keep trying over and over again. Hopefully, two steps forward with one step back is still progress.
There is a statement by a modern day Christian martyr which I want to read to you today. I believe it is a very moving and realistic statement about creating God’s kingdom on earth. It is from a former Archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero. Even though he was an archbishop, he always wanted to be a simple priest among the people and was more affectionately called Monsignor Romero. As Archbishop of El Salvador in the 1970’s he witnessed ongoing violations of human rights and started a group which spoke out on behalf of the poor and victims of the country’s civil war. He embraced a nonviolent form of “Liberation Theology,” a position which led to comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Liberation Theology
“Liberation Theology” became and still exists as a significant term for people attempting to live out their lives spiritually and with dignity within oppressive governments in South America. There are many Roman Catholic communities within Brazil, for example, who are living out a sense of freedom from tyranny from their governments and they are also diverging from the authority of the Vatican. They are called base communities and represent a new reform of government and church, not unlike the mission of Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Monsignor Romero
Monsignor Romero was part of this movement in Central America in the 1960’s and 70’s pleading for equality and justice in his oppressed country. A man by the name of Major Roberto D’Aubuisson attempted to take dictorial control of El Salvador. He founded the political party called the “Nationalist Republican Alliance” and organized death squads that systematically carried out politically motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador in order to gain control.
Romero begged for international intervention. He was alone. The people were alone. In 1980 the political take-over took the lives of 3,000 people per month, with cadavers clogging the streams and tortured bodies thrown in garbage dumps and the streets of the capitol weekly. Most of the other Salvadorain clergy turned their backs on Romero, going so far as to send a secret document to Rome reporting him and accusing him of being “politicized” and of seeking popularity among the common people. Unlike them, Romero refused to ever attend a government function until the repression of the people was stopped. He kept that promise winning him the enmity of the government and military, and an astonishing love of the poor majority.
Romero understood the church as more than the hierarchy, Rome, theologians or clerics – more than an institution. “God needs the people themselves,” he said, “to save the world … The world of the poor teaches us that liberation will arrive only when the poor are not simply on the receiving end of hand-outs from governments or from the churches, but when they themselves are the masters and protagonists of their own struggle for liberation.”
Trying to Stop the Violence
Romero’s great helplessness was that he could not stop all the violence. Within the next year over 7,500 Salvadorans would be killed, one million would flee the country, another million left homeless, constantly on the run from the army – and this in a country of only 5.5 million. All Romero had to offer the people were weekly homilies broadcast through out the country, his voice assuring them, not that atrocities would cease, but that the church of the poor, themselves, would live on. He was the voice of the disenfranchised speaking out against the tyranny. He was gaining followers and the United Nations and the United States was beginning to intervene.
Assassination
However, on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass at a small chapel near his cathedral following a sermon where he called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repression and violations of basic human rights, Romero was killed by a shot to the heart. When he was shot, his blood spilled over the altar and the bread and the wine. Days before his murder he told a reporter, “You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish.”
Canonization and Sainthood
In 1997, a cause for beatification and canonization into sainthood was opened for Romero, and Pope John Paul II bestowed upon him the title Servant of God. The process continues.[1] He is considered by some the unofficial patron saint of the Americas and El Salvador and is often referred to as “San Romero” by the Catholic workers in El Salvador. Outside of Catholicism, Romero is honored by other religious denominations of Christendom, including the Church of England through its Common Worship. He is one of the ten 20th century martyrs who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London.[2] In 2008, he was chosen as one of the 15 Champions of World Democracy by the Europe-based magazine A Different View.[3]
The Kingdom of God On Earth
Monsignor’s Romero lived out the life of Jesus and met the same fate as Jesus. But somehow his life and death, like Jesus, furthers the kingdom of God on Earth. He wrote these incredible words before his death. These words are real. They express the tension between the Kingdom of God on earth and the Kingdom of God in heaven. They realize the on going struggle between good and evil as they exist within this world. These words express hope, not a false hope, but a gutsy hope.
Monsignor Romero’s Last Statement
Monsignor Romero wrote this a few months before he was shot performing a mass for the common people of San Salvador:
“It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything that the church is really to be about.
However, this is what we are about: We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.”
On Earth As It Is In Heaven
These are the words from the latest person receiving sainthood from the Roman Catholic Church. Here are a few words, ironically, written at the exact same time from another place in the world and from the other recent recipient of sainthood. In 1979 Mother Theresa wrote this letter to her personal friend and spiritual confidant Father Michael Van der Peet. She addresses him and writes, “Jesus has a very special love for you. But as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see – listen and do not hear – the tongue moves in prayer, but does not speak. I want you to pray for me – that I let Him have a free hand.” That letter, incredibly, was mailed just a few months before she went to Oslo, Norway to accept her Nobel Peace Prize.”
Conclusion
Inside the lives of saints, there are questions and doubts, but obviously also great courage, purpose and hope. Saints are people, too. Martin Luther said that we are all saints and sinners and usually at the same time. Somehow, we do our best with all our perpetual imperfections. Maybe it is like two steps forward and one step back. Maybe it is more like 1.1 step forward and one step back. Even Jesus questioned. Peter denied and Paul was first confused of his conversion. But the conviction of a new world and kingdom remains. Hopefully, we are making some progress toward God’s kingdom. Thousands upon thousands have given their lives for this endeavor. It must be important. May we make it even more important today. We keep praying, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Like Jesus, like Peter and Paul, like, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, like Romero, like Theresa, we also need to keep doing “on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson Aspen Chapel
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (August 15, 1917 – March 24, 1980), commonly known as Monseñor Romero, was a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador. He became the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, succeeding the Luis Chávez y González.
As archbishop, he witnessed ongoing violations of human rights and started a group which spoke out on behalf of the poor and victims of the country’s civil war. Chosen as archbishop for his conservatism, once in office he embraced a nonviolent form of liberation theology, a position which led to comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. In 1980, he was assassinated by a right-wing group headed by former major Roberto D’Aubuisson as he held the consecrated host up during a Mass. This provoked international outcry for reform in El Salvador. After his assassination, Romero was succeeded by Msgr. Arturo Rivera y Damas.
Romero was killed by a shot to the heart on March 24, 1980 while celebrating Mass at a small chapel near his cathedral following a sermon where he called on Salvadoran soldiers, as Christians, to obey God’s higher order and to stop carrying out the government’s repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot moments after the homily, which he had concluded with an improvised pre-Eucharistic prayer thanking God (the homily in the Roman Catholic Rite more or less signifies the end of the Liturgy of the Word and the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist or Mass of the Faithful). When he was shot, his blood spilled over the altar and some of the congregation say it went into the communion wine.[citation needed]
It is believed that the assassins were members of Salvadoran death squads. This view was supported in 1993 by an official U.N. report, which identified the man who ordered the killing as former Major Roberto D’Aubuisson,[6] He had also planned to overthrow the government in a coup. Later he founded the political party Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), and organized death squads that systematically carried out politically-motivated assassinations and other human rights abuses in El Salvador. Álvaro Rafael Saravia, a former captain in the Salvadorian Air Force, was chief of security for Roberto D’Aubuisson and an active member of these death squads. In 2004, Mr. Saravia was found liable by a U.S. District Court under the Alien Tort Claims Act ("ATCA") (28 U.S.C. § 1350) for aiding, conspiring, and participating in the assassination of Archbishop Romero. Mr. Saravia was ordered to pay $10 million dollars for extrajudicial killing and crimes against humanity pursuant to the ATCA. Doe v. Rafael Saravia, 348 F. Supp. 2d 1112 (E.D. Cal. 2004) (providing an excellent account of the events leading up, and subsequent, to Archbishop Romero’s death).
Romero is buried in the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Savior (Catedral Metropolitana de San Salvador). The funeral mass (rite of visitation and requiem) on March 30, 1980, in San Salvador was attended by more than 250,000 mourners from all over the world. Viewing this attendance as a protest, Jesuit priest John Dear has said, “Romero’s funeral was the largest demonstration in Salvadoran history, some say in the history of Latin America.”
During the ceremony, a bomb exploded on the Cathedral square (Plaza Barrios) and subsequently there were shots fired that probably came from surrounding buildings. While no one died from the bomb-blast or the shots, many people were killed during the following mass panic; official sources talk of 31 overall casualties, journalists indicated between 30 and 50 dead.[6] Some witnesses claimed it was government security forces that threw bombs into the crowd, and army sharpshooters, dressed as civilians, that fired into the chaos from the balcony or roof of the National Palace. However, there are contradictory accounts as to the course of the events and “probably, one will never know the truth about the interrupted funeral."[6] Twenty-five years later, the BBC recalled the horror:
Jay Leno puts it into perspective and makes us think about the pathetic negativity. That’s right, Jay Leno!! Jay Leno wrote this; it’s the Jay Leno we don’t often see....
“The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true, given the source, right? The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed, and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the President. In essence, 2/3’s of the citizenry just ain’t happy and want a change. So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ‘’What are we so unhappy about?’’
Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time, and see more food in moments than Darfur has see n in the last year? Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provides services to help all, and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.
Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes, an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss. This, all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Most neighborhoods in this country report 90 percent of teenagers own cell phones and computers. How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what has 67 percent of you folks unhappy.
Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S., yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don’t have and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.
I know, I know. What about the President who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The President who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same President who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The President that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks?
The Commander-In Chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me? Did you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you couldn’t take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad?
Think about it...are you upset at the President because he actually caused you personal pain OR is it because the “Media” told you he was failing to kiss your sorry ungrateful ASS every day.
Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn’t have to go.
They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ‘’general’’ discharge, an ‘’other than honorable’’ discharge or, worst case scenario, a ‘’dishonorable’’ discharge after a few days in the brig.
So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans? Say what you want, but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds, and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and mediaoutlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells, and when criticized, try to defend their actions by “justifying” them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book about “how he didn’t kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this way”...Insane!
Stop buying the negativism you are fed everyday by the media. Shut off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is exponentially more good than bad.
We are among the most blessed people on Earth, and should thank God several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative.
“With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, “Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?”