Sermon for 5 Pentecost

Sermon for 5 Pentecost, Proper 10-B

July 13, 2003

St. Luke’s Church, Jamestown, NY

Eric M. Williams

Read the lessons from the Revised Common Lectionary here.

Anglicans have from the beginning

been suspicious of so-called religious enthusiasm--

from the 16^th century Puritans

to the 18^th century revival preachers,

to modern-day Pentecostals.

Throughout our history we have championed reason, moderation and balance

in our approach to religious practice.

We have exalted the Anglican via media, the middle way

between Catholicism on the one hand

and radical Protestantism on the other.

For us the sonorous sentences of the Book of Common Prayer,

the familiar hymns of antiquity,

the soothing tones of the organ

and the muted light of stained glass reflected on varnished pews--

what Dick Fenn calls, “Piety rendered pleasant.”

It may be slightly dull, but it is familiar, comfortable and comforting,

And always in good taste!

But is it enough?

Enthusiasm is a word which means literally, “filled with God,”

and it suits the two central figures of our readings today,

King David and John the Baptist.

We read that as David brought the ark back to Jerusalem,

he and the people danced before the Lord with all their might.

And when he arrived, he again danced with all his might.

His half-naked ecstatic worship horrified his wife Michal—

she despised him for it.

I can almost hear her commentary:

“David, you are the king. What were you thinking,

leaping about half-naked like that?

Where is your dignity? Where is your self-respect?”

But David was not thinking about dignity or self-respect, or self-anything.

He was caught up in and filled with God,

totally unselfconscious and unrestrained.

He held nothing back and danced with all his might.

When have you or I ever done anything truly with all our might?

Isn’t there always some part of us that holds back,

that wonders how this looks and what will people think?

Some years ago I sang in a church choir with a young African-American woman.

She told stories of the Pentecostal church in which she had been raised,

and where speaking in tongues was one of the gifts of the Spirit

which was regularly manifested during their enthusiastic worship.

But even there, she said, it was hard for people to really let go.

She told of her mother and aunt who, while they were slain in the Spirit,

still had half an eye and ear open for each other,

and would compete to see who could speak longest and loudest.

And enthusiasm does not just mean this kind of expressive worship.

John the Baptist is a shining example of a person filled with God.

His enthusiasm took him away from polite society

and into a ministry of preaching fire and brimstone

on the banks of the Jordan river.

Eventually his love for God and willingness to speak God’s truth

led him to this morning’s tragic story

and his own grisly death.

Where David danced with all his might,

John preached with all of his might

to the lowest of the low

and the highest of the high.

And everyone who met him saw in him a reflection of God,

heard in his words the conviction of God’s truth,

and many were led to repentance, to baptism and a new life,

but not Herod.

Herod, and by the way this is Herod Antipas,

the son of the King Herod who tried to have Jesus killed as a baby.

This Herod knew and respected John.

He knew him to be a righteous and holy man

and he even liked to listen to him.

He was attracted to the God he saw reflected in John’s words and life.

He was attracted, but he was not converted.

He could not bring himself to share John’s enthusiasm,

John’s overwhelming love of God.

Herod was caught in the web of his sins,

unwilling and unable to do the right thing.

He had already jailed John for daring to criticize

his marriage to his sister-in-law.

And now the moment of truth.

What a scene, what a dinner party from hell.

There is Herod, in his cups, surrounded by his cronies,

lusting after this beautiful young dancer,

his own step daughter.

In his drunken lust he makes a rash promise—

gives the girl a blank check to his kingdom.

And then he cannot take it back.

Rather than appear foolish before her and his buddies,

he allows this gross injustice to occur,

he has John beheaded.

This grim scene paints a vivid contrast for us

between a life filled with God

and a life empty of God.

In the end it is not enough to flirt with loving God,

we need to love God wholly, completely, enthusiastically!

We need to let go of our fear, our self-consciousness and our pride.

We need to ask ourselves what it would look like if we came to church

ready to worship God with all our might.

Listen to Annie Dillard:

It is madness to wear ladies hats and straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offence, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return. [1]

We have inherited a church and a tradition that is precious and worth preserving,

where all things are done “decently and in order,”

yet sometimes I fear we are in danger of losing our enthusiasm,

our passion, our self-forgetting, all encompassing love for God.

This service, this meal, this divine dinner party is unlike the grim feast of Herod.

Here we are invited once again to view not the severed head of John,

but the sacred head sore wounded,

Jesus Christ, whose life is shared with us in bread and wine.

Here we are invited to fall in love with God all over again,

to sing and pray, and even dance! with all our might

and to know and feel and experience the enthusiasm of loving God.

[1] Annie Dillard Teaching a Stone to Talk p40.