“The Rebel Christ”
By Rev. Michael Coren
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Reading: Matthew 22:35-40
I'm an Anglican priest and it feels rather strange in a way to be in this terribly Protestant environment but I'm sure we'll all get along. Let me give you a working definition of what an Anglican priest is because a lot of people don't know, in fact a lot of Anglican clergy don't know either, but a story.
A friend of mine who has a little hairdresser, a barber shop really, not a place I frequent. He would just do like a short back and sides, charge very little. And one day, door rings, ding, and in comes a Roman Catholic priest and my friend cut his hair. At the end, the priest goes to pay, I don't know, $15, not much. My friend said, “Look, Father, I'm not Catholic. I'm not even religious, but I have huge respect for your faith and what you do. It's my gift for you.”
The priest says, “That's very kind of you, my son, very kind indeed.” Next day, my friend goes to open the store and there's a big bottle of Irish whiskey waiting for him. Very nice.
About a month later, bell rings, door opens, and a rabbi walks in, and he's cutting the rabbi's hair. At the end, the rabbi goes to pay, and he says, rabbi, “I’m not Jewish, but I have enormous respect for your people and what you've gone through, and it's my little gift for you.”
And the rabbi says, “What a mitzvah, what a blessing that is. Thank you so much.” And the next day my friend goes to open the store and there's a big bag of freshly baked bagels waiting for him.
Around a month later, a bell rings, and in comes an Anglican vicar, an Anglican priest who sits down. He cuts his hair, and at the end the Anglican goes to pay, and he says, “No, honestly, you know, I had a Catholic priest, I had a rabbi in here, same goes for you. My gift, my gift for you.”
And the Anglican priest says, “So kind of you.” The next day my friend goes to open the shop and there's a long line of Anglican clergy. That's a working definition of an Anglican priest.
Now, a little bit about me. I'm an old vocation, I suppose, because I've been ordained five years. I never, ever thought I would be a cleric. I mean, I thought I would play soccer for England till I was about 55 years old. And judging by their recent performance, I still could. But a cleric was never in my furthest thoughts. I'd been a Christian. I wasn't raised a Christian. I became a Christian when I was a young man in my early 20s, and I was a Roman Catholic. I left to join the Anglican Church.
Anyway, I've been ordained five years, and it's been the most extraordinary time of my life. In that time, I wrote a book called The Rebel Christ. I've called my sermon, my homily that today, and I've chosen this reading because I have to say, I sometimes am so disappointed at the complexity that we impose on a faith that is pristine and gorgeous and beautiful in its simplicity. Unlike other monotheistic faiths, with all due respect to Judaism and Islam, Christianity is not a rules-based belief system. It's barely even a religion. It is a relationship; it is a faith.
In the reading today, and think about the framing of it, so often there are questions being asked in the gospels over and over again. Faith is a dialogue. Anyone who says to you they're certain in what they believe, leave. Certainty is not on our side. You don't doubt, but you do question. Faith is a dialogue. And in here, in this text, as it's so often, a scribe or a lawyer or a Pharisee, they're asking, seeking, testing. They often want to get the wrong answer.
What do you say to this one then? What do you say? And here, this is perfect. Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and your strength and love everybody else as yourself. Neighbour is just a term that was used at the time. The Greek is very vague. Love God with everything you have and love others as yourself. That is the quintessence of our faith. The rest is just window dressing. And if any of you are thinking, well, that's pretty easy, you ain't tried it. Because it's incredibly difficult. To love God with that much of what God deserves is very difficult. To love other people, it's easy to love those you love, those who love you. Try loving those who don't. Try forgiving those who've hurt you so deeply. I'm sure you've all had experience of this. That, that is what I call the sandpaper of the soul. It does hurt, it stings, but it refines us, it defines us, and it makes us closer to perfection. It is not supposed to be easy.
People sometimes, when they criticize Christianity, they'll say, well, you're just a Christian because you want it easy. You want to lean on something. They've never been told what it really is. It isn't easy. It's a constant challenge. What Jesus tells us here, Jesus who came not to change the world, but to change us. Every one of you here, me, everybody out there, this is important. The Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah, the Mashiach, to come on a white horse to change the world, to throw the Romans out, to end occupation. Jesus said, no, I don't come to change the world. I come to change you. And that's much more difficult. What he initiated was a great permanent revolution of love.
Whenever you think you've got it right. You start again. When I began my prayer life many years ago, a very wise, elderly monk said to me, if ever you get to the stage with prayer where you think you've got it right, start again. There's so much wisdom in that because we're never going to get it completely right. We're constantly challenged by things, and we should be, and we have to be. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love other people as yourself.
I left high school, my golly, hundreds of years ago. Actually, it was 1976 I left high school. And there was a big party at the end where people were going off either to university or to work, wherever they were going. I think most people were very eager to leave school. You know, the old cliche, the best days of your life, you realize that was true, but at the time you never think that.
I left high school and eventually I would marry a Canadian, come to live in Canada, but I didn't care about leaving high school. I only remained in contact with one person, really. My oldest friend, he was best man at our wedding and he's still a dear friend. But at this party, when everybody was saying goodbye, there was a young woman who was speaking to me. Her name was Angela. She was part of a couple. Now, I use that phrase because Jonathan and Angela had been together, it seemed like forever at high school, which is very odd because we weren't really in relationships, we were too young. And there were those annoying people who would say, oh, look, I've got a girlfriend, I've got a boyfriend. Look at me as though no one else in history had ever had that. But these two were different. They were very non-pretentious or ostentatious about this. They were just an item, Jonathan and Angela. And they were very well known because they were both extremely good looking. Angela, well, I mean, every guy at school was totally in love with her, just gorgeous. And Jonathan, even the guys knew, I mean, he looked like a junior James Bond. Really. And he was captain of the school rugby team, and he was clever, and he was really handsome. Angela was just gorgeous, and she was a great athlete, and she was really clever.
Now, when people are attractive and clever, and athletically gifted, at least let them be unpleasant. Because then you can resent them with justification. But they were really nice as well. I didn't quite understand it because I thought with all that going on, surely, you're going to be unpleasant to people. But they were very nice. Anyway, Angela was chatting to me about what she was going to do with her life and what Jonathan was going to do. And I wasn't paying any attention. And that was it. I went off, they went off.
A few years later I met a wonderful woman at the University of Tirana. I was giving a lecture, and she was in the audience, and this is a true story. It was a very boring lecture, and she came up to me at the end of it and she said, you're amazing! And thinking this would never happen again, I married her. And I was right, it hasn't happened again. I don't think she's ever said it again but that doesn't matter. I came to Canada, and I didn't think about Jonathan and Angela or anything else really about high school. And then I got a letter, it was before the internet was in its powerful and sometimes disturbing dominance. The letter was from Steve, my oldest friend. And he said, do you remember Jonathan and Angela? Well, they have been abroad, they've been in Africa and they're back and they're having a get together for everyone who was at school with them and it's happening when you're visiting Britain. I visit every year. Do you want to come along? And I thought, oh, it'd be great. So, I said I would. And I was.
There was a map that he'd attached. And there was also an addendum, another note. He said, they want you to read that. Anyway, I read this note. Jonathan and Angela wanted everybody to read it. And it said that they had been in Africa where Jonathan was an engineer working on water supplies. And Angela was a teacher in a very little school and there'd been a fire. Everyone had gotten out, but there was a little boy called Joshua who had been in the washroom, and he couldn't get out. Jonathan had run back in and rescued this little boy. They were both okay, but Jonathan had received some quite severe burns. And they wanted people to know so they weren't surprised when they saw him. And in my arrogant way, thought nothing of it. I thought, hey, you know, I've covered wars. I used to work in Belfast during the Troubles. I've seen the most incredible stuff. Nothing's going to shock me.
In the second week of my visit to Britain on the evening of the party, I went to the apartment they lived in, knocked on the door, and Angela opened it. And my golly she was more gorgeous than ever. She said, Mike, you're the first one here, come in, Jonathan would love to see you. I went in the very small apartment and there was a guy sitting in an armchair and I couldn't recognize him because the burns, the scar tissue on his face was so severe. I couldn't see his eyes. I couldn't make out the features that I once knew so well that made him such a beautiful man. I just couldn't see him. I suppose I tried to register indifference, you know, as you would. Doesn't work. And I'll never forget this because his voice hadn't changed a bit. Even in all those years, I recognized it within a moment. And he said this: All right, Coren, I know I look a bloody mess, but at least one of us has kept his hair. I wanted to laugh at the joke, but instead of laughter, I choked up and I started crying. Angela ran up to me and hugged me, and she said, don't worry, Mike, don't worry. We've both done a lot of that. Please, do not worry about that. And then this little African boy, ran out from, it wasn't even a kitchen, it was like a kitchenette. He'd been hiding behind the counter, and he ran out and he jumped on Jonathan's lap and started tickling him and saying, Daddy, Daddy.
Angela said, this is our adopted son. His name is Joshua. And then as people began to arrive, she took me aside and explained this story. They weren’t these awful, terrible people. They were Christian missionaries, and they weren't going out to forcibly convert anyone. They were going out to live the Christian witness, love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love others as yourself. They were there to try and give an education to these kids and bring fresh water to the village, so the women didn't have to risk being abducted and raped when they went to the local river to get water. They'd given their lives to people. They were followers of Jesus Christ. And things began to crystallize in my mind. Then she said to me, you know, I'm not stupid. And I said, I know you're not. She said, you know, I used to walk along arm in arm with Jonathan, and every girl, every woman that walked past, I see them turn their head. It was, it was like a movie star had just walked on the street. He was so handsome. Every woman who walked past, they would turn their head. And she said, that made me really proud. Now, she said, when I walk along. Everyone, male and female, turns their head to look, but for a very different reason. And she said, that makes me even more proud than ever. Love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love others as yourself.
Just up the road from here on Yonge and St. Clair, years ago, that's where CFRB radio used to be. A ten-minute walk from here, I suppose, not very far. I worked for News Talk 1010 CFRB, for years I had an early evening show there. I would get there early to prepare, but not that much, I'm a bit lazy. There used to be a big corner store, and they sold newspapers and magazines and all sorts of food. I would go in before the show to stock up on the basic vital food groups, you know, chocolate, Coca-Cola, that sort of thing, to eat during the show.
Whenever I went in into that store, there were generally some homeless guys outside. There was one particularly hot day, probably in July, and as I was walking in, there was a guy and he said, “Have you got any money?”
I do sometimes give money to people, but generally what I try to do is to feed them. I said, “Are you hungry?”
And he said, “Yeah, I'm hungry.”
I said, “I'll get you some food.” And I walked into the store. He followed me. Now understandably, because this is someone whose routine daily life is being abused and spat at and ignored and mocked, lied to, and he's hungry, so he followed me, but the thing is, he was in a very bad state. It was a hot summer's day, and he was living on the street and to be candid with you, he stank. His clothes were ripped, and you could almost see his genitalia, and he was shaking. As he followed me, everyone looked around at me and I didn't like that. You see, I didn't like that I didn't want to be thought of as being someone like that. I grabbed some food; I don't know what, and I went to the counter. He's standing next to me, and the smell is very strong. He's shaking and making these noises, and God forgive me, I thought to myself, oh, you should have just given him money, you idiot.
Then the woman behind the counter, who saw me every weekday because I went in there every weekday, looked at me. She knew me and she looked at me and she looked at him and she looked at me again and she said, “Are you two together?” What she meant, of course, was, are you paying for him? Because it was very clear he didn't have any money. It's not a difficult question, is it? It probably lasted a very short period of time, but it seemed to last me a virtual lifetime before I said, “Yeah, we're together.” And I gave him the food and he left. I've never seen him again.
He’s now a banker and doing fine. Maybe it's selfish, maybe it's self-indulgent of me to think this, but I thought, you know what, Coren? One day you're going to be standing there and you will metaphorically be stinking because I'm not interesting enough to be that bad, but I'm broken like we all are. And in my brokenness, I sin, I miss the mark, I get it wrong over and over and over and over again. But I would be standing there metaphorically, stinking and broken and smashed and shaking and frightened. I honestly believe the question will be asked of the person standing next to me, who will be Christ Jesus. “Are you two together?” And I hope and pray and believe that by my faith in Jesus, by my relationship with Jesus, that the answer will be, “Yes, we are together.” And I will know eternal salvation. Because it is about a relationship, and it is about the supreme wonderful dignity and humanity of all of us.
C.S. Lewis, a great inspiration in my life said, the closest you'll ever be to God is when you are with another person. It doesn't matter what they look like, who they are, where they are, where they're from, the great equality and dignity of humanity. Jesus Christ came to earth in human form. God of all power and might and wisdom and knowledge comes to earth in human form. There was a song from a few years ago, and one of the lines was, “What if God was one of us?” Don't worry, I'm not going to sing it, you've suffered enough. But you may remember it. It wasn't a Christian song, and it entirely missed the point, because you see, this is what our faith is. God became one of us.
God who could have come to earth if he wanted as an emperor, a warlord, a monarch, a multi-billionaire, comes in the form of a baby. The most extraordinary vulnerability, born to a people living under occupation, born to a refugee family, born to a 14-15-year-old Jewish girl who was terrified of what might happen to her. And he's raised in a part of the country that was lawless. Galilee was dangerous. It was multicultural. It was Greek. It was Jewish. It was Roman. There were bandits. It was hard to control. And he grew up not in poverty, but something close to it. No influence, no power, probably a cave. A lot of cave dwellings. Despised for where he came from. Despised because of his race by many. Then he assembles around him a group of people who are again, not always, but often from the margins of society, a former sex worker, a former terrorist leader, a former tax collector. If there's anyone here from Revenue Canada, I love you, you do a great job, God bless you. (Which is shorthand for please don't audit me). But tax collectors were not people doing a decent and good job for the state.
Tax collectors were collaborators. The Romans were clever. They would say, we need 5,000 a year from you for taxation. If you're raised 20,000, good for you. We don't care, but we want our five grand. We'll give you a Roman soldier to protect you because the people will hate you. That's a tax collector in first century Judea Galilee. People around Jesus were not at the centre of power or love or admiration, they were on the margins of society. Even Peter who probably owned more than one boat, may have been a small business owner. Fishermen, ten a penny.
His mission is often rural. It's not in the urban areas until much later. His message again is the permanent revolution of love. What do we do to follow you? You love and you love, and you love again. When the centurion goes to visit Jesus and says: my slave is dying, and I love him. Slave didn't mean the same thing then as it does now. It was always wrong. It was always an open wound and obscenity, but it may well be that Paul's parents were slaves who became Roman citizens after serving their master. It wasn't always punitive in the way we think of it. But either way, he's fallen in love with this man. (And if ever you want me to talk about full affirmation and equal marriage, I won't do that today because I tell you the Greek in that translation is very vague about his relationship.) But the point is, the Roman centurion, is the personification of all that's bad. The Romans, a centurion, a pagan, a Gentile. Please cure him, I love him. I know you can. I know I'm not fit to enter to your house, but I know you can do it.
Jesus' response: It's done. I have smashed the walls of what you believed. The people around him are in shock. It all changes now. It's not just you. You've been chosen as a people to deliver a great message. Now we move on to the entire world. Yes, he's included. Yes, the woman of the world who is not of our people, she is included. Everyone is included in this great revolution of love. He knows what will happen. He knows he will die the death of a criminal. Crucifixion was so cruel, even the Romans abolished it eventually. A great Greek philosopher said, no one speaks about crucifixion in polite company. He dies an agonizing death, and he does rise again. And I have no doubts about that. Because so many people who saw him die And these were people who saw death on a daily basis.
People today don't see death very often. Back then, it was a neighbour, an intimate neighbour. They saw it all the time. They saw him dead, and they saw him alive again. Oh, maybe it was a mass hallucination. Yes, of course it was. That's very believable. Here's the point: Almost all of the people who saw him alive again gave their lives for what they saw. Now, people give their lives for bad and awful things. People gave their lives for Adolf Hitler, for goodness sake, but they believed it was true. These people gave their lives for Jesus because they saw him alive again. And Thomas, who is, I think it's a terrible misnomer, doubting Thomas. Thomas took the faith to India. Thomas is not the doubter. Thomas is us. He's me, and I suspect, he's you too.
Thomas says, I want to believe with every fibre of my being, but I can't. I wasn't here when he showed himself. I can't believe it. You guys have got it wrong. That would be me. That's humanity. And what is the response? The response from Jesus is, here are my wounds. Then what Thomas says is wonderful, because you know what? He doesn't write a book of theology. Thank God. He doesn't deconstruct the works of a German 19th century thinker. Thank God. He falls to his knees and says, My Lord, my God, my Lord. My.
I'll end with a story of how I believe the church must progress and proceed. Because we are in a state of crisis in the West, not in other parts of the world. They can't contain the number of people. The churches are bursting at the doors. There are so many people coming. But in the West, we are facing lots of problems. We're often so badly represented by Christians in the public square. I don't want to get political. But when I saw Franklin Graham at the Republican Convention, I died a bit inside, because that's not the Christianity I know, the organized goodness, the organized kindness that I see every day in my church. Not judging others but loving others. We need to make the church bigger.
At the end of the Second World War, a group of British soldiers were coming back, well, actually they were literally advancing after Normandy. It was several days after the invasion. It took a long time to complete the campaign. As they were moving forward, and they'd lost some of their friends over the years, they'd been together since 1941. And in a firefight, which they won, one of their friends was killed, but they had to keep going. The orders were quite strict, obviously, and they didn't know what to do. Then they saw in the distance a church steeple and the cross, and they carried him over to the church, knocked on the door, and in broken English and broken French, they said to the priest, “We'd like you to bury our friend.”
The priest said to them, “Was he a Roman Catholic?”
They looked at each other. “I don't know. Don't think so.”
And the priest said, “Look, forgive me, I can't bury him in a Catholic cemetery. I can't, I'm not allowed to, but I will bury him just outside the fence of the cemetery and I will pray for him and do him all the honour I can.”
They weren't happy, but it was the best they could get. And he was buried just outside the fence of the cemetery and off they went.
The war eventually ended, thank God. And as they were coming back with a lot of other men. They realized they weren't that far away from where their friend was buried. It was only about an hour away, and they thought, well, we can do it now. War's over. And they went over to the church, the five of them who were left, to see their friend. They went to the fence just outside where he was buried, and he was no longer there. He was no longer there. These were men who had seen war and violence, and they were heavily armed. They went and banged on the door. As the priest came, they shouted at him, “Where is he?”
The priest said, “He's here. Please, please, he's here.” And the priest took them into the Catholic cemetery. And at the very edge, inside, inside the fence, there was their friend, Barrett. And the priest said, “I made the church bigger.”
We have to witness, all of us, in whatever way we can, to the truth and the love and the joy and the justice and the peace and the patience and the forgiveness and the perfection of Jesus Christ in every way we can, every day that we can. We have to make the church bigger. We have to be great rebels after the greatest rebel of all, Jesus, in this marvelous permanent revolution of love. If we do that, then we are living life as a Christian. And if we live life as a Christian, we will, even if we're not always aware of it, change the entire world.