Anointed for what?

Introduction

(All are sent…)

I am grateful to my Capuchin professors for the sound training they gave me in the classical languages of Latin and Greek. It gives me a taste for words. Take the Latin word for “send.” It is “mitto, mittere, missus sum.” You can hear the word “mission” in “missus sum”? The Christian church is a missionary church, i.e. it is sent. Jesus chose twelve apostles and sent them forth on mission (Lk 9:1). Jesus chose twenty-four disciples and sent them forth on mission (Lk 10:1).

He has sent not only the twelve, not only the twenty-four, but all of us as well on mission. The rite of our baptism anoints us; sets us aside for mission. And that mission injunction of our baptism is always sounded again at the conclusion of every mass. The “Ite, Missa est,” “Go forth, you’re sent; the mass is ended” is not simply some empty permission to peel out of church and get home in time for the game. It is the recurring summons again of our baptismal anointing for mission.

And the one, who sent the twelve and the twenty-four and all of us, is himself also sent: Christian theology of the Trinity has the Father sending the Son on mission into the world. Jesus says to the apostles, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you…”(Jn 20:21). Theology also has the Father and the Son sending the Holy Spirit on mission into the world. In the creed we say, “We believe in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son…”, who has been sent by the Father and the Son.

Sent for what…

So we have all been anointed and set aside for mission. What’s not so obvious is the nature of the mission we’ve been sent on. The history of the Christian Church and of Christians shows that we have been, and continue to be, confused and even at times down right wrong about what the mission is. There is a simple answer: our mission is, our mission can only be, our mission should only be, nothing more nor less than the very same mission as Christ’s. But what is the mission of Christ?

What was he anointed for?

Anointed for moralism?

Was he anointed and set aside for a mission of moralism, especially of sexual moralism. That’s an exaggeration which makes not “justice, compassion, and honesty” but sex to be the height of all morality or the lowest depth of all immorality? If Jesus was anointed to a mission of sexual moralism, he didn’t do a very good job of it. Certainly not when he showed himself forgiving and loving toward the woman caught in adultery, but very firm and very explicit with the hypocrites who caught her in this so-called depth of immorality. “The one among you has no sexual escapade of your own to hide,” he challenges them, “you throw the first stone”(Jn 8:1-12).

<<Nor did Jesus do a good job at sexual moralism when he berated the chief priests and the elders in the temple, saying, “I tell you, that when the saints go marching in, the tax collectors and the prostitutes will be way ahead of you people” (Mt 21:32).>> Jesus was not anointed for a mission of sexual moralism or any other kind of moralism. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with sexual morality, but it simply is not the mission, though the churches and Christians often make it the mission.

During the Monica Lewinsky Saga (which raised its ugly head hopefully for the last time last Friday), the hot pursuit of the sexual escapades of a wayward President preoccupied the whole nation, and distracted its attention and energy for a good year and a half. That is rightly labeled “distraction morality.” Jesus bristles with anger at distraction morality: “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees. You are preoccupied with scrupulously paying tithes on the mint, cumin, and dill in your gardens, but all the while you distract yourselves from the weightier matters of the Law, like justice, compassion, and honesty” (Mt.23:23).

Anointed for legalism?

Second question: Was Jesus anointed and set aside for a mission of legalism, for a mission of law and order, or rather of laws and order? The poor Jew of old had the Law of Moses, which wasn’t a law (singular) at all but rather an immense accretion of 613 majors laws (plural), plus countless minor laws. The religious leaders were constantly nagging the people and Jesus about the observance of this huge pile of rules and regulations: “How come your disciples don’t observe the law to carefully wash their hands before they eat?” (Mt 15:1-2). “How come you and your followers don’t observe the regulation to carefully wash everything that comes from the market place?” (Mk 4:4). “How come you don’t observe the right manner of washing cups, bowls, copper kettles, and dining couches ?” (Mk 7:4). “How come you and your followers violate Sabbath law by picking grain to eat on the Sabbath?” (Mk 2:23-28).

We of the New Testament have our own litany: “How come you omitted the creed at Mass? How come you changed the words of consecration? How come you don’t genuflect after each consecration? How come we don’t say Mass in Latin? How come we take Communion in the hand? How come nuns don’t look like nuns? How come women are allowed in the sanctuary?”

If Jesus was anointed to a mission of legalism, again he didn’t do a very good job of it. Count the number of times Jesus cries out, “Woe to you lawyers, you people who quote the law for us.” Jesus whittled away at the mountain of laws. When he cures a woman on the Sabbath, who was sick for 18 years, bent over and not able to stand up straight, they ask him “How come?” He replies: “If you can lead your ox to water or pull your ox out of a ditch on the Sabbath, then I on the Sabbath can cure this daughter of Abraham afflicted for 18 years” (Lk 10:13-17).

<<He whittled away at the 613 laws and pared them down to only two laws: one great law for loving God and another great law for loving neighbor. And then he nailed the two together and made them one: “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with thy whole heart, soul, and mind, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets stem from these two commandments made one“ (Mt 22:40). Not 613 laws, not even 2 laws, just 1 law.>>

<<A friend, member of the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod, recently told me that when his father died, he asked the pastor whether a friend of his, an Anglican, could be the vocalist at the funeral. The answer was: “Sorry, we have a law, and that law says, ‘Non-Lutherans may not participate with Lutherans.’” We Catholics too have had rules and regulations about participation.>>

Jesus was not anointed to a mission of legalism. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with law and order, or rather with laws and order, but that is not the mission, though the churches and Christians, often make it the mission. Legalism also is “distraction morality,” and Jesus bristles with anger at it: “Woe to you Pharisees and lawyers,you legal people. You are preoccupied with the scrupulous washing of pots, pans, copper kettles, and dining couches, or with the perfect observance of the Sabbath, or with rules and regulations about participation, “but all the while you distract yourselves from the weightier matters of the Law, like justice, compassion, and honesty” (Mt.23:23).

Anointed for orthodoxism?

You know, sometimes you just have to make up your own word, because this poor English language of our (with only a few million words to it) is deficient. For the third question we want to ask, I had to do just that: Was Jesus anointed to a mission of orthodoxism? That’s the new word; the computer went red on it! Orthodoxism: an exaggerated importance placed on orthodoxy, on correct teaching. Orthodoxism: a doctrinaire approach to religion; an exaggerated importance placed upon having and giving the right answers in religion. Was Christ anointed for that?

Right answers aren’t all the great. When Jesus asks the Apostles who do they say he is, Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). That indeed was the right answer, and Jesus calls Peter “blessed” for it. But immediately after that great right answer of Peter’s, Jesus tells him he must suffer and died, and Peter exclaims, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” That angers Jesus who now calls Peter “Satan”: “Shame on you, Satan, for thinking the way humans think and not the way God thinks” (Mt 16:23). Peter, the first Pope, had the orthodox answer about Jesus of Nazareth, but he didn’t know what it meant. Right answers aren’t all the great.

<<Orthodoxism, the literally hot pursuit of orthodoxy, stoked up the fires of the Inquisition which wrote some of the darkest pages of church history. That hot pursuit of the right answer burnt St. Joan of Arc at the stake for being a heretic, for giving the wrong answer. As the bones of that holy maiden were reduced to ashes so also was the church’s credibility.>>

In the 16^th century, in Germany (the birthplace of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation) the Reformers had finally laid hold of the absolutely right answer about Jesus of Nazareth and about the whole process of justification (i.e. that process where by we become pleasing to God): “Everyone becomes pleasing to God only through the shed blood of Jesus of Nazareth, and not through anyone’s good works.” Or to use the battle cry of the Reformation: “We are saved by grace and not by good works.” That one supreme right answer was the “Gem of the Reformation.” But what good was it? We remember because we can never forget that that so-called Christian nation, in possession of its great “Reformation Gem,” hosted the Holocaust which incinerated six million human beings.

<<Right answers aren’t all that great. In fact, every now and then, one of them can turn out to be wrong, deadly wrong. Recall that minister of the extreme religious right which brooks no tolerance except for “extremely right” answers. At Mat Shepard’s funeral he carried a sign which read: “God hates fags.” One of his cohorts carried another sign, and it read: “God buries fags in hell.” Oh how deadly right that is!”

Jesus was not anointed to a mission of orthodoxism. Again, obviously there’s nothing wrong with orthodoxy, with correct teaching. But it is not the mssion. Like sexual moralism or picky legalism, orthodoxism also is “distraction morality,” and Jesus bristles with anger at it: “Woe to you with your preoccupation concerning right answers and correct teaching. In your hot pursuit of heresy and heretics, “you distract yourself from the weightier matters of the Law like justice, compassion, and honesty.”

Conclusion

(fixed eyes)

If Jesus wasn’t anointed for moralism or legalism or orthodoxism, then for what was he anointed and sent? For what is the church anointed and sent? For what are we anointed and sent? Here, we must admit, the right answer is absolutely important.

Jesus is in his home-town. It’s the Sabbath. He goes to the synagogue. He does one of the readings. He opens the scroll and reads from the Prophet Isaiah, 62th chapter, verses 1-2:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has anointed me to console the broken-hearted.

He has anointed me to proclaim freedom

for those unjustly imprisoned.

He has anointed me to open the eyes of the blind.

He has anointed me to lift up the down-trodden.

(Lk 4:14-21)

That’s the anointing and that’s the mission.

Conclusion

(fixed eyes)

Jesus finished reading. He rolled up the scroll. He gave it back to the attendant. He sat down. The next verse says, “And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him” (Kg James). “And they gazed upon him intently” (Living Bible). “Every eye in the synagogue was fixed upon him” (Philipps). (Lk 4:20)

When the mission is moralism or legalism or orthodoxism, the eyes of most will be fixed upon their watches! “Ho-hum” infests many Sunday assemblies. When the mission is proclaimed to be about hard-working poor people, or about those unjustly imprisoned, or about the broken-hearted and down-trodden, or about the blind and the sick -- that will indeed make some people very very happy, but it will also make some people very very angry (because such mission is entirely politically incorrect). But congregation happy or angry, this much is for sure: the eyes of both will not be fixed on their watches.