George Herbert (Mid-week Reflection)

George Herbert

Mid-week Reflection

Monday was the commemoration of George Herbert, Anglican poet, theologian, and parish priest, author of The Temple and The Country Parson.  Here is one of his poems: 

Love (III)
by George Herbert (1595-1633)
(from The Temple) 

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
 
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

“A guest,” I answer’d, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, the ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.”

Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”
“Truth, Lord, but I have marr’d them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”

“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”

“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

--Fr. Tony+ 

With Wild Beasts and Angels (Lent 1B)

With the Wild Beasts and Angels

First Sunday of Lent (Year B)
26 February 2012; 8 am Spoken Mass; 10 am Sung Mass
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon  

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.

Genesis 9:8-17; Psalm 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-13

 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’   And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.  (Mark 9:9-13)

The baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is one of the few events told in the Gospels that almost all biblical scholars and historians agree actually happened.  The story shows up in too many varied forms in too many differing early traditions to ignore.  And the various retellings and versions of the story show an acute embarrassment among some early Christians at the story of their sinless Lord and God seeking “baptism of repentance” from another religious teacher.  Such embarrassment makes it unlikely that early Christians made the story up. 

Mark’s story of Jesus’ baptism and temptation is short and sweet: Jesus comes to John and is baptized.  Coming up from the water, Jesus sees the heavens split apart and the spirit of God descends on him “like a dove.”  Then Jesus hears God’s voice, quoting the Psalms and prophets, “You are my son, this day I have fathered you. I love you, you make me happy.” Immediately, the Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness where he remains for forty days, tempted by Satan, living with the wild beasts, though “angels ministered to him.” 

What would receiving baptism from John have meant for Jesus and why would he have immediately thereafter gone to the desert to be alone with God?

John preaches in the wilderness of Judea, near the north of the Dead Sea. He is within a few kilometers of the community that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, and there are clear links between him and that community.

The Judaisms of the period all agreed that impurity both ritual and moral could be driven away by following the prescriptions of the Torah—usually to wash in pure water and wait until sundown. As a result, mikvehs, or ritual baths are common objects in the Jewish archaeological sites from that period.

A ritual bath (mikveh) from Khirbet Qumran. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls sect, with its dispute with the Temple leadership, believed that simply being born Jewish wasn’t enough to be part of God’s people.  You had to accept the right beliefs and practice the right rituals. They required a ritual washing in order to enter their exclusive community. Their rulebook says that this washing had to reflect a change of heart to be truly valid.

Khirbet (ruins of) Qumran, center; Wadi Qumran (site of the scrolls caves), foreground; Dead Sea  in distance.

Both John the Baptist and the Qumran covenanters fled to the desert to escape what they saw as the corruption and false religion of the Jerusalem elites.   The desert is where God met with his people. God meets Moses and purifies his people there as they wander for 40 years after they leave Egypt (Exodus 2:11—4:31).  God meets Elijah there (I Kings 19:1-18).  

John appears preaching what Mark and Luke call a “baptism of repentance unto the forgiveness of sins,” that is, “a washing showing your change of heart that results in your sins being set aside.” 

Why would a thirty-year old house builder from Nazareth be interested in this?  The Judean wilderness was a long way from Galilee for someone on foot.   Why would Jesus want to go to the Baptist, especially if he were not unduly burdened by a sense of guilt or sinfulness?  As a Jew, he would have been unable to avoid incurring ritual uncleanliness in the course of day-to-day life. But the regular washings prescribed by the Law would satisfy that. Why undergo John’s washing to signify a change of heart?

He was attracted to the Baptist’s message:  the Temple and political leadership are hopelessly corrupt and detached from God.  His baptism is something like what the Qumran covenanters practiced, but popularized and meant for all, not a hermetic ritual into an exclusive sect.  Masses of common people flock to Jordan for John’s baptism. 

Matthew and Luke give a fuller telling of the Baptist’s preaching: “Go and produce tangible evidence in your acts that you have indeed had a change of hearts.  If you are a soldier, don’t commit unnecessary violence and take advantage of people; if you are a tax revenue agent, only collect what is required and don’t skim the proceeds to line your own pocket.” 

The Baptist is preaching basic justice.  He is calling people to take God’s love of fairness personally, to make God’s will their own.  This personal involvement with God, this demand for social justice as evidence of our change of hearts--these are all elements that would remain part and parcel of Jesus’ own proclamation that the Kingship of God had arrived in our midst.

What would John the Baptist say today if we asked him to give examples in our society of tangible evidence of a change in our hearts. Would he ask us to stop walking past beggars without assisting? Would he insist that we stop paying less than living wages to those we employ?  Stop abusing spouses and children?  Looking down on those who differ from us?  Stop frequenting enterprises or buying goods and services based on the exploitation of, or the trafficking in, persons?

Jesus seeks baptism at John’s hand because he takes to heart John’s message of justice, personal responsibility, and relationship with God.   He is himself having a change of heart.  He is moving from one part of his life to another: from his private life with his family and friends, his assisting in the carpentry/house building business, to his public ministry.   

Jesus sees in John’s baptism a call to refocus, to reorient, to redirect his life. For him, the “fruit worthy of a change of heart” would be the living out of the task to which God was calling him. 

Despite the pressures on him in Nazareth to do the conventional, to follow the norm, to settle down, possibly start a family of his own and make something of himself, Jesus makes the long journey to see this Wildman of God in the Judean desert.   His neighbors in Nazareth think he has abandoned his Mother and siblings.  Yet Jesus in baptism hears the voice of God.  The result is clear in Jesus’ public preaching when, alone of the religious voices of the day, he calls God, “Father” and says He is above all a loving Father.    

This is why he must leave for the desert, where must be tested, “live with the wild beasts” and sort out things to find out what his identity revealed in baptism means. 

When Jesus later returns to Nazareth later, his Mother and siblings try to get him to come home and start acting normally again, because they think he has gone insane (Mark 3).  He is no longer the Jesus whom they had known and loved.  He now is clearly a man willing to give up everything for God’s reign to be made more clearly visible, willing to die if necessary. The time in the desert has left its mark.

Contemporary Ugandan theologian Emmanuel Katongole has written of the “‘rebel consciousness’ that is essential to Jesus’ gospel.”  He says, 

Wherever the gospel is preached, we must remember that its good news will make you crazy.  Jesus will put you at odds with the economic and political systems of our world.  This gospel will force you to act, interrupting the world as it is in ways that make even pious people indignant. 

Friends, we are not what God intended when he created us.  We need all the more to have a change of heart and manifest it in our actions.  We too need to seek in quietness our true baptismal identity, and God willing, have angels minister to us also as we struggle with the wild beasts.  May we, like Jesus, remain undeterred from the mission God sets us to, no matter how crazy this appears to those we love.

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Now is the Acceptable Day (Ash Wednesday homily)

Now is the Acceptable Day

Ash Wednesday
22 February 2012; 12:00 noon and 7:00 p.m. Said Mass

With Imposition of Ashes
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10;

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21  

We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,  "At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you."  See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!  (2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:2) 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

Saint Augustine is famously said to have prayed, “Give me chastity Lord, but not yet.” 

Repentance is not a pleasant thing.  It is particularly not pleasant if we have not intention of amending our lives.  In fact, it is not even repentance. 

To pray God for forgiveness without a sincere desire to amend one’s life, without a sincere desire to abandon sin, is like praying God to heal us without healing us.  It makes no sense. 

In the epistle today, St. Paul tells the Corinthians and tells us, “We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. … Do not accept the grace of God in vain. For God says (roughly quoting Isaiah 49:8),  "At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you."  See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”  (2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:2) 

Reconciliation is what repentance is all about.  Being acceptable or finding favor and grace is what it is all about.  Being saved from ourselves is what it is all about.  

The Christian Church established long ago the period of Lent, the preparation for Holy Week and Easter, as a period of penance and contrition.  We put away the “Alleluias” and overly joyous celebration.  Just as we imposed ashes today, throughout Lent we impose disciplines on ourselves, giving up meat, sweets, coffee, or fats, or adding additional service and devotions.   The goal is to help us recognize where we fall short, and, in the words of the prayer book, “worthily lament our sins.” 

As the Gospel reading and the alternate Hebrew Scripture reading from Isaiah say, this is not for show, not to impress others, not to impress ourselves.  This is to help us connect to God. 

God is a great sea of Mercy, a robust and powerful spring of grace:  undeserved, one-way, love and acceptance.   Jesus’ death for us on the cross and victory over the powers of darkness through God raising him from  death and hell is the way that God reaches out to us in love. 

Let us not accept the grace of God in vain.  Let us identify our failings, be contrite, turn to God and ask for help, and, God helping, amend our lives. 

For today is the day of acceptance, the day of favor, and the day of salvation.  Let us not procrastinate or delay. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.  

Ash Wednesday (mid-week reflection)

Ash Wednesday

Today, Ash Wednesday, is the beginning of the season of Lent.   On this day, we have priests impose ashes on our foreheads in the sign of the cross as a sign of penance.  The Book of Common Prayer's Collect, or Prayer for the Day, for Ash Wednesday is as follows: 

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Collect provides succinctly the theology and belief that must lie behind any authentic practice of the Lenten Fast.  

Most of us, like T.S. Eliot in his poem "Ash Wednesday," dare not hope to reform or change: 

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope

Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope

I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)

But as the Collect says clearly, our hope for amendment and closer communion with God, our hope for hope itself lies here:  God does not hate anything that He has made.  No matter how far we are from what God intends, no matter how much we have distorted the image of God that God placed in us in creating us, no matter how twisted we have become and what bad use we have put to God's gifts, God forgives and heals.  But this grace can be accepted by us only if we are sorry for our misdoings, and the start of such sorrow lies sometimes merely in only being desirous of being sorry for our misdoings.   This provides God something He can grab onto as he struggles with us, works with us, forgives us, and heals us. 

The journey we set out on in Lent is a path on which we let that desire work in our hearts and become sorrow for our misdoings.   We let the silly disciplines we impose on ourselves ("no meat," "no alcohol," "no sweets,") make us uncomfortable enough that we pay more attention to things we usually try to ignore.

It is God who does the real work in Lent-- He creates in us new hearts and enables us to have the right feelings about our failings ("worthily lamenting our sins").    As we begin this journey, let us remember the words spoken to Everyman and Everywoman in the story of the defection of humanity in Genesis 2-3, spoken as we were expelled--through our fault, not God's--from the Garden of Delight where we are what God intended:  "From dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." 

--Fr. Tony+

Moment of Clarity (Transfiguration Sunday)

A Moment of Clarity

Last Sunday of Epiphany (Year B)
19 February 2012; 8 am Spoken Mass; 10 am Sung Mass

Transfiguration Sunday
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon  

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9 

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.  As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. (Mark 9:2-9)

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.

Here in Ashland, we have great light.  After a day of working on this homily on Monday, I found myself driving with Elena over to the Y for an evening workout.  As we came across Ashland Street, we looked up to the East.  The late afternoon sun fell on Grizzlie Peak, wrapped in fog, appearing to us as fluffy white clouds hugging the cedars and ridges. Lit by the light reflected back up from the snow on the ground up there, the clouds suddenly glowed brightly, even brilliantly, as if hiding a great light up on the Mountain.  The magical moment gave me a very vivid visual image in my mind to work with as I struggled with this text on the transfiguration of Christ up on Mount Tabor. 

All of today’s readings are about light or sight:  Elisha must see Elijah taken up into heaven in order to have a double dose of his spirit, Paul in 2 Corinthians says that “the god of this world” has blinded “the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light,” while God has given to believers “the knowledge of the brightness of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the mountain, where they see Christ change shapes (“metamorphosed”), burst into brilliant light, and then appear alongside Moses and Elijah.

What Paul calls the “brightness of God in the face of Jesus” is what the story of the Transfiguration is about:  the steady, unchanging sum of brightness around the Deity.  Jesus' transfiguration is a brief glimpse of the true state of affairs, normally hidden from our sight.  

Transfiguration Sunday ends the season of Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.  In a very real way, the scene here is what we call in popular parlance an epiphany, a moment of clarity when all of a sudden we see things as they really are. 

We all have seen such a moment of clarity, both good and bad.  It is when you realize you have found the love of your life.  It is when a person in discernment comes to know what it is that God is calling her to.  It is when you suddenly are sure what your passion in life or work is.  It is what makes a destructive drunk "hit bottom" and begin to reach out for help.  It is when you realize you are in a destructive relationship and need to break it off.  It is when a diagnostician suddenly puts together all the symptoms, pathology, and life details of the patient and intuitively knows what disease she is dealing with.  It is when a scientist suddenly recognizes the pattern and comes up with a new hypothesis or theory.  It is when, of a sudden, we know that we love and trust God. 

But this epiphany to Peter and his companions stretches his mind a bit beyond what it is ready to receive.  His reaction to this revelation of Jesus’ true glory shows he has misunderstood.  Seeing the two great icons of the Jewish tradition before him alongside Jesus—Moses for the Law and Elijah for the Prophets, he calls Jesus “Rabbi” and says it is a good thing that these figures have come to endorse the authority of Jesus.  He suggests that he build three Succoth—temporary shelters—in their honor.  

Succoth (tabernacles, or booths) were set up for the duration of the major harvest festival.  They stood for the tents of Israel during the 40 years of wandering in the desert while being fed on the Manna, the bread from Heaven, and symbolized human reliance on God, an appropriate sentiment for a harvest festival.  

The prophet Zechariah had said that when the Messiah came, all the nations of the earth would go in pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Succoth Festival and build such Booths as commanded by Moses.  God would punish any nation not doing by withholding the rain and sending drought, the punishment that Elijah had famously brought on King Ahab for three years (Zech 14:16-18; Exod 23:16; 34:22; 2 Kings 17).  

Seeing Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Peter wants to build small shrines commemorating the event that showed that Jesus was yet another great figure in the history of the religion of the Jews, perhaps even the Messiah who would force all Gentiles to become Jews by invoking Elijah’s curse of drought.  But the narrator comments, “He didn’t know what he was saying. He was scared witless, after all.” 
 

The glory of God reflecting in the face of Jesus is a revolutionary fact:  it challenges Peter's assumptions.  He is confuses things, and thinks somehow that Jesus is getting his authority or endorsement from the appearance of the ancient prophets.  

But God intervenes and sets things straight.  A light-filled cloud appears and covers everything. A voice identifies Jesus as the first thing, the real item. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to what he says!’   The cloud disappears, and all that remains is Jesus himself.  Moses and Elijah are not longer around. 

The transfiguration is a moment of sudden clarity for the disciples that they don’t fully “get” until after the resurrection: that the “glory of God is shining in the face of Jesus,” that, in the words of John’s Gospel, “Whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father.” 

Just before the verses we read today in 2 Corinthians, St. Paul says that Christ is the image of God, and that we all, beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ, “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). 

How is it that we can "gaze upon the glory" of our Lord?   How can we “listen to what he says” rather than build tents on the hillside, memorials to our own prior conceptions? 

It is important to reflect on our Lord and Savior often and regularly.  That is why daily prayer and scripture reading is an essential part of any Christian’s effective spiritual discipline.  Regular Church attendance helps, but in gazing upon the Lord's glory, we must be the Church, not simply attend Church.  It is not just a passive act of admiration.  Following Jesus in doing corporeal acts of mercy, in serving our fellows, in standing with the outcast, the downtrodden, and the sick--these give us an experience of who Jesus is and what he does. 

Given the stresses of life, it is easy to lose heart.  It is easy to believe that people cannot change.  But the miracle and mystery of our faith is this—we can change because God can change us.  In the Apostles’ Creed we affirm that we believe in “the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”  This makes no sense at all if you don’t believe that God is at work transforming us, and that we shall be changed. 

Just as God sent that shining cloud to drive away Peter’s silly preconceptions and plans, God works with us as we look into the glorious face of Jesus and try to hear his voice. 

The faith that we are being changed from one glory to another in the direction of the image of Jesus is reflected in the classic line from African-American preaching quoted often by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Lord, I know I ain't what I outta be.  And I know I ain't what I'm gonna be.  But thank God Almighty, I ain't what I was!"

Such change is sometimes hard, so hard that at times we do not know whether we will be able to bear it.  At other times it is seems easy as taking off a heavy winter coat in the summer heat.  

When Paul says this turns us into "the image of Christ" he is not saying it removes our individuality.  What he describes is a transformation into our true selves, the individual people God intended when He created each of us, with all that makes us who we are, but absent the brokenness that we so often mistake for what makes us who we are. 

One of the greatest foundation stones of my personal faith is the experience of seeing transformed brothers and sisters around us, and seeing ourselves over the years as God works with us and changes us.  It doesn’t mean we are perfect, only that God is making progress in finishing his creation in us.

Charles Wesley in one of his hymns summed it up this way--

Finish then, thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee:
Changed from glory into glory,
'Till in heaven we take our place.
'Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.  

It is not just in heaven when all of God's creation is done that this happens.  As we are transformed here and now, quickly or slowly, it makes us look around us in amazement of these tokens of God's love and then gaze all the more, "lost in wonder, love, and praise," on the author and pioneer of it all. 

As we look upon Christ's glory, may God so work with us all and change us.   

 In the name of Christ, Amen.

Bless Me For I Have Sinned (Mid-week Meditation)

“Bless Me, for I have Sinned” 

Mid-Week Meditation

16 February 2012 

“Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven,

               and whose sin is put away!

Happy are they to whom the Lord imputes no guilt,

               and in whose spirit there is no guile!

While I held my tongue, my bones withered away,

               because of my groaning all day long.

For your hand was heavy upon me day and night;

               my moisture was dried up as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,

               and did not conceal my guilt.

I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.’

               Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin.” (Psalm 32: 1-6)

Admission of fault and expression of remorse for our wrongdoings are part of a healthy process of amendment of life.   Such acts of confession and contrition have always been seen as a necessary step in repentance and helping us to find peace with each other and within ourselves. That is why we have a general confession of sin in almost all of our worship, both Morning and Evening Prayer offices and the Holy Eucharist. 

In addition to General Public Confession and our private confessions to God in our prayers, the Prayer Book (pp. 446-452) provides for a private confession of sin between a penitent and “a discreet priest.”  The Reconciliation of a Penitent is an ancient ritual.  Though not one of the two Sacraments specifically instituted as such by our Lord while he lived (Baptism and Eucharist), Reconciliation (often just called “Confession”) is counted in Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church as one of the Sacraments of the Church (along with Confirmation, Holy Matrimony, Anointing of the Ill, and Holy Orders).  

 

Due to countless images in movies from the rite as practiced in the Roman use, when we hear “confession,” we often picture a special booth with a priest on one side of the screen and the penitent on the other.  But in the Episcopal Church, the rite takes place either in the church (usually near the altar rail) or the clergy's office.   We recognize that it serves as an aid in personal repentance and amendment of life.  It helps us be more honest, less inclined to tell God how we think our failings should be understood, as we might if praying alone or confessing generally in public.  It allows for pastoral counseling and some spiritual direction.   Because we do not see confession as a one-size-fits-all requirement, for us “All may.  None must.  Some should.” That is, we welcome and encourage all to confess as they feel the need, we require no one to do so, and we recognize that some people really ought to avail themselves of this sacrament since it is such a powerful tool in helping us forgive ourselves for past mistakes and find reconciliation. 

Since private confession to a priest is not compulsory for us, and since it takes time and effort, and, quite frankly, often provokes embarrassment in us as we “fess up” in front of another person, most Episcopalians never bother to seek the sacrament unless they attend an Anglo-Catholic Parish.   I think this is worth a second look for Broad Church Episcopalians (and even Low Church Episcopalians) as the centuries long practice of confessing one's sins to God in the presence of a priest who can then pronounce absolution remains a powerful experience, and very helpful in putting an end to past wrongs.   I have found in my own life that it is an important way to make a break with past sins.   This is why as your rector and pastor, I am recommending it as part of our Lenten discipline and preparation for Easter.

I am reserving most of Shrove Tuesday (February 21) to hear confessions so that you might be able to go to Ash Wednesday services the next day with a sense of a new and fresh start.  Appointments can be made by calling the Trinity Parish Office.  I always am available to hear confession upon request.

If you have never done this and are nervous, don’t worry.  There are two rites you can choose from, and both are simple and easy, and generally only take 5-10 minutes.  I will guide you through it if that makes you feel more comfortable.  And rest assured that anything you say in this context is fully confidential, never to be repeated or referred to again.  It is between you and your God.   

In confession we unload our baggage, and dump the toxic waste we have been carrying around with us.  Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are loaded down and exhausted with a heavy a burden.  Take my yoke upon you and become my students.  I am gentle and kind and you will find a complete rest.  For my yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is so light you’ll think it nothing at all” (Matthew 11:28-30).   Confess your sins and God will separate you as from them as far as the east is from the west. Confess them in the presence of another, expressing true repentance and amendment of life and you will find it easier to walk away from that past.  You won’t want to go back to the toxic waste you have unloaded.  And you will find that Jesus’ burden is light indeed. 

--Father Tony+

His Stomach Turned (Epiphany 6B)

His Stomach Turned

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Year B)
12 February 2012; Single 9 am Sung Mass

(Followed by annual Parish Meeting)
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45

A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!" Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, "See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them." But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:40-45)

 

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen. 

A few years ago, I was serving as altar assistant and cantor for Wednesday noon services at a small Church in Washington DC.  Most of the people who came were employees from the nearby Department of State.  But I remember one member of the congregation very graphically.  He was clearly disabled by mental illness: he often was unable to care for his basic hygiene needs, and unwilling to seek help.  Most of the other worshippers clustered on the other side of the church away from him, because, frankly, his behavior was bizarre and he smelled very bad.  One priest began to get help for the man’s hygienic and then his medical needs.  The man became belligerent and drew away.  Another priest used later the sacrament as a reward to encourage the man to change his behaviors, with some good results.  He began to take his meds and make his talk-therapy appointments.  

In this, I learnt an important thing.   We in the Church are an odd mix of misfits and walking-wounded.  Those of us most thankful for the grace God has shown us are the most engaged with those still suffering, the most patient with the debasements of others.   They also tend to be the least sentimental, and the least willing to make things worse by engaging in enabling behavior that just delays recovery. 

In today’s Gospel reading, one of the “living dead” appears:  a leper.  He begs to be made clean.

Leprosy in the Bible is probably not merely Hansen’s disease, the highly communicable and, until antibiotics were discovered, hopelessly disfiguring and fatal disease that we call leprosy. In the Bible, it almost certainly includes any fungal or viral disease of the skin like ringworm or athlete’s foot.  Leprosy was highly polluting in terms of ritual impurity, and was to be avoided at all costs for this reason. It was a source of “dirt,” disgusting filth, and was contagiously contaminating.

Lepers were beyond the pale of society.  They lived apart from family, community, or village.  They had to warn others they were even approaching: true pariahs, untouchables.  No one wanted to see them, hear them, or even know of them. 

Jesus as a practicing Jew, believed that the purity rules were God’s commandments.  These included the laws that allowed for lepers, once their symptoms disappeared, to be ritually purged of uncleanness through a small sacrifice, a ritual washing, and a declaration of cleanness by a priest in the Temple. 

The leper says to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”    He kneels, and begs Jesus to cure him and remove the ritual uncleanness. 

Jesus’ is deeply moved in reaction.  But the text here is somewhat unclear.  Some manuscripts say Jesus is angry or indignant, presumably at the sight of a person whose situation sums up what is wrong with the world.  Other copies say simply that “his stomach turned.”  The usual translation follows the most common Koine Greek sense of the word and takes this as meaning, “his stomach turned with pity.”  But the original core meaning of the word here in this context suggests another possibility:  “his stomach turned in disgust.”

The sense would be, “Although Jesus’ stomach was turning in disgust, he stretched forth his hand and said to the man, “I do so choose.  Be made clean!”” 

He heals the man and declares him clean, in one act overthrowing all the claims of the Temple establishment and righteous interpreters of the Law.  They claimed that salvation and purity were found only through the orthodox, authoritative religious Temple brand. 

To calm things a bit and keep a lid on the story of miracle-working that had been attracting huge audiences but no congregations, Jesus tells the man to go through the motions of the Law to reclaim legal purity.  But he still has overturned the claims of the Temple rites. 

“Though his stomach was turning, Jesus said, ‘I do so choose. Be healed.’”

Jesus is revolted by the leper.  His religion tells him the man is untouchable.  The commandments of his God tell him that the man is impure, filthy, something to be fled.  Like the man in my old Wednesday parish, the leper was filthy and stank.  He had no business coming near the worship of the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

But for Jesus, mercy and humanity were always more important than purity.  The sufferer in front of him trumped all the sub-clauses of God’s Law. He held his nose, as it were, and still reached out and hugged the smelly wretch. 

This really marks just how radical Jesus was. The religion of the day declared, with the full authority of scripture literally cited and interpreted through authoritative tradition, that impurity was contagious. It spread from the unclean to the clean. People who want to please God must avoid it, lest they commit sacrilege against the Temple of God, the land, and risk God’s wrath.

Despite this, Jesus knew that love and goodness were more contagious than impurity, because of who God was—a loving parent who would always give the child the best food, a wonderful master of the weather who gave the blessings of rain and sunshine to righteous and wicked alike, a merciful friend who would get up in the middle of the night for a friend just because he was knocking at the door.  This is what Jesus preached, and what Jesus lived.  He spent most of his time with the dregs of society:  drunks, traitors, and whores.  “It is the ill who need a physician,” he would said, “not the well.” 

“Though his stomach was turning, Jesus said, ‘I do so choose. Be healed.’”

Despite his revulsion, Jesus chooses to heal the man, even to touch him in the process. 

Love for us Christians is not a condition of the feelings.  It is a state of the will, a choice made by the one who loves.  It is the disposition to serve, help, forgive, and engage for the good of the beloved, whether kindly or fiercely. 

Here in Ashland, land of New Age and Spiritual-but-Not-Religious, we often hear it said, “Trust your feelings.”

I have to say, with some embarrassment, that whenever I hear that, I cringe. 

This is not because I have buried my feelings, cut off emotion, and learned the rigorous discipline of logic and data.  It is because in my experience, feelings can be very dangerous guides to thought and action. 

I have seen far too many families ruined, lives unhinged, marriages and partnerships destroyed, and people put in jail because they were “following their feelings.” 

As a result, whenever I see the first Star Wars movie, when the ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi comes to Luke Skywalker and tells him, “Luke, trust your feelings,” I want to jump out of my chair, and yell, “NO, LUKE!  DO NOT TRUST YOUR FEELINGS.  THEY ARE VERY, VERY DANGEROUS!” 

The adviceto trust feelings is good, as far as it goes.  We process a lot of material at a subconscious level, and our gut intuition sometimes is a very valuable—even a life-saving—factor in crisis situations.  And being authentically in touch with our emotions and able to sort our good ones and not-so-good ones is a crucial skill. 

But the fact is, none of us is perfect, and none of us have perfectly trained consciences or feelings.  We need to learn when and how to trust our feelings to not be misled by them.  And this is done in community.  It is what spiritual direction and retreats is about.  It is what Church is about.  It is what going to group is about—whether therapy or support group, or 12-Step meeting.  One of the things we first learn is how important our feelings are—not as signs of the truth of the world and what we should do, but rather as indicators about what is going on inside of us and of danger areas for us. 

We need never think that our uncleanness is a barrier keeping us from Jesus. We need not fear that a disability we may have can keep us from the love of Jesus.   What keeps us from Jesus is our fear itself. Our fear may make us so nervous that we might not, like this leper, run to Jesus and kneel before him and beg him to heal us. We need to reach out to Jesus and beg him to heal us. 

And then, in thankfulness for his grace, we follow Jesus.  The fact that our stomach may turn, whether in disgust, fear, or trepidation, when we are called upon to do some service of one kind or another, or help a person particularly offensive to us, is not a sign that Jesus is not calling us.  It is a sign perhaps that He is calling us beyond our comfort zone to a good that we could not have aspired to ourselves. 

Disfiguring skin disease is unpleasant.  Smelly and messy lack of hygiene is gross.  But this is what we are called at times to embrace.  And what about HIV/AIDS?  Or nasty, ugly, just plain mean mental illness? Drug or alcohol addiction?  The madness and dementia of old age? 

Like Jesus, we need to choose to heal, to reach out and touch the leper, to choose to welcome the smelly and crazy guest.  This act of choice is what we call love.  And it is where God intersects with human life. 

May we so serve and follow God’s call. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.