Thursday, November 29, 2012

Advent (Midweek Message)


Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message—November 28, 2012
A Note on Advent

The new Christian year starts on November 30, Saint Andrew’s Day, because of the story where Andrew and John become the first disciples and Andrew introduces his brother Simon Peter to Jesus (John 1:35-40). In the Eastern tradition, Andrew is often called “the first-called (protokletos)”of the apostles.  The Sunday on or nearest St. Andrew’s Day is the first Sunday of Advent, effectively four Sundays before Christmas.  That means Advent starts this Sunday. 

Advent is the season when we look forward to the coming of Christ, both long ago and still to arrive.  It is a penitential season, like Lent, where we prepare for the great feasts and celebrations of our faith through introspection, repentance, and trying to amend our lives.  Its liturgical color is usually, like Lent, Violet, or, in the Sarum use of England’s Salisbury Cathedral, Marian Blue, since the season celebrates the Blessed Virgin's acceptance of God's plans to become incarnate through her.  Both seasons are marked with one “Rose Sunday.”  (Fourth Lent is Laetare “lighten up” or refreshment Sunday; third Advent is Gaudete “Rejoice” Sunday, marked by a pink candle in the otherwise violet or blue Advent Wreath.)  

 
Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer wrote the following collect and placed it in the first English Book of Common Prayer (1549) for the first Sunday of Advent: 

“Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

From 1662 on, prayer books have given the instruction that it be said daily throughout the entire Advent Season.  It is based on the epistle for the First Sunday of Advent, Romans 13:8-14:

“… The commandments …  are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself."  Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the Law.  And do this, because you recognize what time it is in which we live. The hour has come for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first came to faith.  The night is nearly over; day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light … [C]lothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how to gratify the raging desires of the you that resists God” (my translation).

Paul here counsels us to amend our lives.  Importantly he says we do not need to worry about rules or points of purity in and of themselves.  Rather, he says, we simply need to show love to each other and all the rest will take care of itself. 

He uses the graphic image of waking up in the morning and putting on clothes for the new day to describe why showing love and acting in love it is so important.  He likens the dawning of a new day to the future coming of Jesus in glory:  “Night is nearly over.  Day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.” 

Twilight is a curious state—part day, part night.  It can signal the onset of night, or precede the breaking of day.   Paul wants us to be sure that we look at the mixed signals around us and realize that God is at work and things are going to get better, not worse.  It is going to get lighter, not darker. 

He uses the image of all night parties that will surely cause regret and headaches the next morning to describe such “deeds of darkness,” that is, actions that are symptomatic of this messed up world. 

 “Wake up,” he says, “and put away this age’s abusive ways, and put on new clothes for the new day.”  He calls these an “armor of light” as if to say that the clothes we put on for the new day will serve as a hedge or protection against the darkness of the current age, adding, “Put on as your new clothes Jesus Christ himself.” 

Beating ourselves into submission and forcing ourselves to follow rules against “works of darkness” is a recipe for unhappiness and tension—the very kind of tension that leads us to feel compelled to engage in works of darkness.  “Clothing ourselves in Christ” brings us to the light more and more, and actually empowers us to show love so bad behaviors will of themselves drop off and cease. 

Paul is talking about putting the example of Christ before our eyes, putting gratitude for what he has done for us in our hearts.  A heart full of gratitude has little room for the selfishness that generates unjust, hurtful, abusive, and wanton acts. 



As part of our parish observance of Advent and preparation for Christmas, we will be handing out small dice at services on Sunday as you leave the Church, one for each household.   Each side has written upon it something to refrain for the day:  but not things like meat, sweets, or alcohol or specific sins.   It suggests that we refrain from things that decrease the love in our lives, things like anger, criticism, or negativity. We suggest that we keep the die by our home advent wreaths, and each of us throw the die each day and work on that issue. 

And remember to say the Advent Collect each day in your prayers. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Transparent World (Midweek Message)


Transparent World 
Father Tony’s Midweek Message
November 21, 2012

People who say that they somehow do not believe in God usually mean they do not believe in a guy (always a male, usually with a white beard) “out there” somewhere who interferes on occasion with matters and demands our love and worship.  (“He is, after all, a ‘jealous’ one, he!”)  This is, however, a petty caricature of the living, creating Ground of Being and Love Itself.  God is not “out there” somewhere.  God is beneath and behind all.  Luke describes St. Paul speaking to the Athenians and saying of God “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). 

This is an important idea, since otherwise, God is diminished and we are left with reducing the object of our worship to a kind of supernatural wacky great uncle or an imaginary friend with super powers.  Such a god is not really God, but a sort of demiurge or daemon.  When we feel hurt or anguish, it is easy to feel betrayed by such a Deity.  God thus diminished is far removed from the good we see all about us, all of which comes from God directly. 

“Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows [God’s] self everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that He is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without [God].  It's impossible. It's simply impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.”  --Thomas Merton (in remarks to monastic novices).  



Faith is trust in this Ground of Being, who is not less than personal.  Indeed, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity teaches us that God is more than personal, and includes the social as well.   

I think that gratitude is the emotion that best connects us with God.  Trust is a close second.  Both of these are in fact expressions of love.  And God is, in fact, Love Itself. Love, trust, and gratitude give us eyes to see God. 

In prayer and meditation, try to reflect on the Beauty of God’s Holiness while feeling this love.  It helps.    Peace and Grace,   Fr. Tony+

Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Great Uncovering (Proper 28B)



“The Great Uncovering”
18 November 2012
Proper 28B
Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

When I was in second grade, my teacher suggested to my mother that I see an optometrist.  I was always sitting way too close to the blackboard and burying my face in any book I was reading.  She suspected I was near-sighted and needed eyeglasses.  I was pretty suspicious.  I had once put on my mother’s glasses; they just made things look blurry and unrecognizable.   My teacher, however, was right.  When I first left the optometrist’s office with my new thick-lensed horned-rimmed glasses on, I was stunned.  There, on all the trees across the street, were branches wreathed in hundred of individual leaves, rather than general masses of green!  There, in the reddish wall of the building across from my parents’ office machines store, were hundreds of individual bricks framed by white mortar! 
Years later it was similar, when I first wore polarized sunglasses.  I had been working as a life guard and could never see what was going on under the water because of the surface glare.  I bought clip-on Foster Grant polarized lenses.  It was magic.  Suddenly, the glare was gone and I could see everything clearly.  Inside, however, they made everything dark and difficult to see.     
When I first looked into the night sky with a telescope I was also pleasantly surprised: what once had been a mere star, turned out to be a planet with rings or striped bands or a distant galactic nebula.  But I could not make the telescope help me see anything up close that I wanted to examine.     
Lenses, filters, magnifiers:  they change our vision and make what was difficult to descry clear.   They give can give differentiation where once was sameness, clarity and detail where once was vagueness, or sometimes simply alter our view entirely and make us aware of reality that we never would have guessed.  In a real way, they uncover what was always there, but lay it bare before our eyes.    But they all need to be used in the right context, for the right need. 
Today’s Hebrew Scripture and Gospel lesson are examples of what scholars call apocalyptic writings.    The Greek word apokalypsis means an uncovering or a revelation of what is hidden.   The question is: what do they uncover?
Early Jewish writings like the Book of Daniel and the non-canonical Book of Enoch, as well as Christian writings like the Apocalypse or Revelation of John, are included in the genre.  Sections of other books sometimes take on characteristics of this type of writing as well.  The prime example of this is the “Little Apocalypse” of Chapter 13 of Mark, together with its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21.
This literature is rich is images—often symbolic figures, numbers, angels, and animals—and has, over the centuries, inspired a lot of varied interpretation.   Much of the imagery in these books seems disturbed or obsessive—a third of the sea or the moon turning to blood here, the stars falling from heaven and killing most living things there, the “whore of all the earth” fornicating with the kings of all nations here, a multi-headed beast covered with eyes and horns devouring the righteous there.  This has led, over the centuries, to many interpreters taking this literature as if it were television-like predictions of coming events in world history and especially what will happen when this world system comes to an end. 
In the year 1,000, we had penitentes running all over Europe whipping themselves and declaring the end of the world with such images.  In the 1970s, we had “the Late Great Planet Earth”; today we have the Left Behind novels.
But this reading completely misunderstands apocalyptic, and goes against Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel.   
Just before Jesus’ arrest, Jesus and his disciples are at the Temple in Jerusalem.  It is pretty impressive: 10 stories high, with masonry stones embellished with smaller carved jewels glittering in the sun, gold leaf covering large parts of it, truly a marvel.  A disciple says, “Wow! Look at that, Jesus! Isn’t that impressive?”   Jesus replies by dismissing it all and saying, “Don’t get too exited.  Soon not one stone there will be left standing on another.  It’s all going down.”   Later, when they are on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron valley opposite the Temple Mount, with a panoramic view of the complex, the other disciples ask him about this.  Such large buildings, such destruction, just like those horrible scenes in Daniel or the later parts of Ezekiel.  It is destruction on an apocalyptic level, so they ask him how his prediction fits into the weeks, days, and schemes, the numerology and timetables of apocalyptic books: when will this destruction happen, when is the end of the world? What will be the signs preceding it?
Jesus explains that such a scorecard approach to end-time signs is pointless—too many people abuse such imagery for their own advantage (“many will come and say…”).  He says they shouldn’t be too alarmed or overly excited by the appearance of apocalyptic standard stage props of “wars and rumors of wars” or natural catastrophes.  Such things, he says, are “but the beginning of the birthpangs,” that is, Braxton-Hicks’ contractions or false labor. Jesus is saying, “Don’t worry too much about any of these things.  They’re just a false alarm.  Keep calm and carry on!”  
The fact is, Apocalyptic is primarily about events and people in the world of its authors, not our day.  The Revelation of John, the classic Christian Apocalypse, itself says that it is about things that will "come to pass soon"  (Rev 1:1).   That doesn't mean soon to us, but soon to the writer
What is uncovered in apocalyptic is this: God's purposes and the final outcome of things when all is said and done, not "coming events."

Apocalyptic is literature written during persecution.  It seeks to understand the sufferings of the righteous and encourage them to not lose faith, and to keep resisting the oppressors.  In John’s Revelation, these are Romans under the Emperors Nero and Domitian, who put Christians in the arena to be torn apart by wild animals because they declined to offer incense to a statue of the Emperor.  In the Book of Daniel, they are Greek Syrians under Antiochus who flayed alive or boiled in oil whole families simply because they kept the Law of Moses.
Apocalyptic puts its message in rich images and code so that the readers can read it without the censors and secret police catching on and then torturing and executing them.  It is very much about “current events” as seen by the author.  It looks to the future to argue that no matter how bad things get, in the end God and the righteous will triumph and all the suffering will have been worth it.
These books read sometimes as if a highly disturbed person wrote them.  That is because the authors were people traumatized by persecution and horrible faith-devouring events.  And therein lies the importance of these writings to us.   Whatever the specifics of what hardships we may have to go through, whatever the final consummation of history that still waits us, we must remember that these books are about hope and perseverance, and the ultimate triumph of the Good.
Jesus’ “false alarm!” approach here suggests that this is the real worth of Apocalyptic speculation.  I think he would see its basic message as the same as Winston Churchill’s famous line from World War II, “If you are going through hell, then keep on going!” 

Jesus denies that apocalyptic should be read as a coded playbook of good guys versus bad guys.

Whenever anything horrible happens, no matter what, count on it that someone somewhere will mark it up as an act of God, as some punishment for some bad thing, the fault of some bad group of other people.  You know what I’m talking about.   

Pat Robertson said the 2010 Haitian earthquake was God’s punishment on Haitians’ ‘historic pact with the Devil’, dredging up a bit of Haitian revolutionary war propaganda from two centuries ago.   In 2001, Jerry Falwell blamed the 9-11 attacks also on the victims, saying that God was punishing America for lax sexual morality and casual acceptance of abortion.  The severity of Hurricane Sandy this last month was also in some quarters attributed to a Deity angry with America’s supposed moral laxness, rather than on climate change.  Louis Crew, founder of the GBLT-supporting Episcopal ministry group Integrity, says that he personally over the years has been blamed for earthquakes, tornadoes, and fires, all supposedly God’s punishments for Louie’s depravities.  “Oh, if only I had such power!” he wistfully muses. 

Jesus wants nothing to do with such nonsense.  He tells us in today’s Gospel, “Don’t worry about apocalyptic—just keep calm and carry on!  God’s kingdom is coming, and is in our midst now.  Don’t demonize others and don’t blame God for bad stuff.” 

Once, a man born blind was pointed out to him:  “Was it his parents sin or his that caused this?”  “Neither,” he said  (John 9:3).

Another time people came to him and said,  “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours who were worshipping in the Temple?  Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing!  What did they do that was so bad that God punished them this way?”  “They did nothing any worse than anyone else,” he replies, and continues,  “What about those people who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed?  They were no worse than anyone else.”  “The lesson we should take here,” says Jesus, “is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).  

Apocalyptic is a lens to help people through bad, horrible times.  Its vision amid persecution of a bright future city of God where God will wipe away every tear is like my clear vision of those leaves and bricks after years of fuzziness.  Trying to turn Apocalyptic into something it is not, into predictive television of coming events, is like me putting on my mother’s glasses—it will only distort the world and bring more blindness, not clarity.

Jesus is saying here that we should take the traumatic events we experience, whether war or natural disasters, as occasions for drawing closer to others, for helping them, for being helped by them.  This is the heart of the coming of the Kingdom.  Anything else is stageprops that can and will be used by people wanting somehow to profit from it all. 

In the coming week, I would like you to ask yourself how you react to bad things in life.  Do you blame God for them, or say God is punishing someone, either you or some other group?  In prayer, seek ways to help use the traumas you experience or witness as ways to draw closer to others.  Seek ways to thus bring closer the great day when God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Samuel Seabury and George Washington (midweek)

 












Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message – November 14, 2012
Bishop Samuel Seabury and President George Washington

The results of the recent election have elated some of our parishioners and devastated others, just as in the general population.   The mixing of religion and politics in the campaign troubled many: many socially progressive clergy supported the President because of his endorsement of marriage equality and his efforts to expand health care; Roman Catholic bishops and Evangelical leaders urged the election of Governor Romney because of his anti-abortion positions and opposition to same-sex marriage. 

On the Episcopal Church’s Calendar, today is the feast day commemorating the first American Bishop, Samuel Seabury.  His story has several interesting points for anyone wondering about the mixing of religion and politics and about how to cope with a failure or success for the political program you believe best follows God’s will.

Before the American Revolution, the Church of England was the state-sponsored Church in several of the colonies.   There was no American Bishop.  The Church in the northern colonies tended to have “High Church” beliefs and practices, and valued Bishops, their succession from the Apostles as overseers of God’s work, and a more sacramental view of life and worship.  The Church in the southern colonies, including Virginia, tended to be more Protestant, “Low Church,” and focused more on the authority of Scripture, the role of the Presbyters (Priests) and the lay Vestries rather than Bishops. 

Though about 2/3 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had nominally been Anglican laymen, their independence-mindedness was not shared by most of the Anglican clergy serving in America.   All Church of England clergy took an oath of loyalty to the King, and only those with sufficient “Low Church” loyalties and theological flexibility actually supported the Revolution.   During the revolution, the various colonies disestablished the Church.  The Continental Congress passed laws making it treasonable to lead public prayers asking for God’s blessing on the King of England or its Parliament.

Born in Connecticut in 1729, Seabury had been ordained in 1753 a Church of England clergyman like his father before him.  Seabury took his oath to the King seriously, and saw the Bishops, who were peers of the realm and sat in the House of Lords, as the thing that linked the Church with the historical teaching of the Apostles.  He wrote a series of tracts, “Letters of a Westchester Farmer,” under a pseudonym opposing Independence and criticizing Alexander Hamilton’s tracts supporting the Revolution.  Seabury continued in public prayers for the King and Parliament.   Imprisoned briefly in Connecticut in 1775 by Continental forces, Seabury took refuge in New York (a Tory stronghold that remained under British control) for most of the war - even serving as chaplain to a Loyalist regiment.

After 5 years of war, the British surrender to Colonial forces at Yorktown in October 1781 meant that the thirteen colonies would not return to British control.  As British forces elsewhere in the colonies withdrew, Anglican clergy fled en masse to Canada or back to England.    Seabury decided to stay, recognizing that he was an American and not an Englishman, and desiring to help rebuild the Church, devastated by the loss of clergy and mainstay Tory contributors. 

In 1783, Seabury was elected by ten of his New England peers to serve as bishop over what was now being called the Episcopal Church in America.   He sailed to England, and eventually was consecrated as Bishop by non-juring bishops of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, since as an American he could not take an oath of loyalty to the King and was thus then ineligible for consecration as Bishop in the Church of England.   He returned to America, and was instrumental in setting up the Protestant Episcopal Church of the (newly formed, in 1789) United States of America.

In 1785, a young Episcopal lay minister approached retired General George Washington for a recommendation to Bishop Seabury, so he would ordain him.   He believed that General Washington, a well-known and highly regarded Anglican, could give him a recommendation that the Bishop could not refuse. Washington's account of the meeting is as follows:

A Mr. Jno. Lowe, on his way to Bishop Seabury for Ordination, called & dined here. Could not give him more than a general certificate, founded on information, respecting his character; having no acquaintance with him, nor any desire to open a Correspondence with the new ordained Bishop.

Washington never got over his reluctance to directly engage Seabury.  As President, when one of Seabury's allies, the Reverend John C. Ogden, sent several appeals to Washington for help in a dispute between Seabury's Episcopalians and the New England Congregationalists, Washington declined to respond.

George Washington and Samuel Seabury were both Episcopalians, and fervent ones at that.  They each represented a particular experience within the Church:  Seabury High Church Apostolic succession and Washington Low Church, Scriptural authority, and lay governance.  Each let their faith bring them to opposite conclusions on the great political issues of the day:  Seabury as a Loyalist and Washington as a Continental patriot. 

The greatness of the two is found in how they each reacted to the defeat of one party by the other.  Seabury did not pack up and abandon his country or his Church when the Loyalists lost the war.  He stayed in for the long haul, rebuilding the Church from the foundations up.  He refused to rehash his former opinions once they had clearly become historical footnotes.    For Washington’s part, while avoiding direct contact with a man who had bitterly opposed him in the greatest struggle of his life, he did not work actively to undermine him or expel him, either from the country or the Church.  Washington remained a faithful Episcopalian, even under the bishopric of the one-time Tory, Samuel Seabury.    Both continued to try to pursue his duty to God and country as each saw it, and not bring too much recrimination or reproach from the past to dealings with former adversaries. 

Good examples, I think….  

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Long Robes, Long Prayers (Proper 27B; Stewardship)

 

“Long Robes, Long Prayers”
11 November 2012
Proper 27B
Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

"Teaching in the temple, Jesus said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."
He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." (Mark 12:38-44)

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

I remember the moment when I, as a young man, lost my idealism about the U.S. system of government.  I was a Ph.D. student at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and worked nights sorting Congressional mail to help pay the bills for our growing family.  I worked in the House Post Office as a patronage employee, and I needed that job so I could go to classes during the day.  One night, I inadvertently witnessed a medical emergency involving a federal crime.  I called 911, but by the time the medical team arrived, the evidence of the crime—the drug works scattered about the men’s room floor and the hypodermic dangling from an unconscious co-worker’s arm—had been cleaned up, evidently by one of my co-workers while I called the emergency responders.  At the end of the shift, I was told to wait. The House Postmaster wanted to talk with me.  He asked me what happened, and I told him.  And then he told me that I had only seen my coworker unconscious, but that there had been no drug works or needles.   If I were questioned by the capitol police, he said, I was to leave out any mention of these because they simply had not existed.

I looked at him in shock. I had no intention of perjuring myself. “There are bigger issues here, sir.  We’ve got to get this guy help for his addiction.  You can’t suppress this just to maintain appearances.”  And then he said, with complete conviction, “Tony, don’t be naïve.  The only thing that matters is appearances.   The hospitalized guy is the son of a key majority staffer and is under the direct patronage of the Speaker of the House.   If you say anything that would embarrass him or cause political problems, I will make sure you lose your job and never work again in D.C.”  

“The only thing that matters is appearances.”  With those words, the scales fell from my eyes and I saw how corrupt and self-serving much of Washington life was. I happily did not lose my job.  The Postmaster saw to it that I was never questioned about the matter.   It would take several years before I regained some trust in the system.  This very Postmaster was implicated in a great embezzlement scandal.  He and his office staff were sent to federal penitentiaries for long sentences. 

“The only thing that matters is appearances.”  This cynical take on the world is common enough, and is what today’s Gospel reading is about.  Jesus criticizes those who specialize in religious law, who desire “to walk about in long robes (think: tailored suits, name brand accessories), to be greeted with respect in the marketplace (presumably where anything can be bought for a price), to have the best seats in houses of worship (that is, those most front and center, where everyone can see you), and seats in banquets held in honor of them.”  Jesus adds that the menus at such banquets of honor include something other than food:  “they devour the houses of widows.” And then he gives the real reason for their piety and worship, the long prayers that go with their long robes, “they do it all for appearance’ sake.”  While they appear to be buying influence, honor, power, and the respect of others, he concludes, all they really are buying is “more and more condemnation.” 

“The only thing that matters is appearances.”  This is not the same thing as having a decent respect for the opinion that others may have of you and being open to their suggestions and correction.  There are many, many things more important than appearances.  Integrity, honesty, kindness, assistance and love are values in and of themselves, wholly apart from appearances.  These higher values are only cheapened and demeaned if they are put into the service of trying to gain the approbation of others.

The difference between merely keeping up appearances and actually doing the right and honorable thing is this—keeping up appearances is done to control others, to manipulate them.  It objectifies them and in the process separates you from them, no matter how much closer to you they may seem.   Being open to the impressions of others is an act of community, and brings you closer to them.  

I have to admit that there is a certain allure to embracing “image management.” I grew up wanting the approval of my parents, my teachers, my sisters and brothers, and my classmates.  I based my good view of myself on the view that others had of me, and so I was always hungry for approbation, praise, and applause.  Good grades, admiring comments, ego strokes.  By the time I was a young adult, I was very much a people pleaser. 

My run in with the Postmaster forced me to reconsider my people-pleasing ways.  In the end, I realized that what other people think of me is, strictly speaking, none of my business.  But this did not come quickly. 

Just after this I became a practitioner of public diplomacy for the U.S.  My job was to mold public opinion overseas in the favor of my country, through press relations or through cultural, educational, or professional exchanges.  I had to advance my career as a Foreign Service officer through maintaining my supervisors’ and colleagues’ good opinion of me and my work. 

I learned that openness, honesty and effectiveness were great tools in managing the opinions of others.    But when I treated these qualities simply as tools for making a good impression, in reality they became increasingly impossible to reach.

In Lincoln’s famous phrase, you cannot fool all the people all the time.  Well, you can’t please all the people all the time either.   If your self-esteem is based on praise from others, you will be doomed to always feeling like a fraud, always having to catch up or cover up, never at peace, always struggling to manipulate your image and spin things. 

Jesus in the Gospel today says that such manipulation of others goes hand in hand with exploitation of others.   What the scribes are eating at their feast of honor is actually the houses of widows. 



Jesus juxtaposes this image of alienation and oppression with the view of a poor widow giving her last penny to the temple treasury. 

We are in Stewardship pledge season, and the temptation is always to preach this text as an example Jesus gave us to follow—the Widow’s Mite, the great example to us.  She gave her last penny, and so we should be willing also to give until it hurts.  But that is decidedly not what Jesus is getting at here.  

His point is that this poor woman is so controlled and brain-washed by the teaching of the scribes—those ultimate image managers, those complete maintainers of appearances, those devourers of widows’ houses—that she gives willingly all her livelihood while those who oppress her give only a tiny portion of their abundance. 

In a world where “all that matters is appearances,” the widow’s mite is laughable in comparison with the lordly sums of the scribes’ contributions.   As things really are, her contribution is greater than all of theirs.   She sacrificed while they did not. 

The contrast is very much like that in Jesus’ story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector—both go and pray, but the Pharisee thanks God (loudly, for an audience) that he is not a sinner like all those about him and that he gives all sorts of devotions and money to the Temple.  The Tax Collector stands off by himself, can’t even bring himself to lift his eyes, and prays, ‘Have mercy on me, a sinner.’  The Tax Collector, says Jesus, went away from the Temple closer to God, while the Pharisee left further away. 

The Widow’s Mite, if applied to Stewardship campaigns, if anything, talks about the Church’s responsibility to be open in its accounts, responsible in its use of contributions, and fixed on the task of helping and standing with the poor and the oppressed.

It also talks about the real issue at heart in our giving to the Church.  THIS IS NOT ABOUT APPEARANCES.  It is not about trying to impress others, or gain control over them.  It is not about soothing a bad conscience or boosting a bad self-image by doing one more great, praiseworthy act.  It is not about people pleasing, or even God-pleasing. 

It is about true honor, not the honor we gain from the praise of others.  It is about offering true meals to the hungry, not about meals where we impress others and receive their praise.  It is about real prayer, not prayer to impress. 

Our giving to the Church must come from a thankful heart, a vision that the Church’s ministry is God’s work, and a sense that all that we enjoy comes as a free gift from the parent of us all.

Some of us tithe, or pay a tenth of our increase, as a way of trying to avoid being like the scribes whose offerings, though great, were less that the Widow’s penny.   Presumably she would only have paid a tenth of that penny coin.   

Don’t let scruples get in your way here.  “If I gave that much, it would only be because I am trying to impress someone.”  Remember the words of St. Julian of Norwich when she doubted that she should do something because she might have unworthy motives in doing it. She said God told her, “Do the right thing, and I will redeem your motives.” 

Our giving to the Church must be an act of community, where we draw nearer to our sisters and brothers, not an act of competition or objectification, where we draw away from them.  It must be an act where we take responsibility for God’s work, not where we try to take control. 

When all is said and done, it is about faith.  John Wesley famously used to inquire into the spiritual health of the faith communities he had founded when he would visit them.  A regular question he would ask, to help them determine the quality of their faith was this:  has your faith affected your pockets?  If it hasn’t, then it probably is weak and feeble. 

This week, please pray and consider where you are perhaps like my Postmaster—do you ever act as if the only thing that matters is appearances?  If so, just have faith and drop that burden.  Stop that particular rat race.  Get up off your knees from that particular idol.  You’ll be much, much happier. 

Also, if you have not already done so, take a good hour or so and consider your obligations to the Church.  Give not to impress anyone, and least not to impress yourself.  Make a pledge that adequately expresses your thanks and gratitude, one that will require sacrifice from you.  If it is not big enough to cause you to simplify your life and wonder about your financial wisdom, it probably is not big enough to express real gratitude, thanks, and faith.  But this is between you and God.  It is not for appearances. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.  



Sunday, November 4, 2012

All Are Thine (All Saints'; All Souls' B)

 

“All are Thine”
4 November 2012
Solemnity of All Saints & Commemoration of All Souls
(Transferred from Nov. 1 & 2)
Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
[Preached in Mandarin the evening before at
the Chinese Language Eucharist 5:30 p.m.] 
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

As Father Tom told us in his homily at the Thursday Eucharist, the Church’s calendar has two Triduum—or three day—liturgies, one in the spring and one in the fall.   The Spring Triduum is the greatest feast of the Church, celebration of the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord through a series of services that go from Maundy Thursday, on through Good Friday, and then to the Great Vigil of Easter and Easter Sunday.  The fall Triduum—the celebration of All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day—is much smaller, but seeks to take the promise of the Easter Feast and make it personal to us all, in our shared humanity and shared mortality.    

Though All Hallows’ Eve has become trivialized somewhat by the popular secular celebration of Halloween, its basic message is that though there are many things in the world and in our hearts and imaginations that are truly frightening, we need not fear because God is with us.    All Saints’ celebrates the blessed departed whose lives and witness to the faith were such that we look to them as examples, believe that they are in the presence of God, and hope they are praying for us.   All Souls’ or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed remembers the larger group of the dead for whom we hope and pray.  As our Prayer Book puts it, “Remember all who died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to you alone; bring them into the place of eternal joy and light” (p. 375). 

We pray for the dead because it is a natural desire of the human heart, and since ultimately death is such a mystery to us.  The early Protestants rejected prayers for the dead because they believed that the dead are instantly judged by God and assigned to heaven or hell and nothing we can pray for will change that.  They also were rebelling against a corrupt Church’s selling of such prayers and sacraments.    But the fact is, there are examples of prayers offered for the dead in the traditional Greek canon of the Christian Bible.   So we pray for the dead, and hope. 

Since it is so hard for us to know what is inside the human heart, in practice many of us approach All Souls’ as an occasion to remember and pray for all the dead, confident that God wants to save all his creatures, and hopeful that, in the end, God’s love will overcome all our human crankiness and resistance.   Perhaps, just perhaps, all the departed will one day be faithful departed since the faithfulness at issue is God’s, not ours. 

The other evening, after the All Hallows' Eve  Liturgy, Elena and I went home to that beautiful Halloween night sky with stars and bright puffy clouds scudding by, shining bright and backlit by the nearly full moon.  After all those prayers and assurances in the liturgy for a peaceful and restful night, Elena had a terrible nightmare that woke both of us up at 3 a.m.   When we were younger, I was the one with terrible nightmares, and she was the one who by comforting and cuddling, helped me back to sleep.  Now I play the role of a great warm teddy bear helping her get back to sleep. 

When I am asked about All Saints’ and the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, and the commemoration of All Souls’ and prayers for the dead, I think of the role of comforting one’s bedmate to help her sleep.  In night-time darkness when nightmares come, we are there for each other.  The blessed departed, who prayed in life and most certainly continue to pray in death, are there for us.   They are not just a “great cloud of witnesses” in the arena seating cheering us on.  They actively work on our behalf, and give us strength, if only by their examples.  The great multitude of the rest of the dead—well, we pray for them, and by our prayers, hopefully help work God’s mercy in them.   

We also are the hands and hearts of the blessed departed here below. 

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus shows his love and solidarity with Lazarus and his sisters several times.  He weeps with them.  He gets angry and indignant at how rotten a thing death is.  He takes time to talk with Martha.  But note that when he raises Lazarus from the dead, he leaves the miracle unfinished.  Lazarus comes forth, but Jesus tells us to untie the funeral cloths, to “unbind him.”   

St. Teresa of Avila wrote,

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

No matter what the saints above us may be praying for, here below, we are their hands and feet here, their eyes, their ears, their heart.   This, too, is part of the communion of saints.  Just as Christ bid the disciples to unbind Lazarus, so he bids us. 

As part of your prayers this week, think about a dearly departed person, whether one of the great saints of the Church, or a dear friend or family member.  Pray for them, and ask to be prayed for by them.  Think of what they prayed for when they were here, and what they are probably praying for now.  And then find a way to start working for that. 
 
In the name of Christ, Amen.