Upon a High Rock (Lent 2C)

Upon a High Rock
Lent 2C
24 February 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland

 Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35 

Dear God, let us not accept that judgment, that this is all we are. 

Enlighten our minds, inflame our hearts with the desire to change—

With the hope and faith that we all can change.

Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

(Dorothy Day)

 I had an experience during June 1989 in Beijing China that had a profound effect on me.  I was the director of the Fulbright Scholarly Exchange program at the U.S. Embassy.  After the June 4 crackdown on student demonstrations, there were a couple of weeks of real uncertainty and danger.  On June 5-6, in a flagged and marked convoy of cars and vans from the Embassy, I helped evacuate American teachers and students living in Beijing’s universities, getting them to the airports so they could leave the country.  You couldn’t cross the city without such assistance, since there were armed patrols everywhere, roadblocks preventing any movement, and sporadic weapons fire to disperse crowds.  At a couple of the university entrance halls, I saw the mangled bodies of students killed near Muxidi and Xidan, central access points to the center of the City where Tiananmen Square lay, laid out on biers with banners declaring “THEY WILL SAY THIS DID NOT HAPPEN.  REMEMBER THE DEAD.”   (他们要说大屠杀没有发生.  奠)

 

When we got to South Gate of Peking University, we found it blocked by a 2 ½  meter tall barricade thrown up by students and teachers afraid that the army would enter the campus and start killing people.  People manning the barricade asked us if it had been the Chinese government that had asked us to remove our nationals or the U.S. government that had done this on its own.  We assured them that it was a U.S. choice to protect our citizens.  Reassured that the army hadn’t sent us to get rid of foreign witnesses, they began taking down the barricade to let us pass.  As we waited, a local professor of mathematics who had noticed I spoke Chinese approached me.  She said, “We are glad you are helping our American friends get to safety.  It is very dangerous to be here right now, and we don’t want any of them to be hurt.  But if you are going to help them leave, promise me, once things calm down, that you’ll help bring them back.”  I gave a vague reply of “yes, of course.” 

She grabbed my arm and looked me in the eye.  “No I mean it.  You don’t understand.  I was 5 years old when the People’s Republic was declared.  My generation has lived through hell—the anti-Rightist campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the starvation that followed, the split with the Soviets, the Cultural Revolution and the ten years of chaos.  When the leadership after Chairman Mao opened the door to the outside world and declared a policy of reform, we finally started having hope.  The most present form of that door to the outside world is in fact these foreign teachers and students.  It is our last hope for getting our country right.  Things are really bad right now, and it is good that you are taking them to safety.  Once things calm down, the leaders have no choice but to come back to openness and reform.  But if you foreigners won’t come back because you don’t want to have anything to do with those ‘evil’ Chinese who run their children down with tanks in the streets, then it will be as if the door had never opened.  And that is the end of hope here.  So you have to PROMISE me to help bring them back.”  I was really moved by what she had said, and I looked her back in the eyes and promised her that I would do everything in my power to help bring the students and teacher back and help Chinese students go abroad. 

I had joined the Foreign Service with a desire to travel and see the world.  But the experience at the barricade left an impression on me.    With the exception of three years in Africa when I was told I needed to get professional experience apart from China, my entire 25-year career with the State Department was in or about China, building people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.

That barricade experience changed me.  It gave me a vision and a commitment.  It brought focus and form to my life and my career.  There were many, many times when fears, personal disputes, family issues, disagreements with national policies, and other distractions made it seem to me that I needed to do other things, go to other parts of the world, or perhaps needed to leave the foreign service.  But through it all, whenever I thought back to that experience and the promise I had made to that desperate woman, all the distractions faded away and my path was clear. So I worked to restore and increase the exchange programs bringing Americans to China and Chinese to the U.S.  And now there are more in both directions than ever before, far beyond our wildest imaginations back in 1989. 

Later in my life, when I felt the call to ministry in Holy Orders, it was very similar.  The vision and sense of call that God had planted in my heart again and again made it very, very clear, what the next step I needed to do was, despite distractions, impediments, confusing mixed signals, and the attraction of other good things. 

Life can be a very confusing and discouraging affair, and it is easy to lack focus, become distracted, and wander. 

But God has a purpose for each and every one of us, and God has a plan, as obscure and hard as it may be for us to see at times.    God is engaged with us, and hopes to take us from the confusing fog around us and place us, as today’s Psalm says, high upon a rock where we can see clearly, at least the big things in the distance.

It is what all today's lectionary lessons are about.  In today’s Gospel, Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and trans-Jordan, wants to arrest Jesus and perhaps kill him as he has killed John the Baptist before him.  They tell Jesus to stop what he is doing, and leave Antipas’ territory for a while till things calm down. 

His reply is striking:  “Go tell that fox this:  Look at me!  Here I am casting out demons and illnesses, for a little time at least.  And after a little time, I will finish my work.  But that is not here, and that is not now.  Jerusalem is going to kill me, not Antipas. Jerusalem, that great religious trump card in the deck of the system of oppression that seems to run everything around here, is where prophets like me get killed.  I am just going to have to continue going about my work, and ignore this Antipas and his animus. ”  

Jesus here is not distracted by the very troubling message of these friendly Pharisees because he has a clear sense of what his mission is, and where the real enemy to his mission lies.  He has been to the Judean desert, and has faced the temptations of self-gratification, power, and of wanting God to be on his side and at his beck and call.  Despite being just a couple of miles from the provincial capital Sepphoris, and its commerce and trade center, Tiberias, he has avoided these population centers like the plague in his ministry.  It is not as if he didn’t know them—he probably helped reconstruct Sepphoris as a building contractor as a youth and probably had it in mind when he said “a city on a hill cannot be hid.” But once he began his work of proclaiming the Good News of the arrival of God’s Reign—of God being in charge, right here, right now—he had gone exclusively to poor peasants, artisans, and desperate day-laborers and their families.  And these had included at times both Jews and Gentiles.  He knew that the hopes of his people included the rescuing of the poor and enlightening the Gentiles, and that somehow Jerusalem, with its big city history of heartlessness and tendency to kill prophets, was at the heart of this hope.  Antipas was a sideshow.  Jesus would continue his mission,  and in the end, set his face to Jerusalem. 

In the Hebrew Scriptures lesson, God tells Abram to "go outside" and look up at the stars.  In that moment, God makes a promise to Abram, and Abram, despite everything, trusts him.  And it is a trust that stays with him, despite problems and things like "the terror of Abram" later in the passage.  

In today’s epistle, Paul asks his gentile converts to imitate him in the example he has given them and to model themselves on that.  The confusions and wanderings of life in Phillipi otherwise might be too great for them, and they would have only whatever their natural urges were at the moment as their guide and “god.”  It is about the same idea—the need to stand on a rock that is higher, the need for vision and a sense of calling to bring clarity in the midst of chaos, in the midst of distractions. 

How do we know that we have been lifted to a rock that is higher?  We still see all the distractions and are totally in the middle of them.  But we find ourselves at peace.  Tranquility, not distraction reigns.  Firm clarity of purpose, not detachment, denial, or emotional withdrawal prevails. 

How do we recover such clarity that we once had, but lost?  Think back to the experience or commitment that gave you the clarity.  Replay it in your heart and mind.  Do not forget it.  And then, relying on it, wait patiently for the Lord, as our Psalm today says.  

If we have never had such clarity, how do we get it?  Jesus said, “Ask and you shall receive, knock and it shall be opened.”  Prayer, engagement with scripture and a faith community, honest and empathetic mutual communication and service, and doing the little things we know are what we must do, despite our confusion, is key.  God has a way of rewarding faithfulness in small points of clarity with greater clarity. 

Knowing what we are called to and being true to the call—this is essential in finding a sense of happiness and fulfillment in our lives.   We have in the Church the process of discernment and counseling to help us if we are finding it hard to see the way, or if what we think is the way doesn’t seem to fit what those about us see.  In the words of Frederick Beuchner, “Mission is finding where our deepest joy meets the world’s deepest need.” 

Sisters and brothers—I have been struck in talking to people recently just how many of us feel unworthy, unneeded, or unloved.   Know this:  God loves you.  God made you as an individual creation with your skills, likes and dislikes, passions and disabilities, talents and gifts.  God has a very specific intention in creating you.  Know you are held in the heart of God in full love, honor, and with every hope.  We are in a broken world, and we are broken along with it.  And that is why we must dig deep to try to find the treasure buried in the field of our heart, the pearl of Great Price for which we will be willing to give up all things.  The voice of God is buried there, and it calls you to great things.  It can place you on a rock that is higher, place you high upon a rock from which you will be able to look out and see things clearly.  And not just for a moment, but for decades, for your life, and for eternity.    Dig deep, pray, talk to a counselor or work with dear friend to discern.  Let God place you on that rock. 

 
In the name of God, Amen. 

Struggles in Prayer (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

Struggles in Prayer

We read on Sunday about Jesus fasting in the wilderness:  it was a scene a struggle.  It is important to remember in our Lenten prayers and efforts to approach God that it is love that lies behind and drives the struggles we encounter in the wilderness: 

“There are many conflicts on the way into the experience of divine love.  Sinfulness originates in a deep wound to our humanity which hinders us all from accepting love.  As the Spirit exposes it to Christ’s healing touch in prayer we shall often have to struggle with our reluctance to be loved so deeply by God.  Christ himself will strive with us, as the angel strove with Jacob, to disable our self-reliant pride and make us depend on grace.  Our love must be purified and tested by many times of darkness, loss, and waiting.  The nearer we draw to God, the more we will sense our vulnerability to the ‘cosmic powers of this present darkness’ [Eph. 6:12],  that seek to isolate us from God and from one another.  So there are sufferings to be expected in our prayer but through them we come to the peace Christ promised.  ‘After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever.  Amen [1 Peter 5:10]’”.     (The Rule of the Society of St. John the Evangelist—North American Congregation; Cowley Publications: Cambridge MASS, 1997; p. 43)

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

St. Isaac the Syrian (Mid-week Message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

February 13, 2013 (Ash Wednesday)

St. Isaac the Syrian on Sin and God’s Compassion

The reading for the Daily Office on Ash Wednesday is the Book of Jonah (it is the synagogue reading for the Day of Atonement).  In it, God spares the city Nineveh when it repents and puts on sackcloth and ashes.  For the start of Lent, I thought you might find useful a quotation from St. Isaac of Nineveh, a Syrian mystic and ascetic who died in A.D. 700: 

“To the extent a person draws closer to God—even if only in his or her intentions—to just that extent does God draw close to that person with His manifold gifts.

“A handful of sand thrown into the sea, is what sinning is like, when compared to God’s Providence and Compassion.  Just as an abundant source of water is not impeded by a handful of dust, so is the Creator’s Compassion not defeated by the sins of His creations.

“What is imprinted in us at birth comes before faith and is the path leading to faith and toward God.   What God plants in our very being when we are born, it alone brings us to the point where we feel the need to trust God, Who had brought everything into being.

“Those in whom the light of faith truly shines never arrive at such shamelessness as to give God demands: "Give us this," or  "Remove from us this."  The genuine Father, whose great Love transcends in countless ways the love of any father we might know, gives us spiritual eyes.  Because of this, we continually view the Father’s Providence, and are no longer concerned in the slightest about ourselves.   God can do more than anyone else, and can assist us by a far greater measure than we could ever ask for, or even imagine.”

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

Three Booths (Transfiguration C)

Three Booths
Last Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
10 February 2013 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 Sung Eucharist 
Trinity Parish Episcopal Church, Ashland Oregon

Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]

Dear God, let us not accept that judgment, that this is all we are. 

Enlighten our minds, inflame our hearts with the desire to change—

With the hope and faith that we all can change.

Take  away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

(Dorothy Day Prayer for Change, July-August, 1972)

The Hebrew Scripture lesson today is about Moses going to the Holy Mountain and returning with the brightness of God still on him.  In today’s Epistle, Paul uses this story about Moses’ glory to argue for flexible legal and liturgical practice within the Church he planted in Corinth.  The Gospel is Luke’s telling of how Jesus is transformed and surrounded by glorious brightness before his close disciples’ eyes.

In the Church’s calendar, today is the last Sunday before Lent, called Transfiguration Sunday on account of the Gospel Reading.  We are vested in white rather than Ordinary Time Green in honor of the white brightness that shone from Jesus on Mt. Tabor. 

The epiphany to Peter and his companions stretches his mind a bit beyond what he is ready to receive.  His reaction reveals his misunderstanding. 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 or booths—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 shining forth from the face of Jesus is a revolutionary fact:  it challenges Peter's assumptions.  He confuses things, and thinks somehow that Jesus is getting his authority or endorsement from the appearance of the ancient prophets.  

“Let’s build three booths.”  This is Peter’s way of saying, “I know what’s going on here.  I understand.”  It tames the untamable.  Like Homer Simpson being quietly told a universally known truism he clearly had not gotten, Peter replies by saying, “I knew that.”   

We are creatures of habit who embrace our coziness with the familiar.  Even here in Ashland where we say we like and desire change, we find ourselves grasping at times for straws from our past experience to categorize and tame the truly revolutionary we encounter. 

Old vs. new, stability vs. change--this was the theme of a couple of somewhat contradictory sayings that Jesus gave when asked about changes he had made in the practices of John the Baptist:    

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse.  Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:16-17)

The point is that new departures require totally new frameworks, and that Jesus’ ministry had to follow its own rules, not John the Baptist’s.  The Reign of God is like new wine, still fermenting and bubbling.  It needs to be put into freshly made wineskins that are still flexible and expandable rather than in old, used, and increasingly brittle ones, which tend to crack and burst under the pressure of the fermentation.     

The Reign of God, as new and uncontrollable as new wine, when it encounters the old is also like a patch.  New things must be accommodated to the context into which they will be placed, or great damage can be caused.  An unshrunk cloth used as a patch would tear up old, previously shrunk clothing the first time the patched garment is washed.  But as Luke’s version of the parable tells us (5:36), such accommodation cannot be allowed to destroy the integrity of the new reality: we cannot tear up the new garment in order to patch up an old, because then both the old and the new are ruined.

The Transfiguration totally flummoxes Peter, since he is still in “old think.”   But in a way it is an accommodation to his way of viewing things, and the result is “three booths.”   

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.   Only new wine in new skin remains, no more old garment in need of a patch. 

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, “Christ is the image of God” (2 Cor. 3:18), and that, in the words of John’s Gospel, “Whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father.” 

The Transfiguration in the story wipes away the conflict between old and new.  That is what the 2 Corinthians passage is about:  as we look upon the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus, we ourselves are transformed, and more able to accept and embrace the new.   He rhetorically contrasts this with the fading glory on the face of Moses coming down from the Mountain.  But we must not read the 2 Corinthians passage in an anti-Semitic or supercessionist way, in which the whole, complete, and pure Christian revelation is seen as replacing the partial, benighted, and wrong-headed Jewish one. Paul wrote this passage as a Jew, and his contrast is not between Judaism and Christianity, but rather two competing Jewish visions of Law and Grace.

Paul tops his argument by using a very un-Jewish image.  To describe the effect of Christ’s glory on Christians, he uses the pagan myth of metamorphosis, or shape changing.  Not found in the Hebrew scriptures, it is a standard in the paganism of Paul’s Gentile:  Zeus shifting shapes into swans, or bulls, or young men; the Olympian Gods changing human beings in the myths into constellations, flowers, trees, or even just echoes.

Paul ironically transforms the image of transformation by describing a metamorphosis totally at odds with the sudden, in-all-directions shape-shifting of the Olympian myths.  His metamorphosis is gradual but marked transfromation that goes toward a single point—the glory surrounding Jesus, the resurrected Lord's own image.  He writes, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” 

What Paul calls the glory around Jesus is what today’s Gospel reading is about:  This steady, unchanging standard of brightness is what is revealed momentarily in the story.  Jesus’ transfiguration is not a metamorphosis or transformation.  It is a brief glimpse of the true hidden state of affairs. 

Peter mistook the revelation of Jesus’ true glory as a fading transitory shifting of appearances—that is what the three booths are about.   Peter is an old wineskin here, about to burst under the pressure of this new and unprecedented experience.  But seeing the glory and hearing the voice, he is transformed.  He is transfigured.  And by the time the resurrection comes, he is ready for the astounding realization of who Jesus actually was.

Sisters and brothers.  We do not like change, we don’t like to be stretched.  Even if we tell ourselves we do like these things, it is only to the point of where our comfort level lies.  And truly new wine in old wineskins is decidedly not comfortable. 

It is easy to lose heart.  It is easy to think “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  But the miracle and mystery of our faith is this—we can change because God can change us.  We can cast aside old ways of thinking, feeling, and being.  We can forget about the three booths.   It is part of our faith--in the Apostles’ Creed we affirm that we believe in “the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”    Belief in any of these things makes no sense at all if you don’t believe that God is at work transforming us, and that as a result, we shall be changed. 

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 feels like taking off a heavy winter coat in the summer heat.   But no matter how hard or easy, it goes on.  And it is not a shape-shifting that turns us into something alien, something that is "not us."  When Paul says this turns us into "the image of Christ" he is not saying it removes our individuality.  It is a transformation into our true selves, the individual people God intended when He created each of us.  

As we sang as we entered today, in Charles Wesley’s words--

Finish then, thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see they 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, we begin to cast off the three booths.  It makes us look around us in amazement of the tokens of God's love all about us 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 help us to embrace the changes he is bringing about in us. 

In the name of God, Amen. 

Shrove Tuesday (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony's Mid-week Message
Feb. 6, 2013
Shrove Tuesday 

“And if, in your preparation [for receiving Eucharist],  you need help and counsel, then go and open your grief to a discreet and understanding priest, and confess your sins, that you may receive the benefit of absolution, and spiritual counsel and advice; to the removal of scruple and doubt, the assurance of pardon, and the strengthening of your faith. 

(Book of Common Prayer)

Lent begins a week from tomorrow on Ash Wednesday, February 13.  The day before is called Shrove Tuesday, on which day Christians traditionally sought to be shriven, that is, confess their sins and receive absolution (the middle English verb “to shrive” means to “forgive, absolve”) as a way of preparing for the start of Lent.  The day is variously known as Fat Tuesday (“Mardi Gras”), Carnival (from Latin carnem levare, “to remove meat” from the house), or Pancake Day (when rich foods made from items forbidden by the Lenten Fast would be consumed). 

Here at Trinity, Tuesday evening we will be having our annual Shrove Tuesday Pancake supper and launch of our social ministries fund-raiser, the Party of Parties.  During the day,  I will be available to hear confessions in the church and counsel privately those who desire to receive the rite of the Reconciliation of a Penitent (BCP 446-452).  Call the Trinity Office  to make an appointment, or simply show up.

We often miss the point when we talk about “confession of our sins.”  We think in terms of simply violating God’s laws or commands.  But sin as a concept is far broader than this legal view.    Most modern theologians define sin either teleologically or relationally:  something that turns us aside from what God intends when he creates us, or anything that separates us from God or others.    God loves us regardless, and so it is more a question of talking about things that in our own hearts and minds separate us from the love of God. 

Danish theologian Soren Kirkegaard said “Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God . . . Faith is: that the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God.”  Confession and repentance are processes that help us know who our real selves are, and make us more and more hopeful and welcoming of that.

Again, this is an offer for those who want to avail themselves of it, not a requirement in a one-size-fits-all rule.  According to the old Anglican saying about private confession, “all may, none must, some should.”  

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+  

On your Side (Epiphany 4C)

 

On Your Side
Homily delivered for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson
27 January 2013

9:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist (before annual Parish Meeting)
Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

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

My parents met in second grade, were best friends, and fell in love as soon as they were in high school.  Lonnie and Grace secretly married when they were seventeen years old, much to the chagrin of their parents. But they remained faithful and true to each other for sixty-some years, until they died.

I never saw them argue, though I often saw them work out differences between themselves.  I once asked my father how it was that he and my mom were able to have such a long lasting, happy marriage.  He answered quickly.  “One of the saddest things you will see in your life, something that is all too common, is when a person treats the one he or she loves with less respect and kindness than that they do with strangers.  Gracie and I learned early on to treat each other, and the people we love, better, not worse, than other people.  It goes a long way in keeping life in order and balance.  And it helps keeps the joy you have in your love relationships.”

I was a little shocked at the idea—how could it be that people treat loved ones harsher than strangers?  But I came to learn all too soon that this was the norm, rather than the love I had seen modeled in my parents’ home.  People often treat their loved ones with less politeness, less dignity, and more abruptness than strangers.   

I am not sure why this is so.  Perhaps it is just the fact that love and intimacy lets us feel comfortable with one another, let down our guards, and open ourselves up to what we think as more “honesty” in our dealings with each other.  We come to expect to be loved and forgiven, and so are willing to do more that might need to be forgiven.  We see ourselves as less likely to give petty offense—we are with the beloved, after all, or with kin, or with friends—and thus believe we don’t have to put on airs, keep up a show, and observe the rules of politeness and kindness that serve as ways of limiting damage to relations with strangers and losing influence over people whose help or good will we may need.   

One of Aesop’s fables describes the problem.  The fox, when first meeting the Lion, is terrified, and is attentive to all politeness and courtesies and polite insincerities.  The next time they meet, the greeting is polite, but less ceremonial.  As they greet each other on successive days, the meeting becomes shorter and more abrupt.  Finally, even the politeness is gone and the Fox does not even worry about greeting the King of Beasts.  The moral is, you will remember, familiarity breeds contempt. 

Some of you may remember Erich Segal’s 1970 novel, Love Story, whose theme line was “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”    My father hated that phrase. He believed that love means saying you’re sorry each and every time you are in the wrong and have slighted or hurt the beloved. 

Today’s Gospel reading describes a scene where the people of Jesus’s hometown, initially pleased and pleasantly surprised at the well phrased preaching of this local boy who has made good, turn against him.   They think they know him only all too well, and the fact that Jesus calls them on this—complete with proverbs on familiarity breeding contempt and scriptures where God worked with strangers and not locals—enrages them. 

The fact is, familiarity and intimacy should breed sympathy not contempt, affection not judgment.  The fact that this is not usually the case is pretty good evidence to me of our brokenness, an indication that our loves—whether social affection, friendship, romantic desire, familial or community attachment—are limited and broken. 

The reading from Corinthians that we just heard is often misunderstood.  Because it is regularly read at weddings, people think that Paul is talking about romantic love only.  But Paul is talking about love itself of any kind.  He says that love is not just an emotion that is felt and experienced, but a condition of the will.  He knows that love as emotion, like any passion, can be fleeting or unpredictable.   The love he describes is what love should be, not how it often is played out in our brokenness.

He uses a classical literary device of personifying an abstract concept, in this case, “Love,” in order to give a graphic sense of what that concept entails.  Unfortunately, personification is a literary trope not commonly used in our age, and we often miss Paul’s meaning, which is about this very issue—what it is to love, and why familiarity cannot be allowed to breed contempt.   

In order to make what Paul is saying clearer, I have done my own translation of the passage, using literary devices more familiar to us moderns.  Rather than using personification, for instance, I give concrete examples and cases.  Here is what I believe Paul is saying:  

“Imagine that I can speak in many human and angelic languages, but that I am a person who does not love anyone.  What I am I then?  Simply a noisy and annoying gong or cymbal, nothing more.  And what if I were a prophet who knew every bit of God’s plan, and every item of knowledge there was to know, and even had such complete faith that I could move mountains at will.  If I weren’t a loving person—what would I be?  Nothing, that’s what.  If I gave away everything I own—and if I gave over even my body—a praiseworthy thing, to be sure—and yet if I did not have love, it wouldn’t do me any good.    What is love?  When you love someone, you are patient and kind with that person.  You are not jealous of those you love, and you don’t try to show them up.  You don’t talk down to them, or act rudely toward them.  You don’t try to have your own way at their expense, nor do you get annoyed or resentful at them.  You don’t get pleasure at any injustice done to them or by them, but rather you rejoice when truth prevails for them.  When you love someone, you put up with whatever they do, you trust whatever they say, you hold every hope for them, and you are willing to endure anything for them.  When you love, you never stop loving.  Not so with prophecies, languages, or knowledge—these will all cease one day.  For our knowledge and our prophecy are partial only.  And when wholeness arrives, partial things will come to an end.  When I was a child, I used to talk, think, and reason as a child does.  When I became an adult, I put aside a child’s way of doing things.  At present, we see things indistinctly, as if through a clouded mirror.  But then it will be face to face.  At present, I know things only in part, but then, I shall have a knowledge of others just as I also am fully known.   But as matters stand now, only these three things really last—faith, hope, and love.  And of these, the greatest is love. (1 Cor 13:1-13)

Love here is not just a feeling we experience or suffer.  It is an active way we behave, the way we treat the beloved.  Love in this sense is a type of sacrifice, a limitation on our freedom and our will.    At the heart of love is giving the beloved the benefit of the doubt, withholding judgment, and sharing hope.   It is saying “I’m on your side.” 

For Paul, love by definition places constraints on our freedom.  That’s why he says at one point, “In love, be like slaves to one another”(Gal. 5:13). 

Paul knows that love is risk, that love is costly.  It involves constraints, though these are not reducible to mere rules.  It is the opposite of letting yourself go because of familiarity, of thinking we owe less attentiveness and care because we feel safe in being rude to intimates. 

Love is always a risk, no matter what kind of love you are talking about.  Relationships, whether romantic, friendships, or community life like the Church, demand attention and sacrifice.  We often are afraid of trusting our fragile hearts to someone else, especially if our heart has been bruised or broken.  But love is a gift from God, and refusing love, not loving, is an option that we take only at the peril of our souls.

C. S. Lewis writes:  “Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation.”

Not all the people of Nazareth rejected Jesus.  Most did, but this story as told in Mark 6 suggests that at least some accepted him:  he was able to heal a few.   These few gave him the benefit of the doubt, and rather than letting their familiarity breed contempt, they cultivated it and let it blossom into a deeper and deeper relationship. 

In the animated movie Toy Story, there is a song that talks about friendship, one type of love, and it expresses why contempt and hurt need not be the end of affection or intimacy.   It’s sticking together, putting up with each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt. 

You've got a friend in me.
You've got a friend in me.
When the road looks rough ahead
And you're miles and miles
From your nice warm bed,
Just remember what your old pal said
Boy, you've got a friend in me. 

You've got a friend in me.
You've got troubles, well I've got 'em too.
But there’s nothing I wouldn't do for you.
We stick together and we see it through.
You've got a friend in me.

Some other folks might be
A little bit smarter than I am
Bigger and stronger too maybe,
But none of them will ever love you the way I do.
It's me and you
And as the years go by
Boys, our friendship will never die.
You're gonna see
It's our destiny.
You've got a friend in me.

May we treat our loved ones, may we treat each other, more kindly, not less kindly, than strangers.  May we learn the joy of sacrificial love, of giving each other the benefit of the doubt, and of working out our differences in love and respect, with no imputed bad motives.  For love so lived never ends, and is the most important of all the gifts of God.    

In the name of God, Amen.   

Growing Light (Candlemas)

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Growing Light

(Candlemas—the Feast of the Presentation)
3 February 2013  

7 p.m. Sung Mass with Candle-lit Procession

& Blessings of Candles, Wicks, and Lamp Oils

Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 84; Hebrews 2:14-28; Luke 2:22-40

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

T.S. Eliot’s poem “Little Gidding” in The Four Quartets begins with these words: 

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror ...

In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. ...

Eliot is describing here unseasonable bits of warm weather in the middle of the winter, something that we have been seeing here in Ashland occasionally in the last weeks.  A “January thaw” or “a sunny groundhog’s day” are the opposite of “Indian summer.”  In the autumn, a brief bit of unseasonably warm weather recalls the heat of summer.   But warmth and sunshine now draws our minds to the spring that is coming.  Eliot compares this to a person’s spiritual awakening to the mystery of grace at a dark time in life.  Both untimely seasons, whether climatological or spiritual, are seen here as “sempiternal,” partaking both of time and timelessness, of now and eternity, of “time’s covenant” and “God’s.” 

I find myself hungry for light at this time of year, at least in the northern hemisphere.  A bright and warm day brightens and warms me.  I think this hunger for light and warmth, and desire for Spring, is what lies behind the popular superstition about groundhogs on February 2:  if it is warm and sunny enough for them to see their shadow, the winter will come back with a vengeance.  But if it is cold and dark, an early spring will arrive.  In the words of the old rhyme,

If Candlemas be fair and bright

Winter will have another fight.
If Candlemas brings cloud and rain,
Winter then won't come again.

Today, February 2, is 40 days from December 25.   In strict Jewish Law, a woman goes into semi-seclusion for 40 days after giving birth to a son.  It is thus today that we celebrate the coming of Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus to offer sacrifice at the Temple at Jerusalem.   There, the elderly Simeon and the prophet Anna welcome them and express joy at Jesus’ coming.  They have been “awaiting the Consolation of Israel,” the moment God would act to set all things right.  They recognize in this baby the great light, the fire of the Day of the Lord that would burn away all that was wrong with the world.  Simeon bursts out into a song of gratitude: “Thank God, now I can die in peace!”  It is the Nunc Dimittis that we regularly say or sing during our evening prayers:

Lord God, you now have set your servant free, 

to go in peace according to your word.

Mine eyes have seen the Savior, Christ the Lord 

prepared by you for all the world to see; 

a light for nations lost in darkest night, 

the glory of your people, and their light. 

This image of light in the Gospel reading was once reflected in the Hebrew Scriptures reading for this festival, the prophet Zephaniah’s grim description of how hard it will be for the complacent to escape the Coming Day of the Lord: 

“At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps to punish the complacent,
   who linger like the dregs of wine in a cup,
thinking, ‘The LORD can do nothing,
   either good or bad.’” (Zephaniah 1:12)

Because of the line, "I will search Jerusalem with lamps," the day was marked with a candle-lit procession, the blessing of the candles to be used in Church in the coming year, and was called Candlemas.  Included in the candles to be blessed was the year’s Pascal Candle, to be lit at the Great Vigil of Easter and then used in all baptisms.  

Regardless of fickle local weather patterns, here in the Northern Hemisphere, the days have already clearly started to get longer:  when we begin Morning Prayer here in the Church at 7:15, it is already light outside—but it was pitch dark when we did so even two weeks ago.  

The fact is, we are about one third of the way between December 21, the winter solstice with its longest night, and June 21, the spring solstice with its longest day.   The light is gradually growing brighter and brighter, the days longer and longer.  With each day we see several additional minutes of daylight. 
Buds on the trees and shrubs are starting to swell, harbinger of spring even if weather turns cold again.   

There is a terrible irony is this.  This is also a season when we see a lot of deaths of our elderly parishioners.  Every year, there seems to be a spate of deaths among our elders starting just before Candlemas’ “Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace” and lasting through the Easter season.  They seem to get through the holidays and the new year, only to have their bodies give out in the early to late spring.   This demographic quirk should remind us that even as spring and the renewal of the natural life about us gets closer, we ourselves as individuals are closer to our own deaths than ever before.  That’s just the nature of our lives.  We all die, and any passage of time brings us all inevitably closer to our common end.

Soon after Candlemas (in some years, as soon as two or three days later) we thus will prepare for Easter through self-denial and fasting during the season called Lent, which gets its name in English from the verb “lengthen.”

Just as the astronomical days grow longer we will be reminded soon in stark terms that our anatomical days grow shorter. Just as the buds begin to swell and the first hints of green plants appear, our brows will be smudged with ashes, the remnants of dead plants from last year.  We will be told the truth that we would like to forget, “Remember you are but dust, and unto dust you shall return.”   Remember that there is darkness about, even in midst of the return of the natural light. 

Sisters and brothers, Trinity family, with the very ancient ritual of light we have celebrated today, where we try to chase away the dark and cold of winter, we are reminded of the Light of Christ, and joy of coming Easter.  We are told to prepare for the lengthening days around us even as our own allotted time here shortens by seeking the One True Light. 

May we be like Anna and Simeon, who persevered in hope, and recognized God when God acted.  They did not despair and give up on the light.  They did not focus on the blindness and darkness around them, but saw God’s love and action in this newborn baby.  They did not hope for a day of vengeance, of wrath, of burning, or of settling of scores through military might, but rather recognized God’s consolation and welcome, through the simple and everyday presence of this particular baby, brought to God’s Temple by this particular Mother.   They saw in this Child their hopes for a setting of things aright fulfilled, through the love and sacrifice his presence embodied.  May we also so await God’s consolation, and rejoice in the dawning of God’s Light.  

In the name of Christ,  Amen.