Augustine on Double-Mindedness (Mid-week Message)

 St. Augustine

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 28, 2013

A reminder for all parents of school children and students or teachers going back into classes:  this Sunday is the blessing of the backpacks.  Bring your basic school kit to be blessed at the 10:00 a.m. Communion Service.  

“Double-minded people are unstable in all their ways” (James 1:8).

Today is the feast day of St. Augustine of Hippo, theologian and bishop. 

Here is a short excerpt from his Confessions, a reminder to us all when we are double-minded: 

“It is no strange phenomenon partly to will to do something and partly not to will to do it. It is a malady of the mind that does not wholly rise to the heights where it has been lifted by the Truth, because it is weighed down by mere habit.  So there are two wills in us, because neither by itself is the whole will, and each possesses what the other lacks.” 

Augustine talks about procrastination as a way of prolonging double-mindedness.  His famous pre-conversion prayer is “Give me chastity, Lord, but not yet!” 

But he says that the grace of God comes to us and helps drive away the force of habit, enabling us to amend our lives and truly change. 

Grace and Peace,  

Fr. Tony+  

St. Monnica, Mother of Augustine

 

Slack (Proper 16C)

Slack (Proper 16C)

Homily Delivered 25 August 2013

8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17

God, give us hearts to love and feel,

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

 

Elena and I just got back from a week in the waters of Alaska and British Columbia, during which time we saw some of the great fjords of the Inner Passage.  One of these is called Ford’s Terror.  It is named after one Harry L. Ford, a crew member of the US. Coast and Geodetic Survey Vessel Carlile P. Patterson.   One day in 1889, Ford, doing a survey of the area, , took a small rowboat into the steep and glacier-bound fjord alone.  The water in the narrow inlet as he entered was calm and relaxed, what sailors call “slack water.”  After a short time looking at the icebergs, harbor seals, and high cliffs, he rowed back to the inlet to go back to Endicott Arm and his ship.  But the tide had turned.  What had been calm, peaceful, and still turquoise water was now a raging torrent of white with a wall of curling surf taller than his boat was long.  For the next twelve hours, cold and hungry, he waited in terror, fearing that perhaps the calm water would not return before he died.  But at the next low tide, during the short interval between the tide going out and coming in, the water went slack again, and he was able to row out again, grateful and with a story of terror that would immortalize his name in maps and Gazetteers.   

  

“Slack”—the term draws up images of calm and peaceful water, but, for wind sailors at least, also risks water that is too relaxed, without enough wind above it to drive a sail-boat.    Slack sails are useless.  The word thus also means the lack of tension and tautness necessary to accomplish things.  My father always told me as a boy to “give it some slack” when I was fishing so that the line would let the baited hook drift naturally in the deep water.    Later, as a teenager, I came to feel he was perhaps a little too attentive to my life. “Give it some slack,” became “Cut me some slack, will you?”    Even later, one of the worse epithets my children hurled at each other when they might not be pulling their own weight was “you slacker!” 

Today’s Hebrew Scripture asks us to cut each other some slack, give each other a break.  Remove the yoke from among you.  Don’t exploit each other.  Remove the pointing of the finger, speaking ill of others. Don’t reduce others to objects to be evaluated and judged, ridiculed, made fun of, or maligned.  Give food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted.  Stand with the downtrodden.  Help and don’t judge.  Give them a break because they need it, not because they deserve it. 

The passage also asks us to cut ourselves some slack.   It ties these social justice issues to the Sabbath.  We shouldn’t place a heavy yoke upon us ourselves, even if we think this serves our purposes.   We shouldn’t belittle ourselves, or think ourselves slackers when we take needed rest.  We need to find time to rest each week, and make this a priority.  We need to not consider this shameful, or slacking off, but rather honorable:

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,

from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;

if you call the sabbath a delight

and the holy day of the LORD honorable;

if you honor it, not going your own ways,

serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

then you shall take delight in the LORD….

To be sure, the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not just a call for regular down time, periodic torpid rest.  The commandment is to remember the seventh day by keeping it holy.  This means, as the Prayer Book puts it, a duty “to set aside regular times for worship, prayer, and the study of God’s ways” (p. 847).   That is a key part of resting from what usually consumes us.   As Second Isaiah says, this should be a delight. 

In the Gospel reading today, Jesus gives a woman a break, and cuts her some slack.  She has been bound down by a debilitating illness, here personified as a demonic spirit, that tautly tied her muscles and held her doubled over and unable to stand up straight and relaxed for years.   He simply lays his hands on her, unbinds her, relaxes her, and restores her slack, natural posture.   She rejoices, thanking God. 

But a community religious leader nearby is not pleased.  He sees Jesus as a competitor calling for people to be lax in following the Law, slack in their religious duties.  He doesn’t want that particular yoke removed, and he points his finger and speaks ill:  “Your business appears to be faith healing and here you are, doing business on the Sabbath! Jesus, you slacker!”

There has been quite a lot of scholarly discussion on whether this is a fair representation of how Jesus’ critics historically may have reacted to such a situation. A scene in John has Jesus healing being criticized for breaking the Sabbath.  There, he mixes his saliva with dirt to make a mud as a kind of healing ointment, rather than just laying his hands on the afflicted.  Since the mixing of mortar for building or clay for potting was a specifically defined form of work forbidden for Sabbath, some believe that it is this, and not the healing per se, that may have been criticized.   

Most rabbinic treatments of the Sabbath indeed include the saving of a life as grounds for allowing things otherwise forbidden for Sabbath.   But is being bent over a life-threatening condition?  Perhaps this woman could have waited a few hours until Sabbath was over to be restored to health.  “There are six other days of the week on which you could have done this,” says Jesus’ opponent in our story. 

However you understand the specifics, one thing is clear.   Jesus notes that his critic fails to see the joy of the woman.  Pulling animals out of the mire was allowed on Sabbath in rigorous interpretations, even if their lives were not immediately threatened.  This woman was more important than an animal!  Her taut binding, bent over in pain for years, was worse than the suffering of a beast caught in the mud!  So couldn’t an a fortiori case be made to allow healing her? 

Since many people thought that illness was a punishment from God, the pointing finger of the community leader implies something else—why should Jesus even try to heal the woman at all, since she is only getting what she deserves?   And to break Sabbath in the process!  Jesus, you slacker! 

Jesus will have none of this.  Break the yoke! Remove the pointing finger!  

What we may be dealing with here is a Galilean rural flexibility to Law running into an urban or Judean doctrine of legal rigor:  slackness on the Law versus tautness.   Generally a critic of rigorists, Jesus himself could have his moments of tightness when it came to the Law:  it is almost certain that the Historical Jesus forbade any taking of oaths or swearing on things, and the casual repudiation of one’s dependent spouse that was the divorce of his day.  

But for him, how to decide when to give more slack or tighten up a bit depended on how this effected the people involved. 

Second Isaiah had said, “if you honor [the Sabbath], … then you shall take delight in the LORD” (Isa 59:12-13).  The woman who has set free from her bonds here is rejoicing in the Lord, and so, thinks Jesus, how can we possibly have violated the Sabbath?   A good tree yields sweet fruit, a bad tree, bitter.  What possible criticism is there when such obvious good has been wrought? 

Knowing when to cut ourselves and each other slack, and when to keep taut the line that ties us to the Good and the Right, and gets good things done, is a trick.  No set of external rules can tell us when to tighten up and when to let loose.  This art cannot be mastered without an open heart and open hands, without trust in God and benevolence or good will for all.  It is rooted the principle that Jesus taught: forgive others that we may be forgiven; treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated.   This complex of ideas is covered by what Buddhists call detachment, compassion, and doing no harm. 

When Harry Ford was caught in what is now called  Ford’s Terror, he almost certainly prayed for slack water.  We all pray for slack at times and we all must be able to give it. We are all in this together, and proper humility demands that we have solidarity with all our other creatures.  It demands that we be gentle. 

Remove the yoke, take away the pointing finger. The rule of thumb that Jesus uses here in this story is good—look at the effect of our actions on ourselves and others.  Regardless of the fingers pointing at us or the yokes laid upon us, as we hold on to the line of our lives and our duties, tighten up or loosen our grips, give the line slack or pull it taut as necessary to advance human dignity, love, and freedom.  

Jesus said his mission was to announce the Year of the Lord’s Favor, to break the bonds, to set the captive loose.  He announced the coming of God’s Reign in full power, and acted in ways that show he saw himself as the Year of Jubilee when all debts were forgiven, as the Sabbath of Lord, when all could rest and rejoice. 

He wants to cut us slack; we should let him do that.  He calls us to cut ourselves and each other slack.  This is how the pointing finger will be removed, and yokes broken.  Let go.  Cut someone some slack.  Give them a break. And let's give ourselves a break as well. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

Bernard of Clairvaux (Mid-week Message)

 

 

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

Bernard of Clairvaux

August 21, 2013

 

Yesterday was the feast day of Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the great spiritual lights of the High Middle Ages.  He took vows early as a Benedictine monk, but then sought to reform what had become a somewhat lax rule of life by organizing a tighter community at the monastery he founded at Citeaux (from which comes the name of his form of Benedictine Monks, the Cistercians.)  Later laxness led to a further reform of the Cistercians, resulting in the Trappist order of silent monasticism we see at such places as Gethsemani, Kentucky, where Thomas Merton lived and wrote. 

 

Bernard was not simply a contemplative, but a person of active faith who engaged in all the great controversies of his age.  He was not always right, but always willing to stand corrected or be proved wrong if that was necessary.  Because he defended the Jewish Community of Mainz (now Germany) from pogroms at the start of the Second Crusade, he became known as a “Righteous Gentile” in that tradition, leading to “Bernard” being a name common in Jewish families (e.g., Bernard Baruch). 

 

Bernard wrote several Latin hymns, including those translated now as “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded,” and “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee.”  This latter, “Jesu Dulcis Memoria,” is more complex than most translations would suggest.  I have translated it, trying to stress the Latin hymn’s simple form and complex play between the outward rites and signs of the Church and what (or rather, who) they are about.  Here is my metrical translation:   

 

Jesus, your sweet memorial,

Fills my heart’s joyful need.

But sweeter honey than all

Is your presence here indeed. 

 

No song ever was better sung,

No sermon better heard,

No sweeter doctrine ever thought,

Than Jesus, God’s own Word.

 

Jesus, hope for sinners meek,

So kind to all who ask,

So good to those who truly seek;

What treasure do you mask? 

 

No tongue can describe it,

Nor pen or text express;

Only one who tastes can credit,

What it is to love Jesus.

 

O Jesus, be our joy alone,

You, our prize to come.

Be our brightness, you our home,

As endless ages run.  Amen

 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

 

Soul-Mates (Holy Matrimony)

 

Soul-Mates

Rite of Holy Matrimony and Eucharist for

Brian Thomas Bedell and YAN Nan.

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Wednesday, August 7, 2013 2:00 p.m.

Song of Solomon 2:10-13; 8:6-7; Psalm 128; Ephesians 5:21-33; Matthew 5:1-12 

God, give us compassionate hearts, hearts to love and feel.

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

In Chinese, when we talk about someone who is a soul-mate, a true friend—we say we share缘分yuanfen. The idea is that we have a link that goes back to some kind of previous life, back to a whole set of good deeds we may have done one another from before we remember, threads of causality from beyond our knowing.  That’s why there are silk threads on the left side of the character for karma or fate, 缘yuan.  

In Western romantic literature, this idea is expressed by the phrase, finding your “one and only” true love. It certainly describes the kind of love my parents had—they met in second grade, were best friends, and fell in love as soon as they were in high school. They 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 you could tell if you had found your one true love, your “one and only.” He looked pained at the question, as if I had missed the point. He said, “it doesn’t really matter if you think you have found your one and only. Many people think they have their one true love, only to discover as they age and change that it was a short-lived emotion, a passing attraction. And their marriages didn’t last. So you shouldn’t ask whether you have found your one and only. You should ask what you need to do today to make the one you love your one and only. Because you don’t find a true soul-mate—you make one through actions each day.”

I thought my father was being terribly un-romantic. But I knew he was deeply and hopelessly in love with my mother.  And that, after fifty years of life together.

I have come to realize that he was describing the only kind of romance that lasts-- one that is strengthened and renewed each day, through thick and thin, by the actions that show and build mutual respect, love, and passion.

Today Brian and Nan you are making each other promises in the presence of family, friends, and colleagues. Be present for each other, and always attentive.  Be sure to take time each day to listen to each other. Allow each other space. May your home be a center of generosity and hospitality, and may you welcome, God willing, children.  Raising children is one of the greatest chances we have to show our generosity and love.  And most of all, be sure to be honest with each other and willing to admit fault when you are wrong.  And always: forgive, forgive, forgive.

May God’s richest blessings be upon you and your life together. 

In the name of God, Amen.

You are Salt (Mid-week Message)

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Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

August 7, 2013

“You are Salt”

“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” (Matthew 5:13)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, progressive theologian of the mid-20^th century martyred by the Nazis, wrote the following reflection on  this line of Jesus in the Gospels: 

“You are the salt” [it says,] not “You should be the salt!” The disciples are given no choice whether they want to be salt or not. No appeal is made to them to become the salt of the earth. Rather they just are salt whether they want to be or not, by the power of the call which has reached them. “You are the salt,” not “you have the salt.” It would diminish the meaning to equate the disciples’ message with salt, as the reformers did. What is meant is their whole existence, to the extent that it is newly grounded in Christ’s call to discipleship, that existence of which the Beatitudes speak. All those who follow Jesus’ call to discipleship are made by that call to be the salt of the earth in their whole existence.”  (from The Cost of Discipleship)

Jesus calls us to be present in the world, stand with our fellow creatures, and serve.  He calls us to make a difference in the world and in the lives of those about us simply being who are, who we have become in Him.  For Jesus, salt makes things flavorful, and preserves things from going bad.  It is also a purifying element in Jewish ritual.  Salt makes a difference.  That’s what he says we, his followers, are:  people who make a difference, who bring flavor and joy to life, and who through our actions and words keep the good and drive out the bad of the world. 

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

Chasing After the Wind (Proper 13C)

 

Chasing After the Wind
Homily delivered the Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 13; Year C RCL)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony A. Hutchinson
4 August 2013; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

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

Today’s Gospel reading should bother us.  If it doesn’t bother us, we have either totally misunderstood it, or are irresponsible people oblivious to our obligations and careless about our futures.  

We might agree with the basic premise of the parable’s morale against those who “pile up treasures for themselves.”  In our middle class morality, being overly ostentatious is just bad form.   Most of us tend to feel uncomfortable when we watch the original movie Wall Street and the Michael Douglas character, Gordon Gecko, says baldy “Greed is good.”  Okay, we may say, greed is bad. 

But the parable seems to criticize even this basic morality and prudence.   The Greek word used for greed here does not mean overly lavish or ostentatious: pleonexia simply means “desire for more.”  The story criticizes, it seems, anyone who desires even a little financial security.  

The rich farmer, if you are honest, seems to be a prudent, smart person who thinks strategically and plans for the future.  He takes basic steps to ensure his future security.  And Jesus calls him a “fool.” 

And so the parable should bother us, especially when we read it with today’s Old Testament lesson from the book of Qohelet or Ecclestiastes.  There a jaded old man condemns practically all human endeavor, whether frivolous and sinful or even serious and responsible, as “vanity of vanities.”  (I think the best translation is “totally pointless.”)  All such activities are “chasing after the wind.”

Is all human desiring wrong?

Jesus tells this parable in response to a complaint from a person in the crowd about a family will.  The practice was that brothers divided up estates equally with the elder brother getting a double portion (Deut. 21:15-17; cf. m. Baba Batra 8.1-9.10).  Families expected brothers if possible to live nearby or together and keep family-held real property as a unit.  But if not, each brother had a right to his portion and the estate should be divided.  The man asks Jesus to tell his brother his obligation under religious law to share the inheritance with him. 

Most lawyers will tell you that disputes over wills and inheritances among siblings are loaded with a lot of emotion, because the siblings are actually fighting over the money as some kind of token of their deceased parent’s love.  Jesus understandably replies: “Sir, who set me up as a judge or arbiter?”   Just as in the story of Mary and Martha, Jesus declines to take sides in an argument brought to him.  Note to all who want to quote Jesus to make a point:  Jesus does not like to be used as a stick with which to beat up those who disagree with us.

Jesus tells the story to get at the heart of the matter:  the man’s desire for more, whether of goods, or of parental love.

A wealthy farmer facing a bumper crop realizes he cannot possibly store all the produce about to be harvested.  So he makes elaborate plans to tear down the old barns and replace them with larger ones before the harvest.  He describes to himself how good things will be when he’s completed his plan: “Friend, you have many good things stored up for years to come.'  Annuity maximized, check.  Portfolio diversified, check.  Real properties secured, check.  Secondary income streams confirmed, check.  "So take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”  But God says to him, “You idiot!  This very night—before you can do any of this—your life will be required of you!  Now who’s going to get all that you have prepared?”  Luke, the narrator, adds,  “That is how it will be for anyone who piles up treasures for himself and is not rich with God.” 

The commonplace Jesus uses here, the fool standing before God, comes from a long tradition in Jewish wisdom literature, like Psalm 14:1:  “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”    By calling the overly prudent rich man a fool, God says that he is an atheist in practice—he has thought, felt, and acted for all intents and purposes as if he believed there were no God. 

He is not criticizing the man because he is rich, but because he is actually poor in terms of bigger things, and unaware of it.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up treasures in heaven.  … For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  Note: the heart here follows where we invest, not vice versa-- you can act yourself into a right way of thinking, but not necessarily think yourself into a right way of acting.   "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food? And the body more than clothing?” He points to birds and wildflowers as an example of how well God feeds and clothes his creatures, says that there is thus no need for striving for food and clothing, and then adds, “Your Heavenly Father knows all that you need” and he is good.  Thus, “work first for God’s Reign and the justice it demands, and God will make sure you get what you need” (Matt. 6:19-33). 

Elsewhere, he describes what he means by “God’s Reign”: we cannot enter it unless we become helpless like little children.  Poor people may get there before the rich; sinners, drunks, and traitors may get there before the pious religious.  In the kingdom, first will last and last will be first and you have to lose your life in order to find it.   

He suggests in many, many places that the true way is not the path of a spiritual superman. God’s banquet is set for all people, not just for a few chosen ones.   “Being rich for God” or “storing up treasures in heaven” for Jesus is not another struggle, not a way of forcing ourselves to conform to God’s rules, not a way showing how good we are as compared to other people. 

He says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Other religious people of the day criticized him regularly for being too lax in his expectations of his followers.  And he regularly told his followers to rejoice, and had lots of parties with them.

He also says that the door into the kingdom is narrow and the way to life is tight fit.  “Go in at the narrow door; for the door is wide and the path is easy to leads to losing your soul.  Many people go in there and do not come out.  The door is narrow and the path is tight that leads to life.  At any given time, there are only few who can manage it.” (Matt. 713-14, paraphrased).  Jesus’ point is that there is no room there to take extra baggage.  If our hearts are set on other things, we simply will not be able to squeeze through.   

Make no mistake—this parable is an indictment of all who pursue material goods to the neglect of more important issues and the needs of other people.  It indicts us if our heart of hearts tells us that what we want above all else—or even above many other things—is wealth. 

But when Jesus tells this parable about desiring more, he is not telling a story that applies only to the rich.  He is talking about any kind of desire that gets in the way of rooting our relationship with God in trust, thanksgiving, and acceptance.  He is talking about any orientation of the heart that places our own will and desires above those of our Creator.   He is talking about acting as if God were not taking care of us, were not a good and loving Parent, as if we thought that God did not exist.    Acting that way, pursuing anything with those assumptions, make life—well, in the words of Ecclesiastes—“totally pointless.”  It makes you a practical atheist.  It is very foolish. 

Our heart must be set on God.  The way to life, being rich with God, the narrow and tight path—all these describe a right relationship with God, and with it, a right relationship with ourselves and others.  In this right relationship, there is no room for illusion or fantasy.  There is no room for letting our fears and anxieties run rampant and blot out the table of plenty before us.   Acceptance, thanksgiving, and openness to more of the good that God gives are the right posture of any soul that would enter this path.  This is the spiritual basis of all proper stewardship, of all properly conceived rules of life.  A desire for more, greed--whether it is of money, or security, or power, or beauty, perfect domesticity, or even of encores of spiritual high points—greed is baggage that simply cannot fit through the narrow door.  

If we're not quite there, that's OK.  Remember that our heart will follow where we place our treasure.  We can act as if we had faith, and faith will come. 
 
It’s all in the context.  At one point, Jesus asks the rich young man to sell his goods and give to the poor.  At another, when Judas criticizes a sinful woman’s extravagant gesture of anointing Jesus with precious ointment because she could have sold it and given the proceeds to the poor, Jesus defends her because she has done a beautiful thing.  He abandons his family and tells several of his followers to do likewise, but then on the cross gives his aging mother into the care of the beloved disciple, and his disciple into her care.   

Jesus here is not telling us specifically to forgo any thought of modest retirement accounts or prudent savings.  Elsewhere he tells us to be harmless as doves but smart as snakes.  He expects street smarts, and his disciples to be no one’s fool.

But he is blasting practical atheism, acting as if God didn't exist.  He is blasting the commonplace we tell ourselves as a justification for this, "God helps those who help themselves."  He is blasting all this because such practical atheism, such idolatry and greed, itself is the act of a fool.  

Unlike the Buddha, Jesus doesn’t counsel against any desire, any attachment.  He condemns a desire for more.  He simply says that we should be thankful for what God in his mercy has given us.  He counsels acceptance, not detachment; thankfulness, not indifference; passion, not apathy.   Jesus is not damning desire per se, but questioning desire apart from God.  

Practical atheism is not an option.  We mustn’t tart up our greed and say it is prudence.  We mustn’t justify our desire to be in control and autonomous as mere independence.   None of this is wise stewardship.  Our trust in God must show fruits in our life, in how we make our decisions, in how we use our time and resources.  Jesus does not call us all to be spiritual supermen, or ascetics.  He calls us all simply to trust and love God, be honest with him, and make our decisions and commit our resources in light of this.

May we answer the call. 

In the name of God,  Amen.