No Secrets
Second Sunday after Pentecost
(Proper 7 A)
June 22, 2014
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D., SCP
June 22, 2014
The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D., SCP
Trinity Parish Church
Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00
a.m. Choral Mass
God, take away our hearts of stone
and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
The
last two weeks, Elena and I have been traveling around the West visiting family
members, attending a wedding and long-schedule events, and generally reconnecting. Last Sunday, we found ourselves at St.
Mary’s, a small historic Episcopal Church in Provo, Utah, home of the LDS
Church’s Brigham Young University. A
liberal church island in a sea of red state conservatism, the small
congregation bills itself as “nourishing souls and saving lives in Provo since
1892.”
In
this beautiful little gem of a church, not unlike Ashland’s Trinity, but smaller,
I saw on the hallway outside the Priest-in-Charge’s office a small framed calligraphic
sign. Its gothic black lettering had the
air of an authoritative dictum from the wisdom of the ages, if not an oracle of
God. Its words? “Thou shalt not … whine!”
Today’s
scripture readings seem to have a whining tone to them: Jeremiah complains,
“O
LORD, you have enticed me,
and I was enticed;
you
have overpowered me,
and you have prevailed.
I
have become a laughingstock all day long;
everyone mocks me…
If
I say, "I will not mention [God],
or speak any more in his name,"
then
within me there is something like a burning fire
shut up in my bones;
I
am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.
For
I hear many whispering…
"Denounce
him! Let us denounce him!"
All my close friends
are watching for me to stumble.
"Perhaps
… we can prevail against him,
and take our revenge on him."
The
idea is that Yahweh’s word has possessed Jeremiah, taken him over, and made him
the object of ridicule and persecution of all about him. Jeremiah, despite himself, simply must speak
God’s word in what we have come to call a Jeremiad,
a non-ending stream of condemnation and woe, and simply accept the rejection of
others and violent persecution. So along
with his prophetic woes, Jeremiah often violates the Commandment I saw last
week, “Thou shalt not whine!”
Jesus
in today’s Gospel reading seems to take Jeremiah as the model prophet: if you follow God, and say God’s word, you
must expect rejection and persecution. The
disciple is no better than the teacher:
Jesus is rejected and killed; so will his disciples be. But, he says, do not fear. God will care for you. But following the truth will bring conflict:
I bring not peace, but a sword, not family unity, but family division. So you better get your priorities straight:
you will at times appear to hate your families if you really love me. That is part of being Christian—take up a
cross, just as I did. This may not be
whining, but certainly is a negative view toward life and family, one that
sounds to us vaguely paranoid and extreme.
So
too today’s Psalm: “Surely, for your sake, [God,] have I
suffered reproach, and shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my own kindred, an
alien to my mother's children.” And
why? “Zeal for [God’s] house has eaten
me up; the scorn of those who scorn [God] has fallen upon me.” Acts of righteousness are turned on their
heads and become things with which to taunt:
fasting triggers reproach; properly mourning the dead by putting on sack-cloth
just brings on further curses. The
righteous person becomes the grist for common gossip at the city gates, and the
butt of lewd songs by drunks.
This sense of
persecution despite—no make that because—of
one’s religious faithfulness is a theme you see throughout the Psalter. “God, I am faithful to you, but the bad guys
around me lie in wait for me.” “God, I
love you, but they are coming after me with knives and dogs!” “Save me, God, from my wicked enemies!”
After Jesus’ unjust
torture and death, early Christians saw these laments in the Psalms as some
kind of prophetic description of Jesus.
But such a use ignores the fact that at times the Psalmist really does
end up whining, and demands the most vicious sort of vengeance for the
persecutors. The Psalmist cries, “Don’t’
listen to his prayers! Make his wife a
widow, and his children orphans, with no one to help them!” Elsewhere, “Happy
the ones who smash your little babies’ brains against the wall!” This is far, far removed from “Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do!”
The basic idea behind
the image of the persecuted prophet is profound: this world is full of people and societal structures
that are based on lies: the lie that
violence will set things right, that might
makes right, that the dignity of a
human being depends on such things as lineage, race, color, gender, religion,
or class; the lie that ends justify
means, that everything is O.K. as long as you get away with it, that appearance
is all that matters.
Humanity on its good
days can bear only so much truth, and on its bad ones cannot bear the truth at
all. A person living in the truth,
however feebly, is bound to be an affront
to the world of lies, and attract the enmity of people of the lie. Thus arises the persecuted prophet, the
martyred righteous. Encouraging those who seek the truth to not
fear, and to anticipate problems, as Jesus does in today’s Gospel, is a grace
rooted simply in acknowledging the hard facts of life in a world of lies.
But the idea that the
righteous will be rejected and persecuted has become a commonplace all too
often abused. “I am being persecuted on
account of my religion” is a plaint often heard when law and government in a
pluralistic society ends up prohibiting retrograde actions like discrimination
or hate crimes motivated by bigotry that may happen to have the endorsement of
some religion or another. It is also
heard when the government requires businesses to provide basic conditions for
work and standard-of-care health coverage for workers. Such
whining—and whining it is—abounds even when the law provides for exemptions on
grounds of religion or conscience, even in the absence of a legal requirement
to operate the specific kind of business at issue.
Beyond this, we see
occasionally in churches, both traditional and progressive, a sick twisting of
the image of the persecuted prophet.
Since true prophets are persecuted in this world of lies, so goes the
reasoning, then I should act in ways will bring about my persecution. Martyrdom for the true way thus becomes a way
to reassure oneself of the rightness of one’s cause.
There is a great difference
between this and real persecution. I
know that people are suffering for their faith in this day and age. I once saw neat little rows of cigarette
burns up and down the back of a man who was questioned by his country’s
security forces because he had attended church with me. Confusing real religious persecution with
not having one’s way in public policy cheapens the idea of religious freedom and
makes it harder to see it when persecution actually occurs.
There is a difference
between cultivating or provoking martyrdom and the Satyagraha, or Truth Force,
of the non-violent activist seeking rightness and justice. One is sectarian and partisan; the other
aimed at applying universal truth to all of us equally.
This difference is
hinted at in today’s Gospel reading.
We are called to
companionship with each other, sharing with each other (“companionship” comes
from Latin cum panis, sharing bread
with). We are called to walk the way
with others, not stand in opposition to them.
Sectarian concern, partisan interest, an “us vs. them” mentality works
against this. If we claim to have the
truth against someone else’s lie, and actively try to fix them and convince them
of the error of their ways, to turn them from being one of them to one of us, this
is not only bad psychology and poor salesmanship, it turns us into opponents,
as antagonists, not comrades walking the path together. It is the difference between cold hearted
sectarian propaganda and authentic, heart-felt sharing of good news, evangelism.
This is why in
today’s Gospel, after saying not to fear the persecution that is sure to come,
Jesus tells us to not keep secrets or hidden doctrines, plans, and teachings,
and to tell publicly what he taught us privately. No special knowledge, privileged doctrine, or
insiders’ path for Jesus’ disciples! No special class of initiated,
“in-the-know,” true believers over against the great unwashed, the uninitiated,
the unenlightened outside the ambit of some hidden truth.
It is not about us
vs. them. We are all in this
together. And living in the truth means
accepting sharing that truth with all, without fear or favor. If they cannot bear the truth, and turn
against it and us, then it is they who have drawn lines and stood in
opposition. But we must always continue
to consider them as in this together with us.
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!” “Forgive them seventy seven times, not just
seven.” “Be perfect in compassion and
grace like our father in heaven, who gives the blessing of rain and sunshine
equally on the righteous and the wicked.”
Sisters and brothers,
we are only as sick as the secrets we keep.
We are only as sectarian and partisan as the exclusions we impose on
those who differ from us. Faith in a
loving God, gracious and kind to all, demands that we live in truth without
fear. While expecting rejection and
meanness from those who cannot bear quite as much truth as God has graced us to
bear, we must never feel smug in having a special secret truth that marks us as
special, as ones apart. We must continue
to welcome, love, and let our lights shine.
No secrets, no sects.
“Thou shalt not
whine.” This week I invite each of us to
look at the things where we believe we may be better informed, or more
truthful, or closer to God than those about us, both in and outside the
Church. Let us ask whether we are walking beside these
others, or setting ourselves in opposition, however benign, to them. In the process of this reflection, let us
find ways to better connect with those about us, to walk with them and share bread with them, and not judge or stand in opposition with them, even if this is as a teacher. Let us seek ways to be channels of God’s love
and grace to all.
In
the name of Christ, Amen.
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