Drop the Rock
Proper
9 Year A
6
July 2014 8 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Holy Eucharist
Parish
Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)
When I was
in discernment for holy orders, I had a vivid dream: I am standing on a pier, with one foot on the
ground and one foot on a boat ready for departure. The distance between the boat deck and the
pier grows and grows, until I am stretched between the two. I know I have to jump one way or the other,
the boat or the shore. But I want
both: I want to be on shore, with its
restaurants, familiar friends, and the comforts of home. I want to be on the boat, traveling to a far
off and new land. I want both, but cannot
have both. I’ll end up in the drink if I
don’t jump soon. And yet I hesitate. Just as fall into the water and begin to
sink, I wake up.
I had often
had the feeling: torn between two goods,
knowing I cannot have both. Sometimes I’ve been torn between a good and a
not-so-good thing, that I wanted all the same.
One foot here, one foot there.
Indecisive, or decisive and rapidly changing my opinion. I felt this when as a teenager I first came
to faith. I felt it when I married Elena
and we started our family. I felt it when
I chose to pursue Biblical Studies at Catholic University instead of Classics
at Urbana-Champaign. I felt it when I joined the Foreign Service, and when
Elena and I became Episcopalians. I
have felt it sometimes as a “temptation” or test of my will when the choice was not
between two good things, but between a good and an evil. But the structure
underlying it is the same: conflicting
and unformed desires.
C.S. Lewis
once made a profound comment about those who have difficulty with faith because
they can’t get God to answer their questions or grant their petitions in
prayer. In his retelling of the myth of
Psyche and Eros, the main character says bitterly near the end of the story
that the gods cannot speak to us openly, nor answer us, until we
ourselves find the ability to express the real desire of our hearts. Most of
us, most of the time, desire what we know not, or want things that in and of
themselves preclude other things we want:
profligate spending and a hefty savings, health and the habits or vices
that destroy it, a life of unrestrained pleasure and a happy family built on
trust and faithfulness, top professional success and high quality family life.
The problem is that we often do not even have a clue what our real desire is,
or are sadly mistaken about it. Lewis
writes, “[God] cannot meet us face to face until
we have faces.”
This division within our minds and wills,
this fuzziness of what we want, the contradictions between our competing
desires are often put into metaphorical form by that image we know from the
cartoons: a little angel sitting on one of our shoulders arguing with a little
devil sitting on the other one, both of them looking like us, but one with
halo, wings, and harp, and the other with horns, tail, and a pitchfork. The image, as laughable as it is, comes a
very real experience in our hearts. Sometimes our competing desires are so
acutely at odds with each other and we are so conflicted that it feels
like we are actually in the middle of an argument apart from us, that we are
being enticed by different personalities rather than simply arguing with
ourselves or being indecisive. This feeling,
I believe, is where the ancient tradition of personifying a tempter, a devil,
or a Satan, actually came from.
In today’s reading in Romans, St. Paul
describes the problem somewhat differently:
I don’t really know who I am or what I really want. I decide to do some good thing, and then fail
to do it. I make a resolve to avoid some
bad thing, and then find myself in the act.
The fact that I cannot really make up my mind, or that I change my mind,
shows how important it is to have objective standards, a written Law: “If do the very thing I do not want to do, I by that fact
agree that the Law is good!” Paul
goes on to describe his inner inconsistency and experience of obsession or
compulsion almost as if he is divided or split: a Law of Sin in his members at
war with a Law of God in his mind. A
little more abstract, perhaps, but basically: a little devil Paul on one shoulder and a little angel
Paul on the other.
This passage is often misread. St. Augustine and then later Martin Luther
took it in light of their own personal sense of guilt in struggles with sin,
and thought Paul was talking about same guilt-ridden introspective conscience
through which they saw the world. Thus
the great division between Law and Grace in Protestant theology arose. But Paul elsewhere shows that he is perfectly
happy in saying that he is “blameless” in keeping the Law, and “righteous” in
the works it requires. Paul is no lust-haunted
Augustine or guilt-ridden Luther.
He simply is describing how hard it is to know who we are and what we
want given how changeable and double-minded we are. And he sees this as an intolerable burden,
because it not only separates us from God, but alienates us from others and
from our very selves. This struggle,
what he calls “this body of death,” makes it hard even to know who we really
are. Who will deliver us from it, he
asks. Jesus Christ is his answer.
People in the thrall of addiction,
whether to drugs or alcohol or bad relationships, or whatever, find themselves
bound by obsession and compulsion.
Paul’s words “the evil that I do not want, that I find myself doing”
rings true to them in a way clearer than for most of us. Most modern recovery programs aim at breaking
the cycle of addiction by requiring a psychological reorientation, a spiritual
change, a radical redirection of one’s attitudes, relations, and whole
life. That’s what the Twelve Steps seek
to bring about in a person. If you want
what they have, they say, “You only have to
not drink today, come to meetings, and change everything in your life.”
An extremely influential keynote
address at an AA national convention several years ago tells of us walking
about in life with a burden: one’s bad
habits, attitudes, fears, hopes and desires, however messy and
conflicting. It’s like you are carrying
a great rock. But, we all say, “No. You can’t take that away! It’s MY rock! It’s
who I AM! I gathered this together over
the YEARS. Sure it’s heavy, but it’s
MINE.” Like me at the end of that dream
so many years ago, or Saint Paul with his "body of death," the addict finds herself drowning, helpless and hopeless,
unable, like Paul, to follow through on the most solemn of resolves. The people in the AA or NA or Al-anon rooms
are on the shore, calling to the drowning person to try to save her. And what is it they are calling? “Drop the rock!”
The Gospel today also speaks of conflicting desires. The same critics had condemned John the Baptist and Jesus: John for being too conservative and austere and Jesus for being too welcoming and liberal. Jesus rebukes these critics. He quotes a popular proverb and compares them to naughty children in the marketplace who cannot be satisfied with anything because of their conflicting desires. They taunt each other: little girls tease the boys who want to dance and play music which men used in wedding celebrations; little boys tease the girls because they want to practice the mourning songs and ululations women sing at funerals. You can’t have it both ways, says Jesus. “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” he concludes, “you won’t have contradictory desires if you are integrated and truly find yourselves.” Then Matthew adds that saying that sounds so much more like the Gospel of John than it does any synoptic: the Father has given all things to the Son. The point is that in Jesus, there are no self-contradictions, no competing desires, no alienation from God, others, or one’s self. So Jesus ends the passage by telling us, basically, to “drop the rock.” He offers to take on our burdens for us if we work along side of him and learn from him. The Message, a modern paraphrase translation of the Bible, puts it this way:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
We are a sorry lot, whether we have
active addictions recognized by others or not.
We all are subject to obsession and compulsion at times, and all carry
heavy burdens created from all our conflicting desires, hopes, and fears. And God cannot really talk to us face to
face until we begin to develop faces that are truly our own, hearts that hold
our real desires. It is by taking on
Jesus’ yoke, taking on his task of announcing the kingdom in word and deed and healing the broken world, walking with him and working with him, that we begin to learn from
him who we each really are and what we truly desire. It is not something forced, regimented, or
produced by a technique. It is not the result of willing it, or submitting to some standard. We let go, and let God. Our new self distills
like the dew in the morning. Losing our
false desires is like finally removing the pebble from our shoe. It is like, in the middle of the summer heat,
taking off a heavy winter coat. It is wonderful.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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