Thursday, January 29, 2015

Treasure in Heaven (Mid-week)

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Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
Treasure in Heaven
January 28, 2015

Sell your possessions, and give to the poor. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys (Luke 12:33)

Store up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.  (Matthew 6:20)

These two snippets from the Gospels placed on the lips of Jesus contrast building up a nest egg here or in the afterlife.  They teach that a lack of attachment to wealth here is essential if we are to keep anything in death:  compassion and helping others is what lasts, especially when they are sacrificial, when they cost us.  The idea is expressed graphically in many moral tales and folk stories from Eastern Europe that talk about a person who is saved from falling into Hell by barely pulling himself up out of the pit by a scrawny turnip—the only gift he had given the poor in a rich, long life. 

I’m not sure that it is because we think there’s something in it for us in the afterlife that we should give alms or be kind and helpful to people. 

The Buddha told the following poem to two elderly men near death who expressed frustration at not having accomplished much in their lives and asked him for advice on how to be happy:

“When a house is on fire,
the vessel salvaged
is the one that will be of use,
not the one left there to burn.
The world is on fire
with aging and  death.  
You must salvage by giving.
What is given away is well salvaged.
Whoever here who foregoes desires
in body, speech, or awareness,
whoever does worthy acts while alive
that person will find them his or her bliss.”
(Adapted from "Dvejana Sutta: Two People (2)" (AN 3.52), trans. from the Pali by T. Bhikkhu. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.052.than.html .)

One way of getting rid of the vexing questions “why am I suffering so much from old age?” or “why has death come so suddenly?” is simply doing kindnesses and helping others as we are able.  Simple compassion and aid to those in need turns our attention from ourselves and our worries. Kind and helpful acts and sacrificial gifts to help others do indeed salvage our sense of purpose and worth in an otherwise difficult life situation.  It is heavenly treasure for this life as well, perhaps, as beyond death. 

Grace and Peace,
Fr. Tony+

Sunday, January 25, 2015

In Word and Deed (Epiphany 3B)

 

In Word and Deed
25 January 2015
Epiphany 3B
8:00 a.m. said and 10:00 a.m. sung Mass
Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon


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

Early in the week, I was sharing Eucharist and visiting with a parishioner who has difficulty getting out of her home.  She told me of one of her children:  “He likes to dip his toes in church, but not dive in.  He likes sermons when they are gentle, honest, and informative.  He loves good Church music.  But he doesn’t like the idea that you have to sign on to this or that teaching.  He says his reservations about the Church are summed up in a single phrase in the Creed.  When we talk about Jesus, we say, “the only son of God.”  He wonders at that: aren’t we all God’s sons and daughters?  And aren’t other faiths good and pleasing to whatever God there might be?  One faith, one God, one Lord, one savior, one baptism: It’s just too exclusive for him, and seems frankly disrespectful of others. 

If you feel this way at times, that’s O.K.  God knows I do.  It sees the ugliness in the way a whole lot of Christians over the centuries have understood their faith.  But such an understanding is wrong.  Scripture and the wisdom and spiritual traditions of the Church have struggled against it again and again.

Belief is not signing on to a program of teachings.  It is opening one’s heart and placing trust.  The commandment is “Thou shalt love God with all your heart,” not “Thou shalt firmly accept the intellectual proposition that God exists.”  When Jesus says the way to life is strait and narrow, he is talking about how hard it is to let go of baggage that keeps us from connecting with God and pursuing God’s justice and love.  He is not saying that one size and only one size fits all.

When the Creed says “only Son of God,” it uses a Greek word, monogenes, that is often misunderstood.  St. Jerome mistranslated it into Latin as unigenitum, or “only begotten.”  But that is not what it means.  Monogenes is a garden variety Koine Greek word meaning one-of-a-kind.  The fathers at the Council of Nicea were saying that Jesus was unique, even though in many ways he was like the rest of us.  They made this claim based on their experience of the living Christ, and their belief that after Jesus’ horribly unjust death, he rose victorious.  This is not to disparage others, but to find joy in Jesus. 

Today’s scriptures are all about evangelism, spreading the good word, missionary work.  Jonah, after his unsuccessful attempt at running away, relents and helps the people of Nineveh to forsake their unjust ways and come closer to God.  Paul, that missionary par excellence, says we have to stop living our normal lives because the great day of God is coming soon.  The Gospel says that right after the murder of Jesus’ forbidding mentor John the Baptist, Jesus begins to proclaim broadly the happy news of the arrival of God’s Reign and calls followers to help him spread the good news.  

Often, we confuse the call to evangelism with a demand that we participate in partisan or sectarian recruiting.  Such a vision is part and parcel of the wrong-headed exclusivism so rightly criticized by the son of my elderly parishioner.  The idea is that there is only one true way, one true savior who can save us from our sins if we but intellectually assent to the true teaching. So we must spread the word about Jesus so that people may be saved or condemned by God on the basis of how they react to the message.

I don’t believe any such thing, and I don’t think you need to either.  When scripture says things like “Jesus is the only way,” it is expressing the how reliable the writers have found Jesus, not calling him a jealous God. The call to evangelism is a call to spread happy news, joy, not make a sales pitch that will send someone to heaven or hell depending on whether they buy it.  Jesus was constantly telling people that what matters is your love of God and of others, not correct religious practices or belief systems.  In fact, he judged religious practices or belief systems on how they fostered a spirit-led life of compassion and service or hindered it. 

The problem with believing that you must convert the world to your way is that such a view has the outward form of love and compassion—who would not want to save people from certain doom?—while it denies the inner power of compassion and love.  You place your understanding above all others’ understandings, and make yourself or your group first.  The world is broken into us and them, the pagans and the believers, the saved and the damned. 

Evangelism is sharing our joy, our hope, and the experiences and reasons that lead us to find hope in Christ.  Our baptismal covenant charges us to proclaim the good news in Jesus Christ in word and deed.  St. Francis said that we should at all times and places be ready to proclaim the Good News, and open our mouths to do so only when needed.   

This isn’t about browbeating people and giving them a hard sales pitch to get them to assent.  This is about letting our joy leak through, and it means listening to others and truly listening to their stories also. 

This last week we saw the death of Marcus Borg, the Biblical Scholar and progressive theologian whose popularization of modern historical Jesus research has rewritten the faith of many, and given many others a new lease on life in faith.  Marcus was here in Ashland last year, and I think those of you who interacted with him saw that for all his erudition and knowledge, he was an unassuming and generally humble man, one willing to engage others in respectful dialogue even when they differed from him on key points. I believe this very openness was key to his effectiveness.  And he only got better with time—that’s one of the great things about sharing your faith—it forces you to sort through what you think and feel, and come to understand what really matters for you.  This is one of the great blessings I have had as a priest: preaching forces you to be honest about where you put your heart and what you actually believe. 

Sharing our faith, telling people where our heart is, is risky.  It makes us vulnerable.  They might reject it, or belittle it.  But that is no reason to be shy.   Acting out our faith, and living as we believe the spirit leads us is also risky.  This last week I also saw beloved friends criticized for doing something their faith led them to, a beautiful act of compassion and self sacrifice for someone who was suffering terribly because of really bad choices previously made.  And now they are taken to task for that compassionate act.   No good deed goes unpunished, it would seem. 

But Jesus calls us to act out the spirit-led life, the life of compassionate concern for others, especially those on the receiving end of society’s opprobrium.   And Jesus calls us to share our faith.  As in so many other things, it is a matter of heart.    It is a matter of feeling comfortable in doing what’s right.  It’s a matter of opening ourselves to God and to others.   Do justice, love compassion, and walk humbly with God. 

Here at Trinity I have seen wonderful scenes of people sharing their faith: a men’s group where people opened up and talked about what they experienced when sharing in the Holy Eucharist; a women’s sewing group where people talked about how they got through hard personal times.   Evangelism is just seeing moments when people are listening and hungry to hear such stories, and then telling them.  When Jesus calls us to fish for people, he is just saying expand the circle of the people you’re willing to risk sharing with.  It’s part of his open table fellowship and pursuit of compassion, rather than purity. 

This week, let’s find ways to better open our hearts to others, whether in deed or in word.  A thought experiment would be “what do I really truly believe? And why?”  And a practice is to actually bring compassion for others into our daily routine, whether shopping for groceries, driving in traffic, or in our prayers. 

Let us proclaim the good and joyful news at all times and places, and occasionally actually open our mouths to do so. 

In the name of Christ,  Amen. 

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Least of These (Mid-week Message)



Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
January 21, 2015
Least of These

“The last will be first, and the first, last.”  Matthew 20:16

“Let the little children come to me; for it is to such as these that God’s Reign belongs.”  Luke 18:16

“Truly, I tell you, as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Matthew 25:40

Jesus repeatedly says that the lowest will be the highest, the last first, and the weakest, strongest.    The idea in his eschatology, or teaching about the last things, is that in God’s Reign, expectations will be turned upside down. 

But implicit in this teaching lies also an ethical or moral idea:  we need to have compassion.   We need empathy and an ability to put ourselves in the place of even the most rejected, the most dominated, the least admired. 

He lives out this ethical teaching in his practice of open table fellowship, a matter that got him into trouble repeatedly and attracted the accusations from the religious and the powerful: “This man eats with whores, drinks with drunks, and has table conversation with traitors and society’s scum.” 

To it all, he replies simply, “It is the sick who need a physician, not the well.”   That means he needs to help people not because they are worthy of help, but because they need it. 

In his opening sermon found in the Book of Luke chapter 4, he makes it clear:  the arrival of God’s Reign is found in “release for captives, sight for the blind, freedom for prisoners, and a general forgiveness of all debts.”  When we are compassionate, God’s Reign is present.  When we identify with the least, we are closest to Jesus. 

Grace and peace, 
Fr. Tony+

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Self and Selflessness (Midweek Message)




Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
Self and Selflessness
January 14, 2015

All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.
        --8th century Buddhist Monk Shantideva 

Those who seek their own life will lose it, and those who lose their life will find it.”  (Jesus, Luke 17:33)

In popular psychology and self-help circles, we talk a lot about setting healthy boundaries, standing up for ourselves and being neither co-dependent nor cravenly dominated by others.  In the degree that this helps us to overcome unhealthy dependence, poor self-image, and shed enabling bad behaviors in others, this is good.  But we should never confuse a healthy sense of personal responsibility and boundaries with self-seeking or ego. 

It is not wrong to enjoy the blessings God sends our way.  Jesus liked to drink with his friends, and tell good stories and jokes with them.  Many of his parables have the character of edgy jokes, with pointed punch lines.  When he says “lose your life” or “take up your cross,” he is not asking us to be grim, joyless automatons.  In saying to learn self-sacrifice, he is not asking us to become like the pathetic “Giving Tree” in Shel Silverstein’s story, whose only happiness is found in self-abnegation to the point of annihilation. 

Jesus is inviting us to lose our false selves, or overweening ego and desire to be reassured by approval of others.  In saying, “Become like children,” he is not asking us to be selfish, self-absorbed brats, but rather people with open hearts and eyes full of wonder at the world God gives us.   

May we all develop balance in our seeking good for others and healthy enjoyment of and wonder at God’s gifts. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+


Sunday, January 11, 2015

A Tear in the Universe (Epiphany 1B)



A Tear in the Universe
11 January 2015
Epiphany 1B Baptism of Christ
8:00 a.m. said and 10:00 a.m. sung Mass
Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon

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

There is a detail at the end of today’s Gospel reading that is quite striking:  as Jesus is coming up from the waters of baptism, “he saw the heavens ripped open, and heard a voice.”  The Greek word here is schizo, to tear or rip asunder.   It shows up again at the end of Mark’s Gospel, in Chapter 15: “Jesus (on the cross) uttered a loud cry, breathed his last, and the curtain of the Temple was ripped in two, from top to bottom.”  The repetition is deliberate: Jesus’ baptism marks the start of his ministry; his death on the cross, its end.  At the baptism, the skies are torn apart so God’s voice can be heard.  On the cross, as Jesus cries out in his death throes, the veil of the Temple, that symbol of the division between this world and the unseen one where God’s presence is not hidden, is likewise torn.

The skies torn and God’s voice heard; Jesus’ voice and the boundary to the holy of holies ripped in two: the phenomenal universe, our day-to-day lives, what we see before us—split and divided so that we see and hear what is behind it all.  There are moments in life where things become clear, where we catch a glimpse of the hidden world through a tear in the universe. 

The baptism of Jesus is one such event; so are our own baptisms.

We are called to follow Jesus in his baptism.  Jesus receives John’s “baptism of repentance,” that is, a washing showing a change of heart and life.   He is about to leave his family’s home in Nazareth, and start his itinerant ministry of announcing the arrival of God’s Reign through word and acts of welcome and healing.     The course of his life is about to change significantly.  Immediately after he is baptized, the heavens are ripped open and God speaks, “You are my beloved; I am well pleased with you.” Jesus immediately sets out into the wilderness for the 40 day testing period preparing him for his ministry. 

Our baptism is also one of repentance, where we change our hearts, directions, and ways of thinking.   The fact that we offer this to babies shows that we believe this is a life-long process grounded in God’s grace, not in our own natural gifts or wits.   It is not just about our feelings.  It is a real thing.   

Baptism demands that we bring forth “fruits worthy of repentance,” that is, a life course and actions consonant with the promises and affirmations we make in baptism.   Included in these is a promise that whenever we fall into sin, we repent and turn again to the Lord.  Again, this is a life-time process. 

Our prayer book tradition has always seen baptism as a sacrament, an outward sign of an inward grace, a signing act in which the grace is bestowed.    I’ve just been reading Diana Butler Bass’s doctoral dissertation, a history of the Evangelical wing of the Episcopal Church in the 1800s.   A major division in the church at that time was an argument about baptism.  Calvinist Evangelicals felt the Prayer Book was too Roman in its theology because it said in the prayers after the baptism that the newly baptized had by this act been born again.   In some cases evangelical priests of that era were tried and defrocked because they refused to use the offending Prayer Book words and substituted ones that talked about baptism purely as a symbol of the act of faith in the heart of the baptized.    Our Baptismal rite to this day says that we are born anew in baptism, and in it find forgiveness of sin.   All this is through the grace and redeeming work of Jesus, but is in the rite itself.  

So how does this work?   How can the act of receiving washing in water actually change our hearts?  Especially when it is done when we are little, and often as adults cannot remember it? 

Baptism is a tear in the universe.  It is an outward sign pointing to and accomplishing an inward reality.  It discloses truth, even as its outward forms continue in some ways to hide it.

It is this way with all the sacraments: in Eucharist, common bread and wine become the body of Christ, the bread of heaven, even as they remain to all appearances bread and wine.   In reconciliation, we face our guilts and fears and God drives them away, but we remain sinners afterwards all the same.   In confirmation, we reaffirm our baptismal vows, and take this initiation into a deeper, more intentional commitment, but we remain who we were before.  In matrimony, we place our deepest relationship in God’s hands, but the relationship still must be nurtured and cared for.  In orders, we consecrate our life to service in particular ways, and the community offers us up to this service.  But take away the collar and the strange kit, and we look pretty much, in fact, are pretty much like all the rest of the laity.  In anointing, we pray for healing and restoration of good health, and we do this even at the end of life, when we expect that healing and restoration won’t be forthcoming.  

All the sacraments take place in time, but are also eternal.   All involve sacrifice.  All involve consecration.  All involve trusting that God will change us and will change things.   Sacraments all are part of a life’s course, are all lifelong.  

A few months ago, in our Sacerdotal Saturday Movies, we watched Tender Mercies.  Robert Duvall plays Mac, a down-on-his-luck country singer recovering from alcoholism.  A young widow offers him room and board at her Texas motel in exchange for handyman help.  Hope and grace stir in his life.  Eventually both Mac and the widow’s young boy, Sonny, decide to be baptized. Driving home afterwards, Sonny says: "Well, we done it Mac, we was baptized." He looks into the truck’s rearview mirror and studies himself for a moment. "Everybody said I’d feel like a changed person. Do you feel like a changed person?" "Not yet," replies Mac. "You don’t look any different, Mac." "Do you think I look any different?" "Not yet," answers Mac.  

Like Sonny, we most often can’t see ourselves as changed people.   Our habits, our ways of thinking, our ways of behaving are just too ingrained.  Baptism or no, adult immersion or infant effusion, we wonder if there is any possibility of change in our lives. 

But that is exactly where the rip in the universe occurs.  In sacraments, if we see things rightly, we get a glimpse of what’s really going on. 

A major part of the light shining through this tear in the universe is expressed in what that voice says to us:  “You are my child.  I love you.  You make me happy.” 

But the glimpse through the veil, the vision through the torn skies does not last forever. 

And so we have to take a long view.  There are times when we can perceive who and where we are only, like Sonny in that movie, by looking into the rearview mirror and seeing what we have already passed. 

Given the stresses of life, it is easy to lose heart.  It is easy to believe that people cannot change.  That is why we promise in baptism to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of the bread and in the prayers.  The miracle and mystery of our faith is this—we can change because God can change us.  At baptism we affirm in the Apostles’ Creed that believe in “the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”  This makes no sense at all if we don’t believe that God is at work transforming us, and that we shall all be changed

Sacraments make us new, and help us be reborn in the direction of the image of Jesus.  Remember the classic line from African-American preaching quoted often by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Lord know I ain't what I outta be.  And Lord know I ain't what I'm gonna be.  But thank God Almighty, I ain't what I was!"

Let’s try all the harder to keep the Baptismal Covenant.   As St. Francis said, preach the Good News of God’s love at all times and in all places, occasionally actually opening our mouths to do so.   Let’s not get discouraged in the fight against the powers and dominions, the unjust structures of power and society, and think that if we can’t see change that means there is no point in the effort?   Remember Margaret Mead’s words, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”  And let’s be more regular and more fervent in our prayers, more emotionally connected by them. I think that is one of the reason we use the Psalter so much in prayer—it is a book of emotions.  As Gandhi said, “It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

It is only by taking our covenant seriously, and challenging ourselves with it, that this life-long tearing of the universe is made open to us and we can see that God has loved us all along. 

Thanks be to God. 
Amen. 


Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Baptismal Covenant (Mid-week Message)

 
 
Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
Baptismal Covenant
January 7, 2015
 
Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.” (Exodus 19:5)
 
This coming Sunday is Baptism of Christ Sunday, an occasion to reflect on baptism and what it means for us. 
 
The Baptismal Covenant in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (pp. 304ff.) includes the following:
 
·      An affirmation of our dedication to the basics of the Trinitarian faith outlined in the Apostles’ Creed.
 
·      A promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread (the Holy Eucharist), and the prayers.
 
·      A promise to persevere in resisting evil, and to repent from sin we may fall into, and return to the Lord.
 
·      A promise to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, seek and serve Christ in all persons, and strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.
 
These are all commitments of relationship: with God, with Jesus, with the ministers Jesus established and those who followed after, with the living tradition of faith and practice they have given us, and with God’s reign on earth, with our actions and society conforming to how God intends.   
 
Jesus was baptized by John in a “baptism of repentance,” that is, a washing showing a change of heart. Immediately afterward, the heavens were opened and God spoke, “You are my beloved; I am well pleased with you,” and Jesus went our into the wilderness for the 40-day testing period preparing him for his ministry. 
 
Our baptism is also one of repentance, where we change hearts, directions, and ways of thinking. The fact that we offer this to babies shows that we believe this is a life-long process grounded in God’s grace, not in our own natural gifts or wits. Baptism demands that we bring forth “fruits worthy of repentance,” that is, a life course and actions consonant with the promises and affirmations of the covenant. 
 
As part of our preparation for Baptism of Christ Sunday, I invite us all to take a few minutes and ask how we each are doing in fulfilling the covenant. Where are we doing okay; where should we place more effort?
 
With Blessings and Grace for the New Year,
Fr. Tony+
 

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Orientation (Epiphany)

 
Orientation
6 January 2015
Feast of the Epiphany
6:00 p.m. Sung Mass
Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland, Oregon
Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12; Psalm 72:1-7,10-14

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

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, the Greek word for the “Manifestation” of God.   Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, to the unbelievers.   Today’s Gospel tells the story of strange figures from the East arriving in Jerusalem seeking the child born “King of the Jews.”  The visitors are called Magoi (Latin: Magi).  The Greek word often describes Persian astrologers or diviners, or even Zoroastrian priests.  The word is related to our word “magician” and always is tinged with Mystery and the Occult.  Probably the best translation for it is Wizards.
 
We don’t know how many of the Wizards arrive; we usually number them as three because that is how many gifts they bring are named: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

We usually say they are kings because of the passages we read today from Isaiah and Psalm 72, where foreign kings bring gifts and tribute to the Ideal King of the Future. 

All three gifts are luxury items, and tell us more about Jesus than about those bearing the gifts.  

Gold is a gift one gives a king.  Frankincense is a gift to a priest:  fragrant resin of a bush originating in Yemen that is used as incense in worship, driving away the smells and thoughts of everyday life.  It is thus an offering to GodMyrrh is another fragrant resin from Yemen, used as an ingredient in medicines and to prepare bodies for burial.  It is thus a gift to a great healer, but also to those who mourn, a sign showing that Jesus was born not only divine but fully human and mortal, destined to die.


As we processed into the Church today, we used frankincense to symbolize our prayers rising to God and remind us of the Magi’s gifts, the gifts of strange unbelievers who come to Jesus. 


I prefer to see the Magi as Wizards rather than kings, because their exotic strangeness and not their royalty is the point in today’s Gospel, which sets them in polar opposition to an archetypical bad king, Herod the Great.  

Herod was a consummate player of power politics, marrying and divorcing well-connected wives, murdering princes and priests, and on three separate occasions suddenly switching his allegiance to political and military patrons in Palestine and then Rome on his way to the throne.   He was Jewish, though only marginally so.  He believed you had to hold onto political power through any means necessary, and the easiest way was to suck up to the more powerful and simply make possible opponents disappear.  He had worked hard to get where he was. He had no intention of losing his throne to some upstart offspring of the Davidic line.  “I got MINE and no one is going to take it away from me” sums up his approach to life.  
Where Herod is a Jew, but a bad one; the Magi are gentiles, but righteous ones.   Where the King’s heart is tightly closed, the Wizards’ hearts are open.  Where his fist firmly grasps his power and prestige, their hands are filled with gifts.  Where he does exactly what he has always done to stay on top, they are compelled to go beyond their comfort zone, study foreign scriptures, leave their homes, and search for a good only dimly conceived.

When the Wizards arrive at their intended destination Jerusalem, they are disappointed to find out that things are not as they have imagined.

They are nine miles off track. It is Bethlehem, village of shepherds and the poor, rather than Jerusalem, city of the rich and powerful, where they are actually headed.   Their open hearts and minds respond, and they change their understanding and direction.   Ability to reorient is a sign of an open heart. 

The King, however, only changes his tactics:  when the Wizards do not return, he persists in his murderous plans to protect his perks, but now killing innocents in addition to the pretender to the throne. Stubborn persistence in futile patterns of thought and behavior are signs of a closed heart.  Besides that, doing the same thing again and again expecting different results is just plain crazy. 

The contrast could not be greater:  Herod vs. the Persian strangers, closed heart vs. open hearts, stinginess vs. generosity.    This teaches us something important about people and faith in general.

In my experience, what matters most is not whether you are a believer or not, but what kind of heart you have.  Is it open or closed?  Does it seek something beyond itself or is it satisfied or stingy with what it has?   What is its orientation?

You have some believers who have open hearts and some who have closed hearts.  And you have some unbelievers with open hearts and some with closed hearts.    The people with open hearts, whether believers or not, are people open to God’s grace.  The people with closed hearts, whether believers or not, close themselves to God’s grace. 

Believers with cold, tightly closed hearts give faith and religion a bad name.  They can be something very close to demons:  inquisitors, Pharisees, guardians of public morality and correct doctrine, holy warriors, who do horrible things to other people using their God or their faith as an excuse.  In the Gospels, the only people with whom Jesus regularly gets angry are the closed-hearted religious.  To them he says, “Whores and traitors will get into the Kingdom of God before you will, because they at least recognize their need for God.” 

Unbelievers with cold, tightly closed hearts can be something close to monsters because they can do horrible things to others simply to protect their own position and prestige, or to build the utopia their godless ideology demands.   They are people like another Herod in the Gospels, Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod the Great in today’s story.  Antipas kills John the Baptist, and Jesus calls him a “fox” at one point (Luke 13:32).   Antipas wants to see Jesus as a novelty just before his crucifixion, and places him in what Luke calls a “gorgeous robe” to ridicule him.  To this closed-hearted unbeliever, Jesus won’t even speak, not a single word (Luke 23:9).

Believers with open hearts remain in awe of what they do not understand about God, what is unclear, and how far removed they are from Deity.  As Paul says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23).

Unbelievers, even disbelievers, can remain open in their hearts, even if they cannot work a faith up for right now.  An example of this is people in recovery in Twelve-Step programs who cannot profess faith in God, but yet “come to believe” in a power greater than themselves, a Higher Power, any higher power.

Do not misunderstand me.  Sometimes we can go from closed-heartedness to open-heartedness quickly, even with no immediate change in our opinions, and then back again.  Openness is a habit of the heart, an orientation of the personality, not signing on to a particular idea.   The Hebrew and Greek words in the Bible normally translated as “faith” or “believe” all have a sense of putting your heart into God, of trusting him.   The first commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God,” not “you shall subscribe to the intellectual proposition that there is a God.” 

I invite us all to a simple practice for the next few days:  meditating on the question, “what gift do I have to offer the baby Jesus?” Ask ourselves:  am I like Herod, or like the Magi?  Do I have an open heart?  Do I let humility, good will, and even humor break into my prior conceptions and help me change?  Am I willing to stretch myself beyond what is comfortable, be generous, and follow God where God leads, or do I want to say “I have MINE, and I want to keep it!” or “This is what I believe, and that settles it, no more questions!”   

What gift do I have to offer Jesus?

In the name of Christ, Amen.