Embracing Mystery (Lent 3C)

Embracing Mystery

Lent 3C
28 February 20168:00 a.m. Said and 10 a.m. Sung Eucharist

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9

 God, give us grace to feel and love. 

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

“Please give me a reason to believe that I am not going to hell,” said the person under hospice care that I was visiting.  “God is in charge of everything.  And now here I have this terrible disease:  I can’t take care of myself any more, even simple things like going to the bathroom or swallowing food or drinking without choking.    It’s only going to get worse.  I know the wrongs I have done in life, and still do.  I feel God is punishing me.  I think he is going to send me to hell.” 

“God is punishing me.”   We hear it or feel it much more frequently than we admit. 

That, or “God is punishing them.”  Back in Spring 2010 a devastating earthquake struck Haiti.  Television Evangelist Pat Robertson quickly said that this was God’s punishment for the Haitians.   Jerry Falwell blamed the 9-11 attacks in 2001 on homosexuals and women who sought abortions.  God was punishing America by knocking down the symbols of our pride, the Trade center and the Pentagon.     

God the Tester and God the Punisher.  Not a pretty picture.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is asked about people who suffer horrible things.  “Did you hear that the Romans massacred those countrymen of yours who were worshipping in the Temple?  Their own blood was mixed with that of the animals they were sacrificing!  What evil did they do that that God punished them this way?” 

This question has hefty scriptural authority behind it. The Book of Deuteronomy and all the books from Joshua through 2 Kings teach that if you do what is right, God will bless you and prosper your way.  If you do what is wrong, God will punish you and bring calamity upon you.   1-2 Chronicles take the idea further: “if something bad happens to you, you clearly have done something wrong: God is punishing you.”

But Jesus says no—God is not like that.   He replies:  “Those people did nothing any worse than anyone else.  And what about those countrymen of yours who died in the Tower of Siloam when it collapsed?  They were no worse than anyone else.  The lesson we should take here is not that they were particularly bad, but that we all need to be better” (Luke 13:1-5).  

Jesus says that God is mystery, hard sometimes to figure out. But the one thing we can be sure about is that God is compassionate. 

Jesus too is following scripture in this view.

The Book of Job tells of a man “perfect in all his ways,” yet who suffers horror.  Job’s friends urge him to confess whatever hidden sin he has committed that God is so obviously punishing him for.  But Job just can’t agree: what he has suffered just is not fair.  He won’t let God off the hook.  But he does not “curse God and die.”  When God at long last speaks to him from “out of the whirlwind,” it is all so overwhelming that all Job can do is mourn and sorrow, and yet bless God for his mysterious goodness.  

Mystery.  In today’s reading from Exodus, God is the one who is, the “I am.”   God remains always somewhat hidden from us, speaking from a bush that burns, yet is not consumed.   The God whose name cannot be said aloud is being itself that brings all things into existence.   This should cause us to stand in awe, and remove the shoes from our feet. 

Jesus says that you can’t explain the bad things in the world by chalking them up to God the great Punisher.   Jesus invites us instead to keep confidence in God’s love and justice and embrace mystery.  He knows that throughout Hebrew Scripture, God is described as loving, compassionate, and patient.  So you have to focus on God’s goodness and love, not on God’s justice, or, worse, what feels like God’s anger when you are not right with God.  Bad things happen even to good people.  Sometimes, the wicked prosper.  But God still loves us.  Embrace mystery, take off your shoes before the burning but unconsumed bush, and keep your confidence in a loving, good, and gracious God despite the things that go bad for us.

In our Friday evening Lenten Soup Supper discussion, one parishioner expressed discomfort at how new approaches to scripture have reconstructed how we understand Jesus’s birth, the incarnation, and the atonement.  Borrowing an image from Diana Butler Bass, she said, “If we are going to put our faith in a suitcase and then haul it over the creaky bridge of awakening over to a reconstructed Christianity on the other side, I wonder just what we’re going to find in that suitcase when we open it.”  For this soul, and for many, I think, progressive politics, good communal life, and maybe personal contemplative enlightenment all appear pretty thin gruel compared to the tried and true way of understanding the stories.

It’s a fair question.  How can we throw out the dirty bathwater of a thousand years of overlaid tradition that have obscured God and made faith all but impossible for many, while keeping the baby Jesus?  How do we even identify the baby?  And how do we know just what to throw out and what to treasure? 

Accepting ambiguity is hard.  But it is easier when we focus on the things we are sure of.  Thus we can keep trying to be faithful to the tradition, continue to learn from the stories that have been handed down, and actually find them newly empowered to do better things for us than we were getting from the exact way we received them.    Again, the key is focusing on what we truly know. 

The gospel stories of Jesus healing the sick tell us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. Jesus’ announcing the reign of God focused in large part in healing physical and mental suffering. This tells us that God doesn’t intend horror and disappointment for those he has made. 

When asked why a man had been born blind, “was it his parents’ sin or his?” he replied, “Neither, it wasn’t punishment for anything, but so that I would have the chance to heal him” (John 9:2-3).  They ask him why, on account of what, and he answers why, for what purpose.   Jesus' shift between the two different kinds of 'why' is essential.   It forces us to turn away from the fruitless questioning of mystery that makes us lose sight of God’s love and instead look for opportunities to serve and help bring the ultimate loving intentions of God closer to what we see before us.  This is what I mean by creativity and imagination.

The basic act of removing our shoes before the Holy is necessary if we are to keep faith and hope.  Embracing mystery means learning to live with uncertainty and ambiguity in an ongoing act of creativity and imagination, and doing so not reluctantly or because we are forced to by facts, but joyfully.  Incarnational acts showing God’s love to those in need and humble prayer that listens to God more than it asks of God—all these are the basic practices of such creativity in the presence of ambiguity.   

After the Indonesian tsunami of 2004, theologian David Hart wrote:  “As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy.”  William Pike, writing on the Haiti earthquake, said that he had been reminded of the story of Elijah’s flight to Mount Horeb in 1 Kings 19, where God spoke to Elijah not out of an earthquake, whirlwind, or fire, but out of the whispering of the still breeze.  Against Pat Robertson’s God the Punisher, Pike remembers the text’s words—“The Lord was not in the earthquake.” 

All I could say to my friend in hospice is that Jesus showed us God. God is love. God is forgiveness.   Then I prayed, using a collect on page 831 of the Prayer Book: “O merciful Father, you have taught us in your holy Word that you do not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men:  Look with pity upon the sorrows of this your servant… Remember him O Lord in mercy, nourish his soul with patience, comfort him (and notice this especially!) with a sense of your goodness.  Lift up your countenance upon him and give him peace.”

God is a healer, not a punisher. 

God indeed is not in the earthquake, not in the horror.  He is not in towers falling, or sickness and suffering. These things show us how far the world is from God's intention, not God’s will.   Rather, God is in the efforts of people trying to help the victims of such things.  He, or should I say She is a nurturer.  She is in reconciliation and service.  He is in efforts to build justice and peace, in caregiving.

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

The Creed as a Subversive Act

 

The Creed as a Subversive Act

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

February 24, 2016

In our parish Lenten discussion groups, some have raised again the issue of the Nicene Creed as a stumbling block to faith.    The discussion brought to my mind something that Marcus Borg wrote near the end of his life.  Within the context of reading the creed metaphorically and as an expression of trust and love rather than as a loyalty oath on correct opinions, he says: 

“Constantine’s agenda [in calling the Council of Nicea] was to reach agreement about the nature of Jesus, so that conflicts within Christianity would not lead to conflicts within his empire.  He seems not to have cared what the bishops concluded—only that they came to an agreement. … Like Roman Emperors before him, Constantine was hailed as divine, Son of God, and Lord.  But he was not, to use the language of the Creed, “begotten and not made.”  He was not “of one substance,” “one Being” with God.  Athanasius’s interpretation put Jesus above the emperor.  …the Nicene Creed made the status of Jesus as divine and Son of God higher than the status of the emperor.  Within a few years of Nicea, Constantine realized this and became “Arian,” that is, an advocate of the lesser status of Jesus advocated by Arius.  So did his imperial successors for much of the fourth century.  Thus a major issue at stake in the Nicene Creed is: Is Jesus above all of the lords of this world or is he among a number of lords?  The issue continues to come up for Christians today.  Is Jesus above the lords of culture or is he one allegiance among a number of allegiances?  Are we to give our allegiance to Jesus in the religious realm and our allegiance to others in the other realms of life?  Are our religious and political loyalties separate?  Or is Jesus lord of all lords?  The answer of the Nicene Creed (and the New Testament before it) is clear.  Jesus as Lord and Son of God transcends all other lords.  Given this, standing and saying the Nicene Creed is a subversive act.  Its affirmations negate the claims of other lords upon us.  God as known in Jesus is Lord, the one and only Lord.  The lords of culture—and they are many—are not.  …  Saying the creed is identifying with the community that says these words together.  The identification transcends space and time.  It is global.  Christians all around the world, in a multitude of languages, are joined together by these words.  The identification transcends time as well; present and past are joined.  When we say the creed, we identify with Christians who have said or heard these words for over fifteen hundred years.  It is a momentary participation in the communion of saints, living and dead.”  (Speaking Christian, 2011; pp. 206-209)

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

Yearning and Awe (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Yearning and Awe

February 17, 2016

4^th Century deacon, ascetic and poet St. Ephrem the Syrian, called the “Harp of the Holy Spirit” by Eastern Church writers, wrote 400 or so metrical doctrinal poems (madrashe) in Syriac,  the later form of Jesus’ native tongue, Aramaic.  I was struck by one recently that talks about faith and fear:  

I stood halfway, caught

Between awe and love.

Yearning for Paradise

Invited me to explore.

Awe at its glory

Kept me back from the search.

But Lady Wisdom

Helped me reconcile the two.

I could stand in silent awe at what remained hidden. 

And I could meditate upon the bits that God chose to reveal. 

Searching was for my growth and benefit. 

Reverent silence was for my consolation and help. 

(Hymns on Paradise 1:2, my translation)

In Lent, we often are caught unawares by moments of brilliance.   These may make us question foundations and assumptions, and can be very unnerving.  But it is important not to draw back.  It is important not to treat such wonder lightly or in a jaded chatty fashion.  Faith is trust above all else, and trust helps dispel fear.   We need to take such strange new things and “treasure them in our heart” like the Blessed Virgin after the scene in the Temple with twelve-year old Jesus (Luke 2).  Search is for our growth and benefit.  And attentive silence in the presence of wonder helps us deal with the uncertainty that comes automatically with being on the Way with Jesus. 

Grave and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

A Sea of Compassion (Ash Wednesday)

St. Isaac of Nineveh

A Sea of Compassion

Ash Wednesday
10 February 2016; 12:00 noon and 7:00 p.m. Said Mass

With Imposition of Ashes
Homily Delivered at the Parish Church of Trinity Ashland, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 103; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10;

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21 

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

Saint Augustine is famously said to have prayed, “Give me chastity Lord, but not yet.” 

Repentance is not a pleasant thing.  It is particularly not pleasant if we have little or no intention of amending our lives.  Unpleasant, and it is not even repentance. 

To pray God for forgiveness without a sincere desire to amend one’s life, without a sincere desire to abandon sin, is like praying God to heal us without healing us.  It makes no sense. 

In the epistle today, St. Paul tells the Corinthians and tells us, “We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. … Do not accept the grace of God in vain. For God says (roughly quoting Isaiah 49:8),  “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.  See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”  (2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:2) 

Reconciliation is what repentance is all about.  Being acceptable or finding favor and grace is what it is all about.  Being saved from ourselves is what it is all about.  

The Christian Church established long ago the period of Lent, the preparation for Holy Week and Easter, as a period of penance and contrition.  We put away the “Alleluias” and overly joyous celebration.  Just as we imposed ashes today, throughout Lent we impose disciplines on ourselves, giving up meat, sweets, coffee, or fats, or adding additional service and devotions.   Lenten devotions include abstinence, giving up on things that please us, and fasting, foregoing food altogether for specified periods of time.  They also include special corporeal acts of mercy: feeding the hungry, almsgiving to the poor, standing with and supporting the afflicted and downtrodden, burying the dead, and visiting the sick and the bereaved.   Special periods of prayer and reflection help us approach God. The goal is to help us recognize where we fall short, and, in the words of the prayer book, “worthily lament our sins.” 

As the Gospel reading and the alternate Hebrew Scripture reading from Isaiah say, this is not for show, not to impress others, not to impress ourselves.  This is to help us connect to God. 

For Lent is not about us, but about God.

St. Isaac of Nineveh, a Syrian mystic and ascetic who died in A.D. 700 wrote this: 

“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.”

God is a great Sea of Compassion, an Ocean of Mercy, a robust and powerful Spring of Grace:  undeserved, one-way, love and acceptance.   Jesus’ death for us on the cross and victory over the powers of darkness through God raising him from death and hell is the way that God reaches out to us in love. 

Let us not accept the grace of God in vain.  Let us identify our failings, be contrite, turn to God and ask for help, and, God helping, amend our lives. 

For today is the day of acceptance, the day of favor, and the day of salvation.  Let us not procrastinate or delay. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

Examine your Feelings (midweek)

Examine Your Feelings

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

February 10, 2016

Ash Wednesday

Here in Ashland, land of New Age and Spiritual-but-Not-Religious, we often hear it said, “Trust your feelings.”

I have to say, with some embarrassment, that whenever I hear that, I cringe. 

This is not because I have buried my feelings, cut off emotion, and learned the rigorous discipline of logic and data.  It is because in my experience, feelings can be very dangerous guides to thought and action. 

I have seen far too many families ruined, lives unhinged, marriages and partnerships destroyed, and people put in jail because they were “following their feelings.” 

As a result, whenever I see the original Star Wars movie, when the ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi comes to Luke Skywalker and tells him, “Luke, trust your feelings,” I want to jump out of my chair, and yell, “NO, LUKE!  DO NOT TRUST YOUR FEELINGS.  THEY ARE VERY, VERY DANGEROUS!” 

The advice to trust feelings is good, as far as it goes.  We process a lot of material at a subconscious level, and our gut intuition sometimes is a very valuable—even a life-saving—factor in crisis situations.  And being authentically in touch with our emotions and able to sort our good ones and not-so-good ones is a crucial skill. 

But the fact is, none of us is perfect, and none of us have perfectly trained consciences or feelings.  We need to learn when and how to trust our feelings to not be misled by them.  And this is done in community.  It is what spiritual direction and retreats is about.  It is what Church is about.  It is what going to group is about—whether therapy or support group, or 12-Step meeting.  One of the things we first learn is how important our feelings are—not as signs of the truth of the world and what we should do, but rather as indicators about what is going on inside of us and of danger areas for us. 

A major part of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises is the Examen, the examination of one’s conscience or replay of one’s day.  It has basically five steps, which can be done in as short as 20 minutes.   1) We begin by asking God for light, since we want to see these things through God’s eyes, not ours.  2) We continue by giving thanks for the day that is past, and drawing a vivid mind picture of all the good we enjoyed.  3) We then review the day, looking carefully at what happened, paying particular attention to how we felt about things, using what and how deeply we feel as points of entry into what is going on inside us.  Again, the point is to try to get God’s viewpoint, not simply replay ours.  4) With clear images of the day and our feelings before us, we then face what went wrong in the day, including our own shortcomings.  5) Finally, we look forward to the day to come with sincere petitions to God to help us in specific areas in our lives.  

I invite everyone to try Ignatian Examen, if you have not done so before, or even perhaps try to make this a daily practice for the Lenten season that begins today.   I have found it very powerful, and believe it might be useful to you.   It does help sort out feelings so that we can learn to trust them more. 

Grace and peace,  Fr. Tony+

Seeing Jesus with New Eyes (Transfiguration Sunday C)

Gerard David, Transfiguration of Christ (1520), 

in Church of Our Lady, Bruges Belgium

Seeing Jesus with New Eyes
Last Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
7 February 2016 9:00 a.m. 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]

God, give us grace to feel and love,

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

One of the strangest social events I ever attended in my life took place in December 1991 at the Soviet Embassy in Beijing China.  It was the annual end of the year reception to which many of Beijing’s elites were invited: fine Russian foods, hot cups of rich borscht, scarlet with a white cloud of sour cream in each cup, blini and sour cream, succulent lamb dumplings called pelmeni, huge mounds of beluga caviar on chipped ice, and a full table of Stolichnaya vodka chilled below the freezing point of water, poured out gelatinously into half tumblers, not shot glasses.   The Soviet Embassy was huge, the largest embassy compound of any country in any country on the planet:  its large Stalinist architecture was designed to make people look little, and to inspire awe and fear.  It was a fortress, whose secure battlements were installed after Red Guards had attacked the compound during the Cultural Revolution.   I was second secretary for press at the U.S. Embassy, far too low a rank to be invited to what was considered one of the most exclusive events in Beijing.   Besides, the U.S. and the USSR were enemies in the Cold War.  Both countries had stringent rules limiting contact between their officials and requiring extensive reporting, and both embassies invited only the bare minimum required for politeness from the other to events—usually political officers or suspected or declared intelligence officers. I was surprised to be invited, since I was none of these.    Much to the alarm of our embassy security officer, I had been friendly with soviet colleagues during the year, even to the point of playing volleyball with some at the diplomatic beach compound in Beidaihe during a short summer vacation: things were changing politically in Gorbachev’s USSR.  So when I got the invitation, I was the envy of several of my more ideologically inclined embassy colleagues.  This was especially so since the August coup attempt had rocked Soviet society to its core: Communist Party rule had ended and the Soviet Union was breaking up.    This reception was like being invited to a birthday party of someone who had just died. 

What made the whole thing so odd was this:  in years past, whenever we met with soviet colleagues, they all wore the mask of loyal and dedicated communist apparatchiks.  Even on the beach that summer, there was still a cool reserve remaining, especially among the military officers.  In Beijing in May and June of 1989, people had taken off their masks briefly during the democracy demonstrations, only to put them on back firmly and quickly after the Tiananmen Massacre and subsequent political crackdown.  I had learned to expect as a default what we called “the red mask.”  But here at this party, the hosts were clearly sad for the loss of their country.  And they were showing their sadness.   Drinking perhaps too much vodka, they then opened up throughout the evening: each had his or her own voice.  I had ongoing work contacts the Embassy’ cultural affairs shop and had never seen any difference of opinion or belief between its officers.  But now the minister counselor for culture was telling me that he was Georgian, not Russian.  And though the Foreign Minister, also a Georgian, had already declared that he was headed to his homeland after the breakup, my colleague said he was staying with Russia, since his wife was Russian and all his kids lived in Moscow.   People who had been faceless ciphers, and intentionally so, now each expressed their individual backgrounds and large parts of their stories.  About half of the Embassy staff was leaving, to return to their non-Russian republics or start up small embassies of their own countries in Beijing.  It was strange indeed. 

What I learned that evening was far broader and deeper than the biographic and political details of people in attendance.  I had always had an image of the faceless, non-descript soviet diplomat.  I thought of them as Russian, generally.  But that evening, masks came off, and I saw a very different reality.  I would never again make blanket assumptions about this nationality or that partisan affiliation.  There was always just too much hidden. 

It was an important lesson:  in this life, we see only a tiny slice of reality.  We see it from one perspective only.  We base our perceptions and judgments in our prior experience, limited as this is, and generally are unaware of our blind spots.  Moments where we are able to see things with new eyes are rare, but most valuable. 

Today’s scriptures all talk about hidden things becoming obvious, about moments of clarity when our little slice of reality is shown obviously as deficient and limited.  

The Hebrew Scripture lesson today has Moses going to the Holy Mountain and returning with the brightness of God still on him.  In today’s Epistle, Paul contrasts the fading glory in Moses’ face with the ongoing glory he sees in Jesus.   The Gospel is Luke’s telling of how Jesus is transformed and surrounded by glorious brightness before his close disciples’ eyes.  

Peter and his companions react to the great bursting forth of unexpected light from Jesus in a strange way.   Seeing him alongside the two great icons of the Jewish tradition—Moses for the Law and Elijah for the Prophets—Peter suggests that he build three Succoth—temporary shelters or booths—in their honor.   He thinks perhaps Jesus is on par with them. That’s why he wants to build the Succoth. But the narrator comments, “He didn’t know what he was saying. He was scared witless.”
 

The glory of God shining forth from the face of Jesus is a revolutionary fact:  it challenges Peter's assumptions.   His initial reaction is based on his limited experience and perspective.

But God sets Peter 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. 

The transfiguration is a moment of sudden clarity for the disciples, a moment when they see Jesus with new eyes.  They don’t fully “get” what it means until after Jesus’ death and 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 is about seeing Jesus with new eyes.  That is what today’s 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.   Paul rhetorically contrasts this with the fading glory on the face of Moses coming down from the Mountain. 

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.  He describes the transforming effect of such moments of clarity by referring to the pagan myth of metamorphosis, or shape changing:  Zeus shifting shapes into swans, or bulls, or handsome young men; the Olympian Gods changing human beings into constellations, flowers, trees, or even echoes.  Paul says that when we look upon Christ’s glory, we undergo metamorphosis.   We become more and more like Christ. 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.” 

Sisters and brothers:  we often see Jesus with the eyes of our prior experience, with how we were taught.  We might see him as God only pretending to be human.  We might see him as meek and mild, and always teaching gentleness.  We might see him as a supporter for what people call family values, or the work ethic.  We might see him as a great liberal and rationalist.  Or a great conservative and moralist.  We might see him as a rabbi, a wandering philosopher, a revolutionary agitator, or a simple peasant activist.  But all these ways of seeing Jesus are based on limited view and selective sight. 

The story of the transfiguration, and Paul’s call for us to be transformed—these tell us to keep looking.  Read scripture.  Look into your heart in moments of silence.  Let the work of scholars who show new aspects of the Jesus story in scripture ferment in our hearts.  Serve the poor, and welcome the strange, and look to see Jesus in them. 

God will give us new sight, and we will see Jesus with new and better eyes. And we will be changed. 

In the name of God, Amen. 

What Jesus Accomplished (Midweek Message)

Fr. Tony’s mid-week Message

What Jesus Accomplished

February 3, 2016

As we prepare to enter into the observance of a Holy Lent, it is useful to remember scriptural teaching about what Jesus accomplished in dying on the Cross and coming forth from the tomb on Easter morning.  The New Testament uses many differing metaphors to describe what Christ accomplished for us and in us:  

·      justification (declare or make morally upright; Romans 3:20-26),

·      salvation (rescue on the field of battle; 1 Corinthians 1:18, 21),

·      reconciliation (restoring a personal relationship; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19),

·      expiation (driving away ritual impurity or ‘covering over’ guilt; Romans 3:25),

·      redemption or ransom (purchasing someone back from slavery

         or prison into freedom; 1 Corinthians 1:30),

·      liberation to freedom (restoring full-citizenship to someone; 2 Corinthian 3:17)

·      new creation (being made anew; Galatians 6:15)

·      sanctification (being made or declared holy; 1 Corinthians 1:2)

·      transformation (changing shapes; 2 Corinthians 3:18)

·      glorification (being endowed with the light 
              surrounding God; Romans 8:30)

None of these are completely adequate descriptions of what “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3) means.   But they all agree that Jesus’s death and resurrection is the great victory over what is wrong with us and the world, a mystery just too glorious to reduce to a single image.   Their combined strength cannot and should not be reduced to a wrong-headed and simplistic doctrine of transferred divine punishment and bloody sacrifice. 

The “wrath of God” describes more how our relationship with God feels to us when we are alienated from God than it describes God’s heart.   It is we human beings who tend to think that violence can make things right, not God. 

In this light, our belief that Christ “died for us” takes on deep meaning. In Jesus on the Cross, we see God suffering right along with us, dying as one of us; in Jesus in Gethsemane, a human being alongside us, praying fervently with us, and, like us, not getting what he asks for or deserves. 

As we prepare our Lenten observances, let us remember what Jesus did for us, not focus on beating up on ourselves for being human beings, glorious creations of God, yet now in some ways apart from God and somehow flawed and broken.

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+

Like us in all Respects (Candlemas)

Like us in All Respects

(Candlemas—the Feast of the Presentation)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
2 February 2016 

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. 

Because of the line, "I will search Jerusalem with lamps," in earlier lectionaries’ readings for today, February 2 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.   The candles and lights were a reminiscence of the bonfires of the great Celtic pagan feast Imbolc, on February 1, for us Christians, the Feast of St. Bridget.   

Regardless of fickle local weather patterns, here in the Northern Hemisphere, the days have already clearly started to get longer.  Dawn is earlier and earlier; sunset is later and later.

The story of Jesus being presented in the Temple at the Purification of St. Mary tells us that Jesus was born of a woman, under the Law of Moses.  He had to deal with hearth and home, and with larger institutions of Law and religion.  In the words of today’s epistle, he was like us in all respects, save, perhaps, in intentional sin.  That’s why, says the author of Hebrews, he is someone we can fully rely on and depend on.  He knows what we experience. 

So now, with the darkness of winter finally retreating behind us, we begin to look forward.  Next week, we will prepare for Easter through self-denial and fasting during the season called Lent, which gets its name in English from the verb “lengthen,” a reference to the longer and longer days.

Just as the astronomical days grow longer we will be reminded soon in stark terms that our biological 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.