St. Andrew's Day (Midweek Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

November 30, 2016

St. Andrew’s Day 

Today, November 30, is the beginning of the new Church year:  the feast day of St. Andrew the Apostle.   We read in the Gospel of John:

The next day John [the Baptist] was there again with two of his disciples.  When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look,  the Lamb of God!”   When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.  Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”   They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”   “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”  So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.   Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.  The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ).  And he brought him to Jesus.  Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).  (John 1:35-40)

In the Eastern tradition, Andrew is often called “the first-called (protokletos)” because of this story in the Gospel of John, where Andrew and the unnamed John (the Beloved) are described as disciples of John the Baptist who first became followers of Jesus.  Andrew is the one who introduces his brother Simon Peter to Jesus.   Andrew and Peter were both fishermen from Capernaum, who were called by Jesus to become “fishers of people." 
 

The name Andrew is actually a Greek name, meaning “manly.”   A measure of the degree of intra-cultural mingling in the mixed populations of Galilee of the period is found in the popularity of such Greek names for Jewish boys there.   This, even in the presence of wildly popular but such stridently nationalistic Jewish names such as Simon, Judas (Judah), and Jesus (Joshua).  

 

Later in John’s Gospel, when a group of Greek-speaking Jews wish to speak with Jesus, it is Philip and Andrew that they approach, both disciples with Greek names (John 12:20-22; “Philip” means “horse lover”). 
 

Earlier in John, when Jesus realizes the crowds are hungry just before he feeds the Five Thousand, it is Andrew who introduces him to a boy nearby by saying, "Here is a lad with five barley loaves and two fish." (Jn 6:8f) 

Andrew appears in all the various lists of the Twelve given in the New Testament, but these three passages in John are the only places where we see Andrew as an individual.  In each, he is portrayed as introducing people to Jesus.  As a result, he is seen as the archetype of the Christian missionary or evangelist.  The Fellowship of Saint Andrew among Episcopalians today is devoted to encouraging personal evangelism, bringing of one's friends and colleagues to a knowledge of Christ.

Since Andrew’s day marks the beginning of the Church Year, the First Sunday of Advent is defined as the Sunday on or nearest the Feast of St. Andrew.  This day is effectively the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day. 
  

In early Church tradition, Andrew preached in Asia Minor and along the Black Sea, and was martyred by crucifixion in Greece.  Tellingly, later tradition describes him not nailed to a Latin cross, like Jesus, but rather, tied to an X shaped cross (a “saltire”), where he valiantly preaches for two days before expiring. 
 

When the Emperor Constantine in the 4^th century set up his new capital Constantinople at Byzantium, the bishopric of the new city needed the cachet and authority of an appeal to apostolic tradition like those of the other major metropolitan sees or patriarchates.  Rome and Antioch both claimed that their churches had been founded by Peter and Paul; Alexandria, Mark, Peter’s assistant and scribe; Jerusalem, all the Twelve as well as James the brother of the Lord. The Patriarch of Constantinople reached back to the traditions of Andrew preaching along the Black Sea and the Bosporus to claim such status for his see.  The great Byzantine preacher John Chrysostom said that thus Andrew, the first-called of the apostles, the “Peter even before there was a Peter” founded what he claimed was the preeminent Patriarchate in the Church. 

Since missionaries went far and wide from Constantinople, soon Andrew was claimed as patron saint of Ukraine, Romania, Russia.   In the early Middle Ages, a missionary named Rule brought some of Andrew’s relics to Scotland, to a town known as Fife, but which he rechristened as St. Andrew's, where there is now the oldest and most famous course for Scotland’s national sport, golf.   Andrew thus became the patron saint of Scotland in addition to the Greek Byzantine heritage countries where he himself had been a missionary. 
 

The white X shaped saltire “St. Andrew’s Cross” on a blue field is the design of the Scottish national flag.  The St. Andrew's cross appears in the Union Jack of Great Britain behind the red X shaped cross of St. Patrick of Ireland and the regular +-shaped red cross of St. George, patron saint of England. 

Andrew is a sign for all of us to be bold in introducing people to Christ.  Gentle inviting hospitality seems to have been his way, and seems to be the best way for us as well. 
  

The collect for St. Andrew’s day is:

Most Merciful God, you make yourself known in the lives and examples of your saints.  Bestow on us, we pray you, the courage and loving friendly concern of your first apostle, Andrew, that we, like him, may stand as constant witnesses of your love, grace and truth, and bring our friends and colleagues to the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ your son our Lord, in whose name we pray.  Amen. 

 Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+

Breaking Dawn (Advent 1A)

 

Breaking Dawn

27 November 2016; 8 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev’d Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

at Trinity Parish Church, Ashland, Oregon

Advent 1 A

Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

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

“But of that day and hour no one knows… It will be just like in the days of Noah: just before the flood, people were [doing the normal things people do] … and they were totally in the dark until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.   Two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you have no idea when your Lord is coming…  you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming when you least expect him.”  Matthew 24:36–44

Yikes.  Matthew’s Jesus here is talking about the Day of the Lord, when God will settle all accounts and make all things right.   This Day of Judgment is also called the Day of Doom (from the Middle English word for a final settlement of law), as well as the Day of Wrath, when all God’s enemies will be punished or annihilated.  Here, it’s coming to get you, you don’t know when, and so you must stay awake, watch, and never, ever, fall asleep again.  Yikes.  

This is Apocalyptic stuff. Two in the field, one gets zapped; two grinding meal, only one gets out alive!  If you aren’t ready, you’ll be left behind!  It just doesn’t seem to fit in with the Christmas decorations, the carols, or the merry parties from now until January. 

But it does fit with the dark underbelly of the season:  the secular myth of a right jolly old elf who keeps score, knows who’s naughty and who’s nice, who brings great presents to the worthy and a piece of coal and a switch for the rest. At least we know the day and hour of his arrival.  We need not stay awake, but rather have to go to bed and sleep before he comes!

It also seems to fit in with the popular but false theology handed out in some churches:  God will bless you if you work hard and are nice; if you are lazy or mean, not so much!   Jesus is coming soon, and boy, is he … angry!  Follow the rules, pay your money, don’t complain or raise inconvenient questions, and you will be caught up in the cloud to meet him in rapture, while the others will meet their doom. 

Apocalyptic suits the spirit of the age we’re in:  a great struggle between the forces of light and darkness.  Us versus them. Mean-spiritedness toward the other, whether on the right and the left.  An unrelenting call for justice, law, and punishment.

This reading is from the Gospel—the Good News—of Matthew.  So where is the good news?   Where is the grace?  It all sounds like Law and Punishment to me.   Get ready for the great and terrible day, or it will indeed be for you a Day of Doom, a Day of Wrath. 

But this does not ring true to what we know about the historical Jesus.  His parables taught about a God of grace and love, and his announcement of the coming of the Kingdom was not set in the distant future: “the Kingdom of God is already in your midst.  Open your eyes and see it!”   Where all around Jesus were people who thought that simple justice demanded that the coming Messiah put down the wicked and make it once again a great thing be a Jew, Jesus taught that God gave blessings of rain and sun to both the wicked and righteous, and that we should be perfect in compassion just as God is.   If the coming of Jesus was the coming of the Messiah, the punishment of the Great and Dreadful Day looked like a baby placed by his family in a feeding trough because of its poverty; it looked like a helpless man brutalized and killed on a cross by the powers that be.  God’s setting of all things right looked not like a battle scene or a capital court, but rather like the reconciliation of former enemies by a loving mediator willing to suffer to fix things. 

It was only when second or third generation Christians began to worry about how long Jesus was taking to return that they began to cast their hope again for apocalyptic salvation in the future.  The horrors of the Roman War that destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E. brought back such traumatized future wish-fulfillment with a vengeance.  When suffering Christians heard the risen Jesus speaking words of comfort to their hearts, loaded with the images of the Apocalyptic literature they still read and studied, they put those words onto the lips of Jesus in the Gospels they wrote about him.  That’s why sometimes Jesus seems so schizophrenic in the Gospels:  the historical Jesus with his kingdom that’s already here is mixed with the words of later Christians’ more traditional comfort in a coming Day of the Lord.

Matthew’s Jesus’ words here to watch and not sleep, when seen in light of the historical Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom here and now, become an invitation to open our eyes and see the hand of God at work in the world about us.  The Reign of God is in our midst, even with all the messed up and sick way our world and our lives are ordered.  We must open ourselves, our eyes, to the incredible, amazing, and sometimes shocking love of God that will eventually set all things right by winning all things over to himself.   God’s hand at work is right there in front of us—two men in a field, two women grinding meal—and unless we open our hearts and eyes, we’ll miss it.  God invites us to watch and rejoice. 

That’s what today’s collect, based on today’s epistle, is all about.  Until our 1979 Prayer came out, this was the collect for Advent, to be said every day of the season.  Many of us still pray it each day until Christmas.  

It teaches that the mixed light and darkness we see about us is precursor to a dawn.  It is not deepening into gloom and night.  It is brightening, ever so gradually, but ceaselessly, into day.    Opening our eyes to God at work about us gives us gratitude and thanks, and empowers us to “cast away the works of darkness.”  This is done only by putting on Christ as a garment, and a protective armor.

Note that Paul here does not say we need to worry about rules or purity: all we need is to show love to each other, since love in fact is the source of all truly good action.  If you truly love God and neighbor, everything else will take care of itself.  There is no worry about the specifics of rules.   No naughty-or-nice list.  Just grace and love.  It’s what Paul calls earlier in Romans “not conforming to the world, but being transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Rom. 12:2)

Beating ourselves into submission and forcing ourselves to follow rules against “works of darkness” is a recipe for unhappiness and tension—the very kind of tension that leads us to feel compelled to engage in works of darkness.  “Clothing ourselves in Christ” will bring us to the light more and more, and actually empower us to show love, and the bad behaviors will of themselves drop off and cease. 

Paul is talking about putting the example of Christ before our eyes, putting gratitude for what he has done for us in our hearts.  A heart full of gratitude has little room for the selfishness that generates unjust, hurtful, abusive, and wanton acts. 

This is the first Sunday of Advent.  This is a penitential season, to ready us for the coming of Christ, whether in the Feast of the Nativity in the coming weeks, or in the Great Day of Reckoning whose hour no person knows beforehand. I pray that sometime before the Christmas Feast begins in four weeks, we all may look into our own hearts, and try to see the darkness that remains there.  Then cast it away.  Grab it with both hands, and give it the old heave-ho. 

I started the season by talking to my spiritual director and making confession.  It took a great load off of my heart.  I invite you all to do the same. 

As you leave Church today, we will be handing out advent calendars for your use at home.  Put together by our friends at the Forward Movement, it provides daily exercises, readings, and short reflections to help us make room for Jesus in our hearts before Christmas. 

Let us cast away the works of darkness and put on the Jesus as a garment, an armor of light.  The day breaks; the shadows flee away.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

An Attitude of Gratitude (Midweek Message)

An Attitude of Gratitude

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

November 22, 2016

“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer selves are withering away, our inner selves are being renewed each and every day. For our current bit of suffering—so insubstantial a burden as to be almost nothing—is kindling in us a weight of glory beyond any possible comparison.”  (2 Cor. 4:16-17).

One of the things people ask me about Elena’s illness is how she and I are faring emotionally.  The burden of disability is greater than that of caregiving, but both at times can be heavy.  With a progressive, debilitating illness, people think, it is easy to lose heart.   And so it is.  Loss—be it of loved ones or abilities, or of the hopes we had in our heart of how things should be and how we should be—loss always causes mourning and some grief. 

But here’s the thing:  gratitude drives out regret.  Thankfulness drives out fear.  One of the things that most drew me to Elena when we were dating was her strength, what my father called her “grit.”  And this much has not changed.  I am thankful that she and I learned early on to focus on the joys of our life, to enjoy what we are still able to do, and not regret loss.   She loves walking on the beach, but when she became wheelchair bound, that wasn’t possible.  But I found a beach wheelchair online—one with big balloon tires, and we have used it several times since.  It is an effort, but we do it as much as a spiritual practice as anything else:  focus on the joys and do not regret loss. 

U.S. Thanksgiving Day was inaugurated by President Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War.  Even amid the turmoil and horror of war, Lincoln knew that thanks drives away fear and  uncertainty. 

I am so thankful for this wonderful community, Trinity Ashland.  We try to take the Gospel seriously.  We look out for each other.  Our common life is a joy. 

Cultivating an attitude of gratitude in our daily life helps us get through the nasty bits.  And remembering the “weight of glory” promised by Jesus helps too. 

What are you thankful for?  What are the things for which you are passionate, and which are fully in your reach right now? 

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

King of All the Ages (Christ the King Sunday)

 

“King of All the Ages”

20 November 2016

Solemnity of Christ the King

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

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

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 46; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43

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

One thing I learned in living overseas for most of my adult life, in a variety of political and cultural settings is this:  it is only when the community and political life of a country are doing reasonably well that people have the leisure to say that they cannot be bothered with politics.  It is when things are bad—when war threatens or breaks out, when tyranny threatens the basic rights and dignities of large or small parts of the community, when the economy works to the advantage only for a very few while the large mass of people suffer want and uncertainty about their livelihoods or making ends meet—it is when things are bad that most people pay attention to politics, either by open, vocal participation or secret, silent subversion of the powers that be. 

In 1925, the world was in turmoil.  The so-called Christian kingdoms of Europe were at an end, or collapsing.  America had thrown out monarchy 150 years before; France had guillotined its King and Queen and hundreds of priests and bishops 125 years before.  The great failed socialist revolutions of the mid-1800s had been quelled, only to see a corrupt and bitterly unfair return to the rule of the wealthy few.   One victim of the turmoil of the mid-1800s had been the secular realm of the Bishop of Rome, the Papal States that had the Pope as King, that were abolished in 1870 with Italian national unification under a King.  After a few decades of seeming prosperity, the powers of Europe—the few crowned heads remaining, the governments, and the Church—had failed to prevent the world from sliding accidentally into the Great War of 1914-18.  The ironically named “war to end all wars” killed Christendom, the union of faith and governmental power that had reigned there for 1,500 years.  A whole generation, traumatized, left the churches never to regularly return.  The Bolsheviks had taken over Russia and killed the Tsar and his family.  

  

As the post war economic depression set in, Italy’s King, Victor Immanuel III, watched on helplessly as a young former socialist and wounded WWI veteran named Benito Mussolini rose to head the government through vicious street fighting and appeals to return Italy to the glories of the Roman Empire.  In Germany, a young failed artist who was also a wounded WWI veteran, named Adolf Hitler, had just gotten out of jail for staging an attempted violent coup in Bavaria, and was clearly on his way to becoming Germany’s leader through even more brutal and violent bullying tactics joined with appeals to make Germany great again.    

Looking on this scene of turmoil, Pope Pius XI did some serious theological reflection on the failure of the monarchial system and the future of Christianity.  He issued a circular letter on the subject, Quas primas (In the first).  In it, he encouraged Christians to celebrate a feast near the end of the liturgical year celebrating Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.  The Feast is now celebrated by not only Roman Catholics. All churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary now observe Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of their liturgical years.  These include most Anglican and Episcopal churches, as well as the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ, and the Moravian Church. 

This is not because all the motives and reasons of Pius are accepted.  He was arguing not only for the independence of the Church from the state, but also for its immunity to secular law.  Just 4 years after the feast was initiated, Mussolini ingratiated himself with Pius by granting the Vatican independent sovereignty as a city state, a status it enjoys to this day.  

The reason we have all seen fit to celebrate this feast is found in an idea that is indisputable:  human governments—whether they are monarchical, despotic, socialist, nationalist, republican, or democratic—all fail, in greater or lesser degree, in standards of supporting justice, mercy, security, and prosperity.  

The idea is similar to the idea discussed by Augustine of Hippo in The City of God:  human politics, even when they are as good as human politics can get, fall short of the ideal.  This is because they are all based in human self-interest.  And where there is self-interest, there is rivalry.  And where there is rivalry, sooner or later, there is favoritism for some and alienation or abuse of others. 
 

For the ideal, we need the reign of God.  

 

This is not to argue for a theocracy, whether expressed in monarchial or republican institutions.  It is to argue for transcendence and not losing our vision of the ideal of justice and fairness.  

I think all of us have had the experience of being lead by a charismatic and convincing political leader who knew how to play the right chords of our hearts, and how to inspire our hope.  And then we had the experience of that leader failing us, of disappointing our hope, and sometimes, even disgusting or frightening us.   One of my mentors in the ordination process told me his wakening as an adult Christian came when some of the religious socialists (including priests) he had supported in Nicaragua as a young man in a hope that they would help usher in the Reign of God, in some small way, turned out in office to be petty tyrants and corrupt officials.  

When I was a boy, I loved the hymn, Beautiful Savior. 

Fair is the sunshine,

Fairer the moonlight

And all the stars in heav'n above;

Jesus shines brighter,

Jesus shines purer

And brings to all the world his love.

Fair are the meadows,

Fairer the woodlands,

Robed in the flowers of blooming spring;

Jesus is fairer,

Jesus is purer.

He makes the sorrowing spirit sing.

Beautiful Savior!

Lord of the nations!

Son of God and Son of Man!

Thee will I honor, praise, and give glory,

Give praise and glory evermore!

Evermore!

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.  

Love in Action; Love in Dreams

 FM Dostoevsky in the period of working on the novel ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. 

Painting by S.M. Skubko. Moscow, 1966 - 1984

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Love in Action; Love in Dreams

November 16, 2016

In times of uncertainty and fear, it is easy to get depressed.  It is also easy to scapegoat and blame others wholly for your stress.  It is also just as easy to beat up on yourself for not having lived up to your own stated values.  Sometimes, we find ourselves debating things again and again in our minds, listening the great committee inside our brains; or we find ourselves daydreaming, imagining how things might be if we could only fix things and be the heroes of the day.  All of these ways of coping, as understandable and common as they are, are unhealthy spiritual practices. 

Near the beginning of Dostoevsky’s great novel The Brothers Karamazov, a conversation occurs between a spiritual leader, a monk with the gift of healing, and a society woman who has come for counsel.  She complains that she has little faith in herself, unable to feel the love for others that Christ commanded us to have.  This impairs her ability to reach out to God.  The monk replies,

“It's just the same story as a doctor once told me … ‘I  love humanity,’ he said, ‘but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams… I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, … and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom.  In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of [people]: one because he’s too long over his dinner; another because [s]he has a cold and keeps on blowing [her] nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest [people] individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.’”

The healer provides the following spiritual advice: 

“Must one despair? No. It is enough that you are distressed at this. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you.   … Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially to yourself.… Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself.  Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love. Don't be frightened overmuch even at your evil actions. I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all.… But active love is hard work and courage, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it—at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”

Simply being in the moment and reaching out, simply loving the person in front of you instead of some imaginary mass of humanity, simply serving and embracing, despite the noise, the smell, and the drama of real people—this is what our Lord calls us to do. 

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

A Heavenly City (Midweek Message)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

A Heavenly City

November 9, 2016

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”

(2 Cor 5:1).

In the year 410 C.E., nomadic peoples known as the Visigoths invaded and sacked Rome.  The Empire had been Christian for about 100 years, and had moved the seat of its government east.  But Rome remained the center of the Western Church and culture.  When the Visigoths attacked, they spared those who had taken refuge in the Vatican out of respect for the Christian tradition (the Visigoth leader himself was an Aryan Christian).  Conservative elements in the city blamed Christianity for the destruction of the city: they saw it as punishment from the pagan gods Rome had rejected in becoming Christian.  A North African Bishop, Augustine of Hippo, replied to these accusations with one of the classics of Christian theology, “The City of God.”     

In it, he argues that the loss of confidence and hope caused by Rome’s destruction came from misplaced loyalties and hope. He contrasts the earthly city, built by human hands for human ends, with a heavenly city, built by the hands of God alone.  People who hoped for peace, culture, and civilization from Rome, he said, were on a fool’s errand.  Even though its contributions and achievements were great, they could not last.   Based in human striving for one’s own good, even at the expense of others, the earthly city is doomed to fail, sooner or later to fall into corruption and turmoil.   Those who seek true peace and civilization can only succeed by turning their hopes to the city built by God, by motives based on love and service and not self-seeking. 

In part, he writes,

“The two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to disregarding God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the disregarding self.  The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. The one seeks glory from human beings; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, ‘You are my glory; you lift up my head.’ In the one, the princes and the nations it subdues are ruled by the love of ruling; in the other, the princes and the subjects serve one another in love, the latter obeying, while the former take thought for all. The one delights in its own strength, represented in the persons of its rulers; the other says to its God, ‘I will love you, O Lord, my strength.’ And therefore wise people of the one city, living according to human values, have sought for [their own] profit [and worshiped creatures]… But in the other city there is no human wisdom, but only godliness, offering due worship to the true God, and looking for its reward in the society of the saints, of holy angels and holy human beings.”  (Book XIV, Chapter 28)

 “The earthly city will not last forever, … [and] is often divided against itself by litigations, wars, quarrels, and such victories as are either life-destroying or short-lived. For each part of it that arms against another part of it seeks victory … despite its bondage to vice.  When it conquers, it puffs up with pride, and is victorious only through dealing in death… [I]t desires earthly peace only for the sake of enjoying earthly goods, and it makes war in order to attain to this peace…” (Book XV, chapter 4)

I have heard many parishioners and colleagues express great sorrow, fear, and frustration at the results of yesterday’s federal election. On the other hand, I have heard expressions of exhilaration, thanks, and hope from some family members and friends from high school. 

Some have expressed a troubling but wholly understandable feeling.  Marginalized people, particularly any who have suffered from bullying, racism, misogynistic harassment or worse, or anti-LGBTQ abuse, have told me that the election results opened old wounds for them, and have made them experience over again the pain and terror of past episodes of abuse.  On the other side, I had one parishioner express pain at having been labeled as “deplorable” simply for voting for what he considered to be the lesser of two evils.  If any of you feel this way, and need someone to talk to, to help you process it, know that I am here and am glad to listen.

I think it is important to remember what St. Augustine taught when he saw the destruction of Rome:  it is a mistake to identify wholly our human hopes and plans with God’s, or to think that what we want is by definition what God wants. 

Two weeks ago in my homily, I quoted Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag Archipelago:  the line between good and evil is not between one group of people and another.  It is not between one party and another; one nation or another; one economic class and another (or even the “one percent” and the “99 percent”); or one religion or another.  The line between good and evil is very sharp, but very fine.  It does not run between groups of people.  Rather, it runs down the center of each and every human heart.

This contentious and vicious electoral season is not unique in American history: in some ways the “revolt of the commons” and identity-politics appeals to class self-interest, and its vituperative personal attacks, all echo the dynamics of the election of Andrew Jackson in 1829.   As most of you know, Jackson left at best a mixed legacy.  His attempted genocide against native Americans and his support of slavery cast a long shadow that is with us to this day.  

Sometimes it is not easy to see the big picture. 

There is a traditional Chinese story that tells of accepting the way things are, the Tao:  A farmer had only one horse.  One day the horse ran away. The neighbors came to commiserate over what they saw as his terrible loss. The farmer said, “What makes you think it is so terrible?”  Later, the horse came home--this time bringing with her two beautiful wild horses. The neighbors became excited at the farmer's good fortune. Such lovely strong horses! The farmer said, “What makes you think this is good fortune?”  The farmer's son was thrown from one of the wild horses and broke his leg. All the neighbors were very distressed. Such bad luck! The farmer said, “What makes you think it is bad?”  A war came, and every able-bodied man was conscripted and sent into battle. Only the farmer's son, because he had a broken leg, remained. The neighbors congratulated the farmer. “What makes you think this is good?” said the farmer.

Let us take this occasion to work, with renewed vigor, for the City of God.  Let us live into our baptismal covenant.  Let us serve each other with love.  Let us listen to each other, and be vigilant in helping each other—whether those who control the new government or those who find themselves in the opposition—follow the better angels of our nature rather than its baser demons.  Let us be thankful for a system of government with checks and balances that protect the minority and help the majority find expression of its will.  And let us work through the processes and structures of this earthly city to help get out of the way of God as he builds the heavenly one. 

Grace and peace, 

Fr. Tony+ 

Blessed Assurance (All Saints' Sunday)

“Blessed Assurance”

6 November 2016

Solemnity of All Saints

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

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

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Daniel 7:1-3,15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31

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

St. Bernard of Clairvaux was the great reformer of medieval monasticism who preached against sterile scholasticism and legalistic religion by urging a personal, intimate experience of God and, as part of this, personal devotions to the Blessed Virgin.  Almost alone among medieval clerics, he preached against persecuting Jews, and for this he was named a “Righteous Gentile” in that tradition (that’s why “Bernard” became a beloved Jewish name, like Bernard Baruch).   In a great sermon Bernard preached on All Saints’ Day, he said,

“Why do we praise and glorify the saints and keep festival for them? Of what use to them are earthly honors when the heavenly Father honors them? What is the point of our praises? The saints do not need our honors and devotion. Evidently, then, our commemoration of them aids us, not them. For my part, I confess that I am inflamed with desire whenever I think of them.”

In church, we talk a lot about the saints.  Nearly every day of the year has a name, or several, attached to it for commemoration.  Originally, the Feast of All Saints was a commemoration of the early martyrs of the Church whose names went unrecorded.  Their story was not known, and as a result they could not be included for commemoration in the calendar, since the day of their martyrdom too was unknown. All Saints was originally a catch-all to commemorate the great models of faith, now departed, regardless of whether their names and stories were known.  

The Church originally called all the baptized hagioi, or saints, because Christ’s saving work was seen as effecting the sanctification of sinners.  Then it began to reserve the term “saint” for those among us whose lives showed the triumph of grace most clearly, and who stood as models for us.  Just as we ask our family and friends to pray for us, we also began to address petitions to these signal saints that they pray for us, even as we continue to pray for our own beloved departed.  That is why there is a distinction between All Saints’ Day on November 1 and All Souls’ Day on November 2.     

All Saints’ celebrates the blessed departed whose lives and witness to the faith were such that we look to them as examples, believe that they are in the presence of God, and hope they are praying for us.  

All Souls’ or the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed remembers the larger group of the dead for whom we hope and pray.  As our Prayer Book puts it, “Remember all who died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to you alone; bring them into the place of eternal joy and light” (p. 375). 

We read our litany of the beloved departed here at Trinity, an All Souls' devotion, on All Saints’ Sunday.   That is because sometimes it is hard to distinguish between those whom we ask to pray for us, and those for whom we pray.  

We pray for the dead because it is a natural desire of the human heart, and since ultimately death is such a mystery to us.   The Prayer Book teaches, “we pray [for the dead] because we still hold them in our love, and because we trust that in God’s presence those who have chosen to serve him will grow in his love, until they see him as he is” (p. 862).  C.S. Lewis wrote,  

“Of course, I pray for the dead.  The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best with unmentionable to Him?” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer).

Since it is so hard for us to know what is inside the human heart, in practice many of us approach All Souls’ as an occasion to remember and pray for all the dead, confident that God wants to save all his creatures, and hopeful that, in the end, God’s love will overcome all our human crankiness and resistance.   Perhaps, just perhaps, all the departed will one day be faithful departed since the faithfulness at issue is God’s, not ours. 

In the Apostles’ Creed, we say we believe in the Communion of Saints.  The blessed departed, who prayed in life and most certainly continue to pray in death, remain there for us.   They are not just a “great cloud of witnesses” in the arena seating cheering us on.  They actively work on our behalf, and give us strength, by their prayers and examples.  The great multitude of the rest of the dead—well, we pray for them, and by our prayers, hopefully help work God’s mercy in them.  

The Prayer Book’s Catechism teaches,

“The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.  … [E]verlasting life [means] a new existence, in which we are united with all the people of God, in the joy of fully knowing and loving God and each other. … Our assurance as Chstians is that nothing, not even death, shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ jesus, our Lord” (p. 862). 

All Saints’ and All Souls remind us of the hope in Christ that is in us, of how we are all called to be saints, and in some ways have already been made holy in baptism.  They remind us that indeed, God is at work in the world about us, that “things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made…” (BCP, p. 540).  They remind us of our blessed assurance that in the end, all will be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.