A Prayer

All nurturing God, you commanded us through the prophets to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with you.  Your Son taught us that if we reject and turn aside the foreigner, we have rejected and turned Him aside.  Open our hearts to those less fortunate, especially those different from us.   Open the eyes of the President of the United States and help him turn from all wicked and lying counselors who would tell him to harden his heart against those in need.  In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.    

Hints of Glory

Hints of Glory
Homily delivered at the Funeral of David Marc Tracy

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
27 January 2017; 2:00 p.m. Sung Burial Office and Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Lamentations 3:22-26, 31-33; Psalm 121; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:10; John 14:1-6

God, heal us and give us hearts to feel and love,

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

My own paraphrase of St. Paul’s message today is as follows:

“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 light glorious and substantial beyond any possible comparison, because we are looking not at what is before our eyes, but at what is hidden from our eyes; for what can be seen passes quickly away, but what cannot be seen lasts forever.   For we know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, we will find our true bodies—not tents but a great building for our dwelling place, ever lasting in the heavens, made by God and not by human hands.  …  It is God who has given us hints of this bright future, by giving us his Spirit as a down payment of what’s ahead”  (2 Cor. 4:16-17; 5:1-5).

Paul is not trying here to disparage the world in which we live.  Remember that when God made the world, God saw it and said it was good indeed.  Elsewhere, Paul says he sees plenty of evidences in the world of God’s good intention and love in the world.  What Paul is talking about in today’s passage is how things seem when we are suffering and unable to see any good before our eyes. 

He says that what keeps us going in such straits is the vision we have inside our hearts of the important things, the things that never change.  It is the vision of this in our hearts and minds, he says, that saves us from “losing heart.”

The word Paul uses for “losing heart” literally means “being beaten down by bad things.”    He contrasts our sufferings, changeable and limited in time, with the unchanging timelessness of the Shining Brilliance around the person of God.  This brilliance is the glory of God, in Hebrew, kavod, or substantial heaviness.  Paul says that our “momentary” sufferings are very light and insubstantial by comparison with this “weight of glory” around God, a timeless beauty that our sufferings actually are creating in us, unseen.  He says that the substantiality of God’s light is literally a “hyperbole beyond all hyperboles,” immeasurable, timeless. 

It is important here to note that Paul is not trying to say that our sufferings are not real or truly bad.  And he is not saying the world is simply bad and needs to be ignored.  He is contrasting how things now appear with how things actually are and will be.

For Paul, the hidden “eternal weight of glory” or “timeless mass of Light” currently being created in us is actually the real thing, while our suffering, all too clear before our eyes, is but a dim shadow, an unsubstantial trifle, that is passing away.    The image in our hearts of what God has promised, and what God is already actually accomplishing in us, drives away the demons of hopelessness and helplessness that threaten to beat us down. 

Paul tells us to contemplate the “invisible things” which do not change instead of the “things before our eyes” that do. 

It is really hard to say goodbye to David.  His illness was hard, and his passing harder.  Memories about him help us to see the underlying truth and goodness of his life, and this is the very unchanging truth that Paul calls “the weight of glory.”  For Paul, the ultimate reassuring image is God’s love and ultimate triumph over what is wrong with the world.  That is why Paul dwells so much on  “Christ, Christ on the Cross” and the Risen Lord.  It is why he talks so much about God’s loving promises, and so much about our experience of God’s spirit, that gives us hope, confidence, and joy. 

In the words of two African-American freedom songs, one a Spiritual and the other a Work Song, Paul wants us to “keep our eyes on the prize,” and our “hands on the plough.”  He wants us to “hold on, hold on.” 

For many of us, worn down by life and its sorrows, it may be hard at times to see the light.  But we must not resign ourselves to being beaten down, and we must not, in Paul’s words, “lose heart.”  The actor Tom Bosley (the guy who played Richie’s father on Happy Days) said, “Many people think that depression is something you just have to live with when you get older, but it’s not.”

David was almost always upbeat and positive, even in the face of hard things.  His sense of humor and irony helped him see through the darkness.   We might all take a lesson from him here, and recognize that growing weight of glory, the substantial gravity of light and joy around God, that is growing in our hearts, despite loss and pain.   

Thanks be to God.  

You Too Once were Aliens

 The Wall separating the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Bethany from Abu Dis and the rest of East Jerusalem.

You Too Once were Aliens

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

January 25, 2017

Today is the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul.   The story of his conversion—a vicious persecutor of the church (all for the best of religious reasons to his mind) is on the Road to Damascus to do further persecution where he encounters the Risen Lord and turns his life around, becoming “a chosen vessel” to take the gospel to the gentiles—this story above all teaches us that old dogs can learn new tricks, and people can change their direction completely around.  We must never give up on each other. 

The White House is announcing today Executive Orders that will shut down refugee access to the U.S. and begin the process of building the wall against immigration the President campaigned on.  Yesterday, Executive Orders seeking to defeat the goals of the Water Protectors at Standing Rock were also issued.  In light of this, I thought I should simply repeat the teaching of Scripture and let the Word of God speak for itself: 

 “The foreigner who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the foreigner as one of your own, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:34).

“You shall not wrong or oppress the foreigner who lives among you, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt” (Exod. 22:21).

“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt”  (Exodus 23:9). 

Are you unwilling to help someone, or have the rulers help someone, because that person is an “illegal alien?”  Can you imagine having to explain such thinking and feeling to God?  The very phrase suggests that an entire class of human beings is “illegal” and thus not worthy of compassion. 

To such thinking, the Bible tells us, “Care for the foreigner in your midst, because you too were once foreigners.”  This includes aliens as well as indigenous peoples who have been turned into aliens in their own land.
 

Helping others in need merely because they are in need is a central demand of our faith.  It is just that simple. 

The prophet Ezekiel says that the sin that brought God’s condemnation on the Cities of the Plain  (Sodom and Gomorrah) was ignoring the needs of the poor, to the point of abusing them, in the midst of abundance: 

“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food, and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy. Thus they were haughty and committed abominations before Me. Therefore I removed them when I saw it” (Ezek. 16:49-51).

Social Justice is a biblical doctrine, and anyone who wishes to truly preach the Bible must be willing to preach social justice.  Anyone who truly wants their faith and actions to be grounded in the Bible will make it a major part of their efforts.   

Grace and Peace.  Fr. Tony+

The Power and the Wisdom (Epiphany 3A)

He Qi, The Calling of the Disciples

The Power and the Wisdom
Homily delivered the Third Sunday after Epiphany (Epiphany 3A RCL)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
22 January 2017; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Isaiah 9:1-4; 1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23; Psalm 27:1, 5-13

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

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

In all the hoopla and noise this week, one small detail caught my attention.  It was the homily given by Southern Baptist pastor the Rev. Robert Jefress, at the pre-inaugural prayer service held at St. John’s Episcopal Church across the street from the White House.  He compared the new President to the Biblical figure Nehemiah, who helped rebuild the Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile:  “[T]he first step of rebuilding the nation was the building of a great wall. God instructed Nehemiah to build a wall around Jerusalem to protect its citizens from enemy attack. You see, God is NOT against building walls!”  He then urged the President to boldly work for his goals and not to be deterred by critics.

I praise Mr. Jefress for urging the new President to be faithful in trying to build up the nation and not lose courage in his efforts to do what he believes is right.  But I take exception to this use of scripture.  I preached on wall-building about a year and a half ago, and pointed out that the Prophet Amos, viewed as an illegal alien from south of the border by the ministers in the pay of the King of Israel, taught clearly that walls can be crooked: the societies they protect can be corrupt and unjust.  Amos in vision was told to apply the plumb line to Israel, to show how far it deviated from upright.  The plumb line was fairness, justice, and compassion.  It was seeing the humanity of those whom society had judged not worthy of consideration. This was Lord’s standard then and it is the standard God sets for us today. 

Ezra and Nehemiah, among all the prophets, are perhaps the most concerned with ritual and ethnic purity and the least concerned with social justice. They are the farthest from the teachings of our Lord, who taught that caring for the most vulnerable was key to our calling, and said that when all was said and done, how we treat “the least of these, your brothers and sisters” is what divides the sheep and the goats on judgment day.  Any teacher who uses Nehemiah as a model for anyone without further qualification has a deeply flawed understanding of scripture. When someone says, “the Bible says,” you should always ask, “and what else does the Bible say?”  It is only by comparing the differing tendencies of various parts of scripture that we come to understand where the heart of scripture lies.  It is not Ezra and Nehemiah.  In the Hebrew scriptures, it is in the social justice message of the major prophets.  In all of scripture, it is in the teachings of Jesus.

Today’s lessons, once again, are about light.  Isaiah is writing in the 730s BCE.  A new thing in history had appeared: the first transnational military Empire, Assyria under its aggressive new leader, Tiglath-Pileser III, who was conquering all the Middle East.  Whole countries simply ceased to exist, their leaders slaughtered and populations deported far away in the name of national security and political order.  Among the first in Palestine were the regions Zebulun and Napthali, near the Sea of Galilee, turned into an Assyrian province early on.   Eventually, all of the Northern Kingdom would disappear.

Isaiah says, “In past days, [God] brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future, he will make glorious … Galilee of the gentiles.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”  This light will bring liberation: “For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.”  Gideon’s defeat of the huge army of Midian with just 300 warriors was for these people an icon of victory against overwhelming odds. God is the one who gives victory and light—this is the message too of today’s Psalm. 

Zebulun and Naphthali, along with the rest of the North, were never reconstituted historically—they became the proverbial “lost ten tribes.”  This left a feeling of an unfulfilled prophecy or promise: this is why the Gospel writers make such a big deal over the fact that it was in Galilee that Jesus began and performed most of his ministry.  The great light seen by those who sat in darkness, the great liberator, is understood as Christ. 

Christ’s ultimate victory over death and the grave is also seen by St. Paul as a victory against overwhelming odds.  In today’s epistle, he argues against divisions and factions in the Church, divisions based in clever arguments, appeals to wisdom, authority, and group identity.  Christ and no one else is the source of unity, Paul says.  That’s why using Christ as an identity group banner is so wrong.  Paul says true unity comes from the “power of Christ’s cross.”  “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  A few sentences later, he adds, “[W]e proclaim Christ on the cross, a stumbling block … and foolishness” to the two main identity groups of his world.  But to those who follow Jesus, regardless of identity and background, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Cor 1:18, 23-25)

Jesus, dying on a public torture board of the Empire, is strong?  Christ, abused and outcast, is wiser than the deepest tradition of the sages?  Paul admits it:  if you don’t have faith in Christ the cross can only be seen as nonsense.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that Christianity was the religion of the weak, of victims, or losers.  Its emphasis on compassion and pity, he said, simply put a guilt trip on the strong and victorious, who really had nothing to be ashamed of.  The will to power was all that mattered, not artificial concepts of sin and noble suffering.  God on the cross, for him, indeed was a god who was dead.  Any other way of seeing the cross, he said, was self-deception and foolishness.  This idea was taken up fully by objectivist writer Ayn Rand, who instead of supermen made free by the will to power and victim sub-humans rather speaks of the “producers,” and “creators” of society and wealth on the one side, and “parasites” and the dregs on the other.    

For Nietzche and Rand, it’s all about the strong overcoming the weak, the winners beating the losers. It's about "really great" people, "quality" people, casting aside and excluding "losers."  

For Christ, it’s all about welcoming, inclusion, and service.  It’s about the strength found in vulnerability.  It’s about wisdom in marginalization. As Oscar Romero once taught, “only eyes that have cried can see certain things.”   It is those who sit in darkness that see the Great Light. 

Our confident hope is that in the end, right and justice, truth and love will prevail.  If they have not yet prevailed, that is because it is not yet the end.   Nikos Kazantzakis, in his great novel The Last Temptation of Christ, says, “A prophet is one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, despairs. You’ll ask me why. It is because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns.”

 Tomorrow is the birthday of one of my heroes, fighter pilot John Boyd, who died in 2007 at the age of 70.  Boyd was the father of the F-16 because of his mathematical formulas on jet performance, and designed the basic “right hook” strategy that won the first Gulf War.  He is called the father of modern information-based warfare because of his theory of operational decision-making: the OODA loop of observation, orientation, decision, and action.  Though he was an air force major, he is beloved in the U.S. Marine Corps because of his contributions to the theory of modern warfare.  He is a hero of mine because he contributed so much to our nation, and because as an extremely gifted intellect, he struggled against bureaucratic lethargy and stupidity all his life. 

But here’s the thing:  every hero has an Achilles heel.  When you read Boyd’s biography, you realize that this is a man who could only relate to other people as adversaries or fawning devotees.  He marked people as either his enemies or his acolytes.  His whole life was a constant struggle against adversaries, enemies, except for those few moments when he was surrounded by people he identified as on his side, people who “got it.”  As effective as he was in advancing conflict theory in warfare and litigation, his life left a sad tide of human wreckage in his wake.  Marriage and family went well for him as long as all were subordinate to his will and judgment.   When they were not, relationships went to pieces, family cut off any ties with him, and former friends and colleagues abandoned him.  That's one of the reasons he is loved in the Marine Corps and not the Air Force.  Air Force colleagues learned early on that this man was too combative to be a good partner. 

Living life as one great conflict and struggle for power is the shortest way for making life a hell on earth.  Those who live by the sword die by the sword.  A winner of the rat race is still a rat.  Nietzche and Rand’s argument for striving to be a winner, quality people, at all costs is the death of our humanity.  Says Jesus, “those who seek their life will lose it and those who give up their life will win it.”

Sisters and brothers:  the cross is the way we follow Jesus: suffering for others, accepting shame, pain, and even death in pursuit of God’s reign.  But Christ on the cross is the power and wisdom of God.  We may want an easier, softer, more ego-flattering path.  But there is none.   On the way of the cross, we experience death and sit in darkness.  Embracing and accepting the way of the cross is the way we can get out of the rat race, out of the constant division, conflict, and turmoil.  Because on it, even as we sit in darkness, we see a great light.

In the name of Christ, Amen.      

 

  

Religion and Politics: Better Angels or Demons (lecture)

 

Religion and Politics:

How to Find our better Angels and not our Demons

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

Public Lecture sponsored by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

Of the University of Southern Oregon

As prepared

Camelot Theatre, Talent, Oregon

January 18, 2017

1-3 p.m.

JPR interview on this lecture 

I want to thank OLLI for asking me to give this lecture today.

The subject of the lecture, “Religion and Politics: finding our better angels and not our demons” and its date for today were determined months ago, long before the election.     I aimed for a mid-January date because it worked best for my work schedule: after Christmas and Epiphany and before Lent.  I didn’t really focus on the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr., Day was on Monday of this week.  And I had no idea that Friday of this week would see the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45^th President of the United States, or that Saturday would see widespread demonstrations against Trump, his administration, and the new Congress.  So the timing of this topic this week is wholly coincidental, or providential, depending on how you see the universe.    And, as I hope you will see, my recommendations here apply equally to those on the Right and those on the Left, to those who support Trump and those who oppose him

My choice of topic grew out of a course I taught at OLLI last year: Ghosts of the Pilgrims—Puritan political memes in U.S. history and culture.  In the early electoral cycle, many appeals to faith and values in the political debates were couched in images handed on to us from the Puritans.  My own background played a role as well.  I served as a federal official, a U.S. diplomat, for 25 years.  I often was the “religion watcher” at the U.S. Embassy and wrote on the subject regularly in analyses for the Department of State in the foreign countries where I was posted.   And I served the last 5 of those 25 years also as a priest in my private time while living in China.   During that time, I dealt daily with the intricacies of not using my official position to foster religion or even appear to do so while at the same time trying to be faithful and bold in my life as a priest away from the office and my official public role.   It entailed occasional humorous scenes of me surreptitiously changing from the suit and tie of a bureaucrat to the clericals of a priest in the Anglican-catholic tradition, and back again.   One day, as I was leaving the office to assist at Mass during my lunch hour, I was caught by a subordinate who asked me a question that I wonder about to this day, “Which of you is Clark Kent and which is Superman?” 

In Mainland China I worked almost on a daily basis with Chinese officials, and came to recognize early on that appealing to each person’s better values was always a more effective way of seeking good than labeling them and all their fellow communists simply as evil. 

This all has made me acutely aware of the complexities and contradictions in our national legal wall of separation between church and state and our politicians’ nearly continual appeals to God and Right in support of their programs and vision.

The tension is found right in the Constitution.  Article VI §3 says “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Amendment I says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and then adds, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...”   So while the government or its officers cannot sponsor or foster any religious organization, or even boost religion over irreligion, they cannot interfere with people’s free exercise of faith, including those very officials in their private life.

This intentional separation grew out of exasperation and horror at the tyranny of state-sponsored religions and religion-sponsored states in the religious wars and persecutions stemming from the Reformation in Europe, including the English Civil Wars and their aftermath.  These persecutions and horrors worked in both directions:  the Thirty Years War wiped out nearly half of the German population, both Catholic and Lutheran; Roman Catholics suffered bitter martyrdom under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I;  Protestant martyrs likewise suffered under Mary.   The American colonies saw similar persecution in both directions, depending on who happened to control a colony’s government at the time.

The President I consider to be the least religious (but perhaps not the least faithful) of all the Presidents, Thomas Jefferson, sums up the tension well.  In the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (1779) he writes:  “Almighty God hath created the mind free; … no [one] shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in … body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of … religious opinions or belief, … all [people] shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, … the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.   

In his January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury CT Baptist Association, Jefferson writes:    “[R]eligion is a matter which lies solely between Man [and God] … he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, … the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions… the whole American people … declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”  Note: while decrying state sponsoring or fostering of faiths, in both these texts he appeals to his Deist, Enlightenment God. 

The title of today’s lecture comes from the President I believe was the second least religious, but perhaps most spiritually deep, Abraham Lincoln. Trying to keep the nation from splitting up in his first inaugural address (1861) he writes the following: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Lincoln’s somewhat ironic take on the civil religion that Jefferson helped establish with his appeals to God to limit the reach of the Church is evident in Lincoln’s second inaugural (1865), as the civil war was ending:  “Both [sides] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.” 

We see the complex interplay of religion and politics in Mr. Trump’s election.  As much as he regularly offended people of faith of nearly all religious and political stripes by his coarse and harassing approach to his opponents, women, and minorities, his election was made possible in large part by the fact that eight in 10 white Evangelical Protestants voted for him, as well as an overwhelming majority of white Roman Catholics and a substantial number of white mainline Protestants.  Throughout the campaign, he insisted that he is a Christian believer who will help bring a stronger presence of religion in our national life as part of “making America great again.”   Many of the criticisms leveled against him by his opponents were rooted in moral and faith-base objections.  But then, many of his supporters’ criticisms of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton were claims that under their leadership, America had lost its way and undermined the values that had “made America great.”  I have heard one or two of my parishioners say, “If you can you reject Trump because of his moral failings and yet stand by that abuser of interns Bill Clinton or that man we know is a socialist and suspect is a closet Muslim, Barack Obama, I can dislike Trump’s failings while still standing behind him because of what I think he will be able to do for the country.”

Religion is a powerful agent, for good or ill.  It gives us people like Francis of Assisi, Mohandes K. Ghandi, Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr., but also gives us the Inquisition, ISIS, and preachers who at various times and places have said God wants us to keep slaves or practice Apartheit, subjugate women, and persecute gays and lesbians. 

So how do we let our faith help us listen to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” rather than the demons? 

I offer here a few suggestions based on my own understanding and experience of life as a Christian priest and former government official who observed religion and politics in other countries. 

1. Let your faith or deepest beliefs and values form your opinions and actions.  Do not be ashamed of your faith or non-religious values and always try to be explicit in holding political programs or the words and actions of political leaders up to the standards of your values.

Without standards beyond the mere advantage of our separate little interest groups, there can be little holding to account our leadership or ourselves.  This, unfortunately, also applies to the Rule of Law.  Though our wise constitutional processes, checks and balances in power, independent judiciary and press are good hedges against misuse of governmental power, the fact remains that these are not perfect and injustice and abuse have on occasion in our history been fully allowed or even supported by the force of law.  It is our acknowledgement of a higher power and values beyond the merely legal or constitutional that keeps a dynamic for justice and fairness at work in our society.   That said, we must never use the resources of the state to foster our religion or irreligion. 

The important thing here is to be intentional and explicit in letting our faith or deepest values be part of this discussion.  One of the problems with a common-denominator one-size-fits all civil religion is that it blurs the distinction between higher values and the constitutional and legal political process.  God turned into a tool or icon in a public liturgy of “one nation under God” and “God bless the United States” is a God robbed of the power to correct our self-deceptions and holier-than-thou sense of partisan inside track to truth and justice.  If we are honest about how our deepest values condemn certain actions and policies at least there is common ground for a discussion with those who may hold differing values or a different balance of values.  It is not so much a case of freedom of religion or freedom from religion here, but freedom for religion to be religion rather than a tool of the state. 

Silence on our faith or what matters most deeply to us is a recipe for disaster.   The rule in many American households of never talking religion or politics at the Thanksgiving dinner is a case in point:  we try to make nice and not have arguments by simply shutting off any talk of these controversial things.  But often these are the very things that matter most to us.  And never talking about the things that matter most to us is a sure way to slowly but surely empty relationships of any meaning.  The key is in how we do it.  We must be self-aware and acknowledge our differences respectfully and not insist that those with whom we are in community simply follow the same path we have followed.  But we must be honest and talk about it all the same. 

2. Never mistake partisan or other divisions between groups of people for the division between good and evil. 

The best sermon I ever heard in my life was given in Beijing in the late summer of 1989.  It was by a layman in a House Church, and it was on the words of Jesus: “love your enemies and pray for those who despitefully use you.”

During the somewhat liberal period of religious openness in China prior to the June 4, 1989 crackdown, local Chinese had begun attending services with expatriates. After the crackdown, the Chinese security and political control apparatus came down hard on any Chinese person seen to be too closely identified with foreigners.  Old rules that had remained on the books forbidding Chinese nationals from attending “foreign” worship services started to be enforced with a vengeance, rules that are with us still. The pressure brought to bear on our Chinese congregants became almost unbearable. Some of our church members were arrested and physically abused.  Finally our congregation decided that the local people and the expatriates in our congregation would go their own ways and worship separately.  The secular law, previously somewhat murky, had become clear, and we intended to obey it.  It was very hard on all of us, because we had become close friends.       

One of these Chinese members of our congregation spoke at the last service we held together. He started his sermon by noting that separate worship would be hard, since “gathering together each week is like drawing individual pieces of firewood together, to make a blaze that can warm us through the week.”  Pulling apart the critical mass of fuel for the fire posed the risk of extinguishing the flame, especially if the individual pieces of fuel were isolated, put aside, and kept alone in the cold, where their flame would die for want of heat. But we had no real choice in the matter, given the pressures that were being brought to bear. 

My friend said he had always thought that “love your enemies” was a little over-dramatic, “for why should Christians have enemies?” But now he understood the passage much better.    “If I could be so bold, I’d like to refer to a passage in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.” 

In this book, Solzhenitsyn is in the labor camp system in the Soviet Union.  He becomes more and more dehumanized by his torment, but then, in a chapter called ‘Resurrection,’ regains his Christian faith and begins the long road to true freedom, even as a political prisoner.  He says that he realized that no matter how tightly his interrogators constrained him, he always had a choice—though they always eventually could force him to say what they wanted, he could do so willingly or unwillingly, cheaply or expensively in terms of the suffering he endured before giving them what they demanded. 

He also realized that they too were constrained to do what they did, and that they too had a choice in how they did what they were constrained to do.  In a system where all were compromised and all were victims in one degree of another, he realized this great truth: the line between good and evil is not found between one country and another country, between one economic class and another, between one political party and another, between one religion or another, or one race and another.  The line between good and evil, he says, is fine but very definite, and runs down the middle of each and every human heart.  It is found in that space of the heart where we exert our choices, no matter how constrained our choices may be. 

Solzhenitsyn realized that he needed to pray for his interrogator, and for all of God’s creatures, even Stalin.  This is the reason, I believe, that we must pray for our enemies.  They, like us, are in God’s image, and have that line down the middle of their hearts, no matter what decisions they have made before, no matter how distorted the image of God may have become in them, or how twisted or constrained the options left to them might be.

So we must pray to the creator to help his creatures–not that they be like us, not that they treat us more favorably, not that they choose what we wish they would choose, but that in whatever way God wants, here and now, they might opt for the good in their hearts and not the evil.  We pray that they might become what God created them to be, not what we think that they should be.  We do this because we share with them in our hearts the capacity to do great evil or great good.  Without such a belief in my solidarity with all my fellow creatures, even those who persecute those whom I love and what I believe is good, I would not have hope that God might work his miracles in my own heart, and help me to choose the right. 

That sermon changed the way I looked at many things, and is one of the great watershed moments in my life, the moment, I believe, where I started on the journey of cultivating an adult Christian faith shorn of sectarianism. 

This insight—that the line between good and evil is not between groups of people but down the middle of each end every human heart—is what lies behind Ghandi’s teaching and practice of Satyagraha, Truth Force, and Martin Luther King’s statement that he did not seek to defeat his enemies, but rather turn his enemies into friends, to win over even the worst bigot. 
King preached it this way:  “Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the cancelling of a debt.  … [W]e must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves. A persistent civil war rages within all of our lives.”

3. Seek the common weal. 

Understanding that we are all in this together means that we should try to seek the common good, the good shared by all of us.  And this is the case even when it means our own interest group or party may have to put aside some of its advantage or privilege.   It means we reject identity politics, including the politics that use our religious identity as if it were a dividing line between good and evil. 

This does not mean tolerating or accommodating injustice or oppression based in identity.  Racism, sexism, xenophobia, and hatred of GLBT people are in fact demons.  In the degree that they are supported by appeals to religious values or beliefs, they are demons invoked in the name of God.  But they are not our better angels. 

One of the most powerful memes Mr. Trump and his supporters have used is the idea that “political correctness” is just a new form of oppression and tyranny.   It has resonance for many people because it connects with their experience of being on the receiving end of an interest group’s condemnation, and the dark side of identity politics.  “Reverse discrimination” they cry, and “black racism.” 

But a person repeatedly kicking someone who is down on the ground is not the same act as that person on the ground kicking to try to get his attacker off.  Both kick, but they are not the same act. 

Those who work for justice in these areas need to be clear in their witness—to be honest and intentional in bringing their values to play—but should remember that it is the actions that are at issue, not the partisans or group of people.  Instead of talking about political correctness, they might find it more effective to talk about simple decency, fairness, and courtesy in not giving hurt to others. 

5. Stand with the marginalized

Precisely because governing and politics is all about power, and religion itself has an appeal to authority and power, the great temptation is to deceive ourselves that our values demand that we punish or damage those who are not with us or part of us.  Seeking the common weal here means taking care to not be blinded by our own position of privilege.  A default position of those in authority should be to listen more carefully to and to promote the interests of the marginalized and the downtrodden, not because they are of more worth than others, but because our position of power tends to blind us to the truth of these very people.  It is easy for this to slop over into identity politics, but the key in not going there is remembering where the line between good and evil truly lies: down the middle of each and every human heart, regardless of identity or interest group.   

6. Learn to listen, empathize, and be compassionate

It goes without saying that we cannot build common ground and move forward together if we do not listen to each other.  This means listening to those on the other side of whatever identity line we are dealing with.  Listening without correction or interruption, respectfully taking responsibility for our own views, and allowing people to express their truth in their own way builds mutual respect and makes room for empathy.  At the heart of all of this is the practice of compassion, especially for those who differ from us. 

And finally,

7. Treat others fairly (as you would wish to be treated, or as you think all should be treated if you didn’t know who or what they were)

The golden rule in one form or another is taught in most religious traditions, and is generally accepted in most non-religious ethical systems.  It is the ethical basis on which solidarity and devotion to the common weal is based.  Applying it can be tricky when we seek to avoid identity politics yet at the same time want to stand with the marginalized.  Very helpful here is Philosopher John Rawls’ idea that we need to take on an intentional veil of ignorance and ignore arbitrary facts about individual members of society when deciding on the division of social goods.  But simply put, if we try to be fair, and try to treat others as we want to be treated, we have taken the first step toward social justice. 

Friends:  we live at a critical moment in our history as a nation.  Religion is losing its attraction for younger people, and now exerts little power over our elites.  It increasingly is reduced to a mere tool of the bitter partisan division and unrestrained identity politics.  Even the concept of factual truth has been undermined in the process:  witness the increasing use of false news and no regard for fact checking.  Though the left loves to point at Mr. Trump’s role in this, fairness demands that we acknowledge that they too have been part of the process.  This nihilism is the greatest threat to our democracy that we have seen in 70 years, and threatens any sense of shared community in the nation.  The nihilism of both sides threatens the viability of our religious institutions.  

As concerned as I am about the nihilism of new administration, its apparent disregard for truth, scientific fact, and ethical standards that we have jointly held in this country for 50 years, I am also concerned about the nihilism of those who resist it, willing automatically to tar with the same brush all people on the Right or in the center. 

And so I return to Lincoln’s words:  “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.” I pray with him that “the mystic chords of memory … will yet swell the chorus” of the common good and our shared life, and we will be touched “by the better angels of our nature.”

I make these modest suggestions that we might use our faith—whatever faith we may have—to find these better angels and drive away our demons. 

I am willing to answer questions now.   

Forgiveness according to King (midweek)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

Forgiveness according the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

January 18, 2017

Since Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and since a lot of us are talking about hurts we have experienced from the recent political cycle and the upcoming Inauguration, I thought I’d share parts of a sermon Dr. King gave in 1963 about forgiveness and loving one’s enemies: 

“… How do we love our enemies?  First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one’s enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged…

“Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the cancelling of a debt. The words “I will forgive you, but I’ll never forget what you’ve done” never explain the real nature of forgiveness. Certainly one can never forget, if that means erasing it totally from his mind. But when we forgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block impeding a new relationship. Likewise, we can never say, “I will forgive you, but I won’t have anything further to do with you.” Forgiveness means reconciliation, a coming together again. Without this, no man can love his enemies. The degree to which we are able to forgive determines the degree to which we are able to love our enemies.

“Second, we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves. A persistent civil war rages within all of our lives.  …

“This simply means that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface, beneath the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts not quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We recognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched in his being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love.

“Third, we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding. …

"… Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

"Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality.  … Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates [as to the person hated]. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

"… A third reason why we should love our enemies is that love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

"… We must hasten to say that these are not the ultimate reasons why we should love our enemies. An even more basic reason why we are commanded to love is expressed explicitly in Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies . . . that ye may be children of your Father which is in heaven.” We are called to this difficult task in order to realize a unique relationship with God. We are potential sons of God. Through love that potentiality becomes actuality. We must love our enemies, because only by loving them can we know God and experience the beauty of his holiness."

Excerpted from The Radical King by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited and Introduced by Dr. Cornel West. (Beacon Press, 2015).

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+