Joyful Christianity (Midweek)

Fr. Tony is on vacation until Saturday.  Here is a reposting of a message from July 2012. 

 

 

Joyful Christianity

A note to all of us on how we read the stories about Jesus in the Gospels—remember to look for Jesus’ humor, jokes, and peasant wit.  It will go a long way in opening his teaching to us.  In most of his parables and short sayings, there is an exuberance and irony that jump out from the page at us. 

“What is the Kingdom of God like?” Jesus answers in strange ways:  “Like a large unclean mustard weed!”  “Like an eccentric woman who loses a coin and looks all day for it, and then throws a party many times its value when she finds it!”  “Like a crooked household manager who creates a golden parachute for himself when he learns he is about to be sacked!” 

I believe that the “treasure hidden in a field” and the “pearl of great price” can only be revealed to our view when we laugh, and accept with happiness the pitiful incongruities in our pretensions. 

Kenneth S. Leong writes the following in his great book, The Zen Teachings of Jesus: 

“If we are to understand the spiritual truth of the Gospels, we must begin to observe their poetry and cosmic jokes.  Many Christians (and Buddhists also) have a tendency to undervalue joy, fun, laughter, and jokes, much to their detriment.  During one of my Zen classes, I ask my students to close their eyes and visualize Buddha.  After that, I also asked them to visualize Jesus Christ.  The I asked them what their pictures of Buddha and Christ were like.  Not surprisingly, most of them described Buddha as a smiling figure and Jesus Christ as a sober figure.

“[We must remember] the joyful Jesus.  Laughter, particularly in what we call the ‘real’ (translated as ‘joyless’) world, is a key ingredient to our spiritual health. …

“Joy is an ability of the soul.  It is not a natural instinct.  If it were, we should find most people joyful.  Rather, joy has to be learned.”  (pp. 22-23)

May we learn joy, and how to smile and laugh, and not take ourselves so seriously.  May we learn to get the jokes that Jesus tells us, again and again, in the Gospels. 

Grace and Peace,

--Fr. Tony+

School for Love (Proper 11A)

 

School for Love

Proper 11 Year A

23 July 2017 8 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Isaiah 44:6-8 Psalm 86:11-17 Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

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

What is the Church?  Is it a gathering of righteous people, screening out bad influences so the righteous can become even better, or is it a kind of hospital ward where all and sundry—the wicked, the mean, the lustful, the morally weak, the heretical, the bizarre—come together to help heal each other?  If the former, is it the ultimate exclusionary, elitist club?  Is it the acme of hypocrisy:  pretending to be better than we are while trying to remain the same or even sink lower?   And if latter, is it the blind leading the blind? 

In the Church, we hear a lot about distinguishing between the righteous and the wicked:  and it is almost always the righteous who make the distinction.  The incongruity leads some perceptive and thoughtful people in our society to claim, along with the militant godless like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. “God is not great.  Religion is not good.” 

When the self-styled righteous talk about those they see as wicked, it reminds me of repeated scenes in Elena and Tony’s growing family, years ago:  one child would come to us in tears, quivering in hurt and rage.  Pointing to a sibling, they would recount some horror perpetrated, and say “PUNISH HIM!” 

Today’s Gospel, the parable of the wheat and the weeds, is simple enough:  Jesus tells us “It’s a mixed field out there, but don’t be quick to weed out the bad.  You’ll end up killing the good plants too!  Let them grow together.  It will sort itself out at harvest.”

While the Gospel of Matthew here clearly is thinking about the church and how we should respond (or rather NOT respond) to evildoers in our midst, the story raises the larger question that theologian Walter Wink said was the biggest of all theological questions:  how do we react to evil? 

The tale ends with a promise that the weeds will be gathered together and burned.  This may lead us to think, “We may not be able to weed as we’d like now, but in the end GOD AND THE ANGELS WILL PULL THE WEEDS AND BURN THEM UP.”   This is about as small-minded as St. Paul saying that we should do kindness to our enemies because by so doing “we heap burning coals on their head” (Rom. 12:20). It misses the main point of how the story ends: joy at the harvest (rather than smug self-satisfaction that one’s enemies got their just deserts.) 

In this, as in so many other parables, Jesus is taking apart our preconceptions, reworking our definitions, deconstructing our world-view.   The weeds here are noxious, but indistinguishable from the good wheat. Our rules for identifying weeds and wheat may be flawed.  We run too much risk of confusing them. 

That is how it is, isn’t it?  We know who fits in and who doesn’t.  We set up boundaries for our little gardens.  We set up categories and demarcations that label some as unwelcomed weeds.   In our community, we are afraid of those we call “transients.” In our state, at one point we had a law against free people of color residing here.  In our nation, we have borders, and try, with varying degrees of success, to keep outsiders out.  In church, we divide people into categories: saints or sinners, orthodox or heretics, conservatives or liberals. We Episcopalians have a besetting sin of snootiness, so while we may not talk about saints and sinners, we label those with good taste or bad, contributors or ‘the needy,’ those who value ‘traditional and beautiful worship’ or those who ‘prefer the latest cheap fad.’

We are tribal creatures, always wanting labels and markers:  Outsiders or insiders.  Israeli or Palestinian.  Ukrainian or Russian.  Citizens or illegals.  Saints or sinners.  Wheat or Weeds. 

But Jesus says:  your definitions are flawed.  Your boundaries are wrong.  You don’t know the garden’s plan well enough, or the plants well enough.  Let it be.  Let them grow together.  Don’t try to sort this out, let God sort it out.

Jesus calls us to live in peace, non-judgment, and mutual support.  That does not mean he calls us to not confront and work against evil.  No.  He wants us to fight evil with good, not with evil.  Meet hatred with love.  He sees tribal divisions, factions, dividing God’s creatures into “us and them,” and violence, all as evil.   

Implied here is the idea that the division between good and evil is not between different groups of people:  it is actually down the middle of each of our hearts. We do not know enough—either about each other or about God’s plans—to judge the case.  

Look at Jesus’ words.  “Judge not so you yourself won’t be judged.”  “Be perfectly compassionate like your Papa in heaven, who gives the blessing of rain and sunshine both on the good and the wicked.”  “This man was born blind not because God was punishing him or his parents—this happened so we can help the poor fellow!”  “Be salt, be light.”  “Don’t be a judge.  Don’t sit there criticizing others.”   “A truly wicked person who goes to God in sorrow is healed by his prayers.  The so-called righteous person who prays but only feels superior to others will never find that prayers help at all.” 

Look at Jesus’ example.  He didn’t weed out Judas. He never rejected him, but loved him to the end.  He also refused to weed out Peter, as conflicted, impetuous, and changeable as he was.  He counseled against violent resistance of the Roman Imperium and its religious establishment toadies in Judea, yet remained so constantly engaged with it, good and evil alike, and was so effective challenging oppression and injustice that in the end the Roman authorities finally felt they had to kill him as a political rebel. 

   

When we see evil or malice in front of us, we go into fight or flight mode. In the Church, we often try to prettify flight as “finding a better match” or “not having time” for a person.  We prettify fight by making it all beneath the surface:  love the sinner hate the sin, appear to try to respect boundaries even as we wage decades-long skirmishes of passive aggression and subtle undermining.  It’s still fight or flight, regardless of how it’s tarted up. 

But Jesus’ advice is peaceful engagement, strategic inaction.  Jesus teaches us, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Wish well for those who spitefully use you (Matt. 5:44). Let God decide.  Be a light, not a judge.

God knows it is all too easy to point fingers at weeds out there needing to be plucked up and burnt rather than looking at our own heart.   It is hard not to want to fight fire with fire or pray that God fight fire with fire, or just totally give up on people when they push our buttons, pull our triggers.

We all have deep-seated emotional triggers that can really set us off and make us want to go running and demand that that weed be plucked and thrust into the fire.  But even the most sterling “righteous” anger in most of us is mixed with self-interest and fear. Think about it carefully. In this messed up world, why is it that only some bad things cause us to lose our serenity and calm?

My spiritual directors have taught me over the years to identify things that throw me off as opportunities to learn about what is going on in my heart.    I have found that at root of things that really throw me off kilter is fear: fear of loss of status or prosperity, fear of embarrassment or humiliation, and most importantly, fear of losing my own high opinion of myself.

What is the Church?  I believe it is the same thing that St. Augustine said that Marriage was:  a school for love.    

God loves us, each and every one.  So we must learn to love each other. Not pretend to love each other.  Not fight fire with fire, or practice passive aggression as we continue to despise and judge.  But love.  Despite faction, tribe, party, or sect, we must learn to focus on the weeds in our own heart, and not label others as weeds.   We must learn to love as God loves, which almost always means challenging the beloved and being patient, very patient. 

In the name of God, Amen. 

Finding the Hidden (Midweek Message)

 

Finding the Hidden

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 19, 2017

“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming joyfully God’s arrival in these words, ‘The long-awaited time has come:  God’s Reign has come close.  Change your way of thinking and feeling, and trust in this joyful news!’”  (Mark 1:14-15)

“[Jesus] answered, ‘God’s Reign is not coming with outward observable signs:  people are not going to say ‘Here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’   No—the Reign of God is already in your midst.’” (Luke 17:20-21)

We often miss the point of scriptures we have heard from our youth on:  familiarity breeds not so much contempt as inattention.  This is unfortunate, and it means that a major part of a minister’s calling is to bring out the lively and joyful power of words that have become old and dull for many. 

The King James Bible renders the first passage above as: “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”  But in many ways this rendering, at least to our non-Elizabethan ears, gives a washed out and vapid sense of the verses’ meaning.  It sounds like it’s all about propagandizing for a particularly dogmatic form of Christian religiosity and subscribing to a set of evangelical doctrines.  But that is not what the passage is about at all.  The Greek word euangelion “good news” or “gospel” refers to a joyful proclamation of the formal visit by the Emperor.  Basileia “kingdom” actually refers not to the domain of or territory controlled by a King, but to his kingship, the fact that he reigns, is in charge of things.  Metanoeo “repent” actually refers to turning around (meta) one’s mind or heart (nous), rather than specifically turning aside from sin per se.   Pisteuo “believe” or “have faith” actually is related to the word pistis “true to,” or “trustworthy” and is best rendered as “trust” or “give one’s heart to.” 

Jesus' proclamation of the arrival of God’s Reign was a joyful celebration of the fact that God is in charge of things, right here, right now.  And this is the case despite appearances to the contrary.  That is what the beatitudes argue:  God is at work among the starving, the thirsty, the grieving, and the persecuted.  What it takes to perceive God at work in this world about us—and God is at work, says Jesus—is a revolution of perspectives, a turning of the heart, a change of mind.   Losing fear and a sense of zero-sums is part of this process.  Cultivating gratitude and thankfulness, trust, generosity, and compassion for others is at its heart.

It's all about joy and trust, and moves us to great sacrifice:  “The Reign of God is like a treasure buried in a field: someone finds it, hides it again, and in joy goes and sells everything she owns to go and buy the field” (Matt. 13:34). 

Grace and Peace.  --Fr. Tony+

Profligate God (Proper 10A)

Van Gogh, The Sower (1888)

 

Profligate God

Proper 10 Year A

16 July 2017 8 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

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

When I worked for the Federal government, each year we went through an exercise to determine whether the taxpayers’ money under our control was being spent well. We tried to establish metrics—countable and measurable goals—of success and asked ourselves what results the expense had actually produced, not how many programs or products we had created.  We wanted to count the concrete outputs of our work, not list put-throughs.    One frustration we regularly had in conducting such analysis was that often the things that were clearly the most important, long-lasting, and significant were a little too subtle to be counted and tallied and put onto a ledger tied with costs incurred.   We often found it hard to defend our work to what we deridingly called “bean counters” or “green-eyeshades”:  what was most measurable often was the least important. 

We live in a society that thinks of “the bottom line,” the countable profit or loss, as the most important consideration, the ultimate story of success or failure.  The Left often evaluates government’s success by the amount of money redistributed and placed into the hands of those who previously went without.  The Right believes that only a businessman can truly do government the right way, creating the environment for maximized profit and increased production.  In both cases, we aim at a good thing, but corrupt it by thinking in terms of bottom lines. We are an idolatrous lot, ignoring Jesus’ wise words, “you cannot serve at the same time God and money.” 

Even in the Church, we talk endlessly about measures of success:  average Sunday Attendance, percentage of pledgers and tithers and the percentage of income thus pledged, the numbers of congregation building events—child and adult baptisms and weddings—versus funerals.  We sometimes tart such thinking by talking more generally of  “congregational vitality” and “sustainability of ministry.”  Under such metrics, many believe the Church of our age is dying.  Heedless of the countless generations before that also doubted the further viability or sustainability of the Church, we think perhaps we are the last generation of Christians.  This too is idolatry, for it sets up in the place of a living, loving Christ actively engaged with the world through the means of sorry creatures such as ourselves, the image of a Great Corporate Executive in the Sky who expects a larger and larger bottom line. 

Today’s Gospel reading is a great antidote for such idolatry, Jesus’ Parable of the Scattered Seed.

The interpretation given here is a separate tradition, added early on to the parable itself.  It sees the saying of Jesus not as a parable, with one point of comparison, but as an allegory, a coded treatment where different elements of the story stand for different things: the seed is the word of God, the sower a preacher of sorts, and the various soils different people who react differently to the word depending on their circumstances.  This interpretation is almost certainly the product of an early Christian pastor, concerned about how his preaching might be received.

But this misses the point the historical Jesus almost certainly was trying to make.  The seed more likely is about the Kingship or the Reign of God whose arrival Jesus announced, God being in charge of things here and now.   Jesus gave many other parables comparing God’s Reign to some kind of seed. 

In one parable, a seed sprouts and grows all on its own regardless of whether the person who planted it knows or understands why it grows (Mark 4:26-34).   Jesus thus says that God’s kingdom comes primarily through God’s acts, not ours, and arrives despite our unawareness. 

Elsewhere, a tiny mustard seed sprouts and grows into a huge tree-like shrub (Mark 4:31; Matt 13:31; Luke 13:19):  tiny, almost imperceptible in its beginnings, huge, overwhelming, and sheltering in its full growth.  That’s God’s Reign.   

In yet another, God’s Reign is like a field sown with wheat in which is mixed noxious weeds whose young plants are indistinguishable from the good wheat plants (Matt 13:25-40):  we mustn’t try to rip out the bad ones lest we destroy the good ones as well in the process, but rather let God and the angels do the sorting once the plants are fully grown.  Again, God is in charge of the Reign of God, not us. 

In the Parable of the Scattered Seed, Jesus pictures a farmer at work, broadcasting seed in the standard practice of that place and time.

Ancient Galilean agriculture was more variable in its results than ours. “A sower goes out to sow seed and casts it all over the place.  Some falls on hard, thin ground with hardly any soil.  It doesn’t sprout.  Some falls on ground with soil, but little water.  It sprouts but quickly dies.  Some falls on rich soil infested with weeds, and they crowd it out.  Only some falls into good soil with adequate water and sun and not too many weeds.  But there, the crop yields are so high that they justify the apparent waste and loss in broadcasting seed.”

We would say that this farmer is foolish:  he wastes his seed stock by casting it promiscuously, carelessly.  But Jesus argues that the bumper crop that results in that last good, well-watered soil, vindicates the practice: 100 times back from the seed broadcast. 

And this is the heart of the matter for Jesus.  The farmer, like God, is profligate.  He opens his hands and spreads those seeds with abandon.  And the result is good indeed.   Those who might point to the barren bits of ground, the rocky and sun-burnt soil and claim that no harvest is coming are wrong.  The profligacy of the sower, while causing the mixed results, is also what ensures success. 

Jesus’ point is that when we’re talking about the Reign of God, we’re talking about God.  And God is good.  God is compassionate.  God is loving.  God is fruitful.  God is reliable.  God is provident.

This is key to Jesus’ teaching. “God gives the blessing of rain and sun on the wicked and righteous alike” says Jesus.  Like that crazy loving father with the two wayward sons, the prodigal and the priss, or the crazy woman who throws an expensive party to celebrate finding a lost coin, or the shepherd who goes out after one sheep while forgetting the 99, the sower seems foolish, especially to bean counters who worry about wasted seed stock.  But the bumper crop vindicates the profligate sower. 

God is like that sower. We cannot judge God and say that God’s reign is hopelessly delayed, that good is losing and bad is winning. The sower cannot be judged by the wasted seed. The garden’s success is not judged by the bad bits.  

We often are uncomfortable with the idea of a profligate, seemingly wasteful God.  But a God who is too calculating and careful, the God of the bean-counters, is an idol.   One of the reasons that Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species through natural selection was so devastating to many people of faith was that they had been encouraged to worship that idol.  The divines of the age said that nature reflected its author, God, in its order and design, and that nature’s supposed lack of wastefulness showed the parsimony of God’s economy.  But Darwin’s perceptive and careful accumulation of data revealing nature red in tooth and claw, natural selection driven without apparent design by wasteful death and suffering on monumental scales over the eons gave a death knell to the image of God as an orderly and rational designer of nature.

Jesus’ view that God is like a profligate and wasteful broadcaster of seeds is perhaps closer to the truth.  As Annie Dillard writes, “Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once…. This is a spendthrift economy.  Though nothing is lost, all is spent” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek [HarperCollins, 2007], p. 66).

Sisters and brothers, if we are to have faith at all, we must have trust and confidence in God.  We must have patience and be able to see through the dry times, the sparse soils, the apparently wasted seed.  It must have a heart full of assurance that in the end, love wins.  We too must be wasteful, must be profligate.  We must open our hearts and hands, and forgive, love, and broadcast the seeds of God’s love regardless of what the immediate results look like.  Our hearts must be faithful because God is faithful.  God’s ultimate intention is to love, to heal and to save.  God’s Reign has come.  God is in charge, right here and now.  Simply because we cannot see this at all times and places does not mean it is not so, or that somehow God is stingy, picky, or capricious.   Much of what prevents the clear showing forth of God’s reign are those pesky weeds we ourselves cultivate.   “Rejoice for God’s Reign has come” says Jesus, “change your thinking and get out of its way!”

Amen. 

Charity in Diversity (midweek)

 

 

Charity in Diversity

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 12, 2017

 

In my office there is a picture of the Daqin Pagoda from near Xi’an China. Though the subject of some academic controversy, this building may not be an ordinary Pagoda, however. Some have identified it as the tower of a monastery library built in

A.D. 640 by Church of the East Christians during Tang dynasty China’s great period of openness and welcoming of foreign religions and business people. 

 

The Church of the East for several centuries was the biggest branch of Christianity, both in terms of numbers and geographic coverage, from Eastern Turkey through the central Asian area, to China. Because Islam later took over much of this area, the Church of the East has been greatly reduced, and yet still barely exists in some areas of Syria and Iraq. It is called “Nestorian” by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox who claim that it is a heretical sect that split from the body of the Church after the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) defined the two natures of Christ, human and divine, and approved of the use “Mother of God” to describe the Blessed Virgin Mary. Nestorius was a Metropolitan Patriarch in Constantinople who urged the use of the term “Mother of Christ” and was deposed after Chalcedon. After Chalcedon, many who agreed with him fled persecution from the Roman Empire and travelled East. 

 

Scholars now believe that much of the conflict between Nestorius and the Chalcedonian fathers was the result of cultural misunderstandings between those whose native language was Greek and those whose native language was Syriac (a late form of the Semitic language of Jesus, Aramaic). Much of the “heresy” attributed to Nestorius is now seen to be unfair exaggerations and caricaturing of his positions by his opponents. 

 

Such unfair and triumphalist misrepresentation of an opponent’s position is a common scene in situations where Christians accuse each other of “heresy.” Another example is found in Augustine of Hippo’s vilification of the British monk who dared to question his extreme version of the doctrine of original sin: Pelagius. It is now clear that many of the words put onto Pelagius’ lips to get him excommunicated and declared a heretic are Augustine’s distortions and not anything that Pelagius actually taught. 

 

It is important that we try to understand our faith in line with the teaching of the apostles and their successors, the early bishops. I accept Chalcedon and the gentle recognition of human dependence upon God that the bishops saw as key in censuring Pelagius. But I also recognize that the Church of the East was a major historical part of Christianity, and reject Augustine’s extreme doctrine of depravity conveyed to all humanity through the sexual act of generating new babies.   

 

It is also important to try to avoid the trap that the early bishops fell into early on: insisting on only one way of understanding and hurling anathemas and labels of “heretic” on any who disagree with us. “Love one another” said Jesus, and “bear with each other’s weakness.”  

 

Grace and peace. 

 

    ~Fr. Tony+

 

The Baptism of the Bell

Solemn Blessing of the Bell and Steeple Cross

Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Tuesday July 11, 2017

10:00 a.m.

The Rt. Rev. John Thornton, celebrant

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, rector and cantor

The Rev. Meredith Pech, deacon

The rector welcomes the people and the visiting bishop. 

As the bell is prepared to be reinstalled, the people sing responsorial antiphon for the following psalm. 

Psalm 67 Deus Misereatur

Antiphon (cantor sings once and people repeat)

Let the peoples praise you, O God; *

  let all the peoples praise you.

antiphon and Psalm setting by Peter Chrisafulli

1 May God be merciful to us and bless us, *

  show us the light of his countenance and come to us.

   

2 Let your ways be known upon earth, *

  your saving health among all nations.

   

Antiphon:

3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; *

  let all the peoples praise you.

   

4 Let the nations be glad

   and sing for joy, *

  for you judge the peoples with equity

  and guide all the nations upon earth.

Antiphon:    

5 Let the peoples praise you, O God; *

  let all the peoples praise you.

   

6 The earth has brought forth her increase; *

  may God, our own God, give us his blessing.

   

7 May God give us his blessing, *

  and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe of him.

Antiphon

Rector (to bishop):

We present to you this bell and this cross to be rededicated for the service of Christ’s holy Church.

Celebrant

V. All things come from you, O Lord;

R. And from your own gifts do we give to you.

V. Prosper the work of our hands;

R. Prosper our handiwork.

V. Show your servants your works;

R. And your splendor to their children.

V. Our hope stands in the name of the Lord

R. Now and forever, Amen. 

V. The Lord be with you.

R. And also with you. 

 Daily Tidings/ Andy Atkinson

Let us pray. 

Almighty God, you commanded by your servant and lawgiver Moses that silver trumpets be made for the priests to call the people together at the time of sacrifice and to prepare them for worship.  We ask that you send your holy spirit to bless ✚ this bell by our humble service that by its ringing the people may be called into your church and urged on to eternal life.  As its sweet sound swells in their ears, may your holy people grow in their devotion and faith.  May its continuing call to holiness turn aside the traps of the enemy, shattering hailstones, forceful gales, and powerful thunder and lightning.  May its dulcet tones lay low all tumult and confusion and may its clarion call announce to all the peaceful joy of the gospel of your Son.   May our failings, fears, and demons flee before its sound  and the sign of the cross we make upon it.  Grant this, we pray, for your tender mercy’s sake through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reign, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen

The celebrant makes the sign of the cross touching the bell saying

We name this bell “Aunt Lib” in honor of God’s servant who 117 years ago gave it to Trinity Church and community of Ashland, Mrs. Elizabeth A. Smith. 

Gracious God, your servant Moses raised up the brass serpent in the wilderness to save the people from plague and danger.  Your Son Jesus taught that he would be lifted high upon the cross in like manner to draw all the world to himself.  Bless this cross ✚ to be a sign of your love and compassion for all who look upon it as it graces the steeple of this your church named for your holy trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen  

Incense is placed in the thurible.  The celebrant then goes around the bell and cross, sprinkling them and the people with holy water as the cantor sings the chant Asperges me.  The celebrant then censes the bell and people.  

traditional Latin chant, English translation A. Hutchinson

Celebrant

Let us pray. 

Loving Lord, Jesus Christ, who calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee:  we pray you to send your Holy Spirit upon this bell and cross that they may tell out your praise to this community, and call to worship here the faithful and all who want to find faith.  May they and this congregation proclaim the Good News of your Son, and the coming of your Kingdom.  As these gifts are lifted up into the sky and clouds, send your holy angels to reach down to protect this church and all who pray here, and help them to follow your son Jesus who after his death and resurrection ascended in glory to sit your right hand.  This we pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen

Celebrant

V. Lord have mercy.

R. Christ have mercy. 

V. Lord have mercy.

Let us pray. 

All:

Our Father, who art in heaven… 

The bishop blesses the people. 

Deacon 

Let us go forth rejoicing in the power of the Spirit. 

All

Thanks be to God. 

Light refreshments will be served in the parish hall.  As the crane and workers lift and place the bell and cross, please remain outside of the hard hat area. 

Gentle Grace (Proper 9A)

Gentle Grace

Proper 9 Year A

9 July 2017 8 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Holy Eucharist

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145: 8 - 15; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30         

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

Paul in today’s epistle says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15).   He is expressing an experience that most of us have at one time or another:  wanting two different things, each mutually exclusive; not completely knowing our own mind.   Being torn by competing desires, by fears and doubts, is one of the great obstacles to our connecting with God.  As the letter of James has it:  “If any of you is lacking wisdom, just ask God.  God gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will give you what you ask.  But remember, you must do this with complete trust, free of fear or doubt.  The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed about by the wind.  The fear-filled person is double-minded and unstable in every way.  Such a one cannot expect to receive anything from God” (James 1:5-7).   It is because of this that Jesus teaches “blessed are the single minded—they shall see God.” 

C.S. Lewis put it succinctly in his retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros: “[God] cannot meet us face to face until we have faces.”

This division within our minds and wills, this fuzziness of what we want, the contradictions between our competing desires are often put into metaphorical form by that image we know from the cartoons: a little angel sitting on one of our shoulders arguing with a little devil sitting on the other one, both of them looking like us, but one with halo, wings, and harp, and the other with horns, tail, and a pitchfork.  The image, as laughable as it is, comes a very real experience in our hearts. Sometimes our competing desires are so acutely at odds with each other and we are so conflicted that it feels like we are actually in the middle of an argument apart from us, that we are being enticed by different personalities rather than simply arguing with ourselves or being indecisive.  This feeling, I believe, is where the ancient tradition of personifying a tempter, a devil, or a Satan, actually came from. 

St. Paul describes the problem in detail:  I don’t really know who I am or what I really want.  I decide to do some good thing, and then fail to do it.  I make a resolve to avoid some bad thing, and then find myself in the act.  The fact that I cannot really make up my mind, or that I change my mind, shows how important it is to have objective standards, a written Law: “If I do the very thing I do not want to do, I by that fact agree that the Law is good!”  Paul goes on to describe his inner inconsistency and experience of obsession or compulsion almost as if he is divided or split: a Law of Sin in his members at war with a Law of God in his mind.   A little more abstract, perhaps, but basically: a little devil Paul on one shoulder and a little angel Paul on the other.   

This passage is often misread.  St. Augustine and then later Martin Luther took it in light of their own personal sense of guilt in struggles with sin, and thought Paul was talking about same guilt-ridden introspective conscience through which they saw the world.  Thus the great division between Law and Grace in Protestant theology arose.  But Paul elsewhere shows that he is perfectly happy in saying that he is “blameless” in keeping the Law, and “righteous” in the works it requires.  Paul is no lust-haunted Augustine or guilt-ridden Luther.  He simply is describing how hard it is to know who we are and what we want given how changeable and double-minded we are.   And he sees this as an intolerable burden, because it not only separates us from God, but alienates us from others and from our very selves.  This struggle, what he calls “this body of death,” makes it hard even to know who we really are.  Who will deliver us from it, he asks. Jesus Christ is his answer.

The Gospel today also speaks of conflicting desires.  The same critics had condemned John the Baptist and Jesus:  John for being too conservative and austere and Jesus for being too welcoming and liberal.  Jesus rebukes these critics.   He quotes a popular proverb and compares them to naughty children in the marketplace who cannot be satisfied with anything because of their conflicting desires.  They taunt each other: little girls tease the boys who want to dance and play music which men used in wedding celebrations; little boys tease the girls because they want to practice the mourning songs and ululations women sing at funerals.  You can’t have it both ways, says Jesus. “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” he concludes, “you won’t have contradictory desires if you are integrated and truly find yourselves.”   Then Matthew adds that saying that sounds so much more like the Gospel of John than it does any synoptic: the Father has given all things to the Son.  The point is that in Jesus, there are no self-contradictions, no competing desires, no alienation from God, others, or one’s self.   So Jesus ends the passage by telling us, basically, to “drop the rock.”  He offers to take on our burdens for us if we work along side of him and learn from him.   The Message, a modern paraphrase translation of the Bible, puts it this way: 

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

We are a sorry lot, whether we have active addictions recognized by others or not.  We all are subject to obsession and compulsion at times, and all carry heavy burdens created from all our conflicting desires, hopes, and fears.   And God cannot really talk to us face to face until we begin to develop faces that are truly our own, hearts that hold our real desires.  It is by taking on Jesus’ yoke, taking on his task of announcing the kingdom in word and deed and healing the broken world, walking with him and working with him, that we begin to learn from him who we each really are and what we truly desire.   It is not something forced, regimented, or produced by a technique.  It is not the result of willing it, or submitting to some standard.  We let go, and let God work his gentle grace.  Our new self distills like the dew in the morning.  Losing our false desires is like finally removing the pebble from our shoe.  It is like, in the middle of the summer heat, taking off a heavy winter coat.  It is wonderful. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.