Take Joy (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Take Joy

September 27, 2017

During our 25 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, Elena and I saw regularly a phenomenon that was both surprising yet consistent.  You would think that people assigned to “dream postings” to interesting jobs in convenient, healthy, and beautiful places would be generally happier than those assigned to difficult and thankless tasks in what some people called “hell holes.”   But this was not so.  In some of the nicest places you found some of unhappiest people; and in the grimmest, the happiest.  It became clear to us that some people took their happiness to wherever they were assigned, no matter how unpleasant, and others took their misery wherever they went, regardless how pleasant.   

Of course, having a good work environment helped, no matter how nice the locale.  And having a toxic boss could often ruin even the dreamiest of assignments.  But even here, it was clear that some people were resilient and could usefully engage with and mange difficult co-workers and supervisors, while others didn't seem to get along with anyone, no matter how easy and decent others found them.   Even in human relations, some take their happiness along with them while others take their dissatisfaction.   Those who take their dissatisfaction spread it easily to others.  I think this is what Oscar Wilde was trying to get at with his bon mot, “Some bring happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”

There are several practices to which Jesus calls us that empower us to take our happiness wherever we go, and maintain balance whatever we suffer. 

He tells us to not worry: “Do not worry about your life, what you shall eat or drink.  …You cannot by worrying add an inch to your height or a minute to your life… Think about the wild birds:  God gives them enough to eat with no work on their part.  And think about the wildflowers—God dresses them in the finest beauty.”  (Matt. 6:25-28)

He tells us to not be critical or condemning: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.  For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get” (Matt. 7:1-2)

He says to pray and to give help to the poor for the sake of doing those good things in and of themselves, not for show or gaining influence:  “Don’t give alms for show. … Don’t pray for show.” (Matt. 6:1-6)

He tells us to deal with anger in us or directed at us by working to resolve conflict as soon as it arises:  “If you are angry with your brother or sister, … come to terms quickly with your accuser.”  (Matt. 5:22, 25)

He tells us to practice indifferent or impartial benevolence in imitation of our loving God: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. … Be as perfectly compassionate as your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:44-45, 48).  

These practices give us a detachment from what unsettles the heart even while they force us to be fully attentive, fully present, to our world, and truly listen to those about us.   They help us not take things personally.  They help us recognize that others’ actions toward us stem from a whole raft of things that have little to do with us, and that our happiness is not dependent on having things just as we, in our ego and self-absorption want them. 

They help us learn how to take our happiness with us wherever we go, whatever we encounter. 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

Parable of the Bad Personnel Policy (Proper 20A)

The Parable of the Bad Personnel Policy

(Proper 20A)

8:00 a.m. Said; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

24 September 2017

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)
Jonah 3:10-4:11 Psalm 145:1-8 Philippians 1:21-30 Matthew 20:1-16

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

Day laborers have always had it rough.  Just go by that parking lot in Talent where they congregate each morning during the agricultural season from planting to harvest, or the warm dry season for building or yard work.  Look and really see what is going on.  They wait there, patiently, until someone asks them to come and work.  Wages are negotiated on the spot.  They usually take whatever they are offered.  They have no union to represent their interests collectively.  Day laborers are and have always been easily exploited.   Throughout history, in almost every economy, the number of people needing work has almost always exceeded the number of jobs available, and this has meant that employers could keep wages way low.  A simple case of supply and demand:  with too many workers for too few jobs, the value of unskilled labor was low, very low. And most societies placed a very low value on the unskilled laborers themselves.  Many societies see them as lazy, idle, and not worth better paying jobs, though if you look carefully you normally see that the poor unskilled workers in most places are among the most willing to work hard, and are ingenious and inventive in making a little money and making that little money go a long way. 

In Jesus’ time, day laborers were peasants who had been pushed off the land.  Most lived in hovels in the towns and cities, and had no means of support other than whatever they could get by working on a day-to-day basis.    They lacked all job security.  Indentured servants, and yes, even slaves in large enlightened households, had more security and hope for the future.    Religious leaders belittled and reviled day laborers, calling them the “Am Ha-aretz” (the people of the land), unclean and worse than Gentiles, just as our elites often call those people waiting for work at that lot in Talent “illegals.”  As if any person could be illegal, as if any person could have so little worth. 

Today’s Gospel is a parable of Jesus about such day laborers.  I think it should be called the parable of the bad personnel policy because it deals with how angry the laborers get when they believe they have been treated unfairly by a well-meaning land-owner, but one oblivious how his actions might be perceived by the laborers.  Like the king in last week’s parable of the unforgiving servant, the landowner here is one of the careless rich, oblivious to the realities of the people of the land, the illegals. 

The way the story is told, it is clear that the landowner can’t be bothered to go through the math of prorating the workday.  As little as he is paying these guys, it is simpler and cleaner just to give all the workers the same wage, whether they have worked a hard eight hours in the heat of the day, or whether they worked only an easy hour at the end of the day in the crush to get the harvest in before sunset.   And that is in fact what lies behind the all-day workers’ reaction—they are being paid such a pittance that the landowner is willing to throw their entire day’s wage at the newcomers for convenience sake only.  They want more.  The revolt of those who have born the heat of the day is a revolt against what they see as an unfair and demeaning personnel policy. 

The fact that there are plenty of people at 5 p.m. still waiting at the marketplace for work underscores the context in which this story unfolds.  There is such an overabundance of people needing work that the landowner can pay as little as he finds convenient, and as much as he finds least troublesome. 

Jesus’ parable asks us to wonder about what is fair.  Is fairness determined by a mathematical formula that prorates worth by number of hours worked and hardness of the time spent in work?  Or is fairness determined by recognizing human need and the dignity of each person?  It most certainly is not determined by devaluing others, or treating people all the same simply because that is easier.   One of the underlying assumptions in the story is the need for a living wage for all who seek and need work.
 
The Gospel of Matthew takes this parable and turns it into an allegory.  Those who have worked long and born the heat of the day represent one group of people, the newcomers another, and the landowner perhaps God.  Those who have born the heat of the day are seen as stingy and heartless to the newcomers.   It is part of Matthew’s preaching to his own community’s Jewish members to accept newly believing Gentiles.  “Don’t be stingy with God’s grace to others and don’t question it if God is easier on others than he has been on you!” is the lesson Matthew takes from the parable. 

I am not sure if such allegorizing does justice to this simple story that presents so many questions.  But the way Matthew tells the story, does make us ask how stingy we are with God’s grace to others.  And in this, it is wholly in line with Jesus’ idea that we mustn’t demean or objectify others, belittle their efforts and hopes, or base our ideas of fairness on a mathematical formula that determines worth by the marketplace rather than by need.  

No matter how you read the parable—as a criticism of the resentful workers or as a criticism of the landowner’s carelessness and lack of regard for the needs and dignity of his employees—the story is about generosity.  “Are you envious because I have shown generosity?” asks the landowner at the end of the story.  Literally, he says in Greek, “Is your eye evil because I am good?”

“Is your eye evil because I am good?” The evil eye here is what the Hawaiians call “stink eye,” giving a sour face at someone when you’re annoyed or angry at them.   Overcoming envy and jealousy is what today’s Hebrew scripture reading is about.  Jonah is a drama queen with stink eye to end all stink eyes.   “I don’t want to help Nineveh by preaching repentance there. I’ll flee by boat to Spain!”  “The storm’s my fault!  Throw me overboard, feed me to the fish!”  And once back at work:  “If you don’t wipe out Nineveh as I prophesied, it’s too embarrassing!  I want to die!”  “You sent the vine borer that killed the bush that was giving me shade!  I want to die!”  Jonah is the reading from the scroll of the prophets assigned in synagogues for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement that starts this coming Friday evening.  Yom Kippur is about forgiveness and compassion strong enough to bring you back from death in the belly of a fish, transformative enough to deliver you from even such a case of stink eye as Jonah’s.
 
I invite us this week to let this parable work in our hearts.  Are there areas where we resent to good things that happen to others?  Are there places where our envy and jealousy cause us to be stingy?  Do we wish God were stingy too? 

I invite us all to find ways for us to open our hearts and loosen our grip, whether on ourselves, others, or money.  This is not just the spirituality of good stewardship, of all abundant, joyful life. 

God is generous, perfectly so, and we too must be generous. 

In the name of Christ, Amen 

Kindness as a Spiritual Practice (mid-week message)

The Virgin of the Lilies, by William Bougeureau

Kindness as a Spiritual Practice

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

September 20, 2017

“Be as wise as snakes, but harmless as doves.” —Jesus, in Matt. 10:16

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” –oft-quoted axiom variously attributed to Wendy Mass, the Rev. John  Watson, Plato, Philo of Alexandria, or Robin Williams

“Life is short and we have little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us.  So be swift to love, and make haste to be kind.”  —Frederick Amiel

“Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.” —Siddhartha Gautama Buddha, in Uppada Sutta  45.2

We live in what seems at times an increasingly brutal and heartless culture.  Meanness, snapping at each other, always attributing the worst motives and goals to others, and even physical abuse seem to be the currency of post-Modern, Trump-led America.   And the problem is on all sides:  the left pillories and ridicules the right; the right damns the left.  Whites defend their privilege by denying it exists and quietly (or, recently, not-so-quietly) berating people of color.  People of color suspect that all whites are closet bigots.  Men belittle women with vile characterizations of emotional and physical cycles, and women complain about toxic masculinity and testosterone poisoning.   For whatever reasons, even in the Church, even here at our beloved Trinity Parish Ashland, we see cases where people are far too quick to assign ignoble motives to others, or question people’s good will, competence, honesty, or intelligence. This, of course, is a violation of our Lord’s great ethical demand, the Golden Rule:  treat others as you would be treated.   

God knows I fall into this trap far too often, usually when I am hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.  And those words form an acronym that is a good reminder on how to proceed when I am in any of those states: HALT. 

The practice of kindness is a core tool in the Christian’s spiritual kit.   Most of us were taught this as children by our parents’ wise words, “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, remain silent,” and “Before you speak ask three things: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?” 

How can we be kind to a person who thwarts us or behaves in ways that annoy us when we ourselves are going through a raft of bad things and are on edge?  A key part of the practice of kindness is assuming that the person before us, whatever their own disabilities and hidden battles, is doing their best.   In this, we cut that person the slack we would wish other people would cut us.   Another is not taking possible or clearly intended harms, slights and insults personally:  these reflect those hidden battles of which we know little, and could as easily have been directed to someone else.  It’s not about us, even when the person before us wants to make it about us.   This is what Jesus is trying to get at when he teaches “forgive someone who offends you seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:21).   

We here at Trinity are a Beloved Community.    Gentleness and kindness are the rule, not the exception.  But for our own spiritual and psychological health as well as the concord and unity of our community, we need to remember to bring ourselves up short, HALT, when tempted to lash out at someone present or absent.  Instead, give them benefit of the doubt: Assume that there is suffering as well as good in the person’s life which we do not see; Assume that they are doing the best they are able

It will make our lives, and the life of the Church, that much sweeter and joyful. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

The Message of the Cross (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

The Message of the Cross

September 13, 2017

^“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. … [W]e proclaim a Christ affixed to the cross: this trips Jews up and strikes Gentiles as plain foolishness. But those of us whom God calls, whether Jews or Greeks, know that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.  (1 Cor. 1:18, 23-24).

Tomorrow, September 14, in the Episcopal Church Calendar is Holy Cross Day, a feast where we meditate on the instrument of our Lord’s death and the tomb where he arose from the dead.  The date remembers the dedication on September 14, 335, of the basilica built by the Emperor Constantine on the site of Calvary and the tomb of Christ, where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is currently located.  Constantine chose the date to remember the dedication of Solomon’s Temple hundreds of years before, in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar (September was the seventh month of the Roman calendar).   The Emperor’s mother, St. Helena, was in charge of the excavations of the site where large pieces of the “True Cross of Christ” were reportedly found. 

Some moderns are uncomfortable with meditations on the cross:  they wonder whether a tool of capital punishment and torture is an appropriate focus for spiritual devotions.  Like the Jews and gentiles in Paul’s letter, they find the cross something to stumble over, or sheer non-sense. 

Five hundred years ago, on October 31, 1517, Augustinian monk Martin of Erfurt (Martin Luther) posted his 95 theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.  It was Luther who later made a great distinction between a Theology of Glory (where we earn our own salvation and the Theology of the Cross, where we learn about God through God’s self-revelation in Jesus who lived, suffered, and died as one of us.  Christians through the centuries have always seen God’s love and saving help for us in the passion of Jesus, in his sufferings on the cross.  That’s why the cross, often with a carved representation of the suffering Jesus, has long been prominently displayed in most Christian Churches.  The point is not morbid gore, or the questionable doctrine of transferred punishment, but rather, a glimpse at the mystery of God suffering with us, as one of us.

In a 10th century North African hymn, we see the way some who have gone before us have reflected on the cross of Jesus as the moment when glory, salvation, and hope arrived:

The cross is the hope of Christians
the cross is the resurrection of the dead
the cross is the way of the lost
the cross is the savior of the lost
the cross is the staff of the lame
the cross is the guide of the blind
the cross is the strength of the weak
the cross is the doctor of the sick
the cross is the aim of the priests
the cross is the hope of the hopeless
the cross is the freedom of the slaves
the cross is the power of the kings
the cross is the water of the seeds
the cross is the consolation of the bondmen
the cross is the source of those who seek water
the cross is the cloth of the naked.
We thank you, Father, for the cross.

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

Inclusive Community (Proper 18A)

 

Inclusive Community
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18 Year A RCL)
10 September 2017 --8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-11; Psalm 119:33-40; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

I remember clearly the moment when I understood where the Spirit was calling the church in terms of acceptance of gays and lesbians.  I was in discernment for holy orders in a parish outside of Washington DC that was mixed: it had many progressives, but it also had conservatives, and it was divided over the question.  Some felt that the five or so “clobber passages” in the Bible teaching that same sex activity was an “abomination” were definitive in establishing norms for sexual ethics and morality; others thought that the great narrative of Acts 15 was central:  the early apostles voted to accept gentiles as full fledged members of the church without them first becoming Jews even though previous scripture labeled them as unclean.  In this story, inclusive acceptance is at the heart of the Christian calling.  I was at a diocesan discernment conference for those preparing for Holy Orders.  My conservative parish priest was with me.  I had been overwhelmed and happy to see a great variety of people in the seats preparing for the priesthood: all colors, ethnic backgrounds, and life-situations.  But after the conference, my priest turned to me, and in hushed, conspiratorial tones aimed at letting me know that I might be included in the Rector’s close circle of intimate advisors and co-workers, he said this to me:  “Tony, did you see that person in the row right behind us?”  He was referring to a younger person of ambiguous gender identity who was seeking the priesthood.  I had learned from her in one of the work sessions during the day that she was a trans-woman, and had started out life as a boy. She was inspiring in the faith sharing exercise, and was being sponsored by a priest I knew, respected, and loved.  I replied, “Who do you mean?”  The priest replied, with clear disgust in his voice, “You know, that freak!”  I looked puzzled.  He replied, with acid frostiness, “You had to have seen it: That he who thinks he’s a she and has mutilated himself to make the point instead of repenting and trusting Jesus to heal him.”  He said this with loathing and hatred and I flinched.  All I could say was, “Well, I know the priest who accompanied her, and I trust his pastoral judgment.”  He replied, with anger, “This is exactly the slippery slope I predicted when we began accepting unrepentant sexual perverts as priests.  The future leadership of the Episcopal Church more and more is going to look like that damaged freak because we have abandoned the Bible!”   I walked on in silence.  His unguarded moment of frankness had shocked me. I was sure I had looked clearly upon the hatred at the heart of those wanting to divide the Episcopal Church over gays, lesbians, and Gene Robinson.  From that moment on, I was firmly in the Acts 15 camp. 

Today’s Gospel has a set of rules for dealing with conflict within the Church, how to maintain the beloved community.   You know the basic outline:  first talk to the one who has offended in private.  If that doesn’t resolve it, then go with two other people who can witness the exchange and bring some objectivity to it, and if necessary, assist each party to listen to the other and improve their communication.  Finally, if that doesn’t work and the offender persists, “”they shall be to you as a pagan and a tax collector.”    Well, what does that mean? 

A common reading is this:  this is gradual escalation.  Try out a one-one-one talk where public grandstanding can be avoided.  If that’s no good, call in witnesses so they can help you brow beat the offender into submission, as Methodists used to say and Baptists still say, “labor with the brother.”   And if that is no good, then kick his sorry behind out of the community altogether.  To me, this understanding is basically, a polite form of rejection and shunning.  I may not curse you, but I have cursing in my heart when I say, “I wash my hands of you.” 

I wonder if that’s a right reading.  We know Jesus said “If someone sins against you seven times in a day and says, I'm sorry, keep on forgiving them seven times" (Luke 17:3-4) and that one form of the saying corrects any misunderstanding we might have by adding, "don’t just forgive seven times, but seventy-seven,” that is, never stop forgiving.  And that original saying is almost certainly from the historical Jesus, using a striking and memorable turn of the phrase, and its emendation is clearly the creation of the later church trying to make rules out of the legacy of Jesus' sayings.  

The saying in today’s Gospel, with its law-like procedural character and concern for rules to run a community, is almost certainly a creation of the author of the St. Matthew Gospel.  The great hint?  The first words out of Jesus’ mouth here: “If any one sins against you in the church.”  The church is an institution of Matthew’s time, not Jesus’.  The Gospel of Matthew was written in Syrian Antioch for a mixed Jewish-pagan church, one with lots of conflicts and intercultural strife.  It is trying to create a Standard Operating Procedure for managing church conflict.   But remember this:  Matthew, also called Levi, the disciple of Jesus that this Gospel was always associated with, was originally a tax-collector.  And most of the people in the church it is written to are gentiles, or less politely, pagans. 

 

So when it says, “let them be for you a tax-collector or a pagan” I think it is not necessarily saying this is the last straw and you have got to break off relations with the person.  Rather, it is saying that you must face up to the truth that communication has broken down.  Community has gone by the boards.  The relationship between the offender and the offended had turned out to be a non-relationship, or a wholly antagonistic one.  “Treat them as tax collectors or pagans” means face up to the fact that your relationship is bad.  Continue to engage, but as you would with a stranger, not an intimate.  

Why did Jesus teach “never stop forgiving”?  Why did he teach, “don’t give up on someone?   Why did he keep on forgiving, even the worst things? 

There is a hint in today’s Hebrew Scripture lesson:  “As I live, says Yahweh God, I take no pleasure when a wicked person dies, but rather when they turn from their ways and live.”   This passage is the scriptural warrant for the Church’s doctrine of the universal salvific will of God, that God wants everyone to be saved, for everyone to come out all right.  It comes from Jesus’ basic description of God as a loving parent, who gives good gifts to all his children.  It is the principal scriptural problem with John Calvin’s mistaken doctrine of a double predestination, the pre-selected elect to salvation and the pre-selected damned to Hell.  The fact that God wishes good for all is the reason in this passage from Ezekiel for the prophets to warn people—it gives them a chance to turn back from the things that will destroy them.  

Jesus says God sends the blessing of rain and sunshine equally to the righteous and the wicked.  When we ask him for bread, he does not send us stones.  And Jesus says we should be as perfectly compassionate as this Heavenly Father.  God is a great source of light, love, and life. You cannot get close to God without some of that rubbing off.  It is like approaching an open fire hydrant in the summer heat:  you will get wet. 

God wants everything to come out okay for us all, and gives the blessing and thus we need to help warn people who are going to where things will not be okay.  But this general desire to help and to show love by engaging and being in loving relationship with others can have a distorted form:  where we try to remake all others in our own image.    This is why a desire for the brotherhood and sisterhood of the human family is often corrupted by a proselytizing urge at best or an urge to holy war at worst.  It is why my former priest, who now has left the Episcopal Church, says he loves those he privately calls freaks and perverts—after all, he says, he reaches out to them and calls them to repentance and the abuse that he calls “reparative therapy.”    Jesus calls us to reject such twisted desire to help, which is really no love at all. 

Recognizing a break down in relationship, recognizing that someone has become a stranger to us, a pagan or a tax-collector, does not mean giving up on them.  Quite the opposite:  it means never giving up on them, never stopping to the engage and try to communicate, even when they have walked away from us.   

Never give up.   Like God, we must be all-loving, desiring life and health and prosperity for all.   We poor human beings are always eager to turn things into an us vs. them game, always ready to confuse the line between good and evil that runs down the middle of each and every human heart with a line between one group of people and another or even one person and another. 

All of us are enticed by God to do good, because God loves us all.  That’s why we should not give up on people.  That’s why we should not succumb to the urge to shun, to shut down engagement and conversation.  But it is also why we must be honest in recognizing when community has been damaged or broken, and respond with invitation and witness as if to an outsider.    But above all, we must always reach out, and be the loving hand of God for others.  We must never, ever, give up on them. 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.

Judgment, the Flesh, and Sin (mid-week message)

 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Ottheinrich-Bibel (ca.1530-1532) 

illustrated by Matthias Gerung, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Judgment, the Flesh, and Sin

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

September 10, 2014

“There is no way that the scriptures, rightly understood, present God as an eternal torturer. Yet many Christians seem to believe this, and many are even held back from trusting God’s goodness because of this ‘angry parent in the sky’ that we have created. The determined direction of the scriptures, fully revealed in Jesus, is that God’s justice is not achieved by punishment, but by the divine initiative we call grace, which enables us to bring about internal rightness, harmony, balance, and realignment with what is.”  (--Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, Job and the Mystery of Suffering, p. 57)

We have many false ideas about God and the world and many of these come from inadequate translations or misunderstandings of scripture.  There are bad ideas contained in the Bible, to be sure.   But when we come to learn to read the bad passages and ideas in light of the good ones, we start to see the overall message of the whole canon of scripture and many of our wrong ideas about God are corrected. 

Here are several ideas and phrases that many of us have gotten from the way we have heard scripture read and taught, followed by possible alternate phrases or ways of saying them that cohere better with what the whole of scripture teaches about God.  

Judgment, God as a Judge:  The basic Hebrew idea of shaphat (judgment) is the setting of things right.  That’s why the Book of Judges is not about jurists in black robes and white wigs, sitting at a bench rapping gavels.  It’s about heroes who vindicate the oppressed.  The Day of Judgment is the day when all that is wrong is set to right.  When we say in the Creed that Christ will come to be our judge, we are saying he will come to set all things right.  And saying that that final judge is Jesus means that mercy and love is the central part of the setting things right. 

Flesh, the Desires of the Flesh:  This image, used by Paul, often is taken as something dirty, evil, and in absolute polar opposition to God and God’s plans for us.  But Paul knew as well as anyone that when God created us in creation, he declared it very good, and that our bodies are very much a part of what God intends in us.  He uses the stoic idea of “the flesh” as a kind of shorthand in opposition to “the mind.”  A better rendering of the idea in our age is “that part of us that opposes God,” or “the self that opposes God.” 

Sin, sinners:  We often think that this means only deliberate disobedience or rebellion against a command or teaching of God.   But it means anything that makes us fall short of what God intended when God created us, anything that alienates us from God, ourselves, or each other.  It is, in the words of the Enriching our Worship confession of sin, where we have opposed the will of God in our lives, denied God’s goodness in ourselves, each other, and the created world.  It is what enslaves us, the bad we ourselves have done or that done on our behalf, and the good things we have left undone, the skills and gifts not developed, the ideals not pursued. Sin thus conceived is not a crime for which punishment must be exacted (either from us or by proxy by some kind of transferred punishment!), but rather an illness or weakness from which we must be healed, strengthened, and a disruption of relationship for which we must make amends and be forgiven. 

There is a lot going on in our world right now that makes us feel helpless, set upon, and threatened:  our national government pursuing policies that isolate and stigmatize minorities (whether constituted by gender identity or sexuality, race, mother language or national origin), and deprive them of livelihoods, opportunities, and even the ability to live in this country, unbreathable air from the wildfire smoke about us, the horrible storms and flooding in Texas, the Caribbean and Florida, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia, and the specter of war—possibly nuclear war—on the Korean Peninsula and the Pacific Rim.    It is important that we not ascribe such horror to God.  A witty friend of mine put it this way:  it takes a special kind of stupid to think that hurricanes and floods come from a God angry over marriage equality and not even think of the possibility that they may be due to our careless economic activities warming the global environment.   But all the same, when we feel sick it often feels like we’re being punished for something, even if this is not the case. Due to concerns many parishioners have raised, I have decided that instead of Prayers of the People this Sunday, we will start our Eucharist with a (Rite II) Great Litany, a series of prayers in the face of horrors and things that make us doubt ourselves.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

Let Love be Genuine (Proper 17A epistle)

 

Let Love Be Genuine (Proper 17A)
31 August 2014

8:00 am Eucharist with Holy Baptism; 10:00 am Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 26:1-8; Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

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

What is wrong with this picture? 

“Let love be genuine,” says St. Paul in today’s epistle.  But then he adds, “hate what is evil.”  “Feed and give drink to your enemy,” he says, and then adds, “by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head.”  “Bless those who persecute you, … never avenge yourselves,” he says, but then adds, “leave room for the wrath of God.” 

The Psalm today says “I love you, God,” and then adds, “and I keep away from worthless people, and do not associate with the deceitful.  I have hated the company of evildoers; I will not sit down with the wicked.”  Jeremiah says, “Remember me, Lord, and visit me,” and then adds, “punish everyone who troubles me.” 

What is wrong with this picture? 

We hear in scripture that God is love.  But these passages today focus on the wrath of God.   We are taught to love our enemies, but these passages tell us to hate the wicked, or at least avoid them, and ask God to punish and destroy those who do us wrong.

It is a problem we find again and again in the Bible.  “I am a jealous God, visiting the sins of the wicked on their families for four generations!”—this about sums it up.   But even in these same ancient texts others have problems with the image.  Some try to soften it by saying “He is a loving God, slow to anger and of great patience!”  Others just focus on God’s loving kindness and covenant faithfulness, and leave the mystery of wrath alone. 

People try to reconcile these texts, somewhat at odds with each other, by saying that God loves the sinner but hates sin, or that love is demanding and sets boundaries, or that the wrath of God, the demands and punishments meted out by a just and angry God, are reconciled by Jesus taking the place of the wicked on the cross and suffering in the stead of those who have faith in him, thus “satisfying” the “wrath of God.”      

But these are cheap and wrong-headed ways of reconciling the irreconcilable. 

The problem with them is that they retain the basic image of God as anger, rather than as love.   The wrath of God is what destines us, in this view, to a burning lake of fire and brimstone for the eternities, unless that anger can somehow be placated and satisfied. 

    

When I was young, one of my high school debate partners regularly gave in the interpretive reading event Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God.”  It was always a hit, in part because of the campy way he delivered it, one that underlined just how different the Calvinist take of God is from our age’s.  I repeat pat of that sermon here, to make sure you see exactly what the doctrine of the literal wrath of God is: 

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.  …[T]here is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. … O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder…”

Yikes. 

This is not God as love.  And it is not the God that Jesus taught. 

For Jesus, God is a loving parent, our abba or papa. 

For Jesus, God is a healer, a physician, not an Emperor, policeman, or a judge in a court of law. 

For Jesus, we should not try to avoid the wicked, but try to help them.  We must reach out and help others, because “it is not the well that need a physician, but the ill.”    He taught that it was not uncleanness we needed to worry about, but rather unkindness, cruelty, and abuse of others. 

For this, he was accused of being a sinner himself, spending all his time with whores, drunks, and greedy traitors.

When we talk about the wrath of God, it is important to remember that this does not describe the heart of God.  Talk about any of the emotions or passions of God, and you’re affirming that God is more than us, not less.  God’s wrath as an idea reminds us that justice is a basic character of God.  But it does not describe the heart of God:  to take such an image literally would be to say that God is as messed us as we are, unable to detach from our fears and limitations, and willing to engage in abuse to make a point or satisfy an interior rage.  No.  “The wrath of God” describes how things feel to us when we are alienated from God. 

The odd thing about today’s scripture lesson from Romans is that in Greek, Paul does not say “make room for the wrath of God.”   All he says is, “make room for wrath.” 

The idea is that in wickedness there is a naturally-built in suffering.  It may look and feel like punishment or pay-back from a person we have offended, now angry and raging at us.  We see again and again in scripture the idea that illness is a punishment from God.  But Jesus taught that suffering and illness come from opposition to God, not from God’s willing it.  If God has any intention in it, it is to give us the chance to help. 

C.S. Lewis, in talking about that image of God’ anger, Hell, imagines that Hell is in fact created by our own refusal of God’s grace.  He puts it this way, “In the end, when all is said and done, there are two groups of people:  those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘alright, have it your own way.’” 

Sisters and brothers, there is so much we do not know, about God and about ourselves.  Since scripture is more like the field notes of God’s people than a stenographic record of the words and thoughts of God, we end up having divergent and sometimes contrary teachings in them.  That’s why it is so important as we read the varying teachings of scripture to settle ourselves on a firm foundation—and this is the life and teachings of Jesus: God is our loving parent.  God heals.  What matters is that we accept God’s grace and call.  This means having in our hearts firm assurance even as we may run into real suffering and pain that life brings.  Keep open hearts and minds, and let God heal and set things right in God’s good time.  Let love be genuine.  Recognize our own anger and pain, and still choose to accept God’s grace, and even our selves be agents of grace.  The way Jesus puts this is stark: follow him, pick up our cross and suffer along with him.  We must forgive, and not seek vengeance.  We must make room for wrath, that is, trust that wickedness is its own worst punishment, an illness that needs itself to be healed. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.