Getting Honest (Midweek Message)

Getting Honest

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

June 27, 2018

One of the great losses to society and our greater community in winner-take-all, speak-to-the-base tribal politics is honesty and a desire to seek the truth.  Damning your opponent for the same or similar sins you defended or turned a blind eye to in your own chosen standard bearer is but one example of this.  Seeking a quick and devasting sound bite or anathematizing meme to blame an opponent instead of nuanced attention to the cost-benefit and moral analysis of a policy is another.  Appeals to ideology instead of facts, and all-or-nothing thinking brings us quickly where we are unable to compromise and balance competing interests and values.  All we are left with is lying and turning a blind eye to inconvenient facts and a deaf ear to our opponents. 

Part of growing up, I think, is learning that certain things come with a cost, and that the choices we make in life have costs and consequences—not because of some overarching enforcer of rules in the universe, but simply because that’s the way things are.    Some things rule out other things just by their nature.  You may very well be able to pursue protectionist policies and at the same time say you value free trade, but you cannot enjoy the benefits of free trade, including closer international community and lower costs to the consumer.     You draw into question the sincerity of your morality when you condemn sexual harassment and abuse in the opposing party but countenance it in your own.  You may be well claim to value American ideals, but you empty them of all meaning when you spew hatred of the foreigner and fear of immigrants and refugees to shore up your base.  You may be able to say you are not a racist while you hound anyone who works against white privilege, but you cannot work toward real racial reconciliation in society while doing so. 

Honesty is a willingness to conform one’s opinions and behavior to reality despite your ideology or your preferences.    Flannery O’Conner said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”   Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.”  This is why truth-telling is essential in a democratic society.  It is also why support and attention to science is so important in policy planning.   

C.S. Lewis wrote that asking God to forgive our sins without any intention of reforming our lives is like asking God to heal us without making us get better.    

I once counseled a man who wanted a happy family life, but was reluctant to be faithful to his wife.  All I could tell him was that he wanted two contradictory things, and he needed to decide what exactly he wanted more. 

We often encounter candidates for office who say they want to balance the budget, increase services and projects, and yet cut taxes.  They have many fantasy ways of arguing that none of this is self-contradictory.  Regardless, both the left and the right tend to share in their own ways unrealistic and magical thinking.   All or nothing thinking

Being honest with our self, and insisting on honesty in our political leadership is the only way to avoid the trap of “believing our own propaganda” and deceiving our self and others.   A free and independent press and judiciary under the rule of law help us do this.  

“Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech you that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of your favor and glad to do your will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought here from many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in your Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to your law, we may show forth your praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in you to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”  (BCP,  p. 820)

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

Seasick with Jesus (Proper 7B)

Photo by Angela Smith 

Seasick with Jesus
24 June 2018 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 7B
Homily Preached at Trinity Parish Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

The Very Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

Job 38:1-11; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41

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

The one time I got really seasick was when I was in high school.  My father and I were fishing for salmon in a 17-foot Boston Whaler in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  The sea rose with waves higher than the boat was long.  I started vomiting with the buffeting, lay down in the stern and closed my eyes, and, exhausted from a long day, I fell asleep.  When I woke later, the sea had calmed to absolute stillness and fog had come in on the glass-like water.  My father put his finger to his lips and shushed me, and then pointed to starboard.  There was a huge swooshing noise.  I could smell a large mammal, something like cows. Suddenly, an orca—what we then called a killer whale—surfaced just a few feet from the boat.  It was longer than the boat itself.  Then for 30 minutes or so, we sat quietly, in awe but also a little scared, as a pod of about 5 of the huge beasts, including a calf, played around our boat. 

Going onto the waters in a boat has always been the source of awe and fear for human beings, and sailors always thought to be particularly brave or absolutely foolish.   We are just too vulnerable when out on the water.  The Breton fisherman’s prayer, otherwise ascribed to Celtic saint Brendan the Navigator  who went to sea in a wicker-covered-with-hides coracle smaller than most bathtubs, expresses the idea well, “Protect me, Lord.  Your sea is so great and my boat is so small.” 

Today’s Gospel story of Jesus calming the storm is a gem of the story-teller’s art. It starts with nightfall fast approaching and Jesus inviting the disciples to go with him to “cross over to the other side.”  It sounds like Lake Tiberias, the Sea of Galilee, is a symbol for death or the deep troubles we run into in life.  It is a voyage for the adept, for Jesus’ close followers: they leave the crowds of celebrity-seekers and curiosity-hounds behind.  The disciples take Jesus in the boat with them, “just as he is,” and have other boats filled with other disciples tag along.  But this is not an easy journey.  A great windstorm hits them and the placid sea turns into a chaos of huge waves that wash over the boats and begin to swamp them.  People cower beneath the gunwales, are sea-sick, and fear for their lives.  But Jesus is sound asleep, there in the stern on a cushion.  They wake him up, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Roused from his nap, Jesus scolds the wind as if it is a naughty child and says, “Peace! Be still!” The wind stops, a dead calm ensues, and Jesus turns to the disciples with the puzzled question, “Why were you so terrified?  Everything’s okay.  Have a little trust, for goodness sake!”  The story ends, “And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’”

When I heard this story as a boy, I thought Jesus was shaming the disciples:  “O ye of little faith!”  But that is not how the story tells it.  Jesus, “just as he is,” there on a cushion in the stern where it’s a little more stable, is ready to sleep through the night, and when woken is honestly puzzled at the disciples’ terror.  Jesus calms the storm as the answer to the question “do you even care about us?”  But he wonders, how could they possibly not be as confident in God’s care as he is?  The point is that no matter how scary things are on our voyage across to the other side, Jesus is there, in the stern, ready to help. 

Those who told the first stories about Jesus calming the storm that later turn up in our gospels almost certainly had in mind the description of the God who calls the storms and then calms them which we recited today from Psalm 107. In port town churches and Navy chaplaincies we often hear the section of this Psalm that we recited today, the part about “those who go down to the sea in ships.”

But Psalm 107 is not just about sailors. It has several different sections describing people in many different extreme situations, where they need to rely on God. The whole Psalm could be entitled, “God, the Savior of People in Distress.”

Part (vv. 4-9) talks about people who get lost in the desert and run out of water. God there leads them back to an oasis.

Another part (vv. 10-16) describes prisoners in a dark dungeon. God leads them from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom.

Yet another (vv. 17-22) talks about people suffering from horrible illness, as the Psalmist says, “because of their wicked ways.” They are near death because they cannot eat food anymore, it has become so distasteful to them. One wonders whether the Psalmist has venereal disease, alcoholism or addiction, or some other ailment in mind. In the Psalmist's era, people thought disease came as punishment from God rather than from microbes or genetics. God heals these people when they call on him.
 

Finally, we see the part about those who go out upon the sea and get caught in a storm (vv. 23-32). Again, God calms the storm when they call on him. The psalm ends (vv. 33-41) by saying that God can change a river into a desert, and rich springs into dusty and arid ground. He can turn fruitful land into a salt marsh, and a desert into pools of water. The point is that God is a reliable savior in any hardship.

So the next time we hear the story about Jesus calming the storm, let’s not just think about Jesus helping mariners only.

Think about the drug addicts and alcoholics who have been helped by Jesus when they call upon him and surrender to him. And that, whatever name they might use to call Jesus, or image they might have of their “higher power.”

Think about the physically ill who have found healing and comfort in Jesus.

Think about how his message can help those lost in mental illness, or harmful ego.

Think about the poor that Jesus calls us to serve and assist.

Think about how he helps those lost in sin and self-deception, ourselves included, and lost in exploitation and deception of others.

When I heard this story as a young boy, I though Jersus was shaming not only the disciples, but also shaming me.  “Oh ye of little faith.” “If only you had faith, you could not only walk on water but also calm the sea itself.” “If you have faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, you could not only move mountains, but calm the oceans too.” All this conspired to make me want to say, “I’m unworthy, unworthy.”

But the story is not saying that at all.   This is the Jesus who spent his days with drunkards, traitors, and prostitutes, and when criticized for this replied, “sick people need a doctor, not healthy ones.”  “Focus on your faith, not your fear” is what he means. 

If we our circumstances make us think we need God, then we should realize that it is God that we are in need of. God is trustworthy. God, in the idea of the Psalm we chanted today, is the savior of all in distress. Relying on God leaves little room for fear. Regardless of how things turn out, we know that, in the words of the prayer, God “is doing for us more that we can ask or imagine.”

That's why Jesus calms the sea before he asks his disciples why they were afraid. He sympathizes and understands us.  He just wants us to go easier on ourselves and not beat ourselves up so much with fear. 

Jesus, just as he is, is there in the stern even in the roughest of seas.   We need to trust him.

In the name of God, Amen. 

Defilement from the Heart (Midweek Message)

  Photo: Protesters against the detention of migrant children outside of City Hall in Los Angeles, California. (Reuters: Patrick T Fallon)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Defilement from the Heart

June 20, 2018

“[Jesus said,] ‘Listen and understand:  it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles … Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.  And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit… Whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer.  But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.’  (Matt 15:10-20)

Last Sunday, I preached on Jesus’ teaching on the Reign of God and applied this to the current political and moral crisis we face in our nation.   Many, many religious and civic leaders of all faiths and political parties have condemned in the strongest possible terms (“child abuse,” “evil,” “wicked,” “cruel and heartless,” and “unconscionable”) the separation of children from their parents under what was rolled out as a “zero tolerance” policy toward “illegal immigration” by the administration back in May.   Today, our Bishop +Michael Hanley sent out a pastoral message encouraging us all to take steps to oppose this evil being committed in our name: https://www.diocese-oregon.org/families-belong-together/.  The Episcopal Policy Network has called on us to participate in a “virtual vigil” in favor of keeping families together on the border on Thursday, the Summer Solstice, to make the point that any time a child is forcibly separated from its parent is too long a time: https://www.facebook.com/events/790637474463760/.   

The White House today responded to this public outrage by issuing an Executive Order that ostensibly would end the practice of separating families: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/affording-congress-opportunity-address-family-separation/.   Reading the document carefully, it is clear that it eliminates the current 20-day limit on holding people accused of illegal entry into the United States (presumably, they can now be held indefinitely) and there is no evidence of any intention or preparation to reunite families that have already been separated.  Over 2,000 children remain held away from their parents and relatives in what the administration has called “unfortunate, but legally necessary” isolated detention.   This is all the more troubling in light of the President’s earlier tweets saying that the separated children were bargaining chips to help him cut down on illegal immigration and get funding for his signature project in this area, his “beautiful” border wall.   Remember that in the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, as shameful as that episode was, we never tore children from their parents. 

As part of the Virtual Vigil on Thursday, Trinity Church at 9 a.m. local time will toll its bell 2,000 times remembering those 2,000 plus children who remain torn from their families 

What we say and think matters.  That’s why Jesus says defilement comes from the mouth and the heart, and that the blind lead the blind.  The President has fed his political base a non-ending stream of vilification and dehumanization of those who seek to come into the U.S. from south of the border.  It is chilling to watch videos of him, shaking his fist, leading chants at political rallies of “ANIMALS, ANIMAL, ANIMALS!”  It matters little whether this is about gang members alone since it has the effect of dehumanizing anyone coming from that direction.  Note his claim that he is only trying to keep them from “infesting” our nation.  The fact that his Justice Department is seeking to limit drastically the grounds for granting asylum is the manifestation of this in cold, bureaucratic legalese. 

People who defend the President’s policies here can trot out reasons, whether from the Bible (!), law and previous administrations’ practices, and the great specter of “infestation.”  Out of the heart come words and evil intentions indeed.  The Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services said yesterday in a press conference that she was “offended” that anyone would dare claim that the Administration had intentionally harmed children to advance its policy goals.  “We’re just trying to enforce the laws Congress has passed, and if you want to blame anyone, blame them and the Democrats”!  But this is not about parties.  It is about right and wrong, and who we are as a people.  Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem, spoke of the “the banality of evil.”   

I hope the administration follows through in banning this wickedness and in  making every effort to reunite those 2,000 kids and their families, wrenched apart by the “zero tolerance” announced in May.  I invite all to read +Michael’s letter and take action.  And if you are near downtown, listen for that tolling bell tomorrow morning at 9. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

The Sprouting Seed (Proper 6B)

The Sprouting Seed
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6)
17th June 2018
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Ezekiel 17:22-end; Psalm 92:1-4, 11-14; 2 Cor 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34

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

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

The Bible made the news once again this week.  Christian religious leaders of all stripes—from Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals, to progressive protestants like Jim Wallis of Sojourners and our own Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, to Southern Baptist leaders and even the Rev. Franklin Graham—issued statements blasting as immoral and cruel the administration’s policy of separating children from their undocumented parents at the border, and warehousing them.  In response, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the policy, saying it was supported by the Bible: “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” 

Sanders and Sessions seem unaware of how these very verses over the centuries have been quoted to prop up just about every unjust law or wicked regime:  slave owners enforcing the infamous Fugitive Slave Act before the U.S. Civil War, Afrikaner supporters of Apartheid, and anti-Civil Rights lovers of Jim Crow.  Even the Nazi-controlled Protestant Church appealed to them to argue that the German Volk owed their Fuehrer obedience and loyalty.   All missed Augustine and Aquinas’ argument that “an unjust law is no law at all, but rather merely violence.” 

When people say “the BIBLE says,” remember what Fr. Morgan Silbaugh tells our Bible study group, “and what ELSE does the Bible say?” 

In the lead-up to Romans 13, Paul himself writes: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor…  Contribute to [those in need]; extend hospitality to strangers.” (Romans 12:9-18). 

Again and again the prophets declare: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut 10), “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien…of justice” (Deut 27), “The aliens shall be to you as citizens, and shall also be allotted an inheritance” (Ezek 47:21-22), “Do not oppress the alien” (Zech 7:8-10). 

Jesus says in Luke, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause a little child to stumble” (Luke 17:2).

In Matthew 25, he says that on the Last Day, the one thing that will separate those with God and those against God is whether we welcomed strangers, fed the hungry, and helped those in need. 

Some may reply, “But how can we defend our nation, and make it great again? Right there in Ezra, it tells us of the need to build walls.”  Again, what else does the Bible say?  Today’s Gospel says a lot here. 

Jesus grew up in Galilee, a minor client state on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Rome had swallowed up all the world around the Mediterranean.  Rome was great, was huge. But the Pax Romana was largely a creation of the state’s propaganda machine: the leader of the Celts in Britain before being paraded as a conquered slave in Rome, famously said, “You make a desert and call it peace.”  The state spin-doctors said that the Empire was the order and peace intended by the gods, and the Emperor was God’s son.  

Judas Maccabee  

One of the peoples Rome conquered was Jesus’ own, the Jews. Just a century and a half before, they had hoped dearly for deliverance from all their foes and the establishment of God’s just and right kingdom. Judas Maccabee and his army threw off the harsh oppression of the Greek Syrian kings left behind by Alexander the Great. The Book of Daniel, written then, predicted that the Maccabees’ rule would grow and grow, like a rock cut out from the mountains without hands, until it would fill the whole world and smash all systems of oppression and wrong.

But that effort had gone seriously wrong. The Maccabees themselves became tyrannical, and their religious establishment hopelessly corrupt. The Temple itself became as much a symbol of oppressive taxes and impossible rules as of God’s presence on earth. The Temple officials, called Sadducees during Jesus’ time, became quickly the quisling darlings of the Romans. What Daniel had hoped would be the kingdom of God had become just another petty and corrupt banana republic with a compromised religion and horrendous rulers.
 

Some Jews fled the Maccabean establishment and went into the Judean wilderness, seeking to “prepare in the desert” a way for God’s true kingdom. They called themselves the “sons of Zadok” or the “sons of Light,” and advocated a separation of true believers from the rest of the world, “the sons of darkness.”  They believed one day they would destroy the wicked, including the evil “Kittim,” or Romans, in a great war.   They are the ones who wrote what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jewish historian Josephus called them Essenes. Making Judea great again, building the Kingdom of God, meant for them fundamentalist religion, war, and hatred of foreigners. 

Others reacted to the Roman subjugation of Judea and the corruption of the Temple by calling for more and more rigorous study and application of the Law of Moses.  Personal piety, avoiding political controversy with the rulers at all costs, and keeping apart from foreigners for them was the way to make the nation great again.  These are the Pharisees.

Others reacted by calling for armed rebellion. According to Josephus, a Galilean named Judas led a major revolt against Rome around A.D. 5 in a tax protest.  The Romans crushed the revolt, and then crucified thousands of the defeated rebels.  A few surviving guerillas fought on as bandits and terrorists. They are called the sicarii, the knife bearers, or the Zealots.  They insisted on their right and duty to bear arms in the defense of what they called freedom.  They later led another revolt against Rome that ended in the Temple leveled, never to be rebuilt, Jerusalem destroyed, and the expulsion of Jews from Palestine.  The zealots thought that weapons in the cause of right would make the nation great again, would usher in God’s Kingdom. 

When Jesus began to preach, it caused quite a stir. People were excited. Here was a prophet declaring that God was beginning to act to establish his kingdom. “God’s kingship has come near!”  He quoted Isaiah, declaring liberation to the captive and freedom to the prisoner.  And when he began to heal people to show that God’s kingdom had arrived, they really started to flock to see him and hear him. Would he overthrow the Romans? Would he throw out the corrupt priests from the Temple? Or would he just provoke the Romans into killng them?

People asked him how the Kingdom of God could have come already when the rule of the Evil Empire was still so evident. How could he mistake his little public teach-ins for the overthrow of evil promised by the prophets?

Jesus told stories from everyday life as a means of making people question everything they thought they knew about these questions.  Many of them start, “The kingdom of God is like…”  Today’s Gospel from Mark has two of these riddles: the seed growing on its own and the mustard plant. 

 

God coming here and now, fully in charge—It’s like a growing seed: it sprouts and grows all on its own regardless of whether the person who planted it knows that it grows or understands why it grows.  Jesus says that God’s kingdom comes mainly through God’s action. God is already at work and will ultimately set things right, but not yet completely.  God’s reign, making the nation great again:  it starts small and happens in ways we don’t see and can’t even guess.  It’s a mystery:  but it’s true all the same. 

God coming here and now, fully in charge—It’s not like the giant cedar tree prophesied by Ezekiel.  No—it’s like a mustard shrub, little more than a big weed.  It grows in unusual places, apart from human control.  If noticed, it is uprooted.  If without notice, it its tiny seed goes wild.  Though not quite one of the usual images for God’s kingdom—vineyards, olive trees, or that great cedar tree—it’s big enough to shelter wild birds.  For Jesus, the kingdom is the mustard weed.

The kingdom won’t come through force of arms. It won’t come through blaming and scapegoating foreigners and infidels.  It won’t come through mere personal piety and commandment-keeping.  Note the image here:  secret growth, a wild weed, and shelter for the birds, often a symbol for the poor.  Jesus is questioning whether the Kingdom has anything to do with making the nation great again in any traditional sense of that word.  For him, greatness is in goodness, justice, kindness, and providing shelter. 

The kingdom will come through God’s action behind the scenes, on the human heart. Conscience will change us, our ways of behaving, and with this our political systems.  It may be in secret.  It may not be obvious.  But it will come. It will come. Our conscience demands that we make the kingdom alive:  challenge the Empire with peaceful non-scapegoating acts of witness: turn the cheek, go the second mile.  Stand up to power in love and gentleness.    

No matter how bad things are, how much the evil triumph and the righteous suffer, how overwhelming the imperial power seems to be or how corrupt and compromised religious leaders are, the kingdom will come. Despite it all, God actually already is in charge, and God’s reign is here and now. And its full manifestation will come.  Trusting in God means not worrying that it will, because it will.  Trusting means following that clarion call of conscience that God puts in our heart.  “Take up your cross and follow me!” 

That seed is growing on its own.  That weed can sprout and become immense! A country can be great again only when it is kind again, is good again, is just again.   Embrace the reign of God.  Love mercy, work justice, and walk humbly with that God who will make it happen. 

In the name of God, Amen. 

Faith and Fear (midweek)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Faith and fear  

June 13, 2018

Elena and I are at the beach on a short vacation.  Yesterday, I met a young man on the autism spectrum who helped me build a sand castle.  His grandmother told me that he was getting used to the beach, since he liked how the air felt, and the regularity of the waves, but was still learning to overcome his fear of the crashing and roaring sound of the surf.  It got me thinking about things that I am afraid of, and how often they are tied up with things I love. 

Fear has a lot to do with regret or anticipation of loss or pain.  Comfort has a lot to do with the familiar and predictable safety.  Again and again in scripture, God, (whether through Yahweh’s voice, angels, or Jesus) tells us, “Do not fear.”   The oft-seen contrary idea of “fear God” is more about standing in awe of God, not being terrorized: note the line in last week’s psalm:  “For there is forgiveness with you; therefore you shall be feared” (130:3).   Clearly, here “fearing” God means standing in awe of God, not dreading him.   

Mystic Teresa of Avila wrote the following: 

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

Grace and peace. 

--Fr. Tony+

Riddles (Proper B)

Riddles
10 June 2018 Third Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 5B

Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

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

Genesis 3:8-15; Psalm 130; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-25

God, give us eyes to see through temporal division and pain, to see the joyful and eternal weight of glory already present among us.  Amen. 

A friend recently told the story on Facebook of having a nurse perform a serious medical procedure on her where there was “some substantial flashing of personal parts.”  Her husband, at her side, asked her whether she should bring her husband next time.  The nurse, shocked into a wary silence, looked up only to see the ironic playfulness in his face.  All three burst into several minutes of laughter so hard that they had to restart the procedure. 

Gallows humor sometimes saves us from despair at decline or threat.  It seems counter intuitive:  when the going gets tough, the tough start laughing. 

Faith and doubt are like that.  I was having a moment of real reflection a few years ago, wondering about God.  I was wondering in both senses of the word—in awe at the good things we receive each day, but also asking myself if God heard and answered prayers.  Some of my friends told me, trust don’t doubt.  But what was strange is this:  the awe and fear were all wrapped up into a single emotion and a single word—wonder.  One of the things you learn in training to be a Godly Play storyteller is to welcome wonder and questioning.  “I wonder what Jesus must have meant.” “I wonder what you would do in that situation…” I wonder…   I wonder…

Jesus too focused on wonder in both senses, and in the power of irony and humor to unleash our inner strength and light.   The Beatitudes are basically seeing God where we have come to learn to least expect seeing him.  Blessed are the starving.  Blessed are the oppressed.  Blessed are those crushed by grief.  And most of the parables have an edge or punch line that would not work if not for a wicked sense of humor and the double meaning of “wonder.” 

Today’s Gospel says that Jesus, hearing accusations that he worked healings by being in league with the Devil, replied with “parables.”  A better translation might be “riddles”: the riddle of the divided house and the riddle of how to rob a strong man. 

The argument seems simple:  “You say I am in league with the devil and am casting out demons by demonic power.  But that can’t be, since I am undoing the Devil’s work!”   But Jesus pushes the riddle deeper by using the word “Satan” instead of the name Beelzebul that Jesus’ accusers had thrown at him.   Beelzebul was a common name for demonic power in Jesus’ day, originally being the name of a Canaanite deity Baal-zebul, or Lord of the House, who ran competition with Israel’s God, Yahweh, whose house was in Jerusalem.  Baalzebul was so offensive to most Jewish scriptural writers that they regularly distorted the name to Baal-zebub, or Lord of the flies, to suggest that this Canaanite god was just a pile of, well, whatever it is that best attracts flies.   

But Jesus here replies using the name Satan instead of Beelzebul.   Shaytan means “the one in opposition.”  That’s why those Iranian students sometimes chant that the U.S. is the Great Satan.  It also means one who accuses and sets things in opposition.  By definition, Satan is at odds, seeks scapegoats, accuses and blames others instead of addressing real problems and failings over which one has control.    Satan’s house by nature is divided against itself: it defines itself by division, accusation, and casting blame elsewhere.  It only appears to be unified. 

In this morning’s Hebrew Scripture, note the blame in Adam’s reaction upon being found naked:  “the woman, the one you gave me, made me eat it.”  The woman blames in kind: "It was the snake!"  Such is the effect of the accuser:  desire for what others have, the zero-sum game and the violence it provokes, and the resulting blame game that helps us live with ourselves in a such a hopeless world.  

The riddle of the house divided shows that Jesus’ accusers have more in common with the demons that he does.   They are the accuser, the Satan.  When you seek to blame someone, when you accuse and set them against yourself, you must first pretend that you are united, unbeatable, supposedly.  But the very nature of accusation is to accuse anyone at various times. 

He throws in a second riddle to explain—the riddle of a weakling robbing a strong man.  The weakling can steal a strong man’s wealth only by sneaking in while he is sleeping and tying him up before he wakes.   

I am that weakling crook, says Jesus.  I am the sneak thief.  What I am doing will surprise you once you wake up, because the house of wealth, the house of blame, the house of accusation will fall to my subversive little actions.    I am not in league with the accuser, who actually controls wealth and power in this world.  I am the sneak thief who will win. 

When Jesus says the Reign of God is already here, he is saying that the way of the world—the logical and reasonable, revered and respectable, tried and true way of the world is being undermined at this very moment.  The way that seeks to fix things through violence and force, affirms strength and denies weakness, and shifts blame to others and then goes after them instead of accepting one’s own responsibility—Jesus says that this way is already getting ready to collapse.    His preaching of God at work where we least expect is part of this subversive movement.  His riddles about the seed growing secretly and of the tiny seed growing into the greatest of shrubs are part of it.  His healing of illness, paralysis and palsy, of mental illness blamed on demons and bad religion or no religion at all, are part of it.  He is overthrowing the reign of the accuser, the reign of sickness, the reign of division.  He is the sneak thief tying the old monster up. 

In our blame-game nation, community defines itself by pointing to scapegoats, by saying the truth is not in them.  It comes from all sides: fear of the foreigner and the alien, “fake news,” “alternate facts,” “deplorables,” “hypocrites,” and lies, lies, lies.  In all this, I am reminded of a comment by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “In a democracy, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”   As Flannery O’Conner said,  “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” 

We often accuse those who see things differently from us of being crazy, just like in today’s Gospel, where the family of Jesus thinks he has gone crazy.

Jesus has seen the accuser for he is.  He sees through the sham of reason and respectability, and looks crazy to all about him.   When they press the matter, he says that he counts as his family only the ones who also see through the sham, the ones who are crazy like he is crazy.    He invites us all to join him.  He bids us to follow him.   Again, Fannery O’Conner: “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”  

And Jesus says that stubbornly sticking with the lie is the only thing that is really irredeemable.   Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, seeing again and again God and right and love breaking into the world of sham, shame, blame, and violence and then persisting in calling it evil, well, Jesus says, this is the one course of action in which there lies no hope at all. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that when Christ calls any of us to follow him, he bids us to come and die.  The illusion of the unified and strong and rich reign of accusation and violence must end.  We must lose our false selves, our smart and respectable selves, and become crazy like Jesus.  We must risk all like Jesus.  It is part and parcel of being in awe and wonder at a loving, kind Abba or Papa in whom there is no deception, no accusation, no blaming, no violence, no division or faction.

The way of breaking through the sham is wonder, is gallows humor, and is going through pain.  The Persian Sufi mystic and poet Rumi wrote: “I said: what about my eyes?  He said: Keep them on the road.  I said: What about my passion?  He said: Keep it burning.  I said: What about my heart?  He said: Tell me what you hold inside it. I said: Pain and sorrow.  He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

Sister and brothers, I have had colleagues tell me that they pity me, ministering to a congregation with so many elderly, with so much degenerative illness, with so much death.  But I have to say, ministering here is one of the greatest blessings I have had in my life.   I get to see grace in peoples’ lives and in my own life almost every day.  I get to hear stories of real gallows humor in horrendous situations that might make others lose all faith, hope, and humor.  Those who say, “I don’t want to be a burden” don’t understand at all.  Giving those you love a chance to show their love, a chance to serve and help in hopeless situations—that is a gift, not a curse or a burden.   The family Jesus calls us to join may be crazy, but we’re a home crazed with love, defiant hope, and sometimes joyful laughter.   

Jesus call us to follow him, see through the sham, and be his family. Jesus bids us all to go crazy like him, and die to this sick world.

I wonder if we can heed his call.  I wonder how we can.  I wonder...  I wonder. 

Goodness at the Heart of Things

 Mystic Christ, Painting by Fr. John Giuliani

Goodness at the Heart of Things

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

June 6, 2018

“And God saw all that He had made, and,

behold, how very good it was!”  Gen. 1:31

There is a deep optimism at the heart of our faith.    Affirming the creation—the teaching that all things, including us, came into being at the word of a loving and all-nurturing Deity—means affirming love and purpose at the heart of things.  Granted, at times in history this essential optimism has been dimmed somewhat by talk of flaws and faults in our very natures (what Augustine of Hippo—that no-so-completely-reconstructed Manichean—called “original sin.”)  But the basic idea that God is good and loving and that God made the universe means that all things are in fact are an artifact of goodness, a reflection of love.   

We see God reflected in the natural world.  Paul writes in Romans, “For what can be known of God is plain… Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and known through the things He made” (Rom. 1:19-20).  Some people wonder whether this can be true, seeing “nature red in tooth and claw” and the great wastefulness of natural selection, evolution, and mass extinctions.   Others take these aspects of nature and wonder whether God is a monster, or a capricious tormentor of his creatures. 

But the Psalmist has no such worries: “Yours is the day, O Lord, yours also is the night.  You established the moon and the sun.  You fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you made both summer and winter” (Psa. 74:15-16); “[God] covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills.  He gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry” (Psa. 147:8-9).  So even if there is on occasion hardship in nature, blessing remains:  “The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Psa. 34:10). 

This is what Jesus was thinking about when he taught, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted.  So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:29-31); “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?  And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you?” (Matt 6:25-30)

In all this, the love and providence of God are seen to be reflected in the abundance and beauty of God’s creation, nature. 

Spirituality is in many ways the manner in which we experience, process, and share in the transcendent, the ineffable, the sacred in the world about us and in our life.   One of the great blessings of the Celtic spirituality celebrated and taught by many of our parishioners and members of the Ashland community is its recognition of God at work in the work about us, especially the natural world.    Even when vague in expression and unadorned by traditional doctrine or authority, this sense of original blessing gives life and joy.  The thankfulness at its heart is the great antidote to fear, despair, and even guilt or shame, especially pathological worrying about vaguely perceived failings and shortcomings.    

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

Ordinary Time and the Historical Jesus

 Computerized reconstruction of how the historical 

Jesus may have looked based on a first century Palestinian skull. 

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

June 2018

Ordinary Time and the Historical Jesus

We have just entered into what liturgical scholars call “ordinary time,” the lengthy period from Pentecost in late spring to the beginning of Advent in late November.  Because of its length and the liturgical color we use during this time, some call it “the Great Green.”  Most of our Sunday Eucharistic Lectionary Gospel readings during this time come from the ministry of Jesus and focus on his teachings and miracles.   Where readings in the other seasons focus on the fulfilment of prophetic vision in Christ (Advent), the incarnation (Christmas), penitence (Lent), or the breadth and depth of the Universal Christ (Easter), ordinary time acquaints us with the earthly Jesus, the Synoptic Gospels’ various portrayals of him.   

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all give different views and interpretations.  But these divergent stories track closely with each other.  This divergent similarity provides us with the raw data we can use to reconstruct the words and actions of the historical Jesus, using the various tools of modern Gospel scholarship:  textual, source, form, redaction, and rhetorical criticism.  Thus separating the Christ of Faith from the Historical Jesus is important if we are to have clarity in our faith and understanding: what the man Jesus actually said and did is important if we follow the Church’s faith the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us and that Jesus was not half divine and half human, but rather fully God and fully human.  

A rigorous method of establishing whether the historical Jesus said something put on his lips in the gospels is broader than identifying simply things you doubt the Jesus of your modern progressive imagination would have said.   There are several rules of thumb that help us establish this with some degree of objectivity.    

One such rule is dissimilarity, whether the saying at issue differs from the sayings of the Jewish religion before Jesus and the faith of the Church after him.  Another rule is multiple attestation: whether the saying is found in numerous separate traditions in early Christian writings (such as Mark and how Mark in used in Matthew and Luke, the non-Marcan shared material in Matthew and Luke, the Johannine tradition, St. Paul, and the later Gospel of Thomas that has a few sayings that seem to go back to an earlier period).  Coherence with what we know about Jesus—that he was a marginal follower of John the Baptist and that he was put to death by the Romans for political rebellion—as well as how a saying fits in with other sayings that are indisputably from Jesus, is another rule of thumb, as is embarrassment—the difficulties that a saying would have caused for church leaders, who thus had little reason to invent it. 

When we do this necessary work of sifting and reorganizing the material, we see often that sayings of and actions by the historical Jesus are taken up and reinterpreted by the Gospel writers.  Such a repurposing of Jesus’ words is seen often in Matthew.  The best example, I think, it the parable of the bad personnel policy, where workers hired at different parts of the day under the press of needing to get the crops in receive the same wage because the landowner can’t be bothered to pay on a pro-rated time basis the below-living wage pittance he gives his day laborers, causing a revolt of sorts by those who bore the heat of the day and worked long hours.   On the lips of the historical Jesus, the parable asks us to consider what is fair, and what is just.  It is part of the historical Jesus’ revolutionary critique of Imperial society and oppression of common people that ended up getting him killed by the Romans for insurrection.  But in Matthew’s Gospel, it becomes an allegory about the relationship of Jewish Christians and Gentile latecomers, and casts God in the role of the landowner, asking us to accept his abundant grace to others who may seem less deserving than ourselves.

Much of the modern work of the Church in social justice issues is based on a firm foundational understanding of the teachings of the historical Jesus: the Reign of God preached by Jesus is still preached by the Church today.  This is not a “Kingdom in Heaven” with “Pie in the Sky, by and by,” so much as a vision of what it means to have God fully in charge, right here, right now.   God’s Reign is the opposite of Caesar’s Imperial Rule.  “Jesus is Lord” denies any claim that “Caesar is Lord.”    This is the theology behind the “Reclaiming Jesus” affirmation of faith by Christian leaders including our own Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, in response to the current political climate of our nation.  During June and July, as we begin our readings about Jesus in ordinary time, we will be having Bible studies and discussions at 9:00 a.m. on Sundays in the Parish Hall on “Reclaiming Jesus.”

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

The Damned Field, Execution place in the Roman Empire (1878), Bronnikov, Fedor Andreevich (1827-1902).