To Be A Pilgrim (midweek message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

To Be a Pilgrim

August 29, 2018

In the Episcopal Church’s saints calendar, today is the commemoration of John Bunyan (1628-88).  A puritan soldier in the Parliamentary Army in the English Civil War, he later was a prisoner of conscience under the British monarchy restored in 1660.   He was found guilty of leading public worship not conforming to the Book of Common Prayer and following the bishops of the Church of England.    During one of his prison stays he wrote the great allegorical novel The Pilgrim’s Progress, describing the journey of Christian, an everyman character representing each believer, from his home in the “City of Destruction” through various scenes of temptation and trial, including the “Slough of Despond,” to the “Celestial City” atop Mount Zion.  In part two, Bunyan wrote a short hymn that summarized his thoughts, one that later was edited by Percy Dearmer and given the form you find in our current hymnal (numbers 564 and 565):

He who would valiant be 'gainst all disaster
Let him in constancy follow the Master.
There's no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound - his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit
We know we at the end, shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away! I'll fear not what men say
I'll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony

Gone too far Jesus (Proper 16b)

Gone too Far Jesus

Proper 16B
26 August 2018; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

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

at Trinity Parish Church, Ashland, Oregon

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

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

In all the accolades for Senator John McCain, who died yesterday, I was reminded of how he said he survived intact seven years of harsh imprisonment in Hanoi: “I had faith in God, and I had faith in my fellow prisoners.”  Note the polarity here:  God and our fellows.  We often find in life that the golden mean, the via media, the one way through troubles is to take the path between Scylla and Charybdis, or the way between two extremes. 

We see it in the tension in today’s lessons:  The Hebrew Scriptures have Joshua proclaiming absolute monotheism and blasting those who would go astray from this.  The Gospel has people rejecting Jesus because he has talked crazily about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and weakened such a monotheism. 

Jesus often offended and outraged those about him.  He often heard, “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

In Mark 3, Jesus’ family thinks he has gone insane.  When he comes back from his baptism and the 40 day retreat, instead of returning to them as a dutiful son and brother, he begins his wandering ministry.  “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

In Matthew 19, Jesus forbids divorce in most if not all circumstances.  His own disciples reply, “Well if that’s the case, it’s better never to have married.”   “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

Several times Jesus’ opponents criticize him for keeping open table fellowship with known sinners, and unclean people.  They blast him for spending all his time with drunks, sex workers, and profiteering traitors.  He replies that God himself is gracious to sinner and righteous alike, and that it is the sick, not the healthy, who need a doctor.  “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!” 

In John 8, a crowd tries to stone Jesus to death because he has said that he was older and greater than Abraham.  In John 10, another crowd tries to do the same after he says, “the Father and I are one.”  In the passion narratives, Jesus’ accusers tear their hair and rend their clothes, saying “he has blasphemed!”  “Jesus, now you’ve really gone too far!” 

So also in today’s Gospel reading—Jesus says people must eat his body and drink his blood in order to have everlasting life.  Many disciples say, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”   As they leave Jesus replies, “Does this offend you? How will you react when you see just who I really am?”  He asks the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”  The best Peter can answer is “And just where else can we go at this point?”  

All of these stories suggest that there comes a point in all people’s interaction with Jesus where they reach a tipping point, where a single word or action by Jesus is just so outrageous that they can no longer put up with him.  Some leave Jesus.  Others plot to silence him. In the end, others nail Jesus to the cross.   

Modern biblical criticism has pointed out well that only part of this reflects the historical Jesus before his death, while much reflects the Christ of faith of Jesus’s followers, talking and writing after mature reflection on the Easter events.

Jesus in his earthly life did not have a clear vision of what would happen at Calvary and on Easter Sunday.  His preaching and ministry focused on God’s Reign, not on himself.  The Romans killed Jesus for insurrection, not blasphemy.  Much of Jesus’ emphasis on his own person in John’s Gospel actually reflects the later insights of the Church.  

That said, the Historical Jesus almost certainly believed that the Kingdom of God was breaking into human history in his own person, and that this would lead to his own death.  Trusting in God to save his servants and redeem even their deadly sufferings, he persevered and took his challenge to the powers that be in Jerusalem. 

There, Jesus celebrated one last meal with his close followers at the time of the Passover festival.  Jesus likely pointed to the usual Passover meal symbols, the “bread of affliction” and the wine of the “cup of blessing,” and gave them new meaning. “This surely will end with my death, with my body over here (pointing to bread of affliction) and my blood over here (pointing to cup of blessing). What I will now suffer is true affliction and true blessing.  Share this bread and wine with me.  Eat my flesh and drink my blood.” 

After the Easter events, this took on completely new meanings. 

This push-the-envelope practice of open table fellowship, this personalization of the redemption of Israel, and near insane talk about cannibalism as communion was revolting to some people around Jesus.  “Jesus, now you’ve gone too far!”

Most of the time, Jesus has gone too far because he is too open, too broad in his understanding, too inclusive.  They accuse him of blasphemy because calling God Abba, Jesus has brought God too close, and challenged monotheism.  As John 5:18 puts it, he was “thereby making himself equal to God.”

I was raised in a tradition that often quoted the Joshua text and said it meant that there was only one true way, and you had to follow the Lord or be damned. “Choose this day whom you shall serve:  Yahweh, or the pagan idols, life or death!” 

But the fact is, Biblical faith is pluralistic faith, despite its moments of monism.  I love the fact that our scripture is called the Holy Bible, ta biblia ta hagia, which means the Sacred library, the Holy little books, and NOT the ONE, TRUE, HARMONIOUS, AND INFALLIBLE-IN-ALL-ITS-DETAILS BOOK. 

I like the fact that we have four gospels, all very much in glorious disharmony and at odds with each other on some very basic points, and that this diversity is the very starting point of our discussions about the historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith.  

I stand in awe of the glorious doctrine of the Holy Trinity, where the one and only God, monistic by definition, is tempered and modulated by a society of three persons in one being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally dancing and processing, eternally relating, and calling us into the dance.  

 Christian faith is pluralistic faith. 

And I am very, very pleased that today’s gospel tells us to keep an open mind and heart about new things we learn from God.  We must not draw red lines that, once crossed, will force us to say, “Now you’ve gone too far, Jesus.” 

I remember my reaction when my children first mentioned around the dinner table, 20 years ago, the need to honor the loving and monogamous relationships of same sex couples by celebrating marriages for them.  It was a few months after our daughter had come out of the closet.  I thought I was being very open minded and liberal by not rejecting her.  But when she talked about same sex marriage, I thought (and probably, alas, said,) “Now you’ve gone too far!”  I felt that holy matrimony was somehow being demeaned and cheapened by spreading it or something like it to what I had been taught all my youth was deficient, unnatural, perverted, and sinful.   But thank God I remained open minded and open hearted.  I have been blessed to celebrate at the weddings of several friends and family members—gay and lesbian couples.  These have been great spiritual high points for me.  Thanks be to God, who moves in wondrous and mysterious ways to bless his children. 

It is important not to forget the value and truth of Joshua’s words as well.  Without a clear sense of monotheism, of the unity and uniqueness of God, the doctrines of the Holy Trinity and of the Incarnation make no sense.   Without a sense of sanctity of matrimony and of the union of two people, of human love, and the importance of exclusive, monogamous, dedicated relationships, marriage of any kind doesn’t make much sense either. 

Those of us who pray the rosary recognize the spirituality of navigating between two poles:  our hands count the prayers on the beads, our mouth says the prayers.  But our minds are directed to the mysteries--joyous, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious-- all scenes from our Lord’s life.  This technique of pursuing two tracks at once very quickly breaks open a space in our hearts and minds that lets the spirit in and takes us to the presence of God. 

 

Even in the horrible scandal of priestly abuse now seeming to overwhelm the church, a simple polarity could have prevented it.  Jesus taught us to be smart as snakes and harmless as doves.  Those abusing priests and malicious covering-up prelates were harmful, and the well intending prelates covering up to prevent scandal and hurt to the church, well, they were not smart at all, ignorant of even the basic issues and ethics of preventing and eliminating sexual misconduct.

Similarly, the Hebrew Scriptures have two great competing traditions:  the priests on the one side focus on purity, law, and sacrifice, while on the other side the prophets talk about social justice.  As Walter Bruggeman had pointed out, the priests without the prophets are empty ritualism and legalism.  The prophets without the priests’ focus on holiness drawing us beyond ourselves rapidly devolved into tawdry interest groups politics.  It takes both poles to create a field where we can grow and come closer to God.     The one thing we must remember is never to simply toss out one or the other, to say, this does not suit me.  I’m out of here.  

“Now you’ve gone too far!”  When do you say this to those you love?  When have you said it to God, to Jesus? 

This week in your prayer and quiet time, think about this, and ask whether this is part of a healthy monism or an unhealthy one, and whether you should broaden your mind and open your heart. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.  

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Hope and Living in the Present (Midweek Message)

Hope and Living in the Present

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 22, 2018

Elena and I are at the beach with Charlie and Marie.  Being on vacation brought to mind a repeated scene from when our children were young.  When on home leave in the United States, we would travel, often staying in a different hotel each night.  Just after breakfast each day, in the car, the children would begin the questions:  “Where are we having lunch?”  “What will we have for dinner, and where?”  We parents found it somewhat annoying, since often this worry about what was next on the schedule pushed out the enjoyment of what we were doing at the moment, and, on occasion, we had no good answer since we didn’t know what restaurants were available in the next stop of our road trip.  We usually just said, “You just had breakfast!  Why start worrying about dinner NOW?” 

Worry about the future can encroach on our enjoyment of the present.  And always dwelling on the future (or the past, for that matter!) robs us of what really matters:  connecting with eternity, the timelessness of God, and living fully in the present moment, the only place where we truly are free to make choices and love. 

Jesus said, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt 6:34). 

The vision of the prophets in the Bible turned worry about the future into hope. One of our beloved canticles for Morning Prayer shows this well: 

Canticle 11 The Third Song of Isaiah

Isaiah 60:1-3, 11a, 14c, 18-19
Surge, illuminare

Arise, shine, for your light has come,*
and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.

For behold, darkness covers the land; *
deep gloom enshrouds the peoples.

But over you the Lord will rise, *
and his glory will appear upon you.

Nations will stream to your light, *
and kings to the brightness of your dawning.

Your gates will always be open; *
by day or night they will never be shut.

They will call you, The City of the Lord, *
The Zion of the Holy One of Israel.

Violence will no more be heard in your land, *
ruin or destruction within your borders.

You will call your walls, Salvation, *
and all your portals, Praise.

The sun will no more be your light by day; *
by night you will not need the brightness of the moon.

The Lord will be your everlasting light, *
and your God will be your glory.

Even the “bad parts” of the prophetic vision quoted by those who preach doom and gloom are actually expressions of real hope.  The Revelation of John is not so much about the woes coming for the wicked as an expression of hope that despite current suffering, in the end all will be well. 

Given the current political state of our nation, and the ongoing degradation of God’s creation in the natural world, it is easy to worry and focus on negative fears about the future.  But Jesus teaches us to live in the present and focus on the task at hand.  And our faith is that in the end all will be well.  So we just have to keep on working for justice and honoring creation, serving, and loving each other.  The vision of hope given us by the prophets help us live all the better in the present, rather than distract us from it. 

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+  

A Heart's Direction (Alice Hamnett Funeral)

Henry Holiday, Ascension Window, Holy Trinity Church, 48th and Madison Avenue, NYC

A Heart’s Direction

Burial Office for Alice Hamnett  (Aug. 27, 1921- Aug. 2, 2018)

Friday, September 16, 2018, 11:00 a.m.

Isaiah 61:1-3; Psalm 23; Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39; John 14:1-6

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

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.  

The first time I ever visited Alice at home was not too long after she moved to Ashland, when she was in a group home that has since closed, up on Holly Street as I recall.  She told me a bit about her sons, her departed husband, a little about her nursing career, her time in Hawaii, and all the Episcopal churches she had attended since her youth.  The stories were varied, and rich in joy.  It was clear she had a passion for her whole life, and found that Holy Eucharist was a way to connect with that passion and joy.   Daniel was very supportive of his mother in bringing her to church nearly every week until the final month or two.  I feel very blessed to have been with Alice when she died. 

Alice rarely talked about her experiences as a surgical nurse in post-D-Day Normandy.   She rarely talked about why she loved Church.   Yet during one of my home visits to her, Alice told me what she loved most about Episcopalian congregations: the beauty of our worship, our focus on loving acceptance, and our sense of duty.  We focus on what we need to do for God and for others, rather than on being true believers.  “We let God move us, and don’t worry about ‘being saved.’’  In a word, we leave mystery to God.  We focus on service and not so much on how we feel about things.    

Alice really got this right, I think.  In my experience, what matters most is not whether you are a believer, but what kind of heart you have.  Is it open or closed?  Does it seek something beyond itself or is it satisfied or stingy with what it has?   Does it love and accept?  Does it move you to help others?  This is what our reading today from Romans is about:  if our hearts are open even a little, even if all we can manage by way of prayer is an incoherent “Abba, father,” God works with us and gives us grounds for hope.  As Paul says, creation waits in “eager longing” for the “revealing of the children of God.”

This isn’t just an Episcopalian thing.  Pope Francis wisely has said that unbelievers who are honest in their unbelief are closer to God that those who are dishonest in their belief.  

Believers with cold, tightly closed hearts give faith and religion a bad name:  inquisitors, guardians of morality and correct doctrine, holy warriors, who do horrible things to other people using God as a weapon or a shield for their wretched behavior.  In the Gospels, the only people with whom Jesus regularly gets angry are the closed-hearted religious.  To them he says, “Great sinners will get into the Kingdom of God before you will—they at least recognize their need.” 

Unbelievers, even disbelievers, can remain open in their hearts, even if they cannot work up anything looking like faith for now.  An example of this is people in recovery in Twelve-Step programs who cannot profess faith in God, but yet “come to believe” in a power greater than themselves, a Higher Power, any higher power.

Openness is a habit of the heart, an orientation of the personality, not signing on to a particular set of teachings.   The direction of our hearts is the difference between being open or closed, inclusive or exclusive, helpful or insulting. 

Believers with open hearts remain in awe of what they do not understand about God, what is unclear, and how far removed they are from Deity.  As Paul says, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23).   How’s that for a description of Alice?  

Higher than the Cherubim (Midweek Message)

Higher than the Cherubim

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 15, 2018

The Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ

“Neither are we unmindful to bless thee, for the most holy, pure, highly blessed, Mother of God, Mary the eternal Virgin, with all the saints” (part of a prayer by Lancelot Andrewes, 16^th century Anglican Divine, Bishop, and one of the principal translators of the King James Bible). 

A favorite hymn among Episcopalians is the majestic “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones” (The [1982] Hymnal, 618), an anthem describing the throngs of the blessed surrounding the throne of God gazing upon the beatific vision.  It begins with a list of the various orders of angels, called by ancient and strange names mentioned in scripture and the apocrypha, all singing and praising God: watchers, holy ones, seraphs, cherubim, thrones, dominions, princedoms, powers, virtues, archangels, and choirs.  The second verse continues:

“O higher than the cherubim,

More glorious than the seraphim,

Lead their praises, Alleluia!

Thou bearer of the eternal Word,

Most gracious, magnify the Lord.”     

This is addressed to the Blessed Virgin Mary, seen as leading all the angelic choirs and the army of martyrs and saints in verse three and the church gathered in prayer in verse four.  It uses ancient titles and honorifics for Mary, mainly from the Eastern tradition:  Higher than the Cherubim and Seraphim, God-Bearer, Full of Grace.  It sees her great song of praise in Luke 1, the Magnificat (“My soul doth magnify the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God, my savior”), as setting the tune and harmony for all the angelic and saintly choirs. 

Today is the feast day commemorating the end of Mary’s earthly life:  the Eastern Orthodox see it as the “falling asleep” (peaceful death) of the Blessed Virgin; Roman Catholics, as the bodily assumption of the Virgin into heaven, without tasting death.  Anglicans and Lutherans have generally accepted either view, without requiring such belief.    Most Christians over the ages have agreed that honoring the Mother of our Lord through devotions is fit and right, keeping with the biblical teaching that “all generations will call [her] blessed.” We do not see such devotion as worship or idolatrous.  We have taken to heart the scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus on the Cross looks out to his Mother and the idealized Christian believer, the Beloved Disciple, and says, “behold your son,” and “behold your mother.”   Most of us have believed that asking Mary to pray for us is an edifying and uplifting practice; some of us call her “our Lady” just as we call her Son “our Lord.” 

Martin Luther said the Hail Mary throughout his life, though in later years he omitted the specific line asking our Lady to pray for us, since this line alone in that prayer did not come directly out of the Bible.  Jean Calvin himself honored the Virgin, though later Calvinists and radical reformers stripped away Marian devotions from their spirituality because they mistakenly saw them as “Popish idolatry.”   Again, such devotion was shared by all ancient forms of Christianity, not just Rome.  The leaders and theologians of the Church of England under Charles I and II (the so-called Caroline Divines), fighting the abuses of a Calvinism run amok even as they steered clear of adopting what the Prayer Book called “the enormities” of the Bishop of Rome, were intentional in their devout devotion to the Blessed Virgin, since they rightly saw it as part and parcel of their faith in Christ, God made fully human. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+  

Trail Food (proper 14b)

Trail Food
Proper 14B
12 August 2018; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

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

at the Parish Church of Trinity Ashland

Diocese of Oregon

1 Kings 19:4-8 ;Psalm 34:1-8; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

Elena and I love to hike.  We have many wonderful memories of hiking along the Appalachian Trail in the mid-Atlantic states, in the backcountry parks in Taiwan, Hong Kong, along the Great Wall, in the Olympic and Mt. Rainier National Parks, among others.  We miss the close intimate connection with nature since her illness started to affect her mobility, but remain passionate in our love for it. 

Part of the challenge of hiking is figuring out what you can reasonably carry, and then going through the Zen exercise of deciding what you will do without.   Simplified meals are part of this, as is finding appropriate body fuel for the way, trail food.  Light, easy to consume, but substantial enough to give the calories and sugar lift we need to keep on going, and keep enjoying the walk, even when it is arduous and challenging.  

 

 

When I first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings in High School, I was struck by the love of walking in nature expressed in that epic tale.  Despite hardships and risk on the trail, the beauty of walking in the natural world remained.  This was summed up in part by Tolkien’s description of lembas, the way bread made by elves.  The elven High Queen, the Lady Galadriel of Lothlórien, gives it to the company before they set out for the most hazardous part of the journey.   Light brown on the outside, creamy on the inside, crisp and wrapped in golden leaves from blessed trees, the bread keeps for months and, when consumed, revives not only the body, but lifts the heart and soul as well.

Lembas may be likened to the hard-tack crackers we eat to this day in hiking, just way more appetizing.  You may recall that Tolkien was Roman Catholic.  It is clear that his description of lembas, also called life-bread at one point in Tolkien’s writing, comes in part from his devotion to Christ in the Holy Eucharist.  The Lady Galadriel, giving this bread and hope to those finding themselves in the dark, echoes his devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 

Today’s Hebrew lesson is about trail food provided by an angel to the Prophet Elijah.  It sustains miraculously far beyond what one or two meals might.  Like lembas, “one bite makes a person full,” and gives strength and the will to go as long as the journey lasts. 

The other texts, while not talking about trails and walking, are about support and sustenance.  The Psalm affirms hat we can rely on God, and says wonderfully, “Taste and see that the Lord is good, happy are they who trust in him.”   The Gospel is a continuation of the story of the Bread of Life discourse.  It contrasts those who partake of this bread and those who let other things get in the way of partaking of it.  It suggests that the real trail food for us in our life’s journey is Jesus. 

The fact is, it is easy to get worn down by life.  If is easy to lose our way.  It is easy to get hungry, and tired, to the point where we may want to stop putting one foot in front of the other and move along.  If we take our packs off for a moment to rest, we may not ever want to put them on again.  When we are not our best and most at risk of making bad decisions, it is helpful to ask whether we are at risk, at the mercy of extraneous things, things that we just might be able to do something about:  HALT—are we hungry, angry, lonely, or tired?  If hungry, eat.  Angry, work to resolve it or let it go.  Lonely, reach out to someone.  Tired, take a nap or have a good overnight’s sleep.  Or perhaps make a change of routine or scenery to get an emotional reset. 

Today’s epistle makes some suggestions on how to get on well in our life journey.  Here, behaviors and habits are seen as ways of getting strength and sustenance:  stop being phony, be open and direct out of a sense of shared endeavor with others (those on the way with us), go ahead and let yourself have the emotions that come with life (anger, for instance) but don’t let these make you harm others or be malicious.  Deal with them on a daily basis, and don’t let them pile up hidden in your heart ready to break out and overwhelm you.  Don’t steal.  Rather, pull your own weight, again out of your sense of shared journey with others.  Don’t bad mouth people or tear them down.  Instead, build them up. Put away bitterness and cultivating wrath, arguing and slandering each other.   Eschew malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.  This will help us on our way.  Jesus, again, is the model and source of such benevolence.  Jesus is our sustenance.

Eucharist is one of the two Dominical sacraments; the other is Baptism.  Baptism is the gateway through which we start this great journey, our life in Christ.  The baptismal covenant gives us rules of the road and suggestions for daily recharging.  It even mentions our trail bread. 

In it, we:

·Affirm our trust and hope in the basics of the Trinitarian faith outlined in the Apostles’ Creed.

·Promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread (the Holy Eucharist), and the cycle of prayers of our community.

·Promise to persevere in resisting evil, and to repent from sin we may fall into, and return to the Lord.

·Promise to proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ, seek and serve Christ in all persons, and strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.

These all involve relationship: with God, with Jesus, with the ministers Jesus sent and those who came after them, with the living tradition of faith and practice they have given us, and with those about us.    By making and keeping these commitments, we all become ministers of Christ, loving and serving others as he loved and served us.

We turn away from, “renounce,” the things that detract us from our forward movement in our journey.  We commit to keep on walking and carrying our packs for the way, and to do the things we need to recharge and refresh ourselves for the hike.  As Paul says in Romans, we “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

One of the things we promise in baptism to do is to persevere in the prayers, and in the breaking of the bread.    The Eucharist is the way bread, the lembas,  that helps us in our journey with God.  This is because in it we experience Jesus, and reconnect with our model.    In Eucharist, we gather, we are transformed, and we are sent out into the world, back on the way, on our journey with Christ.  One of the reasons we Episcopalians call the Holy Eucharist the Mass is the focus that this name brings:  it is from the same Latin word where we get the words “mission” and “dismissal.”   At the end of our great thanksgiving and this meal with life’s bread and wine, we are sent out into the world.  Our trail food has restored us, and we carry on.  We eat his flesh and drink his blood, and find ourselves saying, “once more into the breach!” able to keep on going where before we were about ready to give up. 

Let us pray. 

Loving Jesus, you are the bread of heaven, the food of angels, the water of life, the wine of joy, the source of all life and strength:  help us to keep our baptismal promises, reconnect with you each day, find strength for the journey, and enable us to love and serve our sisters and brothers, and care for your creation.   Make out burdens light, keep us forever oriented in your love.  Protect us from losing our way, and bring us safely, with all your children, to your great hearth, home, and banquet.  For your tender mercies’ sake we pray,  Amen.    

Miracle Working Faith (Midweek Message)

Jesus heals a leper, Rembrandt pen and ink drawing c. 1655-60
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet

Miracle Working Faith

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 8, 2018

One of the major parts of Jesus’ ministry was healing, whether of mind or of body. In the story of Jesus healing the leper, we see him pursuing this call even as he approaches and engages the ritually unclean. The gospel stories of Jesus healing the sick tell us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. Jesus’ ministry of announcing the in-breaking of the reign of God focused in large part in healing physical and mental suffering. This tells us that God doesn’t intend such ills or like horror and disappointment for us any more than we do.  But does this mean that all we have to do is pray and have faith, and we too will automatically have healings? No it does not. That is not the world we live in. 

Several times in my life I have wished that the world were as simple as what I was taught in Sunday School: pray with faith and God will grant it.  Despite prayers and fasting, dear friends in college lost their newborn son to a horrible genetic illness; my wife’s mother died of cancer; my father died from Alzheimer’s disease.  Yet I have also seen prayers answered in wonderful and miraculous ways, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually: a deadly disease stopped in its tracks and healed, broken relationships mended and strengthened, mental illness managed. I am sure that most of you have had similar experience where we have seen or suffered great pain, but also seen miraculous alleviation of pain. But it is not a simple mathematical formula. 

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, talks about this in his book Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Louisville / London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007). I found what he has to say on this subject very helpful. It coheres with my experience both of prays answered and prayers seemingly rejected. 

Rowan says that God’s ultimate purpose does not include disease, insanity, and death. Yet unfortunately the world as it is currently constituted does include these things that oppose God’s ultimate purpose. Citing St. Augustine, Rowan notes that the miracles of the Bible are most often simply the natural processes sped up a bit. Jesus turns water into wine—but this recapitulates a natural process where water, sunshine, grape vines, given enough time, produce grapes, then juice, then wine. Miracles are not so much the supernatural overturning the natural, but rather when God’s ultimate intentions break into our current time frame. We cannot force this, or expect it as a matter of course—we are talking about miracles here, not magic. This is about the Lord’s book of blessings, not a book of spells.  But we can perhaps do things that make it just a little easier for God’s ultimate purposes to have their way now. 

“God is always at work, but that work is not always visible. God is always at work, but sometimes the world’s processes go with the grain of his final purpose and sometimes they resist. But if certain things came together in the world at this or that moment, the ‘flow’ would be easier and more direct. Perhaps a really intense prayer or a really holy life can open the world up that bit more to God’s purpose so that unexpected things happen. We’re never going to have a complete picture on how that works, because we don’t have God’s perspective on it all. But we can say that there are some things we can think, say or do that seem to give God that extra ‘freedom of manoeuvre’ in our universe. And whether we fully understand what’s going on or not, we know that it’s incumbent on us to do what we can to let this happen. We pray, we act in ways that have some chance of shaping a situation so that God can come more directly in. It isn’t a process we can manipulate; miracles aren’t magic, and we could never have a comprehensive manual of techniques for securing what we pray for. It would be very comforting if we knew the formula for success, but we don’t. All we know is that we are called to pray, to trust and to live with integrity before God (to live ‘holy’ lives) in such a way as to leave the door open, to let things come together so that love can come through.” (p. 45) 

Jesus showed us the path here. He healed lepers, disregarding purity rules in the interest of helping others.  He teaches us to pray and to serve.  We need to reach out to others and see the people in front of us first and foremost as people. We are called to help broken people, and—truth be told—often broken people’s lives are messy and ridden with uncomfortable amounts of drama.  We need not fear contamination or condemnation, or be put off by disorder or bad smells.   We should amend our ways when we oppress others, and work to overcome all forms of such abuse of God’s creatures. We should pray, sometimes fast, and work to make the world and our lives a little more congruent with what God’s ultimate purposes are. For what God wants for all of us is good indeed.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

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Bread from Heaven (Proper 13b)

Collecting manna, detail from a stained glass window in Wells Cathedral;  

Fr Lawrence Lew OP, flickr CCL

Bread from Heaven

Proper 13B
5 August 2018; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

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

at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35

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

Over my life, I have studied many new languages.  And let me tell you—it is easy to confuse things and make mistakes!  Once in France, I tried to follow up with an appointment I had made with an older gentleman.  His wife answered the door and said in French, “I’m sorry he can no longer see you.”  “Just two days ago, he seemed keen on talking to me,” I replied.  And then I thought she said, “No, he has decided” meaning reconsidered.  I replied, “There must be some mistake.  He really wanted to talk with me.”  The woman looked at me in shock, and quivering in rage she asked me to leave.  I only later realized my mistake.  She had not said “Il a décidé” (He has decided), but rather, “Il est décédé” “He is deceased.”   Similarly, I once told my beginning Chinese teacher I had eaten scrambled eggs for breakfast: chǎodàn 炒蛋.  Her shocked gasp and wide eyes told me I had not said it right.  I had said cāodàn操蛋.  I had dropped the F-bomb in Chinese.  

Learning a new language means you will make mistakes.  You will misunderstand and be misunderstood. 

Jesus is trying to teach us a new language, the language of the heart, the language of God.  So it is understandable that he will be misunderstood regularly.  Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures similarly is trying to teach the people a new language, a grammar and vocabulary of ethical monotheism: trust in God and the morals that go with it.  Again, that turf means misunderstanding. 

In today’s Hebrew scripture, Moses says God will give you bread from heaven!  The people look, and all about there is sticky gum resin from little desert plants.  It doesn’t look like bread at all, though they find it is edible and quite tasty once they try it.  “What in the world is this?” they cry: “ma-nah?”  And so that become the name of this bread from heaven, mannah. 

There many scenes in the Gospel of John where people profoundly misunderstand sayings of Jesus.  Jesus tells Nicodemus we must be born from on high. Nicodemus replies, “No one can crawl back into the womb!”  (3:4).  Jesus tells the woman at the well that he offers her God’s living water.  She replies, “This well is deep and you have neither rope nor bucket!” (4:11).   

These misunderstandings come from mistaking an outward sign for the inward thing it points to.   John is saying, “If you take things too literally, you’ll miss the real point.” 

Last week, we read about the feeding of the 5,000.  The people chase after Jesus, wanting more. When they finally catch up in today’s Gospel, he says, “You are hunting me down not because I showed you signs, but because you filled your bellies… Do not work hard for food that doesn’t last, but for the food that lasts forever” (6:26-27).  

“How can we work for bread?” they ask, thinking he is asking them to earn the next meal he will provide.   Jesus answers, “Just trust me.”  “You first show us a sign so we can trust you,” they reply, reminding him of the bread from heaven in Exodus, food that lasted only a day before it went bad and had to gathered each day.   He relies, “That isn’t the bread I’m talking about.  I am talking about me.  I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me and partakes will never be hungry again, will never be thirsty again.”    And so the crowd, in words reminiscent of those of the Samaritan woman, ask,  “Sir, give us this bread always” (6:35).  

For John, signs are symbols pointing to and participating in something greater than themselves.  They are the vocabulary words and grammar of the new language Jesus is teaching us.  Focus only on the symbol, and you end up thinking the symbol is all there is! Bread from heaven, birth from on high, living water—these are images for something we cannot see, but is very, very real.  If you mistake them for mere bread, natural birth, or physical water you miss the point.  If you expect that bread from heaven is always going to look like baked loaves, you’ve misunderstood.  You’ve made the mistake of a first-year language student. 

Our inability to speak this new language of Jesus stems from our broken hearts.  Our twisted vision insists that things be either one thing or the other, that we are separate and apart from what we see, and that God is far, far away and outside of the world, rather than beneath and behind all things.   This dualism makes us take things literally all too often, and is the source of all sorts of bad religion.   

We say God is a Father and Jesus is God’s Son.  But rather than seeing these as profound metaphors of relationship between us and Jesus of Nazareth and the Mystery behind and beneath life itself, we take them literally and end up thinking of God as a divine child abuser who needed to torture and kill his child so that his “wrath” might be “satisfied.”  

We say God commands us to do this and not do that, and has given us laws and rules to live by.  But rather than understand this as a deep symbolic way of saying how we are called to better behaviors and renouncing the actions and ways of being that alienate ourselves and others, we think that God is a divine lawyer or magistrate up above and over there whose angelic moral police must be placated by strict adherence to the law or payments of moral or psychological fines and jail time.  

We say the Bible is God’s word.  But rather than seeing this as a description of that baggy and loose collection of holy texts as the varied field notes of the people in whom God is moving and driving, and the core and canon of a great dialogue of faith throughout the centuries, we think it contains the literal words of God transcribed, without error or contradiction.  So we end up having to deny the obvious literal meaning of many of its texts—with their messiness, and self-contradiction—even as we protest that we are merely following their literal truth. 

Contemplatives call this dualistic thinking, or false consciousness. Modern theologians say that it is extrincist or formalistic thinking that inevitably leads to legalism and sectarianism, rather than intuitively grasped faith and trust in a living God.  

In these stories of misunderstanding, John is saying that the interior depths of life of the heart and spirit must trump the external forms of worship, ritual, and adherence to moral law, and that this must happen in the context of community relationships, both with Jesus and with each other.

Today’s Epistle talks about this contrast between unity and dualistic thinking, between true and false consciousness, between understanding and misunderstanding.  It says we are called to unity and loving kindness because we already live in a world so structured:  ONE Lord, ONE faith, ONE baptism, ONE God and Father of all, ONE hope of our calling.  Again, a metaphor.  Paul is not calling for a monotone, monolithic, centralized and uniform church.  Not so!  As Paul says elsewhere, God is one, for God is all in all:  the comprehensive unity of inclusion, not the narrow sectarianism of exclusion.    One God, one faith, one baptism does not mean no variety or diversity.  Rather, it is a variety of gifts, differing services, roles, skills, and tasks.  It is also differing failings to be amended gently, through bearing with each other, forgiving each other, and speaking truth in love. The goal of this all to give us the tools for mutual loving service, so that we can build up in each other the trust and knowledge we have in Christ, and arrive at community:  unity in our diversity.  To use another metaphor from today’s readings, we become what we eat by consuming the bread of heaven each day, by sharing it.  We eventually arrive at the measure of the full stature of Christ.

When Ephesians says we must no more be children, it is saying we need to grow up and face the unity underlying our lives, the glorious truth of our messy lives.  No more false consciousness or dualism.  No more literalistic misunderstandings.  As Hans Urs Von Balthazar wrote, a unity of faith might not be possible, but a unity of love is. 

I pray that we can be fearless in recognizing metaphor, in accepting the messiness of life, and in being honest when we see God at work.  God knows, it is hard work.  I pray that in shedding the false consciousness of outward division and distinction we may come to see how close we are to Jesus, in fact, that we are in him and he in us, and how this has always been so, that our focus on the unimportant simply blinded us to this truth.   I pray that as we lose our fears, judgment, and denial, we may grow to see the love beneath all things.  I pray that as we break down the obscuring facades of fundamentalism and legalism in our hearts, we may restructure and rebuild the left over pieces into the beautiful and orderly pattern of unity our Christ has set before us.  I pray that we may truly eat the bread of heaven, and drink the living water. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

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