A World Bright with Joyous Saints (Midweek Message)

A World Bright with Joyous Saints

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

October 31, 2018

This evening marks the start of the Christian Northern Hemisphere autumn Triduum (three day festival): All Hallows’ Eve (Oct. 31), All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1), and All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2).  It mirrors the Spring Triduum (Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday).  Where spring reminds us of life and new beginnings, the fall reminds of death and the endings that must precede new things.  All Hallows’ Eve commemorates our hope and confidence in Christ in the face of all that frightens us (“From ghosties and ghoulies and long leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us.”)  All Saints’ remembers the faithful departed whose examples and faith encourage us to follow them and ask for their prayers. All Souls’ remembers all the departed, beloved to us, for whom we pray. 

Much of our parish leadership will be in Seaside at Convention starting tomorrow, and be there for both All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days.  But we will have returned by Sunday, when we as a parish will celebrate All Saints’ Sunday, including our annual reading of the list of our beloved departed, and, at 5 p.m., a contemplative Eucharist in the Church.  In the Parish Hall at 5 p.m., Ashland Youth Collective will be building an ofrenda, a Dia de Muertos memorial altar honoring those whom we love but see no longer, under the guidance of a parishioner originally from Mexico City.    

Our commemorations of the departed, both the Saints and all the rest, remind us that we all—living, dead, and yet-to-come—are in this together, beloved creatures of our loving God.   We remember the examples of the saints and hope that they pray for us; we mourn the loss of the beloved ones we no longer see, and we pray for them.   

A favorite children’s hymn for the Fall Triduum reminds us that we all are saints in the sense of being made holy by Jesus in our baptism, and that the distinction between saints and sinners is thin indeed.   Saints fail like all other sinners.  They just keep picking themselves up and try again, and again:

  

“I sing a song of the saints of God,
Patient and brave and true,
Who toiled and fought and lived and died
For the Lord they loved and knew.
And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
And one was a shepherdess on the green;
They were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

“They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
And his love made them strong;
And they followed the right for Jesus' sake
The whole of their good lives long.
And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
And one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
And there's not any reason, no, not the least,
Why I shouldn't be one too.

“They lived not only in ages past,
There are hundreds of thousands still.
The world is bright with the joyous saints
Who love to do Jesus' will.
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
For the saints of God are just folk like me,
And I mean to be one too.”

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

Jesus is Calling (proper 25b)

“Jesus is Calling”

28 October 2018

Proper 25B

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

at Trinity Episcopal Parish

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Jer 31:7-9; Ps 126 ; Heb 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

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

This week saw some really horrible stuff:  pipe bombs mailed to opposition voices by a right wing fanatic supporter of the President, and the murder of Jews and policemen at a Synagogue yesterday in Pittsburg.  Are we descending into Fascist hell?   But we saw great signs of hope as well:  the Havurah Shir Hadash here in Ashland held a beautiful interfaith prayer service last night.  Thank you, Rabbi David Zaslow.  At Washington National Cathedral on Friday they interred the ashes of Matthew Shepard in its crypt columbarium twenty years after his hate-crime murder in Laramie Wyoming.  What a wonderful thing to have the flagship site of your church put out such a sign of hope and welcoming.  Despite the horrors suffered then and now, this act of grace by the Church reminds us of times in our country when hope for things getting better and inclusion and love actually winning in the end was not assaulted by new horrors each day by the nation’s executive, legislative, and judicial leaders.  I thank Dean Randy Hollerith, bishop Marianne Budde, and bishop Gene Robinson for welcoming Matthew’s parents, giving a safe place for the repose of his remains, and reminding us all of the hope that is at the heart of our faith. 

Today’s Gospel from Mark is about welcome and healing, the only story in the Synoptic Gospels where the healed person is named.  Mark translates Bartimaeus as “son of Timaeus.”  Aramaic was the language Jesus and his followers would have been speaking with each other.   In Aramaic, the word bar means son, and so clearly Bar-Timaeus means “son of Timaeus.”  But Timaeus was a Greek name, meaning “honored one.”  It was not an Aramaic name.  If indeed the blind man was called something like this in Aramaic, it would have been bar-tame’ or “son of shame,” an insulting street name, “Loser,” given him by people who thought God had punished him for some shameful sin by striking him blind (cf. John 9:34). 

Caught up in the excitement at news that the healer from Nazareth is passing by, Bar-tame’ begins to shout to get Jesus’ attention.  “Have mercy on me, Jesus, son of David!”  Maybe by using this most extravagant and dangerous way of talking about Jesus heard on the street—the ideal king of the future, the Messiah—Bar-Tame’ can get Jesus’ attention. 

The disciples try to shoosh the crazy beggar up.  “Jesus is busy here!  How dare you interrupt him with your begging!” 

How often do we, Jesus’ disciples, try to keep people away from Jesus?  How many barriers do we erect around him, barricades aimed at keeping the church pure and undefiled, and from keeping losers far away?  We do it sometimes for the best of reasons, but we are keeping people from Jesus all the same.  Compare the Evangelical Right’s reflexive support of fear, exclusion, and alienation as national policy, with National Cathedral’s support and standing with the marginalized.  Both claim to follow Jesus.  But who actually welcomes people to him?

Jesus finally asks what’s going on.  Bar-tame’ shrinks back, afraid perhaps that he will be as hard on him as his disciples have been.  “Take heart! Go, Jesus is calling you!”  Hearing this encouragement, and the welcome on Jesus’ face, he casts off his cloak and goes to Jesus.   

The beggar’s tattered and filthy cloak was the chief way of appealing for aid, kind of like a cardboard sign saying “anything you can give helps.”   So when Bar-tame’ throws off his cloak, he casts aside his sole means of support, the little bit of security he feels he has, all to meet Jesus.    He also casts away the dysfunctions his disability has wrought, his fearful assumption that he really might be a loser.

So when Jesus asks him “what do you want,” this one-time son of shame does not say “money” or “bread.”  He asks for his sight.  He asks not to be broken any more.  Jesus tells him his faith has already healed him.   Sight is restored.  And Bartimaeus—now a child of honor—starts to walk the Way with Jesus.

 

“Take heart—Jesus is calling you.”  This is the origin of a favorite evangelical hymn: 

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling for you and for me;
See, on the portals He’s waiting and watching,
Watching for you and for me.
Come home, come home,
You who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!

Sung as an altar call to people who feel trapped by their shortcomings and deliberate wrongdoings, the hymn speaks to our need to feel pardon.  But reducing the call of Jesus to pardon alone misses a lot of the power in this story.    Jesus is calling to fix whatever is wrong with us.  He calls us to follow him.  The only right response is joyfully throw off anything that might get in the way.  

When we encounter Jesus, he transforms us.  He brings new ways of living, feeling, being.  If we haven’t been transformed, we just have not encountered Jesus.  Whether sudden or gradual, transformation is a sign of having met him:   we learn to cast off old ways of thinking and feeling about ourselves and others, and bit by bit learn the Way of love.  It happens as we slowly forget our old name “loser” and “child-of-shame” and realize our true name has always been child of honor. 

From the beginning, those following Jesus have met him in his body, the Church: the sacraments, teaching, worship, service, and prayer.  Unhappily, sometimes we are hurt by the Church, and told by well meaning disciples to shoosh up and hide from Jesus.  But Transformation is what the Church is all about.  If we are not being changed for the good by our participation in Church, something is wrong.   

We may have searched for God on our own for years. We may occasionally have tasted  God on our own in nature, the beauty of the world, or what the Celts call a thin place.    But we come to a point where the isolation of individual spirituality fails us. When we come into the Church, we are invited and seduced into a powerful dance of worship that has been going on for centuries, where beauty in colors, smells, resonant words and music all work together to create a world where it is easy to fall in love with God and be carried away, challenged, transformed.  At first it might be confusing or overwhelming.  But we become accustomed to this new life’s rhythms and tides.  We begin to innately sense the depth and meaning in what we do at the Great Thanksgiving, of common bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ, and in Holy Baptism, when common water washes away our old selves.  We learn the prayers and songs of a great daily dialogue of prayer more that 2,000 years old.  The Psalms begin to form our hearts and refine our feelings. We begin to rely on each other and on God more and more, and make greater and greater commitments in service, sacrifice, and compassion.  We see examples of holiness in our midst, and learn gently and steadily, how to become part of the communion of saints.  We see we do not have to be alone any more, howling at the moon.

Our life in the Church gives us the strength and empathy to reach out to others: to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, stand with the downtrodden, and give shelter to the homeless.    You can do this without the Church and without prayer.  But a great curiosity is that the more active the sacramental prayer life of a congregation is, generally the greater its corporeal acts of mercy and social justice.  

Like Bartimaeus by the wayside, do we undervalue ourselves?  Do we feel wholly constrained by our disabilities and failings?  Do we have a vague sense that there must be more to life than this?  

Jesus is passing by. He can heal and take away whatever weakness or handicap holds us down.  

God’s kingdom is here, in our midst.  Things once cast down are being raised up; things once old are being made new; all things are being brought to their perfection by Jesus.  Take heart, child of shame, Jesus is calling you.

Don’t heed those who think you are a loser, unable to change, who say you are daydreaming if you think Jesus is calling you.   Don’t listen even to Jesus’ disciples when they tell you to shut up, sit down, be quiet, and accept your lot.

Jesus heals our blindness.  We often cannot see things clearly because we are so beaten down by experience.  Fear immobilizes us, hardens our hearts, blinds our eyes.   Jesus empowers and transforms us from passive bystanders to active and compassionate colleagues, ministering and healing, bringing interest and flavor to the lives of others. 

Let him in.  Let worship, prayer, and the sacraments wash over you and carry you away in that great stream poured out from the beauty of God’s holiness.  Say the prayers and sing the psalms.  Eat the bread, drink the wine; feed on Jesus.   Then feed others.  Don’t just come to Church.  Be the Church.   Be the body of Christ.  Go forth and heal.  Go forth and shelter. 

Come, Jesus is calling us all.

Thou Shalt Not Lie (midweek message)

Thou shalt not Lie

 Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

October 24, 2018

“There are six things that the Lord hates,
    seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
    and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
    feet that hurry to run to evil,
a lying witness who testifies falsely,
    and one who sows discord in a family.” 

(Proverbs 6:16-19)

As we go into the two weeks before election day, and we see so many political ads and speeches in this era of “alternative facts” and “fake news” so called, it is helpful to remember bottom line morality on expressions of thought, whether spoken or written:  “Thou shalt not lie.”  

Telling a falsehood—saying something is so when it isn’t, or saying that something is not so when it is—is one step shy of outright lying:  telling a falsehood deliberately when you know it to be false.  Being disingenuous is one step shy of speaking falsehood:  suggesting that things are one way when we know they aren’t yet not actually coming out and speaking the falsehood.  We generally recognize the “tells” or indications of disingenuity: fuzzy use of language, turning aside the topic or seizing on peripheral words or ideas, not answering the question posed, or careful parsing of the meaning of the words and language (“it all depends on what ‘is’ means”). 

Misspeaking, or simply getting things wrong, is one thing.  We all tended to laugh and forgive Ronald Reagan when, in reply to being called to account for an inadvertent error, he said, “I stand 100% behind what I meant to say.”  It is important to remember the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “You are entitled to you own opinions, but you are not entitled to you own facts.”    

“Strategic messaging” and doctoring the “spin” of stories in the news cycle are nice ways of talking about the task of getting one’s message clearly across to the public.  I worked as a U.S. government “spin doctor” for 25 years, and saw in my State Department career a tendency of political leaders and the public to judge spokespeople mainly on their effectiveness at achieving desired opinions in the public, in “getting the message out.”  Some in the field stopped seeing the great temptation to disingenuity at heart of much of their work.  They argued for avoiding outright lies on the basis of practicality rather than morality:  rather than saying you must not lie because it is wrong, they said you must not lie because all lies sooner or later become known and in the long run this will damage your credibility.   This process, I think, made the way for some of us to fall prey to the propagandist’s original sin: the Big Lie. Hitler and Goebels said openly that a lie, repeated often enough and loudly enough, becomes true, especially when you accuse those who take exception to the lie of lying themselves.   But liars often are taken in by their own web of falsehood, first because they can tell their lies more credibly if they act as if they believe them, and finally because they end up unable to distinguish truth from falsehood.  They believe their own propaganda, and don’t recognize truth when they see it. 

Jesus often took issue with his opponents for their hypocrisy: falsehood that manipulates others.  Especially when supported by appeals to the authority of scripture, religion, or God, he found it wrong, just plain wrong. 

As we listen to the political arguments and debates, and as we actually fill out our ballots, we should ask ourselves who is telling the truth, who is simply in error, and who is lying.  I don’t think Jesus wants us to vote for liars, or those who enable and encourage them. 

Grace and peace. 

Fr. Tony+ 

To Heal a Broken World (proper 24b)

To Heal a Broken World

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

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

Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 24B

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (OR)

October 18, 2015

Isaiah 53:4-12 Psalm 91:9-16 Hebrews 5:1-10 Mark 10:35-45 

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

I have noticed in the Parish in recent weeks a pain, a dullness, an exhaustion at the larger world we live in.  Where once there was hope and passion for living into our baptismal covenants in seeing Christ in all people and working to heal the world about us and restore the creation of God, many now fear the way things are going in the country and world.  We are still busy and active in works of compassion and service, and seeking social justice, but a gloom seems to have settled upon once joyful efforts, at least for some.  We are afraid perhaps that no matter how hard we try, things may not get better: oppression of women, minorities, and foreigners will only increase; the poor and homeless will continue to suffer and their numbers will grow; the forces of fascism, racism, homophobia, violence, and militarism will go on from strength to strength; and people who wear their “Christianity” on their sleeves will angrily go on supporting such wickedness, all in the name of Jesus and the Good.  

We are, in a word, world weary, worn out by our cares and worries.  A common ailment in ancient Palestine under the Romans, it drove much of the craziness of the Messianic cults and revolts in the first centuries before and of the Common Era.

World weariness then often expressed itself in fantastic and apocalyptic hopes for a world to come, a complete turning over of this system of things, and yearning for the arrival of God’s Kingship or Reign.  Many people began to follow Jesus because he announced the arrival of God’s Reign.  But when he explained what this means, their world weariness kicked in again. 

A few weeks ago we read that when Peter confessed Jesus as Messiah, Jesus replied by saying he was going to be abused and killed, but still hoped that God would raise him up regardless.  Peter answered, “NO! Messiah means victor, not victim!”  Jesus said, “Get behind me Satan!  Your heart is set on the things of this world.”    A couple of weeks ago, when Jesus was asked what the Law of Moses says about divorce, he replied with a great strike against male privilege: God’s intention in creation precludes patriarchy’s easy practice of a husband abandoning wife and children on a whim, despite Moses’s process for a writ of divorce.  His disciples replied, “Then it’s better to never get married.”  Last week, Jesus told the Rich Young Man to detach from his possessions, and they replied “How then can anybody make it into the Reign of God?” 

Jesus’s parables see a humble kingship of God, not a triumphant one: it is not an army of conquering heroes, but a little seed that sprouts and grows all on its own.  It is not a great temple or palace, but a small measure of yeast that leavens enough flour to fill a bakery.  It is not a towering cedar, but a small mustard weed gone crazy in the summer’s heat.  It is the joy of finding a lost penny, a wandering sheep, a pearl of great price, or even a lost child.

In today’s Gospel, James and John ask Jesus for places beside him when he sits in glory in that Kingship of God.  Their vision clearly has not caught up with what Jesus has been teaching. They think Jesus is going to march into Jerusalem, conquer the Romans, and sit on a throne, and they are calling shotgun on the prime seats with the most face time with the ruler to be. 

Jesus replies, “You have no idea what you’re asking.  Are you able to drink the bitter cup I will have to drink, or be baptized—held under water—along with me?”    For Jesus, being God’s chosen one is not about being boss or ruler.  It is about being a suffering servant, about going to Jerusalem faithful, even if it gets him killed:  “You want to be near me, but that means you’ll have to suffer like me.  Can you take it?”  “Oh yes, Jesus, it’s just what we want!” they reply innocently, unaware of the irony their words will bear once Holy Week and its sufferings arrive.

The other disciples at this point get angry at James and John for monopolizing the boss’s time.  They too want to be at his side.  Petty bickering erupts, which Jesus breaks up with his pronouncement: those very gentiles whom you want to defeat like to lord it over each other, but my disciples must be servants and not masters.  The Kingdom will come not by mimicking the Romans and beating them at their own game: it will come when we refuse to be taken into their rat race of envy, power, exclusion, violence, and prestige.  As Jimi Hendrix said, peace will come when the power of love overcomes the love of power.

Become a servant.  Become a domestic drudge, a slave.  Endure suffering.  Do this with faith and trust, and God’s Reign will thrive.    

Jesus was the first to combine this idea of the ideal king of the future, the Messiah, with the image of the Suffering Servant found in the Second half of the Book of Isaiah.  The novelty and counter-intuitive nature of the joining of these two contrary images flummoxed Jesus’ disciples. 

It’s sometimes hard for us Christians to see how revolutionary this joining was, since we tend to read those Isaiah passages in retrospect, assuming that they contain the link. But they don’t.  Because Jesus modeled such suffering servanthood so well, we Christians can barely hear today’s Hebrew Scripture lesson without thinking that it is a fore-telling of our Lord’s suffering on the cross.  But this misses many details in the Isaiah text, and relies on many mis-translations of its phrases and Christian insertions of ideas.  Sadly, these often serve as proof-texts for the discredited, non-Biblical understanding of the atonement worked by Jesus as one of transferred punishment for sin.     

This is Second Isaiah’s fourth song about a servant who suffers abuse but whose faithfulness to God ultimately brings about the conversion and healing of the abusers.  The servant is an image for the people of Israel, abused and oppressed by the gentile nations about them.  This is how I, aiming to avoid such insertions or mistranslations,  translate this chapter, a song on the lips of the gentile abusers who look on the servant, the Jews they have persecuted:  

Who can believe what we have heard?

To whom has YHWH’s vindication been revealed?

For he has sprouted, by His favor, like a sapling.

As from a tree root in arid ground.

He had no form or beauty

That we should look at him:

No charm, that we should find him pleasing. 

He was despised, shunned by others

A person of suffering, well acquainted with illness.

As [a leper] who had to hide his face from us,

He was despised.  We held him of no account. 

Yet the sickness that afflicted him turned out to be our own,

The suffering he endured, ours as well.

We thought he was plagued,

Smitten and punished by God:

But his wounds were from among our own faults,

His being crushed from our own wrongdoings.  

The chastisement he suffered actually made us whole,

His bruises brought healing to us. 

We may have all gone astray like wandering sheep,

Each on a separate way,

But it was our shared wrongdoing

That YHWH allowed to overcome him…

Behold—from the land of the living was he cut off,

From the sin of my people [the gentiles] was this wound his.   

His grave was set among the wicked

And his tomb with evildoers,

Though he had done no harm

And spoken no lie. 

YHWH may have

Allowed disease to crush him,

But if willing to give his life as if making an offering to drive away guilt, 

He may yet see offspring and a long life.

Since through him YHWH’s purpose prospers. 

From out of his mortal anguish,

He will enjoy eat and drink to the full an offering expressing thanksgiving. 

One righteous person, once known,

Will make the many also righteous. 

Thus bearing away their wrongdoing. 

These many will count as his heritage

And he will receive this multitude as his gain. 

Because he was willing to die

And be counted among the wicked

When in reality he was removing their evildoing

And ridding them of wrong.    (Isa. 53:1-12)

Second Isaiah looks at the suffering of the Jewish people and says it is not senseless, but has meaning.  It touches the heart of the gentile abusers, and thus serves a redemptive purpose. 

This idea is an important part of a later rabbinic and Kabbalistic teaching of tiqqun ha-olam: the healing of the world.  By faithfulness in serving others, our perseverance in suffering, we help drive away the darkness, and make more and more present the light of God hiding in all creation. 

For Jesus, suffering servanthood unleashes a power that calls the abusers to account and changes their hearts.  This power was called satyagraha, or truth force, by Ghandi and practiced by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  It is the way the world can be healed, that the kingdom can come.  To reduce Gethsemane and Calvary to some mechanistic and mathematical way to even scores and satisfy some supposed blood-thirsty wrath of God is a terrible reduction and perversion of the Cross.  For Jesus, its redemptive suffering is where the Reign of God is revealed, where the healing of the world occurs, not where a wrathful deity is placated and bribed with borrowed blood.

For Jesus, trusting God and keeping faith in the servant path given us by God is the way to bring about the healing of the world, especially when this means risking suffering and death.   So he says: don’t be like the persecutors, who love to lord it over everybody.  Be a servant, suffer, help bring those abusers find healing.  Take up your cross and follow me. I bid you, come and die so that all may live. 

Following Jesus means sharing Jesus’ sufferings.  It means not given up, or caving in to world-weariness.  Keep the faith.  Having died with Jesus in baptism, we need not fear death any longer.  Even as we drink the cup of bitterness, we see it as a cup of blessing.  Having been raised to life with him, we must give life and love to all. 

It is thus that we can heal the broken world. 

Amen

Morning Joy (Midweek Message)

Morning Joy

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

October 17, 2018

Each day at 8:00 a.m. in the Church, we chant Daily Morning Prayer from the Prayer Book’s rite (BCP, pp. 75-102).  One slight change in how we do it here at Trinity, however, is in the opening versicle and response.  The Prayer Book has “Lord, open our lips. And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.” Instead, we use a slightly longer one from the Prayer Book’s “Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” (BCP, p. 137), an adaptation of Psalm 51: 

“Open my lips, O Lord,

And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence

And take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Give me the joy of your saving help again

And sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.” 

We use this form so that all who come regularly to Morning Prayer will have after just a few days this wonderful opening committed to memory, so that they will have it in their hearts, available for any time when they want to pray but do not have a prayer book available.  With it, they can be able to say morning prayers at any place or time in a form keeping with the centuries old monastic practice of the liturgy of the hours.  These few lines combine an opening, a confession, and a recitation from the Psalms, thus providing the basic shape of the Morning Prayer rite before the scripture readings and prayers themselves. 

I love singing each morning, “Give me the joy of your saving help again, and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.”  It starts my day with a connection with joy and gratitude, and unfailingly gives me a reset when I wake up sluggish, slightly depressed, care worn, or still tired.  It puts me in touch with the emotions expressed in Psalm 30: 

I will exalt you, O Lord,

because you have lifted me up…

Sing to the Lord, you servants of his;

give thanks for the remembrance of his holiness.

For his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye,

his favor for a lifetime.

Weeping may spend the night,

but joy comes in the morning…

You have turned my wailing into dancing;

    you have put off my sack‑cloth and clothed me with joy.

Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing;

    O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.

Joy in the morning is important.  It connects us with gratitude and opens our eyes to the work of God in the world about us.  It sets up our hearts for the day.  I am sure that it is one of the reasons that Jesus regularly sought to go off and be alone, so that he could pray and be recharged (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16). 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

Let Go to Grab On (Proper 23B)

 

Let Go to Grab On

14 October 2018

Proper 23B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. spoken, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass with Holy Baptism

Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

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

Every once in a while, you run into a Bible passage that draws you up short, and makes you ask, “What’s wrong with this picture?” 

In today’s Gospel, a young man asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Now if many evangelical preachers were asked this, they might say, “Confess with your lips and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord.  Accept Jesus as your personal savior, and you shall be saved!”  Other mainstream ministers might say, “Repent of your sins, be baptized, be active in the Church, and live according to God’s Word.”  This time of year, they might add, “Be abundant in your pledging and support the Church by generous giving and tithing.”   But Jesus says none of these things.  Again, what is wrong with this picture? 

Jesus replies by giving a short list of the commandments, passing over the obvious first few that are about devotion to God.  He focuses on the ones about our obligations to others: “Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not lie, honor your parents and family obligations.”   The young man replies, “I’ve kept these commandments since I was little.” 

Again, what is wrong with this picture?  Is Jesus actually saying that in order to go to heaven, you have to give all your possessions to the poor?”   Even Saint Francis, who took this passage very literally in his own life, did not make the demand for absolute poverty in the interest of others a rule for all people in all circumstances. 

When Jesus and his associates talk about “eternal life,” they are not taking about life in heaven after death.  Similarly, “the kingdom of heaven” is not for them an image for a blessed afterlife.  Jesus is here not answering the question, “what must I do to go to heaven?” 

Rather, the idea here is a contrast between the way the world is now, what they called ha-olam hazeh “this world,” or “this age,” and how it will be once God has set things right in the Great Day of the Lord promised by the prophets.  The Day of the Lord would usher in God’s Reign of justice, peace, prosperity, and healing.  This is ha-olam ha-ba, “the age” or “the world” “to come.”

The young man is not asking Jesus what he must do to go to heaven, but rather, what he must do to enjoy life in the Age to Come. 

Again, this was not a way of talking about a heaven in the afterlife, divorced from this world.  Jesus and his contemporaries hoped for no such thing.  They would have seen the wisdom of early American labor activist Joe Hill’s parody of the belief in spiritual salvation rather than social justice in the hymn “In the Sweet Bye and Bye”:

“You will eat, bye and bye,

In that glorious land above the sky;

Work and pray, live on hay,

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.” 

Paul refers to this idea in Galatians 1:4, where he speaks of Jesus giving himself for our sins “to rescue us from the present evil age.”

Jesus announced the inbreaking of God’s Reign. “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand” is better translated: “Change your way of thinking, for God’s Reign is already in your midst.”  When the young man asks, “And what must I do to enjoy the life of this Reign of God,” Jesus lists the commandments on how we treat others.  Building the reign of God means practical real efforts at eliminating injustice and alleviating suffering. 

But note here that for this questioner, Jesus in his list omits the commandment “thou shalt not covet,” or desire the possessions or good fortune of others.  Instead, in Mark he says, “do not defraud.”  In Matthew, he leaves it out altogether.  This tells us the real meaning of Jesus’ next words:  “One thing only you lack:  go, sell all you have, and give it to the poor.” 

The young man may have kept all the other commandments, but he covets his own property.  The one thing this rich young man needs to is let go of his attachment to things; it is the one thing he is unable to do.   He was after all, in the words that end the story, “very rich.” 

This story gives an example of the truth told in the parable of the different soils, what we usually call the parable of the sower.”   A farmer may broadcast good seed into all sorts of different grounds, but the results depend of the quality of the soil.  “Rejoice for God’s Reign is already here!”  says Jesus.  “And how can I participate in it?” says this covetous young man.  “You need to give up your attachment to your things.” says Jesus.  But to another questioner Jesus may have replied, “You need to give up your attachment to having your own way” or “to lust,” or “to your own sense of self importance.”   Attachment is rooted in fear.  And giving up fear is key in seeing God at work in the world about us, in seeing God’s Reign already in our midst. 

What matters here most is not the act of giving, though that is important, but the detachment that allows us to see God’s Reign, the spiritual practice of detachment that makes the giving possible.  Buddhism also teaches the central part that detachment, of letting go of our desire, plays in new life and enlightenment.   Our Christian practice of detachment is not as stark as the Buddhist one that demands annihilation of desire altogether: we let go so that we can grab on to things more central, things that may ultimately allow us to enjoy what we have let go:  seek first the reign of God and its justice, and everything else will be added back on, says Jesus.    

Attachment is the blindfold that keeps us from seeing God’s Reign.  It is what holds us back from reaching out and grabbing God’s hand.  Attachment is driven most of all by fear: fear of not having, or of losing what we desire.  Meister Eckhart, a Medieval Dominican monk and Mystic, taught that the key to happiness is to lose oneself and desire, and thus overcome fear:  if we cannot actually get rid of fear, then we at least can act as if we do not have it.   He said,  “Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure.” “If you would be serene and pure, you need but one thing: detachment.”  And “You may call God love, you may call God goodness.  But the best name for God is Compassion.” 

God’s Reign, the Age to Come, is here and now.  But we are often blind to it.  That’s why it seems so strange when Jesus says such things as “Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the mourning. God is with them.  They enjoy God’s Reign if they but see it.”   Gratitude drives out fear, and with fear, attachment. 

Seeing God’s Reign is not so much about giving up our worldly possessions, or the renouncing of specific sins, as it is about letting go of what alienates us from God and from each other, about letting gratitude drive out fear.  As we talk about pledging and tithing in the coming month, remember that it is not the sums at issue that matter: it is the disposition of a grateful heart, and the spiritual practice of detachment, willingness to let go so we can grab on. 

We celebrated the sacrament of new birth and life in God’s Reign today in little Esperanza’s baptism.  It is an affirmation that the Reign of God is in our midst, despite all the bad that may remain, despite the brokenness we see in us and about us still.  Baptism is new life even as we die to what alienates us from God and from each other.  The Age to Come is here, even as the Present Age is in its death throes.   In baptism we express our hope and affirmation in God at work in our lives and the world about us.  Letting go so we can grab on is what Jesus calls us to do. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.