Expansive inclusion or Group Advantage?

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Expansive Inclusion or Group Advantage?  

November 28, 2018

Today is the feast day of the Holy Sovereigns, Blessed Kamehameha IV and Blessed Emma, King and Queen of the Hawaiians, who died, respectively, in 1864 and 1885.    Kamehameha as a young man traveled to England, and was struck by the beautiful worship and gentle teaching of the Church of England, and thought that it was better adapted to the spirit of Hawaiians than was the dour Calvinism being pushed on them by missionaries from North America.  He invited Anglican missionaries to establish the Anglican Church of Hawaii; Kamahameha and Emma helped found St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Honolulu.  The Hawaiian people loved both of them deeply because they worked tirelessly for the wellbeing, dignity, and security of Hawaiians.  Emma was instrumental in establishing hospitals and schools (still in operation) for the benefit of native Hawaiians, who were rapidly becoming outcasts and wanderers in their own land.  But in so doing, she specified that these institutions should never exclude non-Hawaiians.  What she called “the strangers in our midst” were also to be served. Such “Aloha” is the glue that binds all the people of the islands together.   In building these institutions to support the oppressed, Emma never made it a zero-sum game by excluding non-Hawaiians. 

Emma’s expansive inclusion is an example of a teaching at the heart of our faith.  There is a profound difference between how the world sees things and how Jesus does.   A secular view often takes humanity as exclusive groups competing for a limited pool of resources, with clear winners and losers.  Regardless of whether they are based in economic interest, race or ethnicity, nationality, religion, party, or gender or other identities, such groups in this view are in a life and death struggle: your gain is my loss, and vice versa.  Jesus teaches that we should love our enemies because God gives blessing indiscriminately to various groups: the rain and sunshine falls on wicked and righteous alike.  “And that’s how you should be,” says Jesus (Matt. 5: 43-48).  In his view, God increases blessings as we share them with others and welcome those not in our own tribe.  “Who is the neighbor whom I should love?” asks the lawyer; Jesus replies with the story of the Samaritan who makes a neighbor of his enemy by showing compassion across such divisions. 

In a world where we are all in this together, there is little room for exclusion and stingy hoarding of resources.  There is absolutely no room for demonizing and dehumanizing others.  The solidarity Jesus calls us to fosters the common good, equal opportunity, fair and reasonable distribution of the fruits of our economic life, equity among people and nations, and peace in the world.  It includes all the other principles and values that are necessary to create and sustain a truly good society.  It is at the heart of what it means to be human, since we humans are essentially social beings, not isolated monads.  It is more than a vague feeling of compassion, common cause, or shallow sympathy.   It is in fact a commitment to our common life, a sign that we accept responsibility for each other. 

Emma’s inclusiveness has applications for us today.   In welcoming and opening things up to this expansive solidarity, we must be careful to not fall back into the trap of zero-sum exclusion, this time of the other side of the tribal divide.  One example is this:  many of our parishioners, myself included, love to be addressed as sisters and brothers:  identifying each other as siblings and members of the family marks us as personally belonging to each other, and including women on an equal footing as men broadens the welcome.  Calling us sisters and brothers touches us personally, because it connects to our identity.  But I recently received a request from a dear friend in the Church who self-identifies as gender non-binary (neither male nor female, or maybe a little of each):  using “sisters and brothers” doesn’t include them, and feels like a micro-aggression.   “Don’t use this way of excluding me” they asked, “use ‘siblings, friends, beloved,’ or some other way of intimate inclusion that actually does not exclude those of us who do not share in the cis-hetero binary gendering of the world given us by Patriarchy.” 

While this request is heartfelt and sincere, it focuses only on the exclusion experienced by enbies (non-binaries) and not the inclusion (and personal intimacy) experienced by most men and women in the Church when they hear “sisters and brothers.”   By never using “sisters and brothers,” we end up distancing most of those who hear us.  I hear my friend, and want to include them in my speech habits.  I will use the pronouns they choose for themself.  I also want to respect the truth that inclusiveness is expansive, not reductionist.  It opens us for broader expressions of love, and does not demand narrower or less personal ones.  So in the spirit of blessed Queen Emma and trying to pursue Jesus’ vision of a non-zero sum Reign of God, I will still use “sisters and brothers,” and occasionally add “and all my siblings.”  This is the basic theological reason I intend to continue using masculine images for God (“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”) when rooted in scripture and tradition, but also will add similarly rooted gender neutral and feminine images as well.    

Grace and Peace

Fr. Tony+ 

 Stained glass at The Cathedral of St. Andrew in Honolulu. It depicts the arrival of Thomas Nettleship Staley, received by King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma. Staley was appointed the first Bishop of Hawai'i in 1862.

An Acceptable Offering (Midweek Message)

An Acceptable Offering

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

November 21, 2018

As we come to the close of our annual Stewardship Pledge Campaign, I was struck by today’s first reading for Morning Prayer, from the last book of the Old Testament.  It speaks of the need to place offerings and sacrifices to God first in our priorities.  It criticizes priest and people alike who might want to do worship on the cheap, and thus “nickel and dime” the Almighty.  Here is how I translate the passage: 

An oracle. Yahweh’s word to Israel by Malachi.  Children honor their parents, and slaves their owners.  If then I am your parent, where is the honor you owe me? And if I am a master, where is the respect due to me? Thus says Yahweh of the heavenly armies to you, O priests, who despise my name. You say, “How have we despised your name?”  By offering polluted food on my altar. You say, “How have we polluted it?” By thinking you can belittle Yahweh’s table.  When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not wrong? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not wrong? Try presenting that to your governor; will he be pleased with you or show you favor? says Yahweh of the heavenly armies … O that someone among you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not kindle a meaningless fire on my altar! … For from the rising of the sun to its setting even the gentiles honor my name and everywhere offer it expensive incense, and offerings that are pure; for at least the gentiles honor my name as great, says Yahweh of the heavenly armies. But you profane my name when you say that Yahweh’s table can be polluted by making the food for it a second thought.  “How boring!” you say to me, with rude gestures, says Yahweh of the heavenly armies.  You bring me road kill or sick or lame animals you want to cull as your offerings! Shall I accept such things from your hand? says Yahweh. Cursed be the cheat who prays with a vow to sacrifice his flock’s finest stock, but then sacrifices to Yahweh some poor blemished thing; for I am a great King, says Yahweh of the heavenly armies, and the gentiles, at least, reverence my name  (Malachi 1:1, 6-14). 

Malachi argues that without careful intentionality, worship fails to serve its purposes of drawing us closer to God.   He protests the corruption of worship by priest or people who give it insufficient attention, and place it in low priority, far behind their desire to build their wealth and security.  Jesus took this critique further when he chased out the money-changers from the Temple and went after those who cheapened worship by turning a “house of prayer” into a “den of thieves.”  In both cases, the issue is intentionality and having the right priorities.   

Our giving to the Church is an act of community, where we draw nearer to each other.  It must not be an act of competition or objectification, where we draw away from others.  It must be an act where we take responsibility for God’s work, not where we try to take control of it.  

When all is said and done, it is about faith.  John Wesley used to inquire into the spiritual health of churches he had planted by asking them, has your faith affected your pockets?  If it hasn’t, then it probably is weak and feeble.   Again, this is a matter of priorities and intention. 

We at Trinity are a pretty intentional group of people.   People are invested in our community life and worship, and generally place it high upon their list of priorities.  Witness the growth of our Celtic Service, our Winter Shelter, the quality of our music and altar service, our pastoral care and social justice ministries, and the increased giving and pledging we have seen in the last few years. 

Thanks be to God. 

Hope amid Trauma (Proper 28b)

 

Matthias Gerung, "Die Hure Babylon, Offb 17, 1-18" c. 1531, 

Ottheinrich-Bibel, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

“Hope amid Trauma”

18 November 2018

Proper 28B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

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

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

Daniel 12:1-3; Psalm 16; Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

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

What a blessing to renew our own baptismal covenants today together with little Arabella and Robert!  I think today’s Epistle tells us what our reaction to baptism should be: “let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.” Then it adds this, evidence that in some ways, not much has changed in the Church over 2,000 years, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” 

Hope, clear conscience, meeting together, encouragement:  this is the life of Christian!  It is decidedly not fear, depression, and guilt.

Contrast this joyful encouragement with the banner held up for years now by a group of grim marchers calling themselves Christian in the Ashland 4^th of July Parade: “Repent, for the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord is coming!”  Contrast it with the headline from this week, “Colorado Pastor says God is burning down California as punishment for Support of Homosexuality.”  These people call themselves Evangelicals, or people of the Good News.  But with their focus on the grim, I prefer to call them Dysangelicals, people of the bad news.  They usually like to quote parts of the Bible like Daniel or the Revelation of John that speak at times about horrors coming. 

But they decidedly do not follow what Jesus counsels us in today’s Gospel.

Daniel, Revelation, and today’s Gospel lesson are examples of what scholars call apocalyptic writings.    The Greek word apokalypsis means an uncovering or a revelation of what is hidden.   The question is: what do they uncover?  Is it coming events, or is it God’s ultimate purposes? 

Apocalyptic includes some Jewish writings like the Book of Daniel and the non-canonical Book of Enoch, as well as Christian writings like the Revelation of John, and the “Little Apocalypse” of Chapter 13 of Mark, together with its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21.

This literature is rich is images: symbolic figures, numbers, angels, and animals.  It includes disturbing and shocking scenes: a third of the sea or the moon turning to blood here, the stars falling from heaven and killing most living things there, a scarlet-clad crowned prostitute corrupting all nations here, a multi-headed beast covered with eyes and horns devouring the righteous there.  Though the earliest Christians understood this all allegorically and symbolically, occasionally Christians living in times of turmoil have seen these stories almost as if they were predictions of events to come.  In the year 1,000, penitentes were running all over Europe whipping themselves and declaring the end of the world quoting such images.  In the 1970s, we had “the Late Great Planet Earth”; today we have the Left Behind novels and even support for the State of Israel or President Trump because some think this hastens the great train schedule for the "Rapture" and the Last Day. 

But this reading completely misunderstands apocalyptic.  Jesus, in today’s Gospel, won’t have anything to do with such thinking. 

Just before his arrest, Jesus is with his disciples at the Temple in Jerusalem.  It is pretty impressive: 10 stories high, with masonry stones embellished with smaller carved jewels glittering in the sun, gold leaf covering large parts of it, truly a marvel.  A disciple says, “Wow! Look at that, Jesus! Isn’t that impressive?”   Jesus replies by dismissing it all and saying, “Don’t get too excited.  Soon not one stone there will be left standing on another.  It’s all going down.”   Later, when they are on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron valley opposite the Temple Mount, with a panoramic view of the complex, the other disciples ask him about this.  If it is going to be destroyed, this must be something on the scale of those troubling apocalyptic books.  So they ask him how his prediction fits into the weeks, days, numerology, and timetables of the Book of Daniel and Ezekiel: when will this destruction happen, when is the end of the world? What will be the signs preceding it?

Jesus explains that such a scorecard approach to end-time signs is pointless—too many people abuse such imagery for their own advantage (“many will come and say…”).  He says they shouldn’t be too alarmed or overly excited by the appearance of apocalyptic stage props of “wars and rumors of wars” or natural catastrophes.  Such things, he says, are “but the beginning of the birthpangs,” that is, Braxton-Hicks’ contractions or false labor. Jesus is saying, “Don’t worry too much about any of these things.  They’re just a false alarm.  Keep calm and carry on!”   Jesus denies that apocalyptic should be read as a coded playbook of good guys versus bad guys, but rather as an invitation to hope. 

The fact is, Apocalyptic is primarily about events and people in the world of its authors, not the distant future.  The Revelation of John, the classic Christian Apocalypse, itself says that it is about things that will “come to pass soon”  (Rev 1:1).   That doesn't mean soon to us, but soon to the writer. 

Apocalyptic is literature written during persecution.  It seeks to understand the sufferings of the righteous and encourage them to not lose faith, and to keep resisting the oppressors.  In John’s Revelation, these are Romans under the Emperors Nero and Domitian, who put Christians in the arena to be torn apart by wild animals because they decline to offer incense to a statue of the Emperor.  In the Book of Daniel, they are Greek Syrians under Antiochus who flayed alive or boiled in oil whole families simply because they kept the Law of Moses. 

Apocalyptic puts its message in rich images and code so that the readers can read it without the censors and secret police of the persecutors catching on and then using the possession of this literature as evidence against them. 

These books read sometimes as if some mental patient wrote them.  That is because the authors were traumatized people.  Whatever the specifics of the hardships they describe, we must remember that these books are about hope and perseverance, and the ultimate triumph of the Good.  People like our Dysangelical friends who take these books as coming events and cause for threat and alarm just don’t get it.  Instead of “Keep calm and carry on,” they, like Chicken Little, run about and shriek “the sky is falling! The sky is falling.” 

Jesus’ “false alarm!” approach here suggests what is the real message of Apocalyptic:  as Winston Churchill famously said in WWII, “If you are going through hell, then keep on going!” 

Apocalyptic is a lens to help people through bad, horrible times.  Its vision amid persecution is of a bright future city of God where God will wipe away every tear.  Trying to turn Apocalyptic into something it is not, into predictive television of coming events, lurid in horror and dim in its threats, misses the point entirely. 

Jesus is saying here that we should take the traumatic events we experience, whether war or natural disasters, as occasions for drawing closer to others, for helping them, for being helped by them.  Like Mr. Rogers, he asks us to look for the helpers, and even be the helpers, in horrible times.  This is the heart of the coming of the Kingdom. 

And this is exactly what we celebrate in baptism, and in the encouragement of hope that we owe to one another.  “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.  Let us figure out ways to encourage each other more and more to love and good deeds.”  

In the coming week, I invite us to ask how we react to bad things in life.  Do we blame God for them, or say God is punishing someone?  In prayer, let us seek ways to help use the traumas we experience or witness as ways to draw closer to others.  Let us encourage each other in hope unwavering and thus bring closer the great day when God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven.

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

No Burden at All (Midweek Message)

No Burden at All

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

November 14, 2018

 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill… [U]nless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.  “You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’  But I say to you, if you merely are angry with someone, you will be liable to judgment, if you call someone ‘Stupid!,” you deserve to be in court, if you call them “Moron!,’ you might land in Hell itself…. You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you, everyone who reduces others to objects of lust has already committed adultery in the heart.  ” (Matt. 5:17- 22). 

Have you ever met anyone who has never gotten angry or used even a mild insult to put down someone?  And aren’t sexual desire and urges built into us?  These are the ethics of the impossible. 

Jesus seems at times to make impossible demands of us:  “cut off your hand, or put out your eye, if that’s what you need to do to keep from sin” (Mark 9:43-45),  “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), “abandon your family and loved ones for me” ( cf. Luke 9:59-62).   I think this is not so much a setting of minimal standards as it is a way of saying just how impossible it is to be right with God on our own. 

 “But what is impossible for us humans is possible with God” (Luke 18:27).

Jesus also says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30). 

The path of following Jesus is not full of super heroic demands and denials: it is gentle and grows organically from where we are.  Jesus loves and has the best interest of everyone he encounters in mind, yet he challenges us all.  To the woman caught in adultery, he says, “Neither do I accuse you” (John 8:11), adding, “Go, and don’t sin anymore.”  He is asking her to turn from her past, not demanding that she be perfect right here and now and forever on.  

I think that one of the great reasons that the Church is in such bad odor in our society, both for the religious and the non-religious, is that we have made Jesus into a point of doctrine, and “believing in” him a point of division between insiders and outsiders.  We have not been disciples, doing his work and learning from him.    The Way of Jesus is a gentle way, where we are kind to others and to ourselves.  “Cast away your ego and self-absorption.  Kill your false self and wake up into the true one God has intended all along.”     Jesus does not ask the impossible, but encourages us to shoulder his yoke, to bear the weight of our lives along with him.  And this, it turns out, will be liberation and rest, and no burden at all.  Grace and Peace. 

--Fr. Tony+

Offerings (Proper 27b)

 

Elijah and the widow of Zarephath;  Mother Of God Roman Catholic Church, Covington, Kentucky

Offerings

11 November 2018

Proper 27B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

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

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

1 Kings 17:8-16; Psalm 146; Hebrews 9:24-28; Mark 12:38-44

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

Each time we celebrate Eucharist, at the time when we present the bread and the wine, as well as monetary gifts, at the altar, the priest gives a sentence of scripture or a bidding.  On page 376 of the Prayer Book, you can find several that the priest may choose from: 

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High.    

Ascribe to the Lord the honor due his Name; bring offerings and come into his courts.    

Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.    

I appeal to you, [beloved], by the mercies of God, to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.   

If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that [a person] has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled…, and then come and offer your gift.  

Let us with gladness present the offerings and oblations of our life and labor to the Lord.

The Prayer Book also allows “other suitable passages of scripture,” among which is one of my favorites, from the 1928 Prayer Book, here in modern language: 

“The one who sows little shall reap little; the one who sows abundantly shall reap abundantly.  Let everyone follow their own heart, not grudgingly, or forced to do so, for God loves a giver who is cheerful.” 

Today’s Lectionary readings are all about offerings and sacrifice.  The Gospel and Hebrew Scripture tell stories of women who give their all: the widow of Zarephath feeds the prophet Elijah and finds that God provides for her for years; the widow in the Temple gives her last remaining coins, and serves for Jesus as an example of abuse of the faithful by religious leaders.  Hebrews talks about how Jesus Christ as a metaphorical high priest is better than any real or historical one, and his sacrificial offering the real thing, where all others are but shadows and types pointing to it. 

Sacrifice or offering was at the heart of the religious life of Israel’s Temple.  The basic idea of an offering is expressed in the word terumah: a lifting up, a gift given with a heave. 

Sacrifice served several uses: making up for past misbehavior, cleansing or purgation of ritual contamination, reconciliation, expression of gratitude and thanks.  It sought to repair and strengthen our relationship to God through that most simple of human acts, sharing food.  Some offerings were sacrifices with blood where the animal was burned and the tasty bits shared by the ministers.  Some were of incense. Others were of grain and oil.  In all these offerings, you shared with the deity and the altar servers. 

Prophets at times spoke out against sacrifice considered as some kind of cheap bribery of the Almighty.  They put these words on God’s lips:  “If I were hungry, do you think I would ask you?  All the flocks of the fields are mine.  Do you think I drink the blood of goats or cattle?”  “I demand obedience, not sacrifice.”  “The sacrifice I demand is a humble heart and a contrite spirit, a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.” 

Jesus criticizes the Temple ritual and its rulers.  The system is corrupt, a means by which the rich devour the poor.  But he still honors the act of offering itself. 

American Sign Language’s sign for “sacrifice” makes clear the idea:  taking both hands as if they hold something, then turning them both up, open wide, as if to say “I let go of this.  It’s all yours.”  The essence of offering is letting go of control, and giving up something of yourself with no expectations.

That’s why Hebrews says Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice, even though Jesus was never a member of a priestly family in the Temple.   Hebrews is using a metaphor:  what Jesus did for us in dying is to give himself for us.  He thus accomplishes what Temple sacrifices sought to do:  he reconciles us to God, drives away our sins, and makes us whole.  By giving himself.  By offering. 

Holy Eucharist is a “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.”  In it, we offer bread and wine, product of the created world and of human hands, as tokens of what Jesus accomplished.  In the act of offering, it becomes a communion, or mutual sharing.  That is why we remember Jesus’ words at the last supper, “this is my body, this is my blood.”  And though Jesus died for us only once, as said in today’s lesson from Hebrews, the bread and wine, thus offered, thus sacrificed, are our communion, or sharing, in this. 

Offering, giving, sharing—all these are ways we build closeness with one another.  It is how we build closeness to God: not because God needs to be bribed or placated, but because we need to put our things in second place after our love.  It is all about hospitality and generosity, about sharing and welcoming.  It is a basic spiritual rule and guideline.  It is one of the ways we follow Jesus and serve as his body in the world. 

We are in Stewardship pledge season.  The temptation is always to preach the Widow’s Mite as an example Jesus gave us to follow: she gave her last penny, and so we should be willing also to give until it hurts.  But that is decidedly not what Jesus is getting at here.   His point is that this poor woman is so controlled and brain-washed by the teaching of the scribes—those devourers of widows’ houses—that she gives willingly all her livelihood while those who oppress her give only a tiny portion of their abundance. 

For green lampshade guys, the widow’s mite is laughable in comparison with the lordly sums of the scribes.   But Jesus says her contribution is greater than all of theirs.   She sacrificed while they did not.  Hers was an open-handed offering, while theirs was a small gratuity. 

The Widow’s Mite, if applied to Stewardship campaigns, if anything, talks about the Church’s responsibility to be open in its accounts, responsible in its use of contributions, and fixed on the task of helping and standing with the poor and the oppressed.

It also talks about the real issue at heart in our giving to the Church.  It is not about trying to impress others.  It is not about soothing a bad conscience or boosting a bad self-image by doing one more great, praiseworthy act.  It is not about people pleasing, or even God-pleasing.  Our gifts and pledges to the church should be an offering, not a tip.  They must come from a thankful heart, a vision that the Church’s ministry is God’s work, and a sense that all that we enjoy comes as a free gift from the Parent of us all.

Some of us tithe, or pay a tenth of our increase, as a way of trying to put offerings first, like the widow of Zarephath, whom Elijah asked to give first and then worry about her short larder.  God did and does provide, after all.   

Our giving to the Church must be an act of community, where we draw nearer to each other, not an act of competition or objectification, where we draw away from them.  It must be an act where we take responsibility for God’s work, not where we try to take control of it.  

When all is said and done, it is about faith.  John Wesley famously used to inquire into the spiritual health of the faith communities he had founded when he would visit them.  A regular question he would ask, to help them determine the quality of their faith was this:  has your faith affected your pockets?  If it hasn’t, then it probably is weak and feeble. 

You are hard-working, faithful, and generous.  You are already giving much to show God’s love in the world.  I invite you to continue in this path of gentle wisdom.  We are set as stewards, or temporary managers, of God’s abundance and creation. God the Giver is joyously generous, as we must be.  Trinity is a special loving community, and its varied ministries show God’s love in creation.   I invite us all pray for the courage to break out of our insecurity and fear around money into the world of an abundant God.  Open our hands, heave up our gifts, and bring offerings into God’s courts with praise. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.  

100 Year Anniversary of Armistice Day

 

 

100 Year Anniversary of the Armistice ending the 

"War to End All Wars" 

November 11, 1918 “on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month” marked the signing of the armistice ending the “Great War,” of 1914-18,  “the war that no one wanted,” “the accidental war,” that started the 20^th Century with the mechanized slaughter that resulted in 15 million deaths and 20 million wounded.  Since the U.S. commemoration of “Armistice Day” was transformed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower after the second World War into a general commemoration of U.S. military veterans in any armed conflict, we Americans often forget  the significance of this particular day.

Canadians and the British still preserve it as “Remembrance Day” with a heavy emphasis of the sacrifice and ideals of WWI, together with its futility.  The wearing of red poppies is a major part of the commemoration, bringing to mind the poem by Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae beginning “In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row.”

Since Australians and New Zealanders lost most of their people in that conflict in the battle of Gallipoli (a failed effort to capture Constantinople from the Ottoman Turks), they commemorate the anniversary of the start of that battle, April 25, as Anzac Day (after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, which was decimated in the battle). 

When I was a young man living in the North of France, I had the occasion to visit several of the sites of the trench warfare in the Flanders Fields during World War I, including Verdun and Vimy Ridge.   
Verdun is where German and French soldiers faced off against each other in pitched trench warfare for most of the year 1916, firing about 40 million artillery shells at each other, killing 306,000 young men and maiming about a half million more.  It was the longest and one of the most devastating battles in the history of warfare, which ended as a minor French tactical victory but overall was a costly strategic stalemate.

The site of the battle is to this day a tortured, scarred landscape with overlapping crater upon crater caused by the burst of artillery shells.  Though now it is covered with green grass and is no longer the sea of mud and blood you see in the old photographs, you cannot go off of the marked roads and paths because the area still contains hundreds or thousands of mines and unexploded ordnance.

The battlefield cemetery there has a large memorial, the base of which is an ossuary—a mass grave for the bones of the dead, since thousands were recovered only in pieces. 

The Canadian cemetery at nearby Vimy Ridge, with its preserved trenches, graves, and haunting memorial with tower-like pylons and the overwhelmingly sorrow-filled statue of Canada Bereft, of a mother mourning her dead sons, is, one of those few places on earth, like Auschwitz, the Road of No Return (for Slaves) in Benin, the Choeung Ek "Killing Fields" Memorial in Cambodia, or the Memorial to the Victims of the Rape of Nanjing in Nanjing China, that brings a traveler face to face with great historical horror, overpowering and dreadful.

 
The U.S. “Flanders Fields” Cemetery across the border in Belgium is less theatrical in its presentation, but every bit as moving.

In the U.S., Veterans’ Day has become part of the Civil Religion.  I read a Facebook posting this morning:  “On Thanksgiving Day we thank God for our blessings; on Veterans’ Day, we thank him for those who fought and died for our blessings.”    In the degree that we thereby honor the dead, this is right and fitting.  In the degree, however, that we thereby celebrate the system of power and policy that produces such things as the “Great War” (or, indeed, that calls any war “Great”), the day is diminished and cheapened. 

Friends from New Zealand gave me the gift of sharing with me Church music coming from their homeland.  One of my favorites is the following piece written for Anzac Day: 

A Hymn for Anzac Day

Honour the dead, our country’s fighting brave,
honour our children left in foreign grave,
where poppies blow and sorrow seeds her flowers,
honour the crosses marked forever ours.

Weep for the places ravaged with our blood,
weep for the young bones buried in the mud,
weep for the powers of violence and greed,
weep for the deals done in the name of need.

Honour the brave whose conscience was their call,
answered no bugle, went against the wall,
suffered in prisons of contempt and shame,
branded as cowards, in our country’s name.

Weep for the waste of all that might have been,
weep for the cost that war has made obscene,
weep for the homes that ache with human pain,
weep that we ever sanction war again.

Honour the dream for which our nation bled,
held now in trust to justify the dead,
honour their vision on this solemn day:
peace known in freedom, peace the only way.

Music: © Colin Gibson 2005 Words: © Shirley Erena Murray
Tune: ANZAC 2005

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8EhR44SUp4

Walk in Beauty, Softly (mid-week Message)

Walk in Beauty, Softly

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

November 7, 2018

 “Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have!  You can’t worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you’ll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can’t worship God and Money both.  If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.   Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.  If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”  Matt 6:22-34, The Message

This passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is about seeing things and behaving in ways congruent with faith in a loving God.  The basic idea—that putting first things first frees us from worry and behaviors that are self-defeating and harmful to others—is found in most of the world’s spiritualities and religions.  It can be as simple as the back packer’s dicta, “take it in, pack it out” and “leave the site better than you found it” or as broad as “tread the earth lightly” in modern ecological thought. 

In traditional Chinese thought, it means following the Tao, or order of nature.  In the Dine or Navajo tradition, it is expressed in the exquisite closing prayer of the Walking the Way Blessing Ceremony.  It is usually translated in this way, where “beauty” means the harmony and balance found in the natural world:

“In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again.”

 Anglican poet Christina Rosetti talked about treading softly and seeing things with right eyes in the following poem, which takes themes of All Saints and All Souls and applies them to all creation: 

“Tread softly! All the earth is holy ground.

         It may be, could we look with seeing eyes,

         This spot we stand on is Paradise

Where dead have come to life and lost been found,

Where Faith has triumphed, Martyrdom been crowned,

         Where fools have foiled the wisdom of the wise;

         From this same spot the dust of saints may rise,

And the King’s prisoners come to light unbound.

O earth, earth, earth, hear thou thy Maker’s Word:

“Thy dead shalt thou give up, nor hide the slain”—

Some who went weeping forth shall come again

         Rejoicing from the east or from the west,

As doves fly to their windows, love’s own bird

         Contented and desirous to the nest.” 

Treading lightly upon earth and walking in beauty demand that we look carefully at the world about us and see God’s hand at work.  They come from a heart moved by gratitude and awe.   Thanks be to God. 

Fr. Tony+  

Those We Love, but See no Longer (All Saints, B)

“Those We Love, but no Longer See”

 November 4, 2018 Solemnity of All Saints

(Year B; transferred from Nov. 1; with All Souls' Prayers for the Dead)

Homily preached at Trinity Parish Church

Ashland, Oregon

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

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

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 ; Psalm 24; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

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

Last year on October 31, we saw the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 theses on the door of the university church in Wittenberg Germany, usually seen as the beginning of the Protestant reformation.  Luther was protesting, of course, the shameless sale of indulgences—a money-to-escape-punishment-for-sin scheme by Dominican priest Johan Tetzel to raise money for the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.   Clearly, Tetzel had overstepped Christian faith by claiming that the “moment that the money in the coffer goes ching, the soul from purgatory does spring.”  The Roman Church continues to this day teach the authority of the Church to forgive sins, but has always condemned Tetzel for losing his way in removing remorse, amendment of life, and repentance from the equation and reducing it to a monetary transaction.   The Pope’s reaction to Luther, fired up by his anger at the loss of revenues from the indulgences and the implicit criticism of corruption in the church, also over-stepped the faith and brought the great scandal of the division of Western Christianity. 

But then so too did the Reformers overstep in its reaction to the teachings of the Church associated with indulgences.  Desiring to rid the Church of the pretense that it had some intermediary role as far as forgiveness of sins went, they argued that when a person died, they were immediately judged by God and sent to Heaven or Hell.  Thus, no purgatory, and no way that our acts here on earth, whether payment to the Church or even prayers for the dead, could assist the dead.  They were gone, dead, and judged, so we’d best not worry about them any longer, thank you very much.   Calvin tied this to the idea that God had already predetermined from creation whether a soul was to be saved or to be damned: his infamous doctrine of double predestination. 

But in this, the Reformers erred almost as grievously as had the Roman sellers of indulgences.  Scripture gave several examples of faithful people praying for the dead, mainly in the later books of the Old Testament. Luther and Calvin reacted by cutting out the books in question out of their canon of scripture, though they had been part of the Greek Canon of the Old Testament from the beginning.  They appealed to these books; absence in the canon of the TANAK that the Rabbis drew up in the later 1st century of the common era, even though they drew the list up two centuries after their inclusion in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.   To this day, Roman Catholic and  Eastern Orthodox churches have 46 books in the Old Testament, while Protestants only have 39.  We Anglicans have traditionally printed the 7 Old Testament books in question in our Bibles, but in a separate section known as the Apocrypha of the Old Testament or the Deuterocanonical books. 

In arguing that a soul met judgment immediately upon death, and thus no prayers were needed, the reformers turned aside from the scriptural idea of a general judgment day at the end of time.  And in affirming predestination, Calvin turned aside from the clear teaching of scripture that God has a universal salvific will, i.e., that God intends salvation for all, though we might turn this aside through our own faults. 

Though at times we Anglicans have toyed with these errors of the Reformation, notably in the 39 Articles, in general we have shied away from what we usually see as Protestants throwing out the baby of faith in a benevolent God and the value of our decisions and actions with the bathwater of anything that might have once been used by Johan Tetzel to defend his wretched trade.    In general, we have affirmed that God never willingly afflicts any of God’s creatures, and that there is much about the afterlife we do not know.  We keep those 7 books in the Old Testament, though we concede that it is not a good idea to try to prove doctrine from them to people who reject them anyway.  As a result, we have allowed people to make up their own minds about purgatory or prayers for dead.  And we have prayed for the dead a lot. 

I believe that we must have confidence and hope that all will be well for our beloved departed, and not just for those who died in the embrace of the Church.   This hope is the basis for our praying for the dead.  It is also why we celebrate both All Souls’ Day right after All Saints’.

C.S. Lewis, in his great work Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, writes this: 

“Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to him?

“I believe in Purgatory.  Mind you, the Reformers had good reasons for throwing doubt on the ‘Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory’ … [but T]he right view [is] … in [John Henry] Newman’s “Dream [of Gerontius].” There …  the saved soul, at the very foot of the throne, begs to be taken away and cleansed. It cannot bear for a moment longer ‘With its darkness to affront that light’…

“Our souls demand Purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my [child], that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy’?  Should we not reply, ‘With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I'd rather be cleaned first.’  ‘It may hurt, you know’ – ‘Even so, sir.’

“I assume that the process of purification will normally involve suffering.  Partly from tradition; partly because most real good that has been done me in this life has involved it. But I don't think the suffering is the purpose of the purgation...  The treatment given will be the one required, whether it hurts little or much.

“My favourite image on this matter comes from the dentist's chair. I hope that when the tooth of life is drawn and I am 'coming round',' a voice will say, ‘Rinse your mouth out with this.’ This will be Purgatory. The rinsing may take longer than I can now imagine. The taste of this may be more fiery and astringent than my present sensibility could endure. But . . . it will [not] be disgusting and unhallowed.”

Since it is impossible to know what is inside the human heart, in practice many of us remember and pray for all the dead, confident that God wants to save all his creatures.  God is love, and love draws us all on.  I am hopeful that, in the end, God’s love will overcome all our human crankiness and resistance.   Perhaps, just perhaps, all the departed will one day be faithful departed since the faithfulness at issue is God’s, not ours.  And washed and scrubbed, dried with large soft towels and dressed in comfortable fresh clothes, we will be welcomed to the royal banquet, not as permitted strangers, welcomed from outside, but as family members who belong there and without whom there could be no party, beloved all. 

Blessed and beloved: All Saints and All Souls.  But also all of us here:  Blessed and Beloved.

Each week we say “Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven.”  Fr. Tom reminded those attending the healing Eucharist on Thursday that this includes the beloved departed.  We may not see them, but we hear them in our praises: a communion of saints indeed.

Sisters and brothers, and everyone in between:  I have confidence that love will triumph in the end.  I believe that we will be reunited with those we love, and not one good thing in our lives will be lost or wasted.  And the bad and painful things will be redeemed, transformed into joy and easy comfort.  I truly believe this, though I do not presume to know the details and schedule, or even how this might look on the outside.  But I know it will feel like love and joy on the inside.  In God’s economy of grace, not one thing is lost. 

I invite us all to pray this week with special intention for those we love, but see no longer.  Pray for them, and ask them to pray for us.  Think of what they prayed for when they were here.  Wonder what they might be praying for now, in that great company of the Blessed.  If they weren’t churchy, and it is hard to imagine them praying, ask what their hopes and fears were, and what their hearts yearned for, what they expected of us, especially when they were at their best.  For yearning is prayer.  And then find a way to keep on or start working for that.  I know my dad and mom want me to listen better to others, and live the truth God places in my heart.  I wonder you’re your loved ones, no longer seen, desire from you?

 

In the name of Christ, Amen. 

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