Charles Stuart, King and Martyr

 

Charles Stuart, King and Martyr

Homily preached at Thursday Noon Healing Eucharist

Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland Oregon

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

Rector and Convocation Dean

January 31, 2019

Sirach 2:12-18, Psalm 20, 1 Tim 6:12-16, Matt 20:25-28

O God, give us hearts to feel and love.  Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.

“King of Kings and Lord of lords, whose faithful servant Charles prayed for those who persecuted him and died living in the hope of your eternal kingdom:  grant us by your grace so to follow his example that we may love and bless our enemies, through the intercession of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.”  (CoE Collect for the Feast of Charles Stuart, King and Martyr)

Yesterday, January 30, in the calendars of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church of Scotland, is the commemoration of Charles Stuart, King of England and Scotland, executed in 1649 by the Puritan-controlled Parliament and its Army.    Charles, considered a “man of blood” and traitor against the English people by those who tried him, was immediately hailed as a “royal martyr to the faith” by his supporters, and declared a saint when the Prayer Book, bishops, and the monarchy itself were restored after 10 years of rule by the Puritan Commonwealth and Protectorate (military junta).     The Episcopal Church has never added him to its calendar because the “cult of the royal martyr” was seen as monarchist propaganda undermining proper American patriotic republicanism.   Tories and Anglicans have always loved Charles; Whigs and radical protestants, hated him. 

Charles’ trial has provided the legal precedents for most trials since of sovereigns accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, whether at Nuremburg against the Nazi leadership, or at the Hague against Serbian war-lords behind “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia.    Charles for his part never recognized the authority of the court, and defended his actions as the unfortunate but legitimate and necessary acts of a sovereign faced with mutiny and treason by the political elites of his people.    War broke out after he tried to bring religious uniformity to his two realms (Scotland and England) by trying to impose Prayer Book worship and bishops on Scotland.  This forced him to call a Parliament to raise funds, which promptly sided with the Calvinists in Scotland, voted to make itself independent of the King’s pleasure by refusing to disband on royal orders alone, and began raising an army to pressure the King to abandon his devotion to Arminian, or anti-Calvinist, religion.  The House of Commons was motivated in part by opposition to Charles’ even-handed approach to Roman Catholic-Protestant warfare on the continent as well as his marriage to a French Roman Catholic (Marie-Henriette, after whom Maryland is named). 

When finally Charles was captured, radical Calvinists wanted to try him and abolish the monarchy.  They could only do this, however, if they controlled the Parliament.   So they staged a palace coup by arresting and excluding from chambers a little more than half of the House of Commons: the moderate MPs comprising the majority.  Oliver Cromwell and the remaining “Rump” Parliament offered Charles a choice:  undergoing capital trial for his part in the war or granting the “Rump” Parliament everything it asked for, including a limited constitutional monarchy with few royal prerogatives, banning the Prayer Book, abolishing Bishops, and enforcing conformity to Calvinism.  Though Charles had previously shown (with the Scots) a willingness to negotiate some of these things on a temporary basis, he was unwilling, as he said, to accept Cromwell’s final offer and turn his back on the “True Religion” in order to save his earthly crown and his head.    So he was tried, found guilty, and was beheaded at Whitehall on January 30, 1649.  

Though I live in a Republic that gained its birth through violent revolt against the British crown, and firmly support the legal principle of trying rulers for crimes against humanity, I commemorate and honor Charles Stuart the Martyr each year as a form of familial penance:  one of my ancestors, Col. John Hutchinson, governor of Nottingham Castle, was one of the “commissioners” (jury members) in the trial who signed Charles’ death warrant, one of the “regicides.”  After the restoration of the monarchy, Hutchinson publicly confessed his error and sin in the execution of the King, and expressed his deepest remorse for the action.    Though exempted from Charles II’s Act of Indemnity and Oblivion pardoning Civil War actions, Hutchinson did not suffer execution as a traitor:  his early break with Cromwell, his refusal to order reprisal killings of Cavalier prisoners, and his wife Lucy’s family ties to the men who brought the monarchy back meant he was allowed to die in prison rather than being drawn, hanged, and quartered.  

In our Church calendars, we honor both Protestant martyrs under Queen Mary and Roman Catholic martyrs under Elizabeth I.  If we are to honor in our calendars the sacrifices and faithful Christian witness of Calvinists, we need to honor the sacrifices and witness of Anglicans like Charles as well.

 

Before his death, Charles wrote a letter to his son, crowned as Charles II after the monarchy, greatly reduced in its powers, was restored following ten years of rule by the Puritans, who proved to most Englishmen that they could be every bit as tyrannical and incompetent as a bad king.    In part, he said: 

“Above all, I would have you, as I hope you are already, well grounded and settled in your religion, the best profession of which I have ever esteemed that of the Church of England….  I may, without vanity, turn the reproach of my sufferings, as to the world’s censure, into the honor of a kind of martyrdom, as to the testimony of my conscience—the troublers of my kingdoms have nothing else to object against me but this, that I prefer religion and laws established before those alterations they propounded.  And so indeed I do, and ever shall, till I am convinced by better arguments that what hitherto have been chiefly used against me—tumults, armies, and prisons.  …I cannot despair, either of [God’s] mercy, or of my people’s love and pity.  At worst, I trust I shall go before you to a better kingdom, which God hath prepared for me, and me for it, through my Savior Jesus Christ, to whose mercy I commend you, and all mine.  Farewell, till we meet, if not on earth, yet in heaven.” 

Grace and Peace. 

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Weary Gravity and Christian Spirituality (Midweek Message)

Weary Gravity and Christian Spirituality

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

January 30, 2019

Sometimes we need to step back and take in the big picture.  Our desire for our lives and work to have story-book endings and completed narrative arcs often puts us at risk for disappointment and exhaustion:  we find that life goes on, even with the death of loved ones, that suffering and trial go on after a pastoral visit, that all our efforts are partial and bring about only partial success.  While doctors often can cure a specific ailment or alleviate a particular symptom or disability, they ultimately are powerless in turning aside the tidal onslaught of aging, illness, and death.  Basic Christian spirituality is one of partial results, interim fixes, and joy within adversity.  This is a spirituality of open-ended trusting in God, of always being on the lookout to catch glimpses of God’s hand at work in the world about us as well as at work within us, of knowing that in the vineyard of God we may plant seeds or nurture the seedlings, but the ultimate fruiting of the world is beyond our vision, and wholly in the hands of God.  Being mindfully present, relaxing in the hands of God and putting aside our own expectations are part of this.  John O’Donahue (1958-2008) put it this way:

“A Blessing For One Who Is Exhausted

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laboursome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have travelled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of colour
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.”

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

God on the Seas (Mid-week Message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

God on the Seas

January 23, 2019

Yahweh, how many are your deeds!
    All of them you do in wisdom. 
    All the earth is full of your wealth. 
 This ocean, vast and wide,
    Teems with countless creatures,
    Life both great and small. 
 Among them sail ships,
    And this Leviathan you formed for the sheer joy of it. 

These all look to you
    To give them food in due season;
When you give to them, they gather it up;
    When you open your hand, they are filled with good.
When you hide your face, they panic;
    When you take away their breath, they die
    and to dust they return. 
When you send forth your breath, they are created;
    and you renew the face of the earth. (Psalm 104:24-30 TAB)

In addition to moments of awe and mystery at the beach and in the mountains (shared in the last two midweek messages), I have had moments of real awe actually out on the water.  

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

Another time, Elena and I were on a day cruise out of Lahaina, Maui.  We ended up close to a large pod of humpback whales.  They were immense, even the one calf, who, though dwarfed by its mother and aunts, still was larger than our catamaran!  They surfaced and spouted, and three or four breached, jumping completely out of the water to a height of 3-4 meters before splashing back in with a thunderous WHHHHOOOF. 

Just a few years ago, Elena and I were on a cruise ship skirting North-eastern Australia and the Southern islands of Indonesia.  One afternoon, we were surrounded by a school of flying fish.    I had always thought that flying fish just leapt out of the water and skittered shortly on the surface before falling back in.  But here were hundreds of them, clearly aloft, flying about a foot or two above the waves for extended periods, using their wing-like fins for lift and guidance.   The spectacle lasted about an hour before the school turned aside and stopped following our ship. 

We also were blessed about 10 years ago to see a dozen or so pink dolphins in the waters north of Hong Kong.  These endangered marine mammals are actually white dolphins that get flushed in the warm waters of the South China Sea, and present as a brilliant bubble-gum or hot Pepto-Bismol pink.    Again, the pod was at play, and gave us a show of exuberant joy for about an hour. 

Such surface wonders complement the many beauties I have seen beneath the waters: the jewel-like flowering corals and clown, parrot, and trigger fish of Hanauma Bay, a color-shifting Chameleon Rockfish in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the immense scope of the Great Barrier Reef. 

Many of these wonders, unhappily, are now at risk and endangered due to overfishing and climate change.  But they are signs of God’s joy, and we must try to correct our ways before they pass from the scene forever. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

The Good Stuff (Epiphany 2C)

The Good Stuff
Homily delivered for the Second Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
20 January 2019

8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Isaiah 62:1-5 ; Psalm 36:5-10 ; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 ; John 2:1-11

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

When I was a boy, we would travel to my Grandparents’ house in Idaho about once every year. There, we would eat wonderful homemade meals that were not common in my mother’s home.  My mother worked outside the home, and had learned to simplify her cooking in the 1950s and early 60s by using processed foods like Bisquick, Campbell’s Condensed Soups, and even Cheez Whiz or Velveeta in her day-to-day cooking, often using recipes that included brand-name items.   Not so in my Grandmother’s House.  There, they raised most what they ate in their large garden, and “put up,” as they said, much of their garden produce for use in the winter.   I remember the first time I ever tasted real ketchup.  It came out of one of the white glass bottles that my Grandma used to preserve homemade ketchup, steak sauce, and chutney.  I was shocked.  It tasted nothing like the Heinz 57 Ketchup I was used to.  This was too tart and tomatoey, with a lot of fresh vegetable overtones.  I wondered to myself how my Grandparents could stand such stuff, a weak imitation of the real thing, all because they were too poor to buy real ketchup in a grocery store!  It was only years later that I realized that my Grandma’s ketchup was far better than any commercially produced stuff, and in fact, was the real thing.  Heinz and Del Monte were the cheap imitations.  

C.S. Lewis tells a story from his own youth about this kind of contrast:  stealing cigarettes from his father’s stash.  Occasionally when the cigarettes were so few that even one might be missed, he dipped into his father’s plentiful cigar stash, which he kept only for honored guests.  He says that when this occurred, he and a friend thought “poor us, today we’ll have to put up with cigars when we might have had cigarettes!”    Again, if the only thing we know is a weak imitation, or a distorted shadow, when we actually run into the real thing we may think it strange, and perhaps mark it as the poor substitute. 

Today’s Gospel reading from John tells the story of the first sign of Jesus’ glory:  at a wedding at Cana, Jesus simply says the word and turns water stored in jars for purification rites into wine.   I have visited the site of this miracle, in Cana.  There, in the basement of the church over the traditional site, is a museum display of first century stone jars for holding water for purification:  they are immense, each holding about 30 gallons!   There were six:  we are talking about 180 gallons of the finest vintage here: a scripture that definitely speaks to Ashland wine snobs!

At the end of the story, the steward tastes the wine, calls the bridegroom, and says, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the cheap stuff after everyone has become drunk and can no longer tell the difference.  But you kept the good stuff until now.”  The point is that the wine miraculously made by Jesus is better than any other wine, wine produced by the more pedestrian miracle of sunshine, water, grapevines, skill, and time.   The wine Jesus offers is “the good stuff;” all other wine, the cheap imitation.

John reveals Jesus to the reader through a series of marvelous acts: turning water to wine (2:1-12), healings (4:46-5:18), multiplying the loaves and fishes (6:1-16), walking on the sea (6:16-21), giving sight to a man born blind (9:1-40), and raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-44).  John does not call these things miracles. He calls them signs, or pointers to the true meaning of Jesus.   He makes his meaning clear by interspersing between his stories of the signs speeches:  after multiplying loaves, Jesus says, “I am the bread that gives life.” Meeting the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob Jesus says “whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in them a spring of water welling up.”   

In chapter 7, on the last day of the feast of Tabernacles, when priests and Levites formed a chain to bring up bucket after bucket of water from the Siloam pool up to the Temple to cleanse the altar, he says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.”

In chapter 8, at the Feast of Hannukah when the candles of the Feast of Lights are being lit (cf. 10:22), and again in chapter 9 just before he cures the man born blind, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”

In the final sign of Gospel before the passion, just before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Here in chapter 2, Jesus as his first sign makes wine from water at a wedding. Later, in his last discourse before the passion, he says, “I am the true vine.”

The signs, symbols, and images are rich and varied, but all point to one reality, one truth: Jesus is God Incarnate, the ultimate measure by which all good things must be seen.   Bread, Wine, Vine, Water, Light, even Life—all these are good, very good indeed.  But they are mere hints of the real thing, the really good stuff. 

In this world, where we are so used to cheap imitations, we often think that we are trying to do the right thing when in fact, in our brokenness, we are doing its opposite.  And that applies whether you want “to make America great again,” or you want to build social justice in the land.  That is why we must look to Jesus and what he taught and modeled as our standard.  As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” 

John, in all these stories of signs and discourses on Jesus being true light, wine, water, bread is saying:  as good as the good things in our mixed lives can be, Jesus is the truly “good stuff.”   No matter how sweet, beautiful, and wonderful something in our lives may be, it is a mere hint, a dim reflection of what God truly has in store for us, of who Jesus is.  And he is the corrective for our brokenness and our mistaking imitation for genuine. 

Think of the things in your life that truly make you happy.  Think of the things that give you joy, and that take your breath away or make you weep in awe. 

Today’s Gospel, through this sly remark “you left the good stuff till last,” is telling us that these good things, these points of joy like copious wine at a wedding, these, as wonderful as they are, are just shadows, cheap imitations to be followed by the really good stuff.

In Jesus, we find all that we need. Now that is not to belittle other real needs. To say Jesus is the bread of life is not to say that we have no need to work to earn our daily bread, or to help feed the hungry with real bread.   It is simply saying something like Jesus says in Matthew, quoting the Book of Deuteronomy, “A human being does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God.”   

This week, I want you to take some thought about the truly good and wonderful things you enjoy.  Make a gratitude list, if you need to.  And then reflect on what the real thing in which they participate is, what the good stuff for each might be.    Where in our life are we accepting cheap imitations or pale reflections of and rejecting the real thing?  Where in our lives can we be signs to God’s greater love and care? 

Jesus says, I am true wine, the bread of life the true light, the living water.  I am the vine that gives wine; you are the vine’s branches.  Trust me. Have faith in me. Be fruitful and make wine for others.

May we so live, and that each day.

In the Name of God, Amen.

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God in the Mountains (Mid-week Message)

God in the Mountains

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

January 16, 2019

“Go out and stand on the mountain before Yahweh, for Yahweh is about to pass by” (1 Kings 19:3).

Last week, I talked about three experiences where I encountered God in nature, all at the beach: an octopus hatching her eggs, sea turtle hatchlings crawling to the sea for the first time, and a great exultation of seagulls at a very low tide.  This week, I want to tell you three stories of God in the mountains. 

 

Several years ago, Elena and went on a multi-day hike in the Olympic National Park in Washington state.  We were walking in early June, just as the snow and the ice began to clear from the higher elevations of the trail.  It was beautiful, and the walking was hard—multiple highpoints in the trail followed by low-points.  We occasionally saw mountain goats impossibly pasted to opposite cliffs and hills.  Just shy of Bogachiel Peak (native American name: Bogachi'el, "muddy waters"), we came up over a rise in the trail.  Elena was a minute or so ahead of me, and stopped at the small trail summit.  I heard her gasp, and then start weeping.  I thought she had injured herself on the sharp rocks that protruded on the sides of the trail.  When I caught up, I came up over the rise and realized what had happened.   

There, laid out before us was our first full view of the entire Seven Lakes Basin, shocking and overwhelming in its exquisite beauty and suddenness.  I took my breath in sharply as well and smiled as I realized her sobs were those of joy.  The rocky terrain of the large bowl-like basin spread out below us but still above the tree line was covered with brilliantly shining fields and blocks of ice and snow.  The sky was a light blue at the horizon, reflecting the glowing snow, gradually washing into to a deep indigo, almost violet, directly over our heads.  All seven lakes were still frozen, a sharp unnatural and brilliant turquoise that neither of us had ever seen before or have seen since, a color that seemed to lie behind and beneath all the other colors in this glorious scene.  We both stood in silence, weeping for the stark beauty of this place, and of joy of being alive, part of this landscape. 

To this day, when I need to use a meditative technique to calm and center myself, I go in my mind to that place and time, my “safe place,” standing there with Elena, being caressed by the brisk breeze tinged with turquoise and ice, looking out over silence and beauty. 

 

Later that day, when we had hiked down into the basin and set up camp on a stony outcrop in the snow fields surrounding one frozen lake, I had another glimpse of glory, on quite a different scale.  This was not a great panorama and stark broad landscape:  this was up close and personal.  I needed to get water to boil and replenish our bottles, so I went to a large bank of ice and snow poised above the gravel at the edge of our little spot of bare ground, warmed by the sun and moist from the melting ice all around.   The meltwater was welling up from under the edge of ice and running down the gravel into the small circle of open water on the edge of the lake around the center mass of its still-frozen surface.  As I started gathering the water, scooping a cup into the runoff, I noticed there in the water, beneath the edge of the snow, were dozens of tadpoles, newly hatched and warming themselves in the sunlit crystalline water.   They tried to hide under the snow, but every now and then, when totally frightened by the dangerous looking predator hovering over the water (me), they would swim with all their might to the other side of the narrow stream and duck for protection beneath the ice there.  I was astounded by the tenacity and variety of life in this harsh environment.   Fully a month before I would have expected frog hatchlings at this altitude, here were little survivors struggling to live, feed, and grow in the icy waters.    Elena was amazed when I showed her, though she expressed relief that I always boiled water we were to use.  As if the threat of giardiasis were not enough, the esthetics of drinking “frogwater” was too forbidding for her! 

When I was in high school, a couple of friends and I climbed Mt. St. Helens (in its symmetrical pre-1980-explosion form; its native name is Loowit). We were caught in a freak rain and snow storm, and had to shelter in a tent far above tree-line.  We went to bed miserable: wet, cold, and hungry.  For most of the night, the wind roared, and we slept little.  Then when light began to peek onto the tent roof, I went out.  It was the most dazzling, brilliant sunlight I have ever seen.  The clouds had settled far below our altitude.  In silence, I watched the sun rise in a glorious profusion of indigo, violet, gold, and scarlet over grayish blue flocking stretching to each horizon beneath us, with only Mounts Rainier (Tahoma), Adams (Klickitat), and Hood (Wy-east) visible, peeking their rose colored domes and cones above the brooding sea of clouds.   

While it is important to distinguish between creator and creation in any systematic thinking about our world and lives, such moments of awe indeed reveal glimpses of God in glory.  The fact that we react to such scenes in this way is itself a mark of our creator in how we ourselves are built. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+  

Called You By Name (Epiphany 1C)

Baptism of Christ, by David Bonnell

Called You by Name
Homily delivered for the First Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
13 January 2019

8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

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

Isaiah 43:1-7; Psalm 29; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

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

Today is Baptism of Christ Sunday.  In a few minutes, we will be renewing our baptismal vows.  In this, we reaffirm our commitments made in baptism.  As we do so, God is also renewing his commitments in our baptism.  Remember the loving and affirming words of blessing said as the newly baptized are anointed with oil:  “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever” (BCP 308).   Today’s lesson from the Hebrew Scriptures expresses this promise from God this way: 

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you…

…[Y]ou are precious in my sight, … I love you.” (Isa 43:1b-2a, 4)

Today’s Psalm also expresses God’s love in the face of scary waters:

“Yahweh’s voice sounds over the waters,

The God of glory thunders;

Yahweh is greater than roaring waters…

Yahweh’s voice is powerful,

Yahweh’s voice is exquisite…

Yahweh will strengthen his people,

Yahweh will give them the blessing of peace.”  (Psalm 29:3-4, 11)

This linkage of scary roaring waters with God’s love and protection is implicit in our baptismal theology.  In order to have new life, we must, in a sense die.  Paul said it this way: “Therefore we are buried with [Christ] by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). 

Those waters are scary, and we risk being drowned in them!  But coming through them, like Moses and the Israelites and the Red Sea, brings us to joy and peace.  The Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP 845-62) says, “The inward and spiritual grace in Baptism is union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God’s family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit.”

The story of Jesus being baptized by John clearly embarrassed early Christians, who balked at the image of our Lord being under the tutelage of someone else and at the idea that he somehow needed the “baptism of repentance” offered by John.  Mark, the earliest Gospel, says John preached a “baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” Jesus of Nazareth comes and John baptizes him. But when Jesus comes up out of the water, “immediately he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven.”

Matthew changes the story in several crucial ways.  He deletes the fact that John’s baptism was “for repentance” and adds the exchange where John says “I need to be baptized by you, Jesus, not you from me.”   Luke, today’s reading, leaves in John’s baptism for repentance but adds a lengthy description of the Baptist’s preaching and then he avoids mentioning that it was John who actually baptized Jesus. Here, the opening of heaven, the descent of the dove, and the hearing of God’s voice occurs only after the arrest of John, “when all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying.” 

In contrast to Matthew and Luke, who in their separate ways say that Jesus’ getting baptized was not for the remission of sin or a sign of his subordination to the Baptist, the Gospel of John simply deletes Jesus’ getting baptized altogether.  In the prologue of John, the Baptist appears purely as a witness to Light, the word made flesh. John bears witness of the one who is to follow, and identifies him as Jesus. Later, Jesus goes out to Jordan to baptize rather than be baptized (John 3:22-4:3). Though the Baptist is quoted as bearing witness that he saw the spirit descend on Jesus, there is no scene in John’s Gospel of the baptism itself. 

The early Church preserved these stories despite the discomfort it felt about the idea of Jesus receiving John’s baptism.  Their embarrassment is convincing evidence that the historical Jesus was, in fact, baptized by John, drawn to the Baptist’s message of a firm faith in a living God who would soon set things right in the world.

Key here is what the word “repentance” actually means:  the Greek metanoeo used here literally means “a change in heart.”  The historical Jesus clearly had a change of heart at this time, since it was his baptism and then John’s arrest that seem to have sent him into the 40 day fast in the wilderness from which he comes ready to abandon his family and commence his ministry.    He died to his old life, and came to newness of life. 

And that is what we are called to, though our change of heart often will entail turning from specific misdoings and ways of expressing brokenness.  It is why we are baptized as the way entering into Christ’s life, of becoming part of his body and regular guests at his table.  And since the fear of the raging waters can come back at times, and we can relapse into old ways, it is why we occasionally renew our baptismal covenant. 

We live in a scary world, one in which it is easy to lose hope and our bearings.  Dying to our old selves, coming through the raging waters, brings us to God’s promise of love, support, and peace.  Note in the baptism story in Mark and Matthew, when Jesus shows his solidarity with us in this concrete act of dying to his old way of life, God reveals himself.  The dove of peace, the Holy Spirit descends.  The voice of God, a voice of splendor and power louder than raging waters, says, “You are my child. I love you.  You make me happy.”  

And so it is for us.

Let us let God work this mighty change of hearts in us, so that we might hear the voice of God, be bathed in God’s light, and know that we are, and have always been, beloved. 

In the Name of God, Amen.

 

The Renewal of Baptismal Vows (BCP) 

Celebrant  Do you reaffirm your renunciation of evil and
                  renew your commitment to Jesus Christ?
People       I do.

Celebrant  Do you believe in God the Father?
People       I believe in God, the Father almighty,
                  creator of heaven and earth.

  

Celebrant  Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
People       I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
                  He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
                     and born of the Virgin Mary.
                  He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
                     was crucified, died, and was buried.
                  He descended to the dead.
                  On the third day he rose again.
                  He ascended into heaven,
                     and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
                  He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Celebrant  Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
People       I believe in the Holy Spirit,
                  the holy catholic Church,
                  the communion of saints,
                  the forgiveness of sins,
                  the resurrection of the body,
                  and the life everlasting.

Celebrant  Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and
                  fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the
                  prayers?
People       I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant  Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever
                  you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People       I will, with God's help.

Celebrant  Will you proclaim by word and example the Good
                  News of God in Christ?
People       I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant  Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving
                  your neighbor as yourself?
People       I will, with God’s help.

  

Celebrant  Will you strive for justice and peace among all people,
                  and respect the dignity of every human being?
People       I will, with God's help.

Celebrant

May Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given us a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and bestowed upon us the forgiveness of sins, keep us in eternal life by his grace, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

God at the Beach (Mid-week Message)

God at the Beach

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

January 9, 2019 

“For what can be known of God is plain… Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and known through the things He made” (Rom. 1:19-20). 

Earlier generations, based on this passage, used what they saw as the rationality and economical ordering of nature as an argument for a powerful, rational, and providential Deity.  After Darwin and the discoveries of modern geology and paleo-biology, theologians have increasingly shied away from such “natural theology” because of what they see as the randomness of genetic drift and the great wastefulness of natural selection and mass extinctions.  But both the earlier use of Romans to seek attributes of God from nature and the later denial of God from nature miss the key bit in Romans:  it is about awe at the beauty, complexity, and utter strangeness of nature. 

I have three experiences where nature up close totally left me speechless and in awe. All happened at the beach. 

  

When we were living in Beijing the first time, the family and I a couple times a year would make the four hour drive to the beach at Beidaihe, on the Bohai, a large inlet of the Pacific Ocena north of the Shandong Peninsula and west of Korea.  One year, we were snorkeling with masks in the cold, somewhat murky algae-filled waters.  I saw on the bottom a clamshell the size of my palm. I picked it up to inspect it more closely.  Though closed, it had little tentacles peaking out.  When I put it back in the water, it relaxed, and I could see that inside, a small octopus had taken up housing in the shell, holding it together with her arms.   

Then it relaxed more, and I noticed it was embracing a cluster of small pearl-like pear shaped eggs—dozens of them.  And then the translucent eggs began wiggle and then to burst: tiny fully formed octopodes began to swim into the water about my hand.  I showed Elena and the children.  We were witnessing an octopus birthing.  The amazing process lasted about a half hour.  It was jaw-droppingly awesome!  I was stunned at the unlikelihood of finding an octopus in these shallow and crowded waters, let alone witnessing the hatching of octopus eggs.  I later learned that this was a fully grown female Octopus Minor, held as a great delicacy in Japanese and Korean cuisine.  They often seek refuge in such clamshells, and barricade themselves there to protect their eggs as they mature and hatch, often starving themselves to death in the process. 

Another year, Elena and I were on vacation at Hilton Head SC.  On an early morning run on the beach, we looked down randomly, and about us saw dozens of little tiny sea turtles breaking out of half-buried leathery eggs and then crawling, flopping on tiny flippers, to the water.  We stopped and watched for an hour, again in awe.  The profligacy of nature astounded us: a wider view saw hundreds of these little babies, only a few of which would reach adulthood, surrounding us.  I learned that the beach area where we were was later declared off-limit for a week or two each year to protect the hatchlings. 

Another time, when we were living in West Africa, Elena and I would regularly run on the beach early Saturday and Sunday mornings.  One Sunday, on a particularly drastic low tide, we came around a corner.  The beach was covered with at least a thousand gulls and terns, all ravenously devouring the shellfish and kelp beds so rarely exposed.  When they sensed us, they all rose up, as one, and took to the air.  The bright morning equatorial sun, the mists and splashes of seawater, and the light breeze all worked to make the scene magical, if not downright mystic.  The birds were massed, and their undulating movement as a single body looked almost like murmurations of starlings or swifts.  They swept back and forth a few meters above the beach, unwilling to abandon their rare feast, and then settled back down immediately after we had passed.  Elena and I paused, looking up at such beauty, and wept. 

We may want to impose our human percepts and values on such scenes, be they rational order or violent chaos.  But we are so made that we invariably react to them in awe.  And I think that is where the heart of a true natural theology lies. 

Grace and peace,  Fr. Tony+