Sum of All Being

 

 

Sum of all Being

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

February 27, 2019

 

Today is the feast day of George Herbert, poet and priest. One of his poems is called “Bitter-sweet”:

 

Ah, my dear angry Lord,

Since thou dost love, yet strike;

Cast down, yet help afford;

Sure I will do the like.

 

I will complain, yet praise;

I will bewail, approve;

And all my sour-sweet days

I will lament and love.

 

The conceit here is that having contradictory feelings toward God is alright since God appears to have contradictory feelings toward us.

 

Herbert, of course, knew that God is One, and not in self contradiction. But he uses a trope from scripture that sees God as behind and beneath all being, and so is seen as the author of all, both weal and woe, joy and sorry, forgiveness and punishment, blessing and cursing. In typical fashion, writers in ancient Hebrew expressed the comprehensiveness of God by describing God in opposites: God blesses and curses, is jealous or angry but also long suffering and of abundant mercy, makes high and brings low, and is with us in our going out and our coming in, in our rising and in our sleeping. Opposites here listed as polarities actually mean the poles and all that is in between them. When Hebrew scripture gives the name of God as YHWH, it clearly is thinking of the Hebrew verb hwh “to be” in its causative form yhwh: the one who brings into existence all that is. The first person form of this is ‘hwh. That is why in Exodus God tells Moses his name is “I am,” whose form is probably also causative “I bring into existence.” In such a view, we tend to explain good things as blessings from a benevolent God and bad things as cursing and punishment from an angry God. Better to think there is rhyme and reason to the universe that randomness or accident. But the problem of the righteous suffering and wicked prospering puts the lie to such a simple way of seeing things. That’s what the Book of Job is all about.

 

Scripture speaks of the anger of God but also of God’s patience and love. For this very reason, it is unwise to take as literal one description of God from one end of a spectrum and act as if it tells the whole story. Those who say God is an angry God forget what Jesus taught about God as a loving parent. Similarly, those who take the image of God’s love to mean that somehow God is always predictable, gentle, and above all tame, have missed the point that God as love transcends the limits of human love and at times might be appear as forbidding or punishing. But this is more an effect of the eye of the beholder that it is inherent in the nature of the God beheld.

 

One of the great blessings we have in Jesus’ teaching is the idea that at heart God is better described as love than as hate, as forgiveness than as punishment, as parent than as policeman. But in this intimacy, Jesus does not lose any of the otherness of God, the mystery, the glory.

 

Herbert’s poem reminds us that such contradictory images, though often abused, are relative and as changeable as our own emotions and feelings.

 

Grace and peace.

     Fr. Tony+

Jesus beyond tribe (midweek message)

Jesus Beyond Tribe

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

February 20, 2019

At our monthly deanery clergy meeting yesterday, we discussed the ethics and theology of preaching as it relates to issues of social justice:  when are preachers giving a clarion prophetic call for the Reign of God and the justice and love Jesus  demands, and when are they simply “preaching politics”?   The consensus seemed to be that Jesus calls us to proclaim the truth of the Gospel in prophetic tones, and that this on occasion can be perceived as treading into the danger zone of partisan politics.  Preachers must “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  Sometimes, it is easier for those afflicted by prophetic preaching to discount the message as having a partisan motive.  Part of the skill of a good preacher is finding a voice and selection of stories that speak the Gospel truth to a broad range of people regardless of their class background and political ideology.  Knowing one’s audience and preaching in the context of a shared life of mutual trust is essential if one wishes to avoid throwing up partisan obstacles to hearing Jesus’ word. 

This does not mean avoiding difficult subjects, or maintaining a studied silence on controverted issues.  For the last 100 years, an often heard commonplace in the United States has been “don’t talk about religion or politics—they're too divisive and controversial.”  The result is that we have little common ground in our society for evaluating religious or political claims.   There is no common vocabulary, and few shared values, and, increasingly, lack of enough commonly accepted facts and truths to allow us to help each other self-correct.    Perhaps the trope we should have been reciting is: “religion and politics are so important, that we must learn to talk about them with each other civilly and with respect.” 

For me, the heart of the matter is allowing each other mutual respect and enough room to differ with one another without recrimination or name-calling:  learning to differ without being disagreeable. 

   

Today is the feast day of Frederick Douglass, run-away slave and abolitionist.  He certainly was a divisive figure in his own day, but almost all of us have come to see in recent years that his was a prophetic voice.  A key in the effectiveness of his witness (which included strong early support of the women’s rights movement) was his unwillingness to judge matters purely on the basis or partisan advantage.  One of his most common sayings was, “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”  This approach is echoed in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s teaching that love is more powerful than hate, “that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word… We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

A preacher has a special ethical obligation due to the fact that the pulpit is unidirectional: a preacher is addressing a captive audience, one with little or no chance to respond.  A preacher thus must be careful always to seek to preach the message of Jesus as he or she understands it, not simply spew his or her own opinions.  Sometimes members of the congregation will find the message uncomfortable, or possibly unwelcoming to whole groups of people.  When this happens, it is their responsibility to let the preacher know.  At minimum, this will give preacher and congregant the chance to discuss these important matters and deepen their understanding.  At most, the preacher or the distressed congregant—or perhaps both—will be called to repentance and amendment of life.  

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

Taken to Jesus

Taken to Jesus
Homily delivered at the Funeral

of Flora Jane Shuster MacCracken  (Jan 17, 1932- Feb. 8, 2019)

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
18 February 2019

11 a.m.  
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14; Psalm 23; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 14:1-6. 

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

Flora was a beloved mother, sister, and friend.  We will miss her dearly.   She was a member of the first fellowship dinner group Elena and I belonged to when we first came to Trinity.  We always looked forward to sharing a meal at her home.  Flora was an original.  She knew who she was and played that role with joy and verve.  She knew how to comment without a word, with a raised eyebrow and sparkling eye. 

A particularly close friend of Flora’s in the parish, Jan Robertson, wrote this after she learned of her death: 

“Flora took friendship seriously.  Simply, she loved her friends.  She was loyal, generous, forgiving.  …[She] had a very active social life.  She enjoyed dining out and she. Jean Lescher, and I did that often when we were going to the symphony, concerts, and plays.  Flora also enjoyed entertaining at her Sun River home.  I met [her] through her friend, Margaret Nixon…  [When] Margaret began coming to Trinity Episcopal Church, Flora welcomed her warmly, in the same way she reached out and supported many others at Trinity…  [A fellow former teacher,] Flora corrected my spelling more than once.  I even witnessed her call attention to an error on the menu at Standing Stone [Brewery] (the waitress did not share Flora’s concern.)  Flora was always up for a party.  Many were church parties … in her home or mine that we hosted together.  [Jean and Flora gladly helped me in the kitchen at the open house at my small condo for my 70^th birthday.]  Flora had style.  She was perhaps the best dressed woman I have ever known.  I admired especially her jewelry, [including…] 2 and 3 piece sets.  She took notice of my taste and a sweet memory is a gift that she and Margaret gave me [when I was confirmed] in the Episcopal Church:  a piece of Bellek china to add to my collection.  She was thoughtful and generous to many.  Flora had definite ideas about ways to do things.  Once, when she, Jean, and I attended a play at SOU, I suggested… that we might leave at intermission, as she and I were not enjoying the performance.  When we asked Flora about this possibility, she looked at us in bewilderment.  We stayed.  Flora loved Ashland and lived in this community a long time; her commitments were long term.  I admired that she devoted 50 years to Tudor Guild at OSF!  I lived in Ashland nearly 16 of those years and for most of those, Flora was a very important post of my life.  Her love and commitment to her lovely family goes without saying and I enjoyed knowing them too.  I miss you, Flora, my friend.  Jan Robertson.” 

Given the text of the Gospel chosen by the family, I wanted to close my homily today by reading a poem by James Weldon Johnson in that great classic of African-American literature, God’s Trombones.  It is a funeral oration on the lips of an old black preacher.  As you listen to it, replace the name “Caroline” with Flora.  Replace the place “Savannah Georgia down in Yamacraw” with Eugene Oregon.  This is about Flora today, and about our grief at losing her. 

Weep not, weep not,

She is not dead;

She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus.

Heart-broken husband--weep no more;

Grief-stricken son--weep no more;

Left-lonesome daughter --weep no more;

She only just gone home.

Day before yesterday morning,

God was looking down from his great, high heaven,

Looking down on all his children,

And his eye fell on Sister Caroline,

Tossing on her bed of pain.

And God’s big heart was touched with pity,

With the everlasting pity.

And God sat back on his throne,

And he commanded that tall, bright angel standing at his right hand:

Call me Death!

And that tall, bright angel cried in a voice

That broke like a clap of thunder:

Call Death!--Call Death!

And the echo sounded down the streets of heaven

Till it reached away back to that shadowy place,

Where Death waits with his pale, white horses.

And Death heard the summons,

And he leaped on his fastest horse,

Pale as a sheet in the moonlight.

Up the golden street Death galloped,

And the hooves of his horses struck fire from the gold,

But they didn’t make no sound.

Up Death rode to the Great White Throne,

And waited for God’s command.

And God said: Go down, Death, go down,

Go down to Savannah, Georgia,

Down in Yamacraw,

And find Sister Caroline.

She’s borne the burden and heat of the day,

She’s labored long in my vineyard,

And she’s tired--

She’s weary--

Go down, Death, and bring her to me.

And Death didn’t say a word,

But he loosed the reins on his pale, white horse,

And he clamped the spurs to his bloodless sides,

And out and down he rode,

Through heaven’s pearly gates,

Past suns and moons and stars;

on Death rode,

Leaving the lightning’s flash behind;

Straight down he came.

While we were watching round her bed,

She turned her eyes and looked away,

She saw what we couldn’t see;

She saw Old Death.  She saw Old Death

Coming like a falling star.

But Death didn’t frighten Sister Caroline;

He looked to her like a welcome friend.

And she whispered to us: I’m going home,

And she smiled and closed her eyes.

And Death took her up like a baby,

And she lay in his icy arms,

But she didn’t feel no chill.

And death began to ride again--

Up beyond the evening star,

Into the glittering light of glory,

On to the Great White Throne.

And there he laid Sister Caroline

On the loving breast of Jesus.

And Jesus took his own hand and wiped away her tears,

And he smoothed the furrows from her face,

And the angels sang a little song,

And Jesus rocked her in his arms,

And kept a-saying: Take your rest,

Take your rest.

Weep not--weep not,

She is not dead;

She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus.

Amen

On A Plain (Epiphany 6C)

Seehafen mit der Predigt Christi (Seaport with Christ's Preaching) , Jan Bruegel the Elder, 1598

 On A Plain

Homily delivered for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
3 February 2019

8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26; Psalm 1

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

I read something this week that deeply troubled me.  Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, who served as acting director after the President fired FBI Director James Comey, wrote of a telephone call he received from the President at the Bureau just after Comey’s firing:  “Toward the end of the conversation, the president brought up the subject of my wife. Jill had run unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate back in 2015, and the president had said false and malicious things about her during his campaign in order to tarnish the FBI. He said, How is your wife? I said, She’s fine. He said, When she lost her election, that must have been very tough to lose. How did she handle losing? Is it tough to lose?  I replied, I guess it’s tough to lose anything. But she’s rededicated herself to her career and her job and taking care of kids in the emergency room. That’s what she does.  He replied in a tone that sounded like a sneer. He said, ‘Yeah, that must’ve been really tough. To lose. To be a loser.’” 

Such an ugly story--I hope it is not true, though I suspect it is!  What troubled me here was not so much the impropriety and possible illegality of the call, with its overtones of obstructing justice and interfering with ongoing criminal investigations.  What bothered me was the world view where a very few are winners and the rest are just, well, losers. 

Winners over losers.  Rich over poor.  Strong over the weak.  The trope gets played out variously in our world:  Men over women.  Whites over people of color.  Americans over foreigners and aliens.  And, in the world of faith: Righteous over sinners.  It is an idea blasted by today’s readings.  

Jeremiah says,

“Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals

and make mere flesh their strength,
whose hearts turn away from Yahweh. 

They shall be like a shrub in the desert…

They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness,
in an uninhabited salt land.

Happy are they who trust in Yahweh…

They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.

It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green…

The heart is devious above all else;
it is perverse--
who can understand it?”

The Psalm: 

“Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked,
      …nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

They take delight in Yahweh’s instruction,
and they meditate upon it day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,
bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither…

Not so with the wicked;
they are like chaff which the wind blows away.” 

St. Paul in today’s epistle says that the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the heart of any hope we may have in this world where the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer.  Jesus, killed in shame and nailed to a cross, was the ultimate loser in the eyes of the Roman Imperium and Palestine’s Religious establishment.  But God raising him from the dead turns the world upside down.  The high are brought low, the lowly, lifted high.  That’s why “if Christ has not been raise from the dead, we of all people are most to be pitied.” 

The theme is developed at length in the Gospel. 

“And [Jesus] came down with them and stood on a level place.”  This phrase in today’s Gospel from Luke seems to be a trivial detail in the setting of the sermon Jesus is about to give.  Unlike Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, in Luke, Jesus’ sermon is on the plain.    In Matthew, Jesus “went up into the mountain” to speak his “Blessed are” sayings.  There, Jesus is the new Moses, giving a new Law from the Mountain of God.  The whole Gospel of Matthew is divided up into five speech and narrative sections, like the five Books of Moses, the Pentateuch.  But Luke tells a very different story, and presents Jesus in very different terms.  In Luke, though Jesus is on the mountain side when he calls the Twelve, he comes down to address the people.  And it is not just fellow Jews to whom he talks, but to “people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon.” In Luke, both Jews and gentiles gather together in a level place to hear Jesus, in a low place, not a high and exalted one.  

Lowliness and plainness, leveling out the highs and lows, are major themes for Luke: 

In chapter 1, Mary sings: 

[God] has looked on the lowly position of me, his servant.

Mark it—from now on all generations will call me blessed…

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.”  

In chapter 2, Jesus is born in humble, lowly circumstances, in among farm animals:  a feeding trough as a crib.  Shepherds, the lowliest of day laborers, are the ones who visit the baby, not kings bearing gifts from afar.  

In chapter 3, John the Baptist preaches.  Luke introduces him as a great leveler, quoting Isaiah:

  

 “The voice of one crying in the wilderness:

 ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall become straight,

and the rough places shall become level ways,

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

In chapter 4, Jesus adapts Isaiah in his first sermon in Nazareth: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives

and recovering of sight to the blind,

to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

In Luke, Jesus does not speak from on high, whether from Matthew’s Mountain cribbed from Moses’ Mt. Sinai or from John’s Bosom of the Father from which the Logos descends.  He speaks from our side, having lowered himself to the smooth place where he declares the great leveling effected by God’s love.  

Luke is all about Jesus beside us in day to day life.  Where Matthew has “give us this day our daily bread,” Luke has “give us each day our daily bread.”  Where Mark has Jesus saying, “If any want to become my disciples, let them disregard themselves, take up their cross, and follow me” (8:34), Luke has him say, “let them disregard themselves, take up their cross each day, and follow me” (9:23).  Luke thus subtly shifts the focus from fear of a coming judgment when Jesus comes back here from up there to seeing Jesus’ example and teaching along side us as a model and inspiration for us right here and now, each and every day.  

When Jesus in Luke gives his sermon on the plain, notice how he starts.  He speaks of the lowest of the low–the poor, the starving, those crushed by grief at the death of a loved one, and all the marginalized, the hated.  He tells all these losers that that God is on their side, is there with them, and will sustain them.  Then he speaks of the high and mighty:  the rich, those with plenty to eat, merry-makers and those who laugh at others, and all winners, people accustomed to having others suck up to them.    Their happiness is a mirage.  It will end.  They will be brought low.

Luke is consistent in his message that Jesus is the great leveler.   He speaks to us on a plain.  Luke, alone among the Gospels, tells story after story about the women around Jesus.  If he tells a story about how Jesus affected a man, he is sure to pair it with one about a woman as well.  Alone among the Gospels, Luke tells the story not of the Good Jew, the Good Priest, the Good Levite, but rather of the Good Samaritan, member of an outcast and heretical people seen as the ultimate losers by Jesus’ people.  In the second volume of Luke’s Gospel, the Book of Acts, he tells at length the story of how the gentiles came to be accepted as equal members of the Church along with Jewish believers.  With Jesus as the great leveler, the distinction between winner and loser disappears. 
 
Following Jesus each day as Luke would have us means being agents of levelling as well.  Let us try to look at a person’s hope and aspirations, not their checkbook or status.  Let us accept that the divide between good and evil is not a wall that divides groups or categories of people, but rather is a fine line of choice that runs down the middle of each and every human heart.  Let us proclaim the day of liberation of the captive, consolation to those who grieve, welcome to the foreigner, and help bring light to those in darkness.   Let us forgive others in order for us to be forgiven.  Knowing that we are all in this together, let us trust in God, and have God as our trust.  Then indeed, God will lift up the poor and cast down the proud. 
In the name of Christ.  Amen

Finding your Pattern; Following your Heart (mid-week message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Finding your pattern, following your heart

February 13, 2019 

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?  Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”  (Matt 7:7-11)

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind…”  (Matt 13:44-48)

When I was growing up, I was taught that following Jesus and living the Gospel were primarily a question of conforming to rules, and fitting my life into a pattern taught by scripture and church leaders.    Being a 60s kid, “conformist” soon became a bad word for me, and this made me question the value of faith.  Why should I want to be uptight and constrained, not authentically myself, when I could follow my muse, turn on, tune in and drop out, and become the “real me?”   But I soon realized that I needed the structure and direction of some kind of power greater than myself if I hoped for any beauty and progress in my life.  This initially took the form of conforming to other people’s wishes for me.  But over the years, I realized the truth of Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s teachings that any God who needs to be constantly propped up by an act of will is an idol, and that God does not require us to become an army of robot, victim souls.  I became an Episcopalian in the process of this realization. 

Saintliness is not based in conformity and rule observation.  It is, rather, based in living with integrity, always an exercise in authenticity.   As Merton also said, “For me to be a saint means to be myself.”   St. Francis de Sales similarly said, “Be who you are and be that perfectly well.”   Authenticity is, in the words of Dolly Parton, “Find out who you truly are, and then go out and do it on purpose.” 

Authenticity and living into the unique individual God intended in creating each one of us lies behind many of Jesus’ parables on what it means to have God in charge:  the treasure hidden in a field, an expensive pearl, and knocking, asking, and seeking. 

One of the glories of our Anglican tradition is found in Elizabeth I’s defense of her religious policy eschewing the creation of shibboleths and inside passwords to ensure conformity to a single religious viewpoint: “I refuse to make windows into men and women’s souls.”  Conformity should always be toward the patterns and aspirations God places in our hearts and minds, not to some externally enforced demand of other people.  That’s what authenticity and integrity, that’s what saintliness, is all about. 

Grace and peace. 

Fr. Tony+

Glory in Creation (Epiphany 5C)

Marc Chagall, Call of Isaiah (1968)

Glory in Creation
Homily delivered for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
10 February 2019

8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11; Psalm 138

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

We all know the song of the seraphs around God’s throne recounted in today’s Hebrew Scriptures lesson, because it echoes in the Sanctus, part of the canon of the Mass we celebrate each week:  “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts.  Heaven and earth are full of your glory.”  The Hebrew’s stately rhythms resonate with the scene of the Holy of Holies of the Temple with its shaken pillars and clouds of incense smoke: Qadosh, qadosh, qadosh, YHWH tsebaoth.  Melo’ kol ha’arets kevodo.  Robert Alter, in his newly published translation of the whole Hebrew Scripture, renders the verse, accurately, as follows:  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Armies, the fullness of all the earth is His glory.” 

Qadosh:  separate, special, holy.  Kavod: weightiness, gravitas, honor, or brilliant light.   The idea is that God is separate, unique, and apart, holy, and that thrice over. What makes God noticeable,  resplendent, and brilliant, however, is God’s creation itself.  The idea is not that God’s glory is apart from all creation, invading it somehow and filling it.   The idea is that the whole of creation, the handiwork of God, itself is God’s glory.  

Blessed Ireneaus of Lyons, the great second century theologian who was one of the first Church fathers to write in Latin as well as Greek, said “Gloria Dei est vivens homo” “God’s glory is a living human being.”  We often hear this expressed “The glory of God is a human being, fully alive.”  Irenaeus means that God’s brilliance is not ultimately found out there, in the angel choirs or seraphic dance, but here, in that part of creation made in God’s image, a living breathing human being. 

Seeing the glory of God in our human lives should not be an alien idea for us, since we affirm the incarnation of God, God taking on flesh and becoming truly human in Jesus, as part of our creeds.    Seeing the glory of God as all of creation itself is also not foreign:  most of us have experienced awe and wonder at the beauty, complexity, and balance of the natural world around us.    This is the idea behind the great canticle from the Greek Additions to Daniel, Benedicite Omnia Opera Domini, which we chant every Saturday in Morning Prayer, whose verses on the winter cold are particularly apt this morning:  "Glorify the Lord, O chill and cold, drops of dew and flakes of snow.  Frost and cold, ice and sleet, glorify the Lord, praise him, and highly exalt him forever." 

What becomes tricky is this:  when we look to see the glory of God in our cranky, bothersome, and worried selves, in us when we are not our best, not our loveliest.  It is harder still, I think, when we seek to see the image of God in us and in those about us when we are clearly broken, twisted, and lame. 

That is where all the other passages in today’s lectionary come in:  Isaiah sees the splendor of God, and immediately bewails his failings, his shortcomings, where he does not measure up.  Paul recounts the wonder preached by those who went before him—Christ died for our sins, was raised, and appeared, first to Cephas and the Twelve, then to James and the apostles, then to more than 500 at a single event.  When he comes to the risen Lord’s appearance to Paul himself, all he can talk about is how monstrous it was, how untimely, given his own failings, “the least of the apostles,” indeed!   In today’s Gospel, after the miraculous draft of fish, Peter recoils, “Get away from me, Jesus!  I am a sinful man!”    It is hard to see God in us when we note how far we are from the splendor of God.   

But that is where the Psalm teaches us: it is gratitude and thankfulness for God’s gracious acts to us that give us eyes to see we indeed are in God’s image, we are indeed God’s glory: 

“I will give thanks to you, YHWH, with all my heart;
It is your praise that I will sing even before other gods.

Toward your Holy Temple I will bow down;

You name I will praise. 

All because of your love and steadfastness.

For you live up to your name of Being Itself,

and you do what you say despite everything. 

I called you, and you answered me;
You strengthened me from within…

Though YHWH is over all, he looks after the lowly.

And from afar he sees the haughty for what they are. 

Though I walk through troubles all about, you keep me safe;
you stretch forth your hand against my raging enemies. 

Your right hand shall save me.

YHWH will come through for me;
YHWH, your love lasts forever. 

You do not abandon us, the works of your hands.” (TAB)

Accepting our limitations, confessing our brokenness, is key in seeing the image of God in us, in perceiving glory here where we did not think it was.  Not that the brokenness is the image of God, but that such honesty, coupled with grateful hearts, helps us distinguish between flaws and pain and the underlying goodness.  We thus perceive the glorious brightness of the Creator in us and all about us. 

At the end of the Priestly story of creation in Genesis 1, we read: “God saw everything God had made: how very good it was!”  We are part of that.  Scripture here teaches clearly: we are God’s beautiful and good creatures.  We are in the image and likeness of God.  The Psalter teaches we are but a little lower than the angels.  Original blessing—the basic goodness at the heart of humanity—is scriptural teaching.  God’s image is woven throughout our nature, no matter how we may have broken or twisted it.  If it were somehow pulled out of the warp and woof of our beings, we would, simply, unravel.  The whole of creation is the Glory of God.  A Human Being, alive, is the Glory of God.  Original blessing is scriptural. 

But then so is the seeming universal tendency we all have toward brokenness.   Genesis chapter 2 is often called “the Fall of Adam and Eve” but it is most definitely NOT history.  Modern biblical scholarship and theology are unanimous that when we read scripture paying due attention to the literary forms it uses, it is clear that Genesis 1-11 contains origin myths and legends.  Genesis 2 is about ha’adam, Hebrew for “the Human Being,” or Every Man and Every Woman.  It is about each and every one of us, and the predicament we find ourselves in regarding evil, sin, and knowing the difference between good and bad.  The sin of Adam and Eve is not a historical event, but an image for how things are for each one of us.  To see evidence for it, look not to fossils or old books.  Look into a mirror. 

We often lose sight of this because of the historicized way these stories are commonly read, a process helped along by the rhetorical flourishes you can see in such places as Romans 5. But even here, note that Paul says Adam passed sin to his descendants “because all have sinned,” not “so that they all sin,” or “be punished for a sin not theirs.”   Augustine and Calvin’s doctrine of Original Sin  makes an error when they deny the underlying goodness and glory in creation, and in the human person.  They compound the error when they couple their doctrine of universal human depravity with a twisted idea of an angry God thirsty for blood and the Cross as God’s intentional infliction of pain on Jesus as a transferred punishment.  This is not scriptural at all.  But the idea of gratitude opening our eyes to God’s glory in us is scriptural.  And it is all the more powerful when our gratitude is for the love of God shown in God becoming truly human, human enough to suffer along with us unjust death on the cross at the hands of Empire. 

Other scriptures try to account for a glorious and good creation, including us, harboring brokenness.  The story of the flood in Genesis 9 says that every human heart mysteriously seems to have an urge to be bad, a yetser hara‘, despite our being in God’s image.    In Genesis 1, not all the commands of God in creation are perfectly reflected in the nature that results, especially if you read this in the original Hebrew.  “‘Let light be,’ commands God; ‘Light was,” comes back the report.  This is not ham-fisted editing: whoever put this story together knew exactly what they were doing.  ‘Grass grass,’ God tells the earth.  But the earth does not.  It ‘puts forth’ grass.  The created order is slightly disobedient from the start.”  Of the eight “let there be” orders in creation, only “Let there be light” is implemented exactly  (Charles Foster, The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin [Hodder & Stoughton, 2009] pp. 132-33). 

The whole of creation, including us, is the Glory of God.  When we call upon God, God hears us.  And when God calls us, we hear.  We see the glory.  We perceive the beauty and the love.  Gratitude and thanks are what opens our ears and eyes. 

Thanks be to God. 

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