Make Good Your Vows (Trinitarian Article)

 

Roman Votive Stele, 197 C.E., Musée gallo-romain de Fourvière, Lyon.  

 Inscription: Deo Mar/ti Aug[usto] / Callimo/rphus / secunda / rudis / v[otum] s[olvit] l[ibens] m[erito] 

(To the god Mars Augustus, Callimorphus, gladiator, second in command of his Company, on fulfilment of a prayer.)

Make Good Your Vows

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians

September 2019

“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving;

Pay your vows to the Most High.” Psalm 50:14

I have always had issues with the way vows and sacrifices are handled in Hebrew Scripture.  It is clear that most of the references are part of the ancient world’s concern with getting the Deity on your side by promising some offering IF the Deity grants the thing for which you are praying.  Common in almost ancient and primitive cultures—and some modern ones—worldwide, this concept of votive offerings has always seemed to me just a bit too close to the idea of bribery:  do what I ask, and I’ll give you a nice juicy sacrifice.  It seems tawdry, this quid pro quo approach to prayer and intercession. 

The idea, however, is almost universal.  All over Europe and North Africa there are pagan Roman ruins strewn with votive statues or with buildings paid for by the devout or the desperate marked by the initials VSLM—votum solvit libens merito—that is, “paid for in free and willing fulfillment of a vow.”  Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Confucian, and Shinto Temples all over Asia are surrounded by small Tchotchke shops specializing in incense sticks, paper images representing wealth, and fruit and candy to be used as votive offerings at the altars of the various divinities honored. 

Sometimes such attention is addressed to a specific Deity, other times it is addressed to a more generic “to whichever god it may concern.”  This is what is behind the curious start of Paul’s speech on the Areopagus in Athens in Acts 17.  Having seen the jumble of votive statues lining the streets, he says, “I noticed while walking here an altar with the inscription ‘to a god unknown.’ Now what you are worshipping in ignorance I intend to declare to you clearly. The God who made heaven and earth does not dwell in sanctuaries built by human hands.”  The pagan worshipper who had erected the votive altar had probably prayed to multiple gods, and when the prayer request had been fulfilled, not knowing exactly which prayer had done the trick, had covered all bases with the generic “god unknown” offering title. 

Hebrew Scripture’s most common reaction to this near universal desire for votive offerings is “if you’re going to promise God stuff, just make sure you keep your promise” that is, “Make good your vows to the Lord.” (cf. Deut 23:21-23; Num 30:2; Eccl 5:4-5). James 5:12 says if you are going to promise something, or swear an oath to God, not fulfilling it will bring great condemnation.  So better to not swear an oath.  This reasoning is probably behind Jesus’ own forbidding of oaths (Matt 5:33-37          )   Some writers in the Hebrew Scriptures were troubled by the very idea of bribing God with sacrifice. We occasionally get such lines as “to obey is better than sacrifice,” and “if you don’t care for the poor, your sacrifices are an abomination to me.”  But most often, such concern is expressed in declarations that it is the praise and thanksgiving that accompanies such sacrifices that matters, not their votive character:  “Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, come into my courts with praise” (cf. Psalm 22:25; 61:8; Jonah 2:9). 

The point, then, is not to bribe God, but to express thanks.  The intentionality of a vow plus the faithfulness in actually fulfilling the vow is seen as an essential part of building relationship.  We vow not because of who God is (i.e., to change him and convince him to do what we want), but rather because there is something in our hardwiring that requires commitment and follow-through so that we can grow in relationship.  There are some passages that suggest that we do this not only for ourselves, but to build the faith and trust of those about us who witness our vow and fulfilment (cf. Deut 23:23; Psalm 116:14, 18).  The point is not showing off or having people know what you have vowed and given: just as for alms, we must not let our right hand know what our left is doing (cf.  Matt 6:3-4).  Rather, it is about doing what we need to show thanks and praise, and build relationship, and do so unashamed to have others see the process, since they will be edified by it. Intentionality, commitment, and trusting follow-through in community are what vows are all about. 

Why talk about this now?  We are one month out from the start of our annual pledge drive.    I have often heard people say, “I give money to the Church, I just don’t want to make a pledge.”  For whatever motivation, this argument misses the point of commitment and follow-through, and short circuits the piece about intentionality. 

There is a spirituality in giving.  And it rightly should include commitment and follow through.  We have a month to go before the pledge drive begins.  Let’s take these four weeks and think about how we can rightly express our thanks and praise through committed giving of our resources.  Pray about it.  Run a few budget projections.  And then commit and follow through. 

Grace and Peace.

Fr. Tony+

Gentle Augustine (midweek Message)

Gentle Augustine

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 28, 2019

Today is the Feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo (died Aug. 28, A.D. 430).  Often seen as a dour bigot obsessed with sexual immorality because of his doctrine of Original Sin and his argument against British Monk Pelagius’s teaching on Free Will and good at the heart of creation, I think this Saint has gotten a bad rap.   I think that at heart, he was a gentle soul, acutely aware of his own failings and willing to suffer those of others.   He first came to theological prominence by his argument against the Donatists, the North African sect that broke away from the main body of the Church over how to deal with the failings of Christians.  One of the last pagan Emperors had ordered the persecution of Christians who refused to renounce their faith:  clergy were forced to turn in their Christian Scriptures to authorities or suffer death and torture.  When the persecution ended and a new Emperor became Christian, rigorists insisted that there be no forgiveness to these “tradditores” (“those who had handed over” sacred things), a word from which we get the word “traitor.”  Moral failings in clergy for Donatists meant that the ministry and sacraments of such priests were invalid, and not Christian.  Augustine, who had himself come to Christian faith only after a decades-long process of struggling with sexual sin and his own raging libido, argued that the Church was called “holy” not because its members and clergy were already holy, but because holiness was their aim.  The Church was for sinners, not only for saints.  All such tradditores, after a penance sufficient to soothe the hearts of those scandalized by previous betrayals and misdoings, were to be received once again into full fellowship and ministry. 

Even Augustine’s condemnation of Pelagius was based on his empathy for those struggling with sin:  Pelagius’s argument for absolute free will meant that the Church was unable to give any ministry to people afflicted with obsessive or compulsive, recidivist sin except “pick yourselves up by your bootstraps, or get out!” 

Most of us know the story of Augustine’s own conversion:  convicted by the unending pleas of his mother Monika and by the reasoning and sermons of Bishop Ambrose of Milan, he overheard a child’s game from over the garden wall, a voice chanting “pick it up and read it” (tolle lege).  Augustine picked up a Bible, opened it at random, and the first verse to appear to his view was Romans 13:13-14: “ Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”  He applied this to himself, who by his own account had for decades prayed, “Lord, give me chastity, but not yet!”  His deep awareness of his own troubled past gave him empathy for sinners, and this is what lies behind both his argument against the rigor of Donatists and his rejection of Pelagius’ austerity toward those who did not use their “free will” rightly.   

Augustine taught that Evil did not exist as a separate power in opposition to Good:  rather, Evil was the privation or absence of Good, just as darkness is the absence of light.  For him, the challenge was not to fight and defeat evil so much as to bring good out of it.  He wrote, “Anyone who does not love Him Who made man has not learned to love man aright. ... No. All things proclaim Him, all things speak. Their beauty is the voice by which ... ‘God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.’”  This, again, is a mark of Augustine’s empathy. 

A controversialist and polemic writer, as bishop, Augustine kept a scroll of calligraphy posted in his office that said, “Here, no evil will be spoken of anyone.”    He had argued that the Church try to root out Donatism; but when the Empire began to persecute them with violence, he defended the very heretics he had previously accused: gentle and fair treatment coupled with good teaching and example might in this case work to bring good out of evil.   

Grace and Peace. 

--Fr. Tony+

Slack (proper 16c)

Slack (Proper 16C)

Homily Delivered 25 August 2019

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

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

The Very Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

Isaiah 58:9b-14; Psalm 103:1-8; Hebrews 12:18-29; Luke 13:10-17

God, give us hearts to love and feel,

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

 

A few years ago, Elena and I went on a cruise in the waters of Alaska and British Columbia, during which time we saw some of the great cliff-bound inlets of the Inner Passage.  One of these is called Ford’s Terror.  It is named after one Harry L. Ford, a crew member of the US. Coast and Geodetic Survey Vessel Carlile P. Patterson.   One day in 1889, Ford, doing a survey of the area, , took a small rowboat into the steep and glacier-bound fjord alone.  The water in the narrow inlet as he entered was calm and relaxed, what sailors call “slack water.”  After a short time looking at the icebergs, harbor seals, and high cliffs, he rowed back to the inlet to go back to Endicott Arm and his ship.  But the tide had turned.  What had been calm, peaceful, and still turquoise water was now a raging torrent of white with a wall of curling surf taller than his boat was long.  For the next twelve hours, cold and hungry, he waited in terror, fearing that perhaps the calm water would not return before he died.  But at the next low tide, during the short interval between the tide going out and coming in, the water went slack again, and he was able to row out again, grateful and with a story of terror that would immortalize his name in maps and Gazetteers.  

“Slack”—the term draws up images of calm and peaceful water, but, for wind sailors at least, also risks water that is too relaxed, without enough wind above it to drive a sail-boat.    Slack sails are useless.  The word thus also means the lack of tension and tautness necessary to accomplish things.  My father always told me as a boy to “give it some slack” when I was fishing so that the line would let the baited hook drift naturally in the deep water.    Later, as a teenager, I came to feel he was perhaps a little too attentive to my life. “Give it some slack,” became “Cut me some slack, will you?”    Even later, one of the worse epithets my children hurled at each other when they might not be pulling their own weight was “you slacker!” 

Today’s Hebrew Scripture asks us to cut each other some slack, give each other a break.  Remove the yoke from among you.  Don’t exploit each other.  Remove the pointing of the finger, speaking ill of others. Don’t reduce others to objects to be evaluated and judged, ridiculed, made fun of, or maligned.  Give food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted.  Stand with the downtrodden.  Help and don’t judge.  Give them a break because they need it, not because they deserve it. 

The passage also asks us to cut ourselves some slack.   It ties these social justice issues to the Sabbath.  We shouldn’t place a heavy yoke upon us ourselves, even if we think this serves our purposes.   We shouldn’t belittle ourselves, or think ourselves slackers when we take needed rest.  We need to find time to rest each week, and make this a priority.  We need to not consider this shameful, or slacking off, but rather honorable:

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,

from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;

if you call the sabbath a delight

and the holy day of the LORD honorable;

if you honor it, not going your own ways,

serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

then you shall take delight in the LORD….

To be sure, the Sabbath is not just a call for regular down time.  “Remember the seventh day by keeping it holy.”  This means, as the Prayer Book puts it, a duty “to set aside regular times for worship, prayer, and the study of God’s ways” (p. 847).  

Yet rest is still at the heart of the commandment.  In the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, we read, “"[The Sabbath] is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 2172). 

In the Gospel reading today, Jesus gives a woman a break, and cuts her some slack.  She has been bound down by muscle tension, here personified as a demonic spirit, that held her doubled over for years.   He simply lays his hands on her, unbinds her, relaxes her, and restores her slack, natural posture.   She rejoices, thanking God. 

But a community religious leader nearby is not pleased.  He sees Jesus as a competitor calling for people to be lax in following the Law, slack in their religious duties.  He doesn’t want that particular yoke removed, and he points his finger:  “Your business appears to be faith healing and here you are, doing business on the Sabbath! Jesus, you slacker!”

Most rabbinic treatments of the Sabbath allow the saving of a life, even if the effort otherwise looks like work.  When Jesus is criticized for breaking the Sabbath by healing in John, what is at issue seems to be not the healing itself, but the means he uses:  he mixes his saliva with dirt to make a kind of eye ointment.  Mixing mortar for building or clay for potting were defined as work forbidden on Sabbath. 

In today’s story, being bent over clearly does not rate as a life-threatening condition.  “There are six other days of the week on which you could have done this,” says Jesus’ opponent.   His list of things forbidden or allowed on Sabbath has become taut and inflexible, the opposite of the restful slack Sabbath intends.    

Jesus points this out by noting that his critic fails to see the joy of the woman.  Pulling animals out of the mire was allowed on Sabbath in rigorous interpretations, even if their lives were not immediately threatened.  This woman was more important than an animal!  Her taut binding, bent over in pain for years, was worse than the suffering of a beast caught in the mud!  So couldn’t an a fortiori case be made to allow healing her? 

We are seeing here a Galilean legal flexibility running headlong against Judean legal rigor:  rural slackness versus urban tautness.  

Generally a critic of rigorists, Jesus himself could have his moments of tightness:  it is almost certain that the Historical Jesus forbade any taking of oaths or swearing on things, and the casual repudiation of one’s dependent spouse that was the divorce of his day.  

Second Isaiah had said, “if you honor [the Sabbath], … then you shall take delight in the LORD” (Isa 59:12-13).  The woman who has set free from her bonds here is rejoicing in the Lord, and so, thinks Jesus, how can we possibly have violated the Sabbath?   A good tree yields sweet fruit, a bad tree, bitter.  What possible criticism is there when such obvious good has been wrought? 

Knowing when to cut ourselves and each other slack, and when to keep taut the line that ties us to the Good and the Right, and gets things done, is a trick.  Using a set of external rules to tell us this will, invariably, lead to a tight, inflexible rule that itself must be broken.  It leads to the pointing finger, the heavy yoke.  This art cannot be mastered without an open heart and open hands, without trust in God, and benevolence or good will for all.  It is rooted the principle that Jesus taught: forgive others that we may be forgiven; treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated.   This complex of ideas is covered by what Buddhists call detachment, compassion, and doing no harm. 

When Harry Ford was caught in what is now called  Ford’s Terror, he almost certainly prayed for slack water.  We all pray for slack at times and we all must be able to give it. We are all in this together, and proper humility demands that we have solidarity with all our other creatures.  It demands that we be gentle.  

Remove the yoke, take away the pointing finger. The rule of thumb that Jesus uses here in this story is good—look at how our actions affect ourselves and others.  Regardless of pointing fingers or the yokes laid upon us, we must give the line slack or pull it taut as necessary to advance human dignity, love, and freedom.  

Jesus said his mission was to announce the Year of the Lord’s Favor, to break the bonds, to set the captive loose.  He announced the coming of God’s Reign in full power, and acted in ways that show he saw himself as the Year of Jubilee when all debts were forgiven, as the Sabbath of Lord, when all could rest and rejoice. 

He wants to cut us slack; we should let him do that.  He calls us to cut ourselves and each other slack.  This is how the pointing finger will be removed, and yokes broken.  Let go.  Cut someone some slack.  Give them a break. And let’s give ourselves a break as well. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

Beauty of Holiness (midweek message)

Beauty of Holiness

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 21, 2019

As many of you know, I was raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to then as “Mormons.”  Church in my youth was a very horizontal, not a vertical, affair:  lay leadership, congregants teaching and preaching to each other.  We did have a weekly “sacrament,” what we called Holy Communion: a 10-minute exercise with water in little paper cups and broken white bread that served as a short side show break in the main event, the “talks” we gave each other on gospel topics.  There was no liturgical reading of scripture, set prayers or responses, usually only one musical “number” from a poorly rehearsed volunteer choir, and director-led gospel songs and hymns for opening, sacrament, and closing.  Once a month, we had “fast and testimony” service where the prepared “talks” were replaced by open-mic sharing of personal faith stories. 

When I was a sophomore in High School, our family was invited to attend the wedding of the daughter of one of my father’s business partners.  He ran the office machines store in Wenatchee, Washington, while my father ran the one in Moses Lake, about 40 minutes away.  My father’s partner was an Episcopalian, and the wedding was to be held at St. Luke’s in Wenatchee.  It was the first time I attended a church service outside of Mormonism. 

The evening service was lit by dozens of candles, set in multi-branched candelabra.  The ministers wore exquisite vestments, shiny and colorful.  The music was gorgeous, and the preaching well prepared by a professional trained in the subtleties of scriptural interpretation and theology.  The bride wore a white lace dress with a 10-foot train; the groom was in white-tie.  The church was filled with clouds of sweet-smelling incense that accented and at times obscured the blazing candles.  The liturgy was chanted, and we all followed along in the Book of Common Prayer. 

I was astounded.  It was like nothing I had ever seen or experienced.  Participating, I realized I finally understood the word “worship”: prayers, hymns, and beauty addressed to God, rather than teaching and admonition addressed to each other.   On the ride home, I asked my parents why it was different from our weekly church fare. “Oh—the Episcopalians are like Catholics: they love stagecraft and scripted texts rather than the plain old Gospel.”   But this seemed to me to miss the deep beauty of what had gone on, and from that Sunday on in LDS Church, I always was more solemn, more God-directed, and more attentive during “sacrament.”  And I was increasingly aware of the poverty of the preaching and the lack of reverential “worship” in my Mormon ward. 

I learned the great benefits of horizontal, people-to-people communal life in faith in the Church of my youth.  For that, I will always be grateful.  But by the time I was in college, I had become more and more hungry for worship and the “beauty of holiness.”  This was fed somewhat by occasional attendance at Roman Catholic mass in graduate school, but by the time Elena and I were intentionally in “church-shopping” mode, we realized that many of the things we found repellant in Mormonism were also shared by the Roman Church, including an overbearing hierarchy,  demands to let intellectual life be subsumed by the religious experience, and subordination of women.  

When we first attended an Episcopal Church as adults open to changing churches, at All Saints Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland, we felt we had come home.  This broad church parish had its own problems, to be sure, but the beauty of holiness was in every gathering, rightly called “worship services,” characterized by reverential prayers addressed to God in well thought-out and prepared words, intentional acts of worship including beauty appealing to all the senses, and well informed and responsible preaching.   Even the hymns were better music and literature. 

I am grateful I am an Episcopalian. 

Grace and peace. 

--Fr. Tony+

Jumble Sale Spirituality

Jumble Sale Spirituality

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 14, 2019

“Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.”
                                      ― Thomas Merton

Reducing things can be hard.  After the death of a loved one, going through their belongings and deciding what to keep and what to let go of, and how best to dispose of them, or simply moving from a larger house to a smaller one and deciding what to get rid of—it’s hard emotionally.  In some ways, getting rid of things emotionally stands for letting go of past arcs in our life, putting aside (forever?) past hopes and passions, and seems we are cutting of little (or large) bits of ourself.  The exercise can make us anxious. 

Elena and I lived in the U.S. Foreign Service for 25 years: that meant a permanent change of station (PCOS) every 2-4 years, and a lot of downsizing for each move.  Now living in Ashland for soon 8 years, this is the longest we have ever lived anywhere.  And with no “Zen exercise for the movers” during that time, things accumulate. 

But it is important to not link ourselves too closely with our “things.”  Periodically reducing the inventory is an important spiritual exercise that helps us order our lives and priorities, and see what our hearts find truly most important. 

This weekend is the Trinity Ashland Rummage Sale.  Getting rid of things—preferably nice things—and selling them at a premium so that others can enjoy them without going beyond their means is the core transaction of this ritual way of fundraising.  If at private homes, we call them “Yard Sales” because of where the goods are displayed.  North Americans call them “Rummage Sales” because of how the buyers must search through barely sorted piles of things to find the specific treasure they seek or some unexpected pleasure inducing object.  I prefer the British name, what we used to call the main event at the Cathedral Michelmas Fair in Hong Kong, the “Jumble Sale,”  named for how we actually set the things out—half sorted piles, with little regard for the provenance or history of the objects themselves. 

Elena and I intend to make the Rummage Sale our annual chance for simplifying and unencumbering our physical belongings.  I invite you all to do the same.   The main beneficiaries of the sale are impoverished students entering into classes and members of the community with constrained budgets.  It is a community service.  And it raises a good chunk of change for the Trinity Budget, which now includes the Music ministries. 

Trinity is accepting Rummage Sale goods from today through Friday.  Don’t see it as losing your stuff.  Think of it as sharing it with others, and helping the Church in the process. 

Grace and Peace.  Fr. Tony+

Count the Stars (Proper 14c)

Count the Stars
Homily delivered the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14; Year C RCL)

The Very Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
11 August 2019; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Gen 15:1-6,  Psa 33:12-22, Heb 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40

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

During the summer when I was 16 years old, I worked as a life guard at the local public pool.  In my off hours, I read a lot that summer, including the autobiographies of Malcolm X and of Mohandas K. Gandhi.  They made me think a lot about faith, justice, and morals.   I had also worked through an introductory college text book on logic, to help me prepare for the upcoming high school debate season.  I was seized by the idea of parsimony in explanations and had begun wielding “Occam’s Razor” to cut back the superfluous when simpler explanations sufficed.   One day, out in the summer heat on a life-guard high chair looking out over the swimmers, it occurred to me:  I could understand the world without any recourse to the idea of “God.”  I had been raised in a religious family, and was full of stories from Scripture that saw the world with God in charge.  Though increasingly at school I noticed the conflicting accounts of science and religion on the origin of life, various historical events, and even morality and sexuality, it had never occurred to me to question these stories told me by those I loved.  But as I sat there, I wondered if “God talk” were just a superfluous explanation of things better and more elegantly described without recourse to stories seeming to me more and more like ancient pagan myths.  Looking up at the sun, I saw merely a ball of superheated gas, not a celestial sign of God’s power and love.  The sky around it was an immense sea of atmosphere before empty space, reflecting and defusing the sun’s light to reveal the exquisite blue.  In that moment, I was freed from the burden that religion, swallowed whole and without question, had imposed on me.  A couple years later, when the song came out, I recognized the deep emotional roots of John Lennon’s call:  “Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try.  No hell below us, Above us, only sky.  Imagine all the people living for today...  You may say that I’m a dreamer, But I’m not the only one. I hope one day you’ll join us, And the world shall live as one.”  

But by that time, I had run into despair and fear of meaninglessness, and had let those non-Christian autobiographies trigger in me on a journey that led me back to trust in God more deeply, albeit claiming less certitude.  What I had shaved off with Occam’s Razor—the superfluous theistic explanations of how the universe works—never grew back.  But in its stead had grown a sense not of how but of why.  Those God-talk stories seemed to tell “why?” better and more parsimoniously than any of the secular tales.  

Today’s scripture lessons are all about faith.  Here is my translation of the opening of today’s epistle reading from Hebrews: 

“Trusting in God, faith, is what undergirds whatever hope we have; it is what makes things otherwise unseen clear to our view.   It was, after all, by their faith that our ancestors gained special distinction.  And it is by faith that we are able to perceive that God’s speech called the universe into existence: things visible created by the invisible”  (Heb 11:1-3).   

The Greek word normally translated by “faith,” is in most cases better translated by “trust.”  Faith—explicit or not—is what lies beneath all hope.  It is what helps us see truth otherwise invisible.  That’s because meaning grows primarily out of an orientation of the heart, not the opinions of the mind.  That orientation is trust, openness coupled with confidence. 

The lesson from Genesis tells us the story of Abram.  In Rabbinic lore, Abram came from a family who for a living made idols, symbols for all the various competing things at work—fearsome or attractive—in the world about us.  The One God calls him out of this life of pursuing things before his eyes, and move from his ancestral home.  Today’s  epistle says he responds by following the call, “not knowing where he was going.”  God promises him a new home, and legacy of family.  But Abram’s eyes tell him that none of that is possible: he and his wife are sterile and well beyond child-bearing years.  God takes Abram out under the night sky, tells him to look up, and “Count the stars.  That’s how many descendants you’ll have.”  The text says Abram trusted God’s promise, despite it all, and “God booked this trust as Uprightness.” 

“Count the stars”: more descendants than the stars in the heavens!  But this is more than an extravagant simile.  “Count the stars”: God here calls Abram to look at one part of the world before him, calls him to visit a thin place, and contemplate the awe-inspiring night sky. The awe leads Abram to trust. 

But note:  it is impossible literally to count all the stars.  There are just too many, and the division between visible stars and ones too dim to see is too blurred.  You can’t count the stars.  But you can try.  And in trying you realize that you just can’t do it. 

“Count the stars—that’s how my promise will be!”   Things impossible now will become accessible.  Things invisible now become visible to a trusting heart.       

Faith and trust are not the opposite of disbelief and distrust.  They are not locked in a life and death struggle.  Rather, they are in dialogue.  Faith is trusting, despite all the reasons you have NOT to trust.  Faith cannot bring the invisible to light without working daily with the fears, frustrations, and doubt brought by the darkness about. 

Galileo Galilei famously defended himself against the Inquisition by referring to the continuity of faith and reason, belief and doubt:  “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

And just as faith grows from doubt, doubt itself reflects the grounds for our faith. 

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote to his youngest son Christopher, “I imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water.”  His point was that we are generally unaware of the framework of our lives—we take it for granted, and do not question it much.  A fish in water is unaware of the water about it: that is just how its world is.  It knows nothing of wetness, though wetness is all about it, because it can’t even conceive of dryness.  But take it out of the water, and it becomes acutely aware that something—something important and necessary for life—is missing.  Tolkien’s friend C.S. Lewis later wrote,   

 “My [adolescent] argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it?  A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet...  [A]theism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning” (from Mere Christianity).
“[Look at how w]e are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. ‘How he’s grown!’ we exclaim, ‘How time flies!’ as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal” (from Reflections on the Psalms.)

Jesus tells us how faith grows:  “Put your efforts in building treasure in heaven.  Where your treasure is, you heart will follow.”  Trust is a matter of the heart.  Where we put our efforts is where our hearts wind up.  If you at times just cannot muster trust in God, seek out moments of awe, count the stars.  But then act as if you already have that trust, and it will come.  Where you invest your treasure, your heart will indeed follow.   Serving others--being God’s love in the world—makes  visible God’s love.  And as we see it, our trust grows.  Like Abram counting the stars, be honest about fears and doubts, but set out anyway, even though we don’t know exactly where we’re going.

Count the stars.  Look honestly at our reasons for doubting God, for not trusting in the Love behind all things.  God knows the world we live in is full of evidence of a lack of love.  But the very fact that we find this wrong, that it makes us uncomfortable, that it makes us say “ALRIGHT ALREADY SO WHERE IS GOD?” tells us that this is not all there is.  The glimpses of love and blessing we show and see from time to time actually reveal the true heart of things, the invisible heart of the world that faith makes visible.  As beautiful and sweet as this world is, it at times makes us gasp for air, like a fish out of water.  That’s because we are not made for this world alone, and the imprint of the Creator’s love is in our hard-wiring.    It turns us away from despair and back to the Creator whose image we bear.  Count the stars.  And know you are beloved.   

In the name of God,  Amen. 

Seeing with God's Eyes (mid-week)

Seeing with God’s Eyes

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

August 7, 2019

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? ... Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”  (BCP, 305, from the Baptismal Covenant)

I have heard recently, from several people, that they cannot have friends who support President Trump and his policies.  “I just can’t bear to hear them spout their hatred and bias, and don’t want to be guilty of enabling Fascism” is the usual reason given for turning aside from friends from decades back, or even from family members.  Painful as such breaks are, some justify them by saying “I am tolerant of everything but intolerance itself,” and pointing to systemic bias and discrimination and how deeply harmful mere personal bias becomes with joined with a dominant position in society and the implicit privilege this brings.  Privilege blinds those who enjoy it:  they are usually unable to see their own bias.  So the need to break from them is all the stronger, if only to witness to them about something they are unable to see. 

Most of you know my own left-leaning political persuasions (I am not sure if that is by way of a boast or confession!).  Many have expressed support when I in preaching touch on how I believe the Gospel directly relates to many issues that are confronting us as a people.  But some have gently chided me privately for keeping and even valuing the friendships I have with those who differ from us in their views of immigration, women’s and minority rights, and race.    

We must not enable wickedness, or stand idly by when great horror against whole classes of people is carried out by a government that supposedly represents us.  This is why it is such a good thing to see the recent comments by the leaders of Washington National Cathedral and Presiding Bishop Michael Curry calling out the President for hate speech.  But that said, we must not fall into the trap of adopting the very bigotry we condemn as wickedness in others by putting ideas above people, and by reducing any human being to a mere political opinion or partisan affiliation.    

We human beings seem to be hard wired in such a way that we band together with those we see as “like us” to the exclusion of “the others.”  Tribalism, sectarianism, partisanship, and, yes, even racism, xenophobia, and fear of sexual minorities are all manifestations of this near universal failing, the desire to book everyone as either one of us or one of them.  

But Jesus calls us to be better than that.  “Who is my neighbor,” asks the lawyer.  Jesus replies by telling a story where the “neighbor” is the one who shows compassion on a person in need who is not part of their tribe, the parable of the “Good Samaritan.”  He asks us to imitate God, who pours out the blessings of rain and sunshine equally upon the righteous and the wicked.  “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” he says, which in the context means, “Be compassionate every bit as much as you see God having compassion.”   

“Treat others as you would be treated” Jesus says, the Golden Rule.  But this also means evaluating yourself by the same rules you evaluate others by: “The measure you apply to others will be the measure applied to you.”   “Don’t complain about the speck of dust on another’s eye when you can’t seem to pull out the log stuck in your own eye.” 

Never reduce a family member or friend to a mere caricature of a person by booking them merely as a sum of their political opinions and actions.  In so doing, we are not seeing the image of God in them, who, like us, are imperfect creatures of God. 

Accepting the fully well-rounded humanity of others and ourselves means seeing past differences and maintaining relationships despite such disagreement, especially when the disagreement is on basic values.     

None of this means, of course, giving up on pursuing justice and the dignity of all.  Desmond Tutu’s line still applies:  “Silence in the face of oppression means you are siding with the oppressor.”  But it does mean being respectful, and in never taking as a default position assuming the worst of motives for our opponents. 

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said it clearly: the line between good and evil is not between groups of people, whether it be between nations, economic classes, races, or political parties.  The line between good and evil is thin, but very clearly defined, and it runs down the center of each and every human heart.  And who wants to kill a part of his own heart?  It is so much easier to simply blame others and assign all evil to them.  He said this in reference to his guards and interrogators in Stalin’s system of political prisons and concentration camps: even they had a choice between good and evil each moment.  Denying that they too were created in God’s image meant denying his own humanity. 

I invite all of us to listen more intently to those from whom we differ even as we continue to engage them, relate to them, and express our values and beliefs and the reasons we feel they have gone astray. 

Grace and peace.  –Fr. Tony+   

The Point in Pointlessness (Proper 13C)

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Rich Fool  

 

The Point in Pointlessness
Homily delivered the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13; Year C RCL)

The Very Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
4 August 2019; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

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

It’s been a hard week: deaths in the parish, increased ugliness in our national political life, and yet again mass murders with assault weapons in El Paso and Dayton.  Yikes.  The Lectionary readings for today seem addressed to moments when we look at the broken world about us and wonder if there is any meaning, any point.

 הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל׃

Haveyl havalim ,’amar Qohelet,  Havel havalim, hakkol havel.

“‘Zero of Zeroes,’ says the Gatherer [of Sayings], ‘Zero of Zeroes, it’s all a big Zero.’”  

These grim intonations begin the book of Qohelet, or, as it is called in Greek, Ecclesiastes.  There a jaded old man, who has been through it all, and found it all pointless, condemns all human efforts, whether frivolous and sinful or even serious and responsible.  They all are, in the words of the King James Bible, “vanity of vanities (totally pointless.)”  They are “chasing after the wind.”

The Psalm picks up the theme:  “We cannot pay the price for our life, the price of not dying and escaping the grave, because it costs more than any of us can afford.  For even the prudent and wise end up dying just as the foolish and stupid.  Their legacy is the place they rot, like wild animals.”   Such pessimism, common in Hebrew Wisdom Literature, is expressed most clearly in another passage in Qohelet: 

“What difference does it make whether we love or hate?  Both are equally pointless, because we all share the same end, whether just or wicked, good or bad, clean or unclean, religious or irreligious.  As it is for the good person, so it is for the sinner; as it is for those who take their oaths seriously and those who violate them.  Among all the things under the sun, this is the worst: that the same end awaits us all.  This fills people’s minds with evil, their hearts with madness as long as they live: for in the end, we all wind up dead… and a dog alive is better off than a lion dead” (Eccl 9:1-5).

These words ring true for many of us, because we look around at times and wonder if indeed life is pointless.  But to find this in the Bible shocks us:  isn’t God’s word supposed to tell us of hope and meaning, say that love must and will overcome hate, and we should observe faith in practice, not pursue nihilist pleasure. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” says Qohelet, “And even this too is totally pointless.”   

There are many ideas and teachings included in the Bible by way of expressing partial truth on the way to fuller revelation.  Some are there, I think, simply by way of bad example: the Deuteronomist suggests that God commands genocide against idolatrous peoples; the Psalmist prays that soldiers will bash in the heads of his enemies’ babies…  This is the Bible we’re talking about here!  “Say it ain’t so, Joe!”  And indeed, many other passages condemn such a take on the world.

Within the whole arc of scripture, admission of the pointlessness of life apart from God is in fact a step toward accepting its deep meaning when we are within the living Christ, as pointed out in today’s epistle.  In light of Jesus’ resurrection, we know that in death life is not ended, but changed.  All will be right in the end, and if things are not all right, then it is not yet the end.  But in this life, we walk by faith and not by sight, so Qohelet’s specter of pointlessness still speaks to us in our bad moments.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus himself expresses a pessimistic view of the best-laid plans of mice and men.  He tells us the exquisite little parable of man who is a model of responsibility and prudence, yet whose efforts end up pointless.  A wealthy farmer plans carefully to insure his security, only to be caught unawares that very night by unexpected death.  He talks to himself: “Soul of mine, you have many good things stored up for years to come. So take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”  He is quoting Qohelet’s line, “Eat, drink, and be merry,” without realizing that “this too is pointless.”  He talks to himself as if to a stranger: such chasing the wind means alienation from self. 

That is because it comes from feeling alienated from God, who replies, “You fool!  This very night your life will end!  Now who’s going to get all that stuff?” 

“You fool!”  The reference is to Psalm 14:1,  “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”  The rich farmer has thought, felt, and acted for all intents and purposes as if there were no God: an atheist in practice.  His praiseworthy prudence has distracted him from the truth that in this life, nothing apart from God is truly secure.  Nothing can be taken for granted; rather it should all be accepted with thankfulness.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus points to birds and wildflowers as signs of God’s love.  If God feeds and clothes his lowly creatures so well, there is no need for worry, no need to strive for more: “Your Heavenly Father knows all that you need… So work first for God’s Reign and the justice it demands, and God will make sure you get what you need” (Matt. 6:19-33).  The point is thankfulness and the compassion that comes from it, not being “righteous.”  “God sends his blessings of Sun and Rain both on the Godly and the Ungodly alike” he says.  “We cannot enter God’s Reign unless we become helpless like little children.” 

“Being rich for God” or “storing up treasures in heaven” for Jesus is not another struggle, a way of bribing love out of a supposedly unloving God, or of showing how much better we are than others.  All that, too, is pointless chasing after the wind. 

Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Criticized regularly for being too lax in his expectations of his followers, he throws lots of parties and regularly tells them to rejoice and be thankful (that’s why “hallowed be thy name” leads in the Lord’s Prayer).

But a heart in gaining gratitude leaves its baggage behind, whether it be guilt, resentment, fear, or greed of any kind.  “Go in at the narrow door; for the door is wide and the path easy that leads to losing yourself.  Many people go in there and do not come out.  The door is narrow and the path is tight that leads to life.  At any given time, there are only few who can manage it.” (Matt. 7:13-14, paraphrased).  There is no room for baggage.  If our hearts are weighed down with desire rather than lifted up with thankfulness, we simply cannot squeeze through.    C.S. Lewis expressed it this way: hold anything back from God, and sooner or later you will lose it.  Give it all up to God, and God will give it and more back to us, created anew. 

Acting as if God were not taking care of us, were not a good and loving Parent, as if we thought that God did not exist, or that God were not unconditional Love itself—this is foolishness, “totally pointless.” 

Our eyes must see God at work in the world about us, and our heart must be thankful, set on God the giver of every good gift. In this world that appears so forlorn of love, so seemingly pointless, there is no room for illusion or fantasy.  No room for self-alienation, seeing yourself as a stranger.  No room alienating others, identifying them as enemies or competitors, or scapegoating and blaming them for our own failings.  No room for letting our fears, anxieties, and guilt run rampant and blot out the table of plenty already set before us.   Acceptance, thanksgiving, and openness are the right posture of any soul that would enter the heart of God. Greed—whether for money, security, pleasure, power, prestige, beauty, knowledge, sanctity, or perfect domesticity—greed is baggage that simply cannot fit through that narrow door.   

And that, I think, is the ultimate point in life’s apparent pointlessness. 

If we're not quite there, that's OK.  Remember Jesus said our heart will follow where we place our treasure.  We can act as if we had faith, and faith will come. 

Jesus here is not telling us to forgo any thought of modest retirement accounts or prudent savings.  Elsewhere he tells us to be harmless as doves but smart as snakes.  He expects street smarts, that his disciples put aside chasing after wind, being fools.   He makes fun of practical atheism, acting as if God didn't exist, and ridicules the excuse we tell ourselves for it, “God helps those who help themselves.” 

Unlike the Buddha, Jesus doesn’t tell us to reject all desire, all attachment. He simply says that above all else, we should be thankful.  Gratitude makes room in our hearts to see things and ourselves as God sees us.  And in this, there is great meaning, order, and purpose to life.  He counsels acceptance, not detachment; gratitude, not indifference; passion, not apathy.   Jesus is not damning desire per se, but questioning desire apart from God.  

Practical atheism is not an option.  We mustn’t tart up our greed and say it is prudence.  We mustn’t justify our desire to be in control and autonomous by saying this is our right.  Our trust in God must show fruits in our life, in how we use our time and resources.  Jesus does not call us all to be spiritual supermen, or ascetics.  He calls us all simply to take up his easy yoke, his light burden: trust and love God, be honest, and act with the compassion for others that grows from this.  Work justice, do kindness, and walk humbly with our God.  

May we answer the call. 

In the name of God,  Amen.