Fake Jesus, True Jesus -- midweek

Fake Jesus, True Jesus?

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 29, 2020

Yahweh said:
These people draw near with their mouths
    and with their lips honor me,
    but their hearts are far from me,
and the worship they give me is mere human invention, learned by rote;
So I will again do
    amazing things with this people,
    shocking and amazing.
The wisdom of their wise shall perish,
    and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden.   

                                 (Isaiah 29:13-14)

Once in a great while, I hear the complaint that our sermons are “too political” with the comment, “and Jesus does not agree.”   Both Deacon Meredith and I try hard to avoid letting our own partisan opinions leak into our homilies.  But in the current climate of identity-group mutual reproach, anything ministers might say on the matter of the sin of racism, or of abusive behavior by anyone, including governmental officials and security agents, is seen as “taking sides” in the partisan divide of our nation.   The gospel is not partisan, but by its very nature is indeed political—Jesus calls us to new life not only in our individual piety and holiness, but also in our shared life and community practice of fairness, compassion, and justice. 

It may be that people simply want “equal time” of pointing out the sins not only of systemic racism and police brutality, but also of the “rioters,” haters of the police, the military, and the President.  But I do not believe it is that cut and dried:   lumping together large numbers of lawful, peaceful protestors, and even people who show solidarity with the oppressed by “taking a knee” during the National Anthem, and labeling them all as “rioters,” “haters,” “thugs,” and “socialists” is a symptom of tribal division: anyone not observing the rituals and niceties of “loyal American patriotism” is marked as the other, as the enemy, as the problem, deserving of violent force and expulsion from the chosen people. 

Dolling this up and parading it as “what Jesus wants” is a horrible misreading of Jesus: 

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?  In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.  Thus you will know them by their fruits.   Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’  Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’”                   (Matthew 7:15-23)

Look at the fruits of people’s teaching and faith.    Do they build compassion, and love, or alienation and hatred?  Do they defend the oppressed, or solidify the power of oppressors?  Do they help us see and empathize with those most at risk, or help us turn a blind eye to them? 

The Church, whenever it has been bound together with state power in the suppression of human dignity, has betrayed Jesus and his teachings.  Those arguing for such are indeed wolves in sheep’s clothing.  Whenever the Church has sought to pursue justice, love compassion, and walk humbly, it has helped bring near the Reign of God.   

It is a pretty good indication that your Jesus is an idol, an anti-Christ, if he hates the same people you hate, and commands you to show no mercy in dealing with them.  On the other hand, a Jesus who calls us to new insights, fresh conviction of error and lack of charity, and bold and risky defense of the marginalized is almost certainly the same being whom the Romans put to death for calling them and their Temple establishment quislings out.  This Lord, whom God raised from the dead, calls us even now to follow him. 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

God Here and Now (Proper 12A)

God Here and Now

26 July 2020

Proper 12A

Said Mass on the Labyrinth 8:00 a.m.;

Said Mass with Sung Antiphons Live Streamed from the Nave 10:00 a.m.

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

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

Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b or Psalm 128; Romans 8:26-39;

Matt 13:31-33, 42-52

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

What would the world look like if things were as they ought to be, if God were truly in charge, right here, right now?  Jesus regularly asked himself this question.  He tells parables to try to get at the matter.  We heard several today: the Mustard Plant, the Yeast, the Hidden Treasure, the Costly Pearl, and the Dragnet.   

What would it be like if God were truly in charge, right here, right now?  The people around Jesus gave various answers: The Sadducees and Herodians said things were already as they ought to be.   The Essenes argued that the world would not be set to right until their kooky little sect had conquered the world by force of arms in apocalyptic struggle.  The Zealots thought it would come through violent revolt against the Roman occupiers.   The Pharisees taught that it lay only in personal piety, scripture study and prayer, and putting a fence around the law so as to separate Jews from gentiles more and more.

Jesus’ parables give a different answer.  They grab you and throw you for a loop—demand a change of perspectives and expectations.

 

God here and now, in charge—It’s like a mustard plant:  a tiny seed that produces a huge plant, growing in unusual places, unplanned, apart from human control.   It does not measure up to the usual images for God’s kingdom—vineyards, olive trees, or the great cedar tree, which in Ezekiel shelters the wild birds in its branches.  For Jesus, the birds seek shelter in a huge weed.  

God here and now, in charge—is like a woman who stirs in a couple of tablespoons of yeast into three measures—about fifty pounds—of flour.   With a little time, that huge amount of dough is raised.  God in charge is not the pure, unleavened bread kosher for Passover, but the impure bread of ordinary life.   God in charge is not the holy work of male priests, but the ordinary domestic work of women! 

God here and now, in charge—is like a peasant working someone else’s field who uncovers a treasure hidden there. Excited, he reburies it, and then scrapes together everything he has so he can purchase the field and its contents.  The field worker, not the land-owner, finds the treasure: usually only those getting their hands dirty in work are the ones who know its details enough to recognize its surprises.    This is not about legal title, but finders, keepers.  No matter how hard it is to scrape together the necessary capital to buy the field, the peasant does it since his glimpse of the treasure was so wonderful. 

God here and now, in charge—is like a drag-net that catches all sorts of fish.  It is not selective or discriminating.  It works below the surface, hidden, and catches everything it touches.   St. Matthew, ever on the lookout for ways to regularize some of Jesus’ more “anti-religious” statements, has added the comment about sorting good and bad fish on the shore.  But Jesus’ original point was that God in charge is overwhelmingly inclusive, and uncontrollable.

God here and now, in charge—is like a jewel merchant who finds the most perfect pearl he has ever seen.  Like the peasant, he sells everything he has in order to purchase the prize.   Not only dispossessed field hands can find a treasure.  Those accustomed to trading fine things can as well.  Maybe even the religious, maybe even the pious and observant—those who are often the butt of the jokes found in Jesus’ parables—may yet encounter God, and be permanently changed.   But the cost for them is just as high as for the dispossessed. 

Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom emphasize the presence of God in everyday life—glorious messy everyday life.  They stress the utter strangeness of God in what we are used to.  In these stories, we encounter abundance, joy, the fulfillment of human desire and the turning of tables on the oppressor.   We have heard these parables so often, we don’t actually listen to them. 

So here are some parables I have written to make the same shocking points Jesus intends in his.

God here and now, in charge is like a woman who buys a dollar lottery ticket.  Not expecting to win, she doesn’t even check the results for a few days.  But when she does, she learns she has not only won, but won big: 10 million dollars.   She is so shocked she falls down and can’t talk for a few minutes. 

God here and now, in charge is like a man who gets a bad tattoo.  After several years of being unhappy every time he sees it, he goes into a tattoo parlor and asks if they can fix old, bad tattoos.  One of the artists is an expert in repair and redesign, but it costs a lot. The man gets excited, and goes and refinances his house to get the money together.  After many hours of pain in the chair, the man looks at the magic the artist has wrought, using the old defective ink-work as ground for and part of a larger piece.  The result is beautiful, much better than even what the man had originally imagined when he got the first tattoo.  He is so happy with it that he constantly tries to find occasions where wear short sleeves so he can show it off.

God here and now, in charge is like a woman in the process of a nasty divorce.  Her abusive husband has hired the better lawyer, and she is about to lose almost everything.  But in sorting through things that the husband couldn’t be bothered to look at, she finds the old coin collection he inherited from his father a few years after their marriage and which he has never bothered to even look at.  She notices a couple of coins that look rare and checks up on them.  They are worth more than all their other assets combined.  So she says nothing, puts the coin collection on her ledger in the agreement, which the ex-husband signs happily.  She never has to worry about finances, or he abusive ex, again.

God here and now, in charge: abundance, surprise, and a call to joyfully give up what alienates us from God and from each other. 

I invite us all this week in our prayer and meditation to ask how we think things would be if God were truly in charge and things were as they ought to be.  Picture it, savor it.  Listen to Jesus’ parables of the kingdom, and let us use our imaginations to try to come with some of our own.  And may we pray for the joyful abandon to turn away from the things in our hearts and lives that keep this vision from being realized.   May we pray and live, “your kingdom, your will be done, on earth as in heaven” and know the abundant joy of God coming here and now, fully in charge.   May we live the happy news that Jesus proclaimed. 

In the name of God, Amen. 

Apostle to the Apostles (midweek message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Apostle to the Apostles

July 22, 2020

Today is the feast day of Mary Magdalene.  She is mentioned frequently in the Gospels, all four of which agree that she is the one who first discovered Jesus’ Resurrection.  Luke 7 introduces her as one of the women disciples from Galilee who remained with Jesus throughout his ministry and death: “A woman from Magdala, from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons.”  Just before introducing Mary of Magdala, Luke tells the story of a “sinful woman”, who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and dries them with her hair, unbound in the style of a sex worker. 

She is often conflated with other disciples named Mary.  In John 12, Mary of Bethany (sister of Martha and Lazarus), just before Jesus’ arrest, soothes Jesus’ body with precious ointment from an alabster jar, “thus anointing his body for burial.”   Mark (14:3-9) and Matthew (26:6-13) also set the anointing story just days before Jesus’ death, and say that wherever the Gospel is preached, this story will be recounted ‘in memory of her.’  But the name of this loving woman is lost in the story, the result of later androcentric clerics tidying the stories to meet their ideas of the subordination of women.   

Some later, non-canonical Gnostic gospels suggest that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife.  But by the 7^th century,  Christians, “connecting the dots” of Luke’s juxtaposing his introducing Mary of Magdala with his story of the  “sinful woman” washing Jesus’ feet, picture her as a reformed prostitute (presumably, sex work was one of the seven demons from which Jesus had saved her), though this connection is not supported directly by scripture or any early writing. 

A later apocryphal story explaining the origin of Easter eggs has Mary Magdalene defending the Resurrection of Jesus before the Roman Emperor Tiberius.  She holds up an egg, and says the tomb with Christ’s corpse was like an egg with a chick about to be hatched.  Tiberius replies sarcastically, “That’s about as likely as that egg turning scarlet in your hand!”  The egg instantly turns red.    Originally, the coloring of eggs red probably stood for the martyrdom of Christ as a necessary precursor to his resurrection.  The icons of Mary Magdalene holding a scarlet egg reminded the devout that Mary had been freed of seven demons, with “sins as red as scarlet being made white as snow” (cf. Isa.  1:18). 

The Magdalene is a great example for us:  apostle to the apostles, first witness to the resurrection, great witness to those far off and those near.  For those who accept the link between her and the “sinful woman” of Luke 7, she also is a symbol of the great mercy of God, and how deep forgiveness and redemption go. 

Here is a sonnet about the Magdalene by Malcolm Guite, poet, theologian, and songwriter who serves as the Chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge where he also teaches for the Divinity Faculty.

Mary Magdalene

Men called you light so as to load you down,
And burden you with their own weight of sin,
A woman forced to cover and contain
Those seven devils sent by Everyman.
But one man set you free and took your part
One man knew and loved you to the core
The broken alabaster of your heart
Revealed to Him alone a hidden door,
Into a garden where the fountain sealed,
Could flow at last for him in healing tears,
Till, in another garden, he revealed
The perfect Love that cast out all your fears,
And quickened you with love’s own sway and swing,
As light and lovely as the news you bring.

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+

Kind Pelicans -- Midweek Message

Kind Pelicans

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 15, 2020

Elena and I are at the beach on a small vacation, masked and distanced at 6 feet from others.  Yesterday we saw a large group of pelicans fly in and land in the water in front of us, and then dive, hunt, and return to the surface to feast on fish for a half an hour.  Sitting amazed at the joyful, almost playful scene, my thoughts wandered: pelicans, despite all their smelly, noisy selves, have for almost 1500 years been symbols for Christians of our Lord.   I have a chasuble with a large embroidered emblem of a pelican feeding her young.

Like many birds, pelicans eat and partially digest their food and then regurgitate it, often red from the blood of the prey, to feed their hatchlings.  But pelicans are larger and people can see this messy behavior, though they cannot usually get close enough to see exactly what’s going on given the bird’s aggressive defense of its own space.     In the pre-Christian classical world, the behavior was mistaken for the mother pelican wounding her breast and feeding her chicks with her own blood.  So when Christians came on the scene, this image of a self-sacrificing, caring, loving parent was understood as a type or allegorical figure for Christ. 

The image even made it into one verse of St. Thomas Aquinas’ great Eucharistic hymn, Adoro te devote (Humbly I adore Thee, Verity Unseen): 

Pie Pelicane, Jesu Domine,

Me immundum munda tuo Sanguine:

Cujus una stilla salvum facere

Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

         Gentle Pelican, Lord Jesu

         Wash me clean with your blood

         One drop of which makes safe

         The whole world, from every evil. 

 

Some find it strange to preserve and use a Christological image that is based on a biological misunderstanding:  pelicans do not wound themselves to feed their children.  But there is a deeper matter at issue:  God reveals Godself to us in our own language, in our own cultural tradition, and sometimes that means that God’s revelation is mixed up with strange and fanciful things later proven to be not so.  But that does not take away the truth of revelation, it merely places it in context.  Historically, it made such truth accessible.   

It is easy to blame the past, and think we are so much more clever and morally justified than those who went on before.  We can see it in some of the excesses of today’s “cancel culture” that, though rightly seeking to remove from our current common life images and symbols that endorse and support systemic oppression, occasionally wants to rid our collective life unreflectively of all images from the past that may not be up to snuff by today’s lights of justice and fairness.   But those who went before were, like us, imperfect and flawed.  And we, like them, will be found wanting by tomorrow’s standards in ways that we can barely predict today.  The issue is not whether a historical figure was perfect or completely “woke,” but rather 1) whether they worked to end the injustice they may have, as people of their age, benefited from, and 2) whether our use of them as heroes or heroines, saints or blessed ones, or monuments, actually gets us closer to fulfilling God’s intentions for us.  All that is demanded of us, says Micah, is to love compassion, do justice, and walk humbly before God.  

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

Profligate Blessing (Proper 10A)

Profligate Blessing

Proper 10 Year A

12 July 2020 8 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth

And 10:00 a.m. Said Mass with Sung Antiphons

Live-streamed from the Chancel

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, homilist  

Isaiah 55:10-13; Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

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

In today’s gospel, Matthew gives us one interpretation of Jesus’ Parable of the Scattered Seed. It sees the saying of Jesus not as a parable, with one point of comparison, but as an allegory, a coded treatment where different elements of the story stand for different things: the seed is the word of God, the sower a preacher of sorts, and the various soils different people who react differently to the word depending on their circumstances.  This interpretation is almost certainly the product of an early Christian pastor, concerned about how his preaching might be received.

But this misses the point the historical Jesus almost certainly was trying to make. Jesus gave many other parables comparing God’s Reign to some kind of seed. 

In one parable, a seed sprouts and grows all on its own regardless of whether the person who planted it knows or understands why it grows (Mark 4:26-34).   Jesus thus says that God’s kingdom comes primarily through God’s acts, not ours, and arrives despite our unawareness. 

Elsewhere, a tiny mustard seed sprouts and grows into a huge tree-like shrub (Mark 4:31; Matt 13:31; Luke 13:19):  tiny, almost imperceptible in its beginnings, huge, overwhelming, and sheltering in its full growth.  That’s God’s Reign.   

In yet another, God’s Reign is like a field sown with wheat in which is mixed noxious weeds whose young plants are indistinguishable from the good wheat plants (Matt 13:25-40):  we mustn’t try to rip out the bad ones lest we destroy the good ones as well in the process, but rather let God and the angels do the sorting once the plants are fully grown.  Again, God is in charge of the Reign of God, not us. 

In the Parable of the Scattered Seed, Jesus pictures a farmer at work, broadcasting seed in the standard practice of that place and time, far removed from our careful planting of seeds and Chinese intensive care of plants. 

“A sower goes out to sow seed and casts it all over the place.  Some falls on hard, thin ground with hardly any soil.  It doesn’t sprout.  Some falls on ground with soil, but little water.  It sprouts but quickly dies.  Some falls on rich soil infested with weeds, and they crowd it out.  Only some falls into good soil with adequate water and sun and not too many weeds.  But there, the crop yields are so high that they justify the apparent waste and loss in broadcasting seed.”

We would say that this farmer is foolish:  he wastes his seed stock by casting it carelessly.  But Jesus argues that the bumper crop that results vindicates the practice: 100 times back from the seed broadcast. 

And this is the heart of the matter for Jesus.  The farmer spreads those seeds with abandon.  And the result is good indeed.   Those who might point to the barren bits of ground, the rocky and sun-burnt soil and claim that no harvest is coming are wrong.  The profligacy of the sower, while causing the mixed results, is also what ensures success. 

Jesus’ point is that when we’re talking about the Reign of God, we’re talking about God.  And God is good.  God is compassionate.  God is loving.  God is fruitful.  God is reliable.  God is provident.  God’s blessing is profligate. 

“God gives the blessing of rain and sun on the wicked and righteous alike” says Jesus.  Like that crazy loving father with the two wayward sons, the prodigal and the priss, or the crazy woman who throws an expensive party to celebrate finding a lost coin, or the shepherd who goes out after one sheep while forgetting the 99, the sower seems foolish, especially to bean counters who worry about wasted seed stock.  But the bumper crop vindicates the profligate sower. 

God is like that sower. We cannot judge God and say that God’s reign is hopelessly delayed, that good is losing and bad is winning. The sower cannot be judged by the wasted seed. The garden’s success is not judged by the bad bits.  

We often are uncomfortable with the idea of a profligate, seemingly wasteful God.  But a God who is too calculating and careful, the God of the bean-counters, is an idol.   One of the reasons that Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species through natural selection was so devastating to many people of faith was that they had been encouraged to worship that idol.  The divines of the age said that nature reflected its author, God, in its order and design, and that nature’s supposed lack of wastefulness showed the parsimony of God’s economy.  But Darwin’s perceptive and careful accumulation of data revealing nature red in tooth and claw, natural selection driven without apparent design by wasteful death and suffering on monumental scales over the eons gave a death knell to the image of God as an orderly and rational designer of nature.

Jesus’ view that God is like a profligate and wasteful broadcaster of seeds is perhaps closer to the truth.  As Annie Dillard writes, “Nature is, above all, profligate. Don't believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn't it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once…. This is a spendthrift economy.  Though nothing is lost, all is spent” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek [HarperCollins, 2007], p. 66).

Sisters and brothers, if we are to have faith at all, we must have trust and confidence in God.  We must have patience and be able to see through the dry times, the sparse soils, the apparently wasted seed.  It must have a heart full of assurance that in the end, love wins.  We too must be wasteful, must be profligate.  We must open our hearts and hands, and forgive, love, and broadcast the seeds of God’s love regardless of what the immediate results look like.  Our hearts must be faithful because God is faithful.  God’s ultimate intention is to love, to heal and to save.  God’s Reign has come.  God is in charge, right here and now.  Simply because we cannot see this at all times and places does not mean it is not so, or that somehow God is stingy, picky, or capricious.   Much of what prevents the clear showing forth of God’s reign are those pesky weeds we ourselves cultivate.   “Rejoice for God’s Reign has come” says Jesus, “change your thinking and get out of its way!”

Amen. 

Jesus on Holiness vs. Justice (Midweek Message)

Jesus on Holiness versus Justice

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 8, 2020

In Matthew 22, the Pharisees, impressed that Jesus has silenced their own opponents the Sadducees, send a student of the Law to ask him an important question of Law, what later rabbis would call halakhah.  They want to get a read of what drives Jesus, and how he reasons about scripture.  They ask him a question they would often ask each other, “Of all the 613 commandments in the Torah, (365 ‘Thou shalt not’s’ and 248 ‘Thou shalt’s’), which is the most important?  What is the heart of the Law?   What should we use as a first principle of interpretation so that we can prioritize and order all this mass of teachings in the Law?”

The initial answer Jesus gives is not all that unusual.  He quotes from the Shema‘, the credo of Judaism that is recited every morning and evening in prayers: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” that is, “you shall be faithful to him with all your will, life, and might.”  Other rabbis had also pointed to this central passage as the heart of the Law.  Jesus says that this is “the first, the most important commandment.” 

But then Jesus, without being asked, adds, “and a second commandment is on par with this first one: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  On these two commandments depend the entire body of scripture.” 

He is quoting an obscure portion of the Leviticus Holiness Code, “You shall  not take vengeance against, nor bear any grudge against your kin, but you shall love your neighbor as you do yourself:  I am the LORD”  (Leviticus 19:18).   

We often don’t realize that this juxtaposition was first made by Jesus, something completely new.  We do this because Luke places this second part of Jesus’ answer also on the lips of the young lawyer seeking to justify himself in order to suss out just how Jesus understands the term “neighbor.” (The story of the Good Samaritan is the answer.)  Though a generation later rabbis were to identify what we would call the golden rule as the heart of the Law, they do not quote Leviticus 19 as the heart of Law, link its use of the verb “love” with the use of the verb “love” in the Shema‘ , and say that this second commandment is “on par with” the first. Jesus puts these two commandments on equal footing, and in so doing bridges a great divide in the tradition of the Hebrew scriptures. 

Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, points out that throughout the Hebrew scriptures, one finds two great thematic threads. On the one side, there is the holiness of God, the separateness of God, calling for a striving for purity and ritual holiness by God’s people, for being special and set aside for God’s service.  “You shall be holy for I am holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness.    On the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially the marginalized, decently and fairly. 

The two themes often seem in opposition.  The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness.  The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly, especially those most in need.  For Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others God says things like:  “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.”    “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.”  For the priests and teachers of halakhic law, however, God says things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.”  “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.”  “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.” 

Bruggemann says that the two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish.  But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression, and dies.  On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics. 

In Matthew 22, Jesus says the heart of scripture is both faithfulness to a holy God and taking care of one’s fellow human beings.   And he uses a text right from the middle of the Holiness code itself (Lev. 19) to counterbalance the over-emphasis that he saw being placed on holiness at the expense of justice.  

It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between them, in every single case he opts for social justice.  For him, justice trumps purity and holiness every time.   That’s why he bases his ethics not so much in fear of avoiding contagion and contamination from the unclean and impure, but rather in communicating and embodying God’s compassion, love, and healing, which he sees as contagious rather than impurity.  Reread the parable of the Good Samaritan:  for Jesus, goodness and love are the great “super spreaders,” not evil and impurity.  And they are the way to welcome God’s Reign, where the conflict between holiness and justice is resolved. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

Gentle Grace (Proper 9A)

Gentle Grace

Proper 9 Year A

5 July 2020 8 a.m. Said Mass on the Labyrinth and 10:00 a.m.

Said Mass with Antiphons live-streamed from the Chancel

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145: 8 - 15; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30       

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, homilist

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

Paul in today’s epistle says, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15).   Most of us have experienced this at one time or another:  wanting two mutually exclusive things; not completely knowing our own mind.   Being torn by competing desires is one of the great obstacles to our connecting with God.  As the letter of James has it:  “If any of you is lacking wisdom, just ask God.  God gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will give you what you ask.  But remember, you must do this with complete trust, free of fear or doubt.  Those who constantly second-guess themselves are like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed about by the wind.  The fear-filled person is double-minded and unstable in every way.  Such a one cannot expect to receive anything from God” (James 1:5-7).   It is because of this that Jesus teaches “blessed are the pure in heart—that means single minded—for they shall see God.” 

C.S. Lewis put it: “[God] cannot meet us face to face until we have faces.”

This division within our minds and wills, this fuzziness of what we want, is often described in metaphorical form by that image we know from the cartoons: a little angel sitting on one of our shoulders arguing with a little devil sitting on the other one, both of them looking like us, but one with halo, wings, and harp, and the other with horns, tail, and a pitchfork.  The image, as laughable as it is, comes a very real experience in our divided hearts. Sometimes our competing desires are so acutely at odds with each other that it feels like we are actually in the middle of an argument apart from us, that we are being enticed by different personalities rather than simply arguing with ourselves or being indecisive.  This feeling, I believe, is the origin of the ancient tradition of personifying a tempter actually came from. 

St. Paul describes the problem:  I don’t really know who I am or what I really want.  I decide to do some good thing, and then fail to do it.  I make a resolve to avoid some bad thing, and then find myself in the act.  The fact that I cannot really make up my mind, or that I change my mind, shows how important it is to have objective standards, a written Law: “If I do the very thing I do not want to do, I by that fact agree that the Law is good!”  Paul goes on to describe his inner obsessive/compulsive inconsistency as if he is divided or split: a Law of Sin driving his various body parts at war with a Law of God in his mind—a little devil Paul on one shoulder and a little angel Paul on the other.   

This passage is often misread.  St. Augustine and then later Martin Luther took it in light of their own personal sense of guilt in struggles with sin, and thought Paul was talking about same guilt-ridden introspective conscience through which they saw the world.  Thus the great division between Law and Grace in Protestant theology arose.  But Paul elsewhere shows that he is perfectly happy in saying that he is “blameless” in keeping the Law, and “righteous” in the works it requires.  Paul is no lust-haunted Augustine or guilt obsessed Luther.  He simply is describing how hard it is to be so double-minded.  What he calls “this body of death” makes it hard even to know who we really are.  Who will deliver us from it, he asks. Jesus Christ is his answer.

The Gospel today also speaks of conflicting desires.  The same critics had condemned John the Baptist and Jesus:  John for being too conservative and austere and Jesus for being too welcoming and liberal.  Jesus rebukes these critics.   He quotes a popular proverb and compares them to naughty children in the marketplace who cannot be satisfied with anything because of their conflicting desires.  They taunt each other: little girls tease the boys who want to dance and play music which men used in wedding celebrations; little boys tease the girls because they want to practice the mourning songs and ululations women sing at funerals.  You can’t have it both ways, says Jesus. “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” he concludes, “you won’t have contradictory desires if you are integrated and truly find yourselves.”   Then Matthew adds that saying that sounds so much like the Gospel of John: the Father has given all things to the Son.  The point is that in Jesus, there are no self-contradictions, no competing desires, no alienation from God, others, or one’s self.  Jesus ends the passage by offering to take on our burdens for us.  The Message puts it this way: 

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

We are a sorry lot.  We all are subject to obsession and compulsion at times, and all carry heavy burdens we create for ourselves with our conflicting desires, hopes, and fears.   But God cannot really talk to us face to face until we begin to develop faces that are truly our own, hearts that hold our real desires.  It is by taking on Jesus’ yoke, taking on his task of announcing in word and deed God’s presence healing the broken world, walking with him and working with him, that we begin to learn who we each really are and what we truly desire.   It is not something forced, regimented, or produced by a technique.  It is not the result of willing it, or submitting to some standard.  We let go, and let God work God’s gentle grace.  Our new self distills like the dew in the morning.  Losing our false desires is like finally removing the pebble from our shoe.  It is like, in the middle of the summer heat, taking off a heavy winter coat.  It is wonderful. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.