Passing All Understanding (Mid-week Message)

 

Passing All Understanding

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

30 June 2021

 

 

 “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”

--Pierre Tiellard de Chardin, SJ

 

“And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and mind in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son, Jesus Christ” –Post-communion Blessing, BCP p. 339 .

 

We open our worship, whether Daily Prayer or Holy Eucharist, usually with some kind of  Song of Praise.  In Holy Eucharist, we usually sing the Gloria “Glory to God in the Highest and Peace to God’s people on earth”.   In Morning Prayer we sing either the Venite (“Come let us sing to the Lord, let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation”) or the Jubilate (“Be joyful in the Lord all you lands.  Serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song”).   There is a call to joy in all these opening rites.  Even in Penitential Seasons, we sing an opening canticle, the Kyrie Pantocrator, that praises the mercy and loving-kindness of God. 

 

All this emphasis on joy and peace was summed up well in Psalm 100, known to many of us in the metrical form of the early reformation:

 

All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice:
Serve him with mirth, his praise forth-tell,
Come now before him and rejoice!

 

Know this: the Lord is God indeed,
We are his own, he did us make;
We are his folk, he doth us feed,
And for his flock he doth us take.

 

So enter then his gates with praise,
And in his courts his love proclaim;
Give thanks and bless him all your days:
Let every tongue confess his name.

 

For God, the Holy One, is good,
His mercy is for ever sure;
His truth has always firmly stood,
and shall from age to age endure.

 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow

Praise Him all creatures here below,

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

 

Why all the joy?  On bad days when I am getting off to a slow and little depressed start of the day, sometimes I can feel pretty cynical about it.  And when we are suffering, it seems not to fit at all.   But the striking thing is this:  singing a joyful invitation to prayer each day does in fact change how I feel, and I regularly find myself recharged and peaceful, if not outright happy, by the end of the prayers.   Peace, which passes all understanding, is a quiet kind of joy. 

 

Joy in the face of the pains we regularly run into in life is the calling of the Christian.   “We are the Easter people and Hallelujah is our song!” said John Paul II.    Working from the foundational assurance that God is love, God is good, and God is here, we see beneath and beyond pain and trial when they occur.  Grief, mourning, and yearning after loss are all healthy and normal response to hard things. 

 

As Rumi said, 

 

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”

 

Sometimes, we need to roll up our sleeves and just reach out and grasp the joy already here at the heart of God’s creation:  “God’s Reign is at hand—be happy and change your way of thinking!” says Jesus (Mark 1:14).  As Fra Giovanni Giocondo wrote on Christmas Eve in 1513 to his friend, 

“There is nothing I can give you which you do not already have. But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instance. Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy! Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty . . . that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.. for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.”

Our smile may come from our joy much of the time, but sometimes, it is our smile that can of itself help bring joy.   

 

Living here in the beauty of Southern Oregon, even with wild fire smoke in the air that triggers memories of trauma from the Almeda fire last year, we must daily remember that God placed every blade of grass and every flower out there to be a source of joy for us. 

 

“Open my lips, O Lord,

And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence

And take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Give me the joy of your saving help again

And sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.”

--BCP p. 137, opening psalmody for “Daily

Devotions for Individuals and Families”

(BCP, p. 137), an adaptation of Psalm 51

 

As we live as resurrection people, we must live in joy, or at least in the deep and content peace of God.  It does pass all understanding.  Reminding ourselves each day in prayer of the peace and joy that come from our faith in and experience of God is a key practice in maintaining joy as the default position of the Christian heart.

 

Grace and peace. 

--Fr. Tony+

 

 

Touch We Now Thy Garment's Hem (Proper 8 B )

 

 

Touch We Now Thy Garment’s Hem
27 June 2021 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8 B)
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2: 23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43

 

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

 

When I came here to Trinity from Beijing in the Fall of 2011 for interviews, the Search Committee asked me how I understood Church, and how I saw what we do each week here.  I could only recite the lines of a hymn I had sung as a chorister as a new Episcopalian, by the iconic 19^th century Church of England priest Percy Dearmer.  It shows up in the Presbyterian and Methodist hymnals, but unfortunately is not in the current Episcopal hymnal.  For me, it captures the sacramental approach to life and faith we Episcopalians hold dear: 

 

Draw us in the Spirit’s tether;
For when humbly, in thy name,
Two or three are met together,
Thou art in the midst of them:
Alleluya! Alleluya! Touch we now thy garment’s hem.

 

As the faithful used to gather
In the name of Christ to sup,
Then with thanks to God the Father
Break the bread and bless the cup,
Alleluya! Alleluya! So knit thou our friendship up.

 

All our meals and all our living
Make as sacraments of thee,
That by caring, helping, giving,
We may true disciples be.
Alleluya! Alleluya! We will serve thee faithfully.

“Touch we now thy garment’s hem” the image is drawn from today’s Gospel reading.  A woman, desperate after 12 years of bleeding that has consumed all her resources for a cure and made her unclean and an outcast, secretly tries to capture some of Jesus’ healing power for herself by touching “the fringe of his robe”, probably the tsitsit on his small everyday prayer shawl.  Jesus is on his way to heal the daughter of an important local leader, Jairus.

 

Touching his garment, she is instantly healed. Jesus, however, notices that something has happened and turns to ask who touched him.   The disciples are perplexed.  The crowds are pushing in, and it could have been anyone. But he is adamant—he has felt power go out from him.

 

 

 

The woman with the issue of blood dared not ask Jesus to help her because she is ritually impure.  Her unusual bleeding made her contagiously unclean: mere contact with her conveyed uncleanness.  The knotting on that prayer shawl stood for the 613 commandments in the Torah, among which we read this, just after the Book of Leviticus’s rules about women with unusual flows of blood: “You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which is among them” (Lev. 15).

The woman is an outcast. She wonders how a religious teacher like Jesus could be expected to pay her any attention, let alone touch her to heal her. So she takes things into her own hands and secretly touches his prayer shawl’s tassels.   And that is what Jesus praises, saying it is her trust that has healed her.   In Orthodox lore, this woman is named Veronica, the one who later wipes the sweaty and bloody face of Jesus on his way to the cross and whose kerchief preserves his image miraculously.

 

When Jesus finally arrives at the house of Jairus, the question of ritual impurity again intrudes in this complicated sandwich of a story. Coming near to or touching a corpse also transmitted ritual uncleanness. When the crowd tells Jairus that his daughter is dead, Jesus persists in going to try to heal her, and tells him, “Don’t be afraid, just trust.”

They leave the crowd behind, and come to the house, where professional mourners are already at work, ululating, weeping, and tearing their clothes. Jairus clearly was a man of influence and wealth.  When Jesus announces that the girl is not dead, just asleep, and says he will go and wake her up, the crowd laughs at him. Instead of reaching for his garment’s hem, they laugh.

 

Most are probably laughing out of nervousness—this guy is not only going to cause a great scene involving a corpse, but is also going to break, right there in public, a great taboo. He would contaminate himself by touching the corpse, and then come out and contaminate them. 

Despite the privileged position the little girl had in life, as a corpse she is just another source of ritual contamination, like the woman with the flow of blood earlier in the story.

After Jesus puts the onlookers all out, he takes the child's father and mother and his accompanying disciples, and goes in to where the corpse is. He then takes her by the hand and says, “Little girl, get up!” (Talitha qumi! It is recorded in the words he probably actually used in his own native language, Aramaic.)

We read, “Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished.”

You see, in both cases, the woman with the unusual flow of blood and Jairus’ young daughter, compassion and service took precedence over a desire to remain pure. 

 

Purity or compassion, Jesus, which is it?   Love, not purity, is Jesus’ consistent answer.  This really marks just how radical Jesus was. The religion of the day declared, with the full authority of scripture literally cited and interpreted through authoritative tradition, that impurity was contagious. It spread from the unclean to the clean. People who want to please God must avoid it if at all possible, lest they commit sacrilege against the Temple of God. If impurity is inadvertently contracted, they need to purge it away through rituals.

As a Jew, Jesus respected the rituals. He was, after all, wearing that small prayer shawl with the fringes.  But he taught that purity and cleanness were not the whole matter, and that goodness and compassion were far more important. In his view, moral goodness was spread to others by compassion and service. And the need for compassion and service trumped the need to avoid contamination at all times.

The theme is a subtext of almost all of Jesus’ public acts and teaching. He practiced open table fellowship with people that his religion labeled as the worst of the worst. According to the Law, the table where one ate was one of the easiest places to contract impurity. He taught that it was what one said and did, rather than what one ate, that counted. He tended to discount ritual washings as a core issue and said they did not necessarily touch what really mattered—the heart. He told stories of religious men avoiding contamination with what they thought was a corpse in contrast to a heretic and illegitimate man (a Samaritan) who, despite the same religious rules about corpses, still showed compassion and thus made himself the fellow countryman ("the neighbor") of the man who was near death.

In so doing, Jesus was following the very best of the Jewish prophetic tradition, which itself had consistently criticized the religious establishment’s concern with purity rather than justice.

Ultimately, it would be Jesus’ uncompromising insistence on this that so alienated the religious authorities that they conspired to turn him over to the hated Roman occupiers.

We need never think that our uncleanness or impurity is a barrier keeping us from Jesus. We need not fear that a disability we may have can keep us from the love of Jesus. Jesus loves us regardless, and wants to heal us and help us understand that we are forgiven all.

What keeps us from Jesus is our fear itself. Our fear may make us so nervous that we, like the professional mourners outside Jairus' house, end up laughing at God. But the woman with the flow of blood was so desperate that she overcame her fear. Taking things into her own hands she reaches out to touch the fringe of his prayer shawl.  We too need to reach out to touch his fringe. 

 

We do that by living in the spirit, by coming together and praying and eating the bread and wine that Jesus shared in open table fellowship.  We do that by serving and loving and showing the same preference for love over purity that Jesus showed.  Draw us in the Spirit’s tether.  Touch we now thy garment’s hem. 

When Jairus learns his daughter is dead, Jesus tells him “Don’t be afraid, just trust in me.”

Jesus is saying this today, to each of us, “Don’t be afraid. Just trust in me.”

 

Let us touch the hem of his garment. 

In the name of God, Amen.

 

The God of Each (mid-week Message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

June 23, 2021

The God of Each

 

“Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.  Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”    Collect for Purity, BCP p. 355.    

 

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” –Robin Williams

“So have no fear of [those who would harm you]; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.  What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops” (Matt 10:26-27).

I have been struck in recent weeks at the way that most of us, if not all, have secrets we keep mainly out of fear of others using them against us.  We need to trust someone before we share our hidden stuff with them.  This is one of the great reasons for the seal of the confessional and keeping pastoral confidences:  losing the trust needed for sharing is the most direct effect of violations of such confidences.  Yet I have also noted that even secrets we take to the grave eventually have a way of becoming known. 

 

We are social creatures, and establish mutual boundaries of trust and confidence through the life-long process of sharing a common life.   We hold our norms so deeply that on occasion, we ascribe them to God, thinking that the Almighty shares them completely, and agrees with our judgment of others.  

 

But the curious thing is that the Bible’s basic story arc, for all its communal, “people chosen by God” discourse, is one where the All Nurturing One engages with individual people first, and only then with the groups to which they belong.   Yahweh calls Abram from his family and homeland, and then makes a covenant with him after telling him to "look to the stars and see if you can count them."  The covenant establishes his descendants as special heritage, and God continues to engage and covenant with individuals among them.  That’s why he is called the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” or the “God of Israel [Jacob and his descendants].”       

 

Jesus calls God our Father in Heaven.  He does not call him “Grandfather” or “Great Uncle.”  To think that somehow our personal relationship with God is of more value than God’s relationship with all other individual people is just plain wrong.  To think that somehow if we pass a tradition of faith on to others, that makes their experience God derivative to and measured by our own, deeply misses the truth that each and every person is in the image of God, and that God calls each person and speaks to their heart directly.  

 

We simply do not know what burdens, battles, and scars others bear.  All desires are known to God alone; and it is only from God that no secrets are hid.  That’s why we must not judge, and “be swift to love, make haste to be kind.” 

 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+     

 

 

God of the Storm (Proper 7B )

 

God of the Storm
20 June 2021 Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 7B
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Job 38:1-11, 16-18; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32; 2 Corinthians 6:1-134-21; Mark 4:35-41

 

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

Several years ago while living in French-speaking West Africa, I had a brilliant idea that I wanted to take my sons deep sea fishing.  I asked about finding what we call in the United States a “head boat” or renting a charter.  A clerk who worked for me at the U.S. Embassy arranged the rental of a small launch and gave me directions to arrive at the commercial fishing port early on the next Saturday morning where he would introduce us to the boatmen, who had “guaranteed” a heavy catch of large sports fish.  We went fishing that day, but, long story short, had a very long, exhausting, and frightening—even terrifying—day.  The boat was not the launch we had expected, but a small dugout canoe with a small outboard motor.  Various voodoo deities of the ocean were beautifully carved on its prow, provoking the clerk to announce solemnly that this was a positive sign that the boat was perfectly safe and that we would be protected by the local deities as we fished in a more traditional way than he and I had expected.  The boatmen were two local fishermen who spoke no language known to any European, Asian, and American, or even to any African who came from further than 25 kilometers from their home village.     We caught no fish, and got our lines fouled on an off-shore oil drilling platform.  We lost power and drifted into Nigerian waters that were the haunts of pirates and very brutal robbers.  When through what seemed a miracle the engine returned to service, we started back to port, but then the seas rose and a storm approached.  We were tossed by 15- foot waves in our 12-foot canoe with its pitiful 8 inches of free-board.  Soaked to the bone, skin blue and teeth chattering with cold, though this was in the tropics, we returned to port hours late, thankful to be alive.  I fortunately had remembered to bring life preservers, though there were shark fins visible in the water.   My sons with me that day have never forgotten the day, and still on occasion tease me for almost having gotten them killed by pirates, bringing them low to a watery grave, and feeding them to sharks.

 

Going onto the waters in a boat has always been the source of awe and fear for human beings, and sailors always thought to be particularly brave or absolutely foolish.   We are just too vulnerable when out on the water in a storm.  The Breton fisherman’s prayer, otherwise ascribed to St. Brendan the navigator who sailed in a small coracle probably about the size of our voodoo canoe, expresses the idea well, “Protect me, Lord.  Your sea is so great and my boat is so small.” 

 

The story of Jesus calming the storm on Lake Tiberias is more than just a recitation of a miraculous act of Jesus demonstrating his authority. It underscores that Jesus is compassionate and wholly worthy of trust and being relied on when we are in trouble.

Those who told the first stories about Jesus calming the storm that later turn up in our gospels almost certainly had in mind the description of the God who calls the storms and then calms them which we recited today from Psalm 107. In churches in port towns and in military chaplaincies for the Navy, we often hear the section of this Psalm that we recited today, the part about “those who go down to the sea in ships.”

But Psalm 107 is not just about sailors. It has several different sections describing people in many different extreme situations, where they need to rely on God. The whole Psalm could be entitled, “God, the Savior of those in Distress.”

Verses 4-9 talk about people who get lost in the desert and run out of water. God there leads them back to an oasis.

Verses 10-16 describe prisoners in a dark dungeon. God leads them from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom.

Verses 17-22 talk about people suffering from horrible illness, as the Psalmist says, “because of their wicked ways.” They are near the gates of death because they cannot eat food anymore, because it has become so distasteful to them in their illness. One wonders whether the Psalmist has venereal disease, alcoholism or drug addiction in mind, but the bit about not wanting to eat any nourishing food brings all these to mind. In the Psalmist's era, people thought disease came as punishment from God rather than from infection microbes. Yet God heals these people when they call on him.
 

Finally, we see the part about those who go out upon the sea and get caught in a storm, in verses 23-32. Again, God calms the storm when they call on him. The psalm ends with verses 33-41 by saying that God can change a river into a desert, and rich springs into dusty and arid ground. He can turn fruitful land into a salt marsh, and a desert into pools of water. The point is that God is creation, and thus a reliable savior in any hardship.

So the next time we hear the story about Jesus calming the storm, let’s not just think about Jesus helping mariners only.

Think about the drug addicts and alcoholics who have been helped by Jesus when they call upon him and surrender to him. And that, whatever name they might use to call Jesus, or image they might have of their “higher power.”

Think about the physically ill who have found healing and comfort in Jesus.

Think about how his message of openness and listening can help those lost in mental illness, or harmful ego.

Think about the poor that Jesus calls us to serve and assist.

Think about how he helps those lost in sin and self-deception, ourselves included, and lost in exploitation and deception of others.

“Master, don’t you care that we are perishing?” the disciples in the boat cry when they find him sleeping in the storm.

Jesus calms the storm and then asks, “Why are you terrified? Where’s your trust in God? Where’s your faith?”

When I heard this story as a young boy, I heard this line and thought that Jesus here was condemning the disciples. “Oh ye of little faith.” “If only you had faith, Peter, you could not only walk on water but also calm the sea itself.”  “If you have faith the size of a tiny mustard seed, you could not only move mountains, but calm the oceans too.” All this conspired to make me want to say, “I'm unworthy, unworthy.”

But that is not what the story is trying to say. Remember that this is the Jesus who spent his days with drunkards and prostitutes, and when criticized for this replied, “the sick need a doctor, not healthy people.” It is the same Jesus who told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

The point is this--if we are forced by our circumstances to think we need God, then we should realize that it is God that we are in need of. God is trustworthy. God, in the idea of the Psalm we recited today, is the savior of all in distress. Relying on God leaves little room for fear. Regardless of how things turn out, we know that, in the words of the prayer, God “is doing for us more that we can ask or imagine.”

That’s why Jesus calms the sea before he asks his disciples why they were afraid. He sympathizes and understands them, but wants to turn their rough fear and general sense of needing into a directed desire for the help of the One who is wholly trustworthy.

Jesus cares, and can help. We need to trust him.

Let us pray. 

 

Saving God,

entering the flood and storm

of chaos and confusion:

speak peace to our fearful hearts

that we might find our faith

in him whose word

brings rest to all creation;

through Jesus Christ, Lord of wind and wave.

Amen.

(Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church, pg.63)

 

Love of Christ (Mid-week Message)

 

Love of Christ

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

June 17, 2021

 

“And this is God’s commandment, that we should trust in God’s Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that God has given us” (1 John 3:22-24).

 

“All that we owe is redeemed in truly loving God, for the love of Christ works in us; Christ is the one whom we love.”  --Julian of Norwich

 

I sometimes feel inadequate, like there is not quite enough “there” there to be and do what God wants.  In my priestly calling, in my care-giving for Elena, as a father to our children, as a friend to people I have known and loved for decades.   I sometimes feel inadequate, and I suspect, from what I have heard from parishioners over the years, that many of you on occasion feel the same sense of inadequacy.  

 

But here’s the thing:  there is nothing that any of us could say or do that would make God love us one bit more than God already does.  We are his creatures, and he knows us to the core.  And he says again and again in scripture that he loves us. 

 

This is not to say that everything we do is right or perfectly done.  But it does mean that God loves us regardless.  Jesus taught this on many occasions, and said that what really matters is not our conformity or disobedience to rules, but our how our heart is disposed. 

 

That is why trusting in Jesus, trusting in who he is and what he did, and trying to follow his way of love, is so central.  In so doing, we take on the heart of Jesus, and begin loving as he loved us. 

 

Back in the 70s, there was a book of pop psychology “I’m OK, you’re OK.”  I think that perhaps from the point of view of this truth of living in Jesus’ love, it should probably be “I’m not OK, and you’re not OK, but hey—That’s OK!”  Living in the love of Jesus makes all things new, and covers a multitude of failings. 

 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+

 

 

All things New (proper 6 B)

 

             Mustard Bushes above the Sea of Galilee, photo by Fr. James Martin, SJ

All Things New
Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6 B)
13th June 2021
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Ezekiel 17:22-end; Psalm 92:1-4, 11-14; 2 Cor 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34

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

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

 

 

I have learned over the course of my life, in many different settings, the truth of this somewhat counter-intuitive truism: a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved; a joy shared is a joy doubled. 

 

If we run into bad things, problems, or even horrors, it is a good thing to talk to others about them, and this sharing helps us process them, come to grips with them, and even find solutions to them.  Simply naming our sorrows to a discreet, listening friend seems to help lighten them. 

 

And if we experience joy, sharing this does not dissipate our joy, weaken it, or divide it, as if joy were some kind of fixed income, a sum that if spent can only be reduced.  It is not, to use an image of mathematician John Nash, a zero-sum game.  Joy shared increases.  That’s one of the points, I think, in the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves:  sharing good increases good, it does not diminish or reduce it.  

 

It most definitely is the logic behind Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan:  when told that we should love our neighbor, we should not timidly ask “and just who exactly does that include?” so we don’t feel obligated to squander our fixed sum of love on those outside our neighborly ambit.  Rather, we treat others with compassion and love, and the scope of our neighbors multiplies. 

It is also the logic behind the Parable of the Talents or the Pounds, whish we read earlier this week in Morning Prayer:  the one who fearfully hides and buries the little he has been entrusted with in order to try to save t, has it all taken away from him; the one who goes out fearlessly and risks it all to build the investment, not only makes a huge profit, but is entrusted with more and more.

Today’s epistle says that our faith in the crucified and resurrected One means bad is not contagious and good is not a zero sum game:  “We are always confident…  for we walk by faith, not by sight… For the love of Christ urges us on… [T]herefore, we regard no one from a human point of view… [I]f anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”   

And our Gospel today has two parables of the Reign of God:  it is like a seed that grows all on its own, without the gardener knowing, and like a tiny mustard seed that ends up a huge shrub so big that birds find refuge in it.  When you are living in the Reign of God, growth happens on its own, and it produces, as the Prayer Book puts it, “more than we can ask or imagine.” 

Today’s Psalm expresses it more concretely.  Here is my translation: 

 

“It is a good thing to give thanks to Yahweh,
and to sing praises to your Name, O Most High;

To tell of your loving-kindness early in the morning
and of your faithfulness in the night season…

For you have given me joy through your acts, O Yahweh;

I shout for joy because of the works of your hands.

The one who is quick to give alms shall flourish like a palm tree,
and shall spread abroad like a cedar of Lebanon.

Those who are planted in the house of Yahweh
shall flourish in our God’s courtyards;

Even when old, they shall still bear fruit;
and be green and succulent." 

 

The point is not that if you follow God, only good things will happen to you, but rather that if we have faith and thankfulness for God’s gracious acts, we are generous and compassionate (that’s what “righteous” zadik in verse 11 means), we will find God’s blessings multiplied and not diminished.  And this unnaturally so—even old plants, that should be dried, withered, and sterile, when planted in God stay green and fresh and produce much fruit.

 

It’s all about trusting God, whose basic character is to be provident and prodigal. 

 

That’s why when faced with challenges to parish vitality, we should not hunker down and retract, but to go whole hog all the more into broader ministry.

 

That’s why when faced with cash flow problems, we should be more generous in our outreach and stewardship rather than more stingy. 

 

That’s why when others hurt us, we should turn the other cheek, and show more love, rather than returning evil for evil. 

 

Paul touches on this great principle when he appeals for alms from the Corinthians in these words:  “[T]the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.  Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver”  (2 Cor 9:6-7).

 

The Psalter says elsewhere, “Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” (Psalm 126:6).  Even if you are suffering sowing as bountifully as you can means you will reap bountifully. 

 

This is not to say that we should be foolish or careless.  Remember Jesus told us to be smart as snakes but harmless as doves.  Jesus demands street smarts.    But it does mean that in the economy of God, there are no zero sums, and an increase in love and service means we will have more to give, not less.   On occasion we may need to cut back or withdraw a bit, but this should be so we can better serve, perhaps better focus our service to make it more effective, and be genuinely more generous in our real situation. We should never cut back or withdraw because we are abandoning hope out of fear.   That would spell increasingly reduced resources, and quickened decline and death, if only of our own hearts.   

 

In all this, we do need to take care of ourselves—not for our own sake, but so we are in a position better to help others.  The selfishness of people who seek good for themselves simply for themselves seems to impose a limit to what they can realistically achieve.  Stinginess, either with time, money, or attention, results in a reduction of what you think you are preserving.  But if you work hard and are attentive to gaining strength and resources so you can share and help others, you will find almost on a daily basis a miraculous multiplication of loaves.

 

It’s all about trust and thanks.  They drive out selfishness, anger, and fearful stinginess. 

 

A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved; joy shared is joy doubled.  Sow sparingly, and reap less and less; sow generously, and a bumper crop will come  Trust in God, and let thankfulness drive out fear.  Those who despite weeping sow the seeds, will surely harvest in joy. 

 

In the name of Christ.    Amen 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Royal Roads (Midweek Message)

Euclid detail of Raphael, School of Athens 

 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

No Royal Roads

June 9, 2021  

 

Pride goes before destruction,

and a haughty spirit before a fall.

--Prov. 16: 18

 

We know very little about the historical life of Greek mathematician Euclid (c. 300 BCE), other than that it was he who wrote the Elements of Geometry, still used as a textbook in that subject.  In one story that remains, Euclid taught many students, including Ptolemy I of Egypt.  Ptolemy, frustrated at the amount of time and effort required to master the basics of this branch of knowledge, asked whether geometry could not be made easier for him, a king.  Euclid famously replied, “There is no royal road to geometry.”  This saying has come to be used to express the general truth that there are no shortcuts in reaching something truly worth attaining, and that it takes a lot of effort to gain control of an area of knowledge.  

 

In our democratic age, this era of self-publication and “alternate facts,” many of us seem to have lost sight of this truth.  Because we believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion on almost everything, we mistakenly think that all opinions are of equal value.  Worse, we may think that opinions on technical matters reinforced from things outside of the technical area are of greater value than classic “peer-review” consensus.  

 

Some think that their religion and reading of the Bible discredit the hard science behind understanding the diversity of life on the planet as the product of evolutionary change and natural selection.  Others think that religious doctrines about when life begins somehow invalidate the medical science that sees the beginning and ending of life as a complex of multivariant spectra that would allow some personal and medical discretion in such matters.  Many would be loathe to use modern biblical criticism as a point of departure for understanding the Bible itself.  And militant atheists like Richard Dawkins believe that their understanding of science requires them to reject all religious doctrine, theology, and theistic philosophy out of hand even though they have not spent much effort in mastering any of these fields, with the result that they often woefully mischaracterize and misunderstand the fields of knowledge they are rejecting.  On the left, we see people who reject root and branch whole areas of knowledge and considered legal opinions simply because they do not conform to the orthodoxies of their partisan commitments, are not sufficiently “woke,” or are seen to work against their particular interest group.  Currently we have people who reject received medical science regarding virology and immunization either because of a left-wing knee-jerk rejection of vaccination writ-large on the one hand, or a right- wing cult of a former president who decided to deny the science as a way of stoking his political base.    

 

The basic problem, here, I think is hubris, or over-weening unhealthy pride.  Thinking that our partisan or interest group commitments, or our personal preferences and whims, can outweigh the expertise of people who have spent their lives studying and researching specific areas is just plain folly.  It is arrogant.  It is a sin.  And in the current environment, it is proving deadly, both to individuals and to our common life.  Just as there is no royal road to geometry, there is no royal road to sound medicine, science, history, or religion.  Just as there is no royal road to expertise, neither is there a republican or democratic one. 

 

Grace and Peace. 

--Fr. Tony+