Donkeys and the Heart of Life (mid-week message)

 

Donkeys and the Heart of Life

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 27, 2021 

 

Clergy among themselves sometimes call funerals and weddings “donkey” events.  This is not because they are like a Palm Sunday procession, or somehow resemble donkeys in the speaker’s mind.  Rather, it is because they, like any beast of burden, are loaded with extraneous baggage.  They are “fraught,” or freighted with emotions and judgments from a whole range of life experience.  So, we say among ourselves, it is very important to listen carefully to requests and to accommodate them when we can.  The real problems arise in such events when those with a stake in them strongly differ in their judgments and requests, i.e., when the donkeys carry conflicting baggage.  It’s not just weddings and funerals, either:  many of the differences we run into about church and community life are the result the different personal luggage we each try to make them carry.  

 

As I prepare to go on Sabbatical starting Sunday, I have been doing a lot of thinking about relationships and how often such issues are things of the head, and act as mere stand-ins for deeper things of the heart. 

 

A friend recently shared a quote with me from Thomas Merton, “The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not twist them to fit our own image.  Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we see in them.” 

 

Another friend shared a touching story about care-giving for someone with dementia:  a son regularly visited his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother.  Sometimes she would greet him as her husband; sometimes her brother in her youth.  Asked by medical staff whether this bothered him, he replied, “Oh no. She may not know exactly who I am because of her illness.  She floats between the different ages of her life’s memory.  So she calls me by the name of the person I seem to look like, regardless from when that memory was formed.  But through it all, she knows I am there, and that she loves me.  And that is enough.” 

 

When we leave our loved ones here behind, and go to meet our Jesus and the loved ones who have gone on before, I think that few of us will remember exactly the details of what others said or did.   But we will remember clearly how they made us feel.

 

I pray that all of us—especially me—can focus on the deeper things of life, the things of the heart, and not let ourselves be distracted from them by the outer things—issues, opinions, courses of action—that in the long run are mere donkeys that carry the deeper baggage of our hearts.  

 

Keep me and Elena in your prayers, as we will keep you in ours.  See you in November.  

 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+    

Bread of Heaven (Proper 12 B )

 

Bread of Heaven

Proper 12B
25 July 2021; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson

at Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland, Oregon

2 Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21

 

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

 

Today’s reading from the Gospel of John tells us a story where five barley breads and two fish, once blessed by Jesus, feed over 5,000 people.  The story occurs in all four Gospels.   In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the story demonstrates the power of Jesus and his role as Messiah.   In John, it forms part of that Gospel’s Book of Signs, a recounting of marvelous deeds by Jesus that point beyond themselves to inner, hidden truths about Jesus: turning water into wine shows he is the true Vine, multiplying the loaves shows he is the Bread of Life, curing the man born blind shows he is the Light of the World, and raising Lazarus from the dead shows he is the Life of the world.   

 

Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000 here is a sign pointing to and embodying the truth that Jesus is both nourisher and nourishment.    Right after this story, Jesus gives the sermon of the Bread of Life, where he says,  “I am the bread of life.  The one who comes to me shall not hunger.  The one who believes in me shall never thirst.  … I am the living bread come down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread shall live forever.  The bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.  … Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up at the last day” (John 6: 35-54). 

 

Where the Synoptics say Jesus took the loaves and fish and “blessed them and gave them” to the people, John alone uses the language, “he gave thanks and distributed” them.   Those words in John link this story to early Christian sacrament of the Eucharist, which, after all, means “Thanksgiving.”

 

St. Paul, writing about 25 years after the death of Jesus, described the origin of this sacrament in this way:  “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’  For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). 

 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all follow Paul in this same basic story.  But John, for his part, does not tell of a Eucharist at the Last Supper, instead he tells of the washing of feet and a long prayer of intercession by Jesus.  It is part of John’s general tendency to remove references to sacraments in stories about Jesus and replace them with stories and speeches that focus on their meaning.   Jesus never receives baptism by John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel; instead he works a sign by offering himself as “Living Water” to the Samaritan woman at the Well, teaching Nicodemus about birth “by water and by the spirit,” and having having water flow from his pierced side on the Cross. 

 

Similarly, in John there is no Eucharistic prayer at the Last Supper.  Rather, the feeding of the 5,000 points to and embodies the fact that Jesus is the Bread from Heaven, which we must eat in order to have eternal life.

The Bread of Life Sermon in John and the Last Supper narratives in Paul and the Synoptics brought the Church early on to recognize the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist celebration and in the blessed bread and wine themselves.       

 

An early Christian hymn by Ephrem of Edessa, writing in a form of Aramaic in the fourth century expresses the wonder and reverence of this belief well: 

…In your bread, [Lord,] there blows what no mouth can devour.
In your wine there smoulders what no lips can drink.
Gale and Blaze in bread and wine: unparalleled the miracle we taste.

Coming down to earth, where human beings die,
God created these anew, like Wide-eyed Ones,
mingling Blaze and Gale and making these the mystic content of their dust.

Did the Seraph’s fingers touch the white-hot coal?
Did the Prophet’s mouth do more than touch the same?
No, they grasped it not and he consumed it not. To us are granted both.

Abram offered body-food to spirit-guests.
Angels swallowed meat. The newest proof of power
is that bodies eat and drink the Fire and Wind provided by our Lord.
                                          (tr. Geoffrey Rowell) 

 

We live today in an age where much of the wonder, awe, and reverence has been removed from life, a world where the realm of the sacred and holy is getting smaller and smaller. 

 

But if we are to be fully human, and true to our nature, we must not lose our sense of the holy, our sense of reverence, and our ability to see the holy, to see divinity, in ordinary things of daily life, like bread and wine.

 

When I hear people mock belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and reverencing its elements as superstitious “cookie worship,” I question their capacity to wonder or hold anything in awe or reverence.  Part of the problem, of course, is that some people do indeed have superstitious and magical ways of seeing the Eucharist.  “Hocus-pocus” as a way to mock such superstition is a corruption of the Latin translation of Jesus’ words when he instituted the Eucharist, “Hoc est corpus meum (This is my body).”  

 

But some peoples’ bad opinions or misuse of doctrine should not lead us to the opposite error of rejecting the true doctrines that can lead us to salvation.  We need to follow here the example of the young Elizabeth I, who affirmed her faith the Real Presence while declining to over-define the matter.  When queried under threat of possible torture or death as a heretic by Queen Mary’s inquisitors about her belief regarding the Eucharistic elements, Elizabeth referred to Jesus’ words “this is my body, this is my blood,” and replied with the ideas summed up in this quatrain: 

 

Christ was the word that spake it.
He took the bread and break it;
And what his words did make it
That I believe and take it.

 

Key in experiencing and honoring the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is having a general idea about what a sacrament is.  It is, just as in our Gospel story today, a sign, a symbol, an outward and visible expression of inward, hidden reality.  A symbol does not just point beyond itself to something else; it participates in and embodies the reality to which it points.  It makes the reality it indicates available to us by the very fact that it is there.   It is for this reason that any understanding of the Eucharist that does not encompass a belief in the real presence of Christ is to my mind flawed. 

It is hard to express the reverence and awe I feel at the presence of Christ in the sacrament.  But hymns, like the one of Efrem the Syrian I quoted earlier, manage at times to capture elements of this awe.  In the hymn, “Lord you give the great commission” we sing:  “Lord, you make the common holy, this my body, this my blood.  Let us all, for earth’s true glory, daily lift life heavenward.” 

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask “give us this day our daily bread.”  But this is not simply a prayer for basic physical sustenance.   The words translated by “our daily bread” actually mean something more like “our bread for the morrow,” the bread of the great feast on the Day of the Lord, or even “the bread beyond the one you meant when you said, ‘man shall not live by bread alone.’”  It is for this reason that the Lord’s Prayer has always been recited as part of the Great Thanksgiving, just before the breaking of the bread. 

 

Friends, as I go on sabbatical for the months of August, September, and October, I will be taking special care of Elena and working hard on my translation, “The Ashland Bible.”  I hope to celebrate Eucharist on Sundays with Elena at home during this time, and privately recite the Daily Office.  And in this, I will recite the Lord’s Prayer every day.  Please keep us in your prayers.  

 

I would invite all of you, this week, to remember to say the Lord’s Prayer at least once a day.  And when you say the words, “give us this day our daily bread,” think of the Bread of Life, come down from heaven. Think of Christ made present to us in God’s gifts of bread and the wine, at his table of plenty.  And then in your silent time, your private prayers, feed on him in your hearts by faith, and be thankful.

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Leave the Results to God (Mid-week Message)

 

 Van Gogh, The Sower

Leave the Results to God

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

July 21, 2021

 

One of the wonderful things about Biblical scripture is that it often is polyvalent in meaning, that is, can be patient of several understandings and applications.  A passage we have read again and again over our life, if re-read at the right time and with the right heart in a new circumstance, can take on whole new significance for us. 

 

I recently had this experience with a passage that most of us know well, Jesus’ Parable of the Scattered Seed (Mark 4:1-9; Matt 13:1-9; and Luke 8:4-8): a peasant scatters seed in various soils and sees most of his plantings die for various reasons but one of them succeed so well that he recovers 100 times his investment of seed.  We know all too well the interpretation put on it by the Gospel writers (Mark 4:13-20; Matt 13:18-23; Luke 8:11-15). The same seed, the preached Word, suffers or thrives depending on the soil where it falls: thin soil along the path is the devil’s temptations that prevent it from even being heard; the rocky soil is where it is received with joy, but because it has no deep roots, dies at the first trial of faith; the seed choked by weeds and thorns is faith that dies because of “cares of the world and love of money”; and the productive good planting is when the word is accepted and truly understood. 

 

But this interpretation 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.  This interpretation is almost certainly the product of an early Christian homilist, concerned about how their 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, and they include no allegorizing. 

 

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 difference between small starts and great results is 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. 

 

In the Parable of the Scattered Seed, the sower broadcasts seed in un prepared soils, the standard practice of ancient Palestine, far different from our intensive soil preparation, seed selection, and care of plants, including irrigation and pest and weed management.    

 

I have understood for years that the one point of comparison the historical Jesus was making in this parable was that the success of the seed that falls by chance on good soil justifies the apparent carelessness or profligacy of the sower in their other plantings. 

 

But the other day, just after I preached about the Peace of Christ and what it depends on and what it requires of us, I came across the passage of the Scattered Seeds again and had an insight.  I realized that the deeper issue Jesus was trying to get at was this: when we are talking about the Reign of God, we need to turn all our concerns and worries about outcomes over to God, because God is Compassion and Providence itself.   The one successful bumper crop outweighs all the losses and failures. 

 

Jesus teaches this truth in sayings and parables not using the image of a seed.  “God gives the blessing of rain and sun on the wicked and righteous alike” says Jesus.  “Can you even add an inch to your height by worrying about it?  Then just let your worries and cares go by the boards.”  “God may seem crazy to us at times, like that crazy loving father with the two lost 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.  God’s craziness is actually God’s compassion and love, deeper and greater than we can calculate or imagine.   So trust, actually trust, God.  Don’t worry about outcomes—he surely doesn’t seem to.  Your worries really show how little faith you actually have.” 

 

Siblings in Christ, 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 failed crops, the apparently wasted seed stock.  We must take in stride Church programs and experiments and life projects and community reforms that just don’t seem to “pan out.”  We must persevere through disappointment and hurt.  We must not be beaten down and care-worn by this broken world and how long it seems to make any progress in healing it.  We must have a heart full of assurance that in the end, love wins and compassion triumphs.  Because that’s how God’s Reign is. 

 

Grace and Peace,  Fr. Tony+

 

Our Peace (Proper 11 B )

 

Our Peace

Proper 11B
18 July 2021; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.,

at Trinity Episcopal Parish

 

Ashland, Oregon

 

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

 

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

 

 

“Remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, … [were] aliens … and strangers to the covenants of promise…. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace… he has broken down the dividing wall, … [Y]ou are no longer strangers and aliens, but citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God….”

 

Ephesians thus characterizes the effect of Christ’s victory over death on the cross on his world.  The idea is that by suffering and overcoming the worst that the wickedness of the world could throw at him, Christ brought peace to people far and near, and broke down the wall dividing groups.  Paul expressed the idea a little more expansively in Galatians:  “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

 

The idea is profound—in Christ, all divisions and distinctions are healed, all differences blurred, polarities centered, dualities united.

 

It is so easy to divide the world into us and them.  Group identity is a cheap way of finding ourselves, and seeing only the good in us, at the expense of those not in our group.  It is a seductive way of making us forget our own failings by focusing on the failings of others.  Thinking that such divisions matter masks the truth that all of us are flawed, and that ultimately, we are all in this together. 

 

Think of the different groups into which we divide up the world.

 

Rich and poor. 

Black and white.

Saints and sinners.

Male and female.  

Cisgender and trans 

Jew and Gentile

Christian and pagan

High Church and Low Church  

Catholic and Protestant.

Straight and Gay.

Republican and Democrat.

Native and foreigner.

 

 “Christ is our peace; in him, we are one.” 

 

Peace in Christ, however, is a starting point, not an end in itself.  It does not give us a ticket to pass by the process of amending past harms. 

 

Take one example—Race.  Martin Luther King said he looked forward to the day where his children would be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.  He wanted bigotry and hurt on the basis of race ended.  But this does not mean he wanted us to ignore the real-world conditions of people who still suffer from prejudice.   If Love sees no color, it also demands that we look at injustice based on color in the eye. In a world where many still feel the oppression and marginalization of personal racial bigotry or systemic preference given to some groups at the disadvantage of others, it means we must say things like “Black Lives Matter.”   

 

Does “race doesn’t matter” mean that black lives don’t matter?  I think not.  Just go over to Railroad Park on A Street and look at the memorial to people who have suffered from systemic injustice.  That is a monument to love, not hatred.  I saw a witty meme recently:  it had Jesus leaving the 99 sheep off in search of the one that was lost.  Off to the side, a person pointed at Jesus and angrily screamed, “All sheep matter!”  The point is not that Black people are wandering souls—they are not—but that Jesus taught us to take special care of those who are on the margins. 

 

We all try to divide people up, and often assigning good or evil to one group or the other. 

 

In the Harry Potter books, there is a clear struggle between good and evil, between Voldemort and Harry Potter, the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix, Griffindor and Slitherin:  good guys and bad guys.  Yet at one point, Sirius Black tells his godson that one must not think that one group or person is purely good and another purely evil:  “We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.”

 

Ephesians is not saying that good and evil do not exist, or that we need not worry about struggling against evil.  But it is saying that divisions between groups often labeled as good and evil no longer matter in light of the cross.

 

There is a deep logic to this.  Community defines itself not just by who it includes, but also by who in excludes.  For this, Philosopher René Girard says that community is “unanimity minus one,” that is, a group united in accusing and expelling at least one of its own. Community is not just joined hands and linked arms of embrace.  It in its structure is also the pointing finger of accusation, of exclusion. Community regulates itself by scapegoating. 

 

Most primitive cultures have myths that express this.  Generally an abnormal or impure member of the community is singled out, driven away, and often killed in the myth.  Thereby the community is made whole.  Impurity and wrong are thus purged.  

 

Our own Christian story turns this myth on its head:  the crowd points their fingers at Jesus and calls for his death, he is brutalized, taken outside the city walls, and killed.   But—and here’s the difference—Jesus is innocent.  It is he who is right, and the community that is wrong. Thus Ephesians: Christ on the cross preaches peace to those who are far off and those who are near.  The cross, that cruel tool the Roman Empire used to enforce community, that instrument of public terror supporting conformity, is undone by the resurrection of our Lord and becomes a sign of healing and unity. 

 

Christ, once driven outside the wall, becomes our peace, and breaks down all dividing walls.  He brings those far off, those driven outside the walls themselves, back, and draws them near.   

 

That’s what all the shepherd imagery in today’s other readings is about.   The kings of Israel, called the shepherds of the people, in today’s Hebrew Scripture lesson fail their flock by striving too hard to maintain its advantage over other nations, perhaps by scapegoating and strong-arm community enforcement. 

 

But Jesus sees the people as a flock without a shepherd, and steps up to feed and support them.  He brings them all together—regardless of their background—into a single fold.  He tends them not because they are his sheep and others are not, but because they need a shepherd.  And so he feeds them and serves them, regardless of their origins.

 

Where the Good Shepherd leads, division and strife, fear and loathing of the Other, are healed.  While not gone entirely, they are subsumed into peace and “righteousness,” or compassionate goodness.  I translate Psalm 23 this way: 

 

“It is Yahweh who is my shepherd; I need nothing else.

Green are the pastures where God has me lie. 

Still are the waters where God guides me.

God refreshes my life.

Because of who God is, God leads me in compassionate paths. 

Though I must trudge even through the darkest deadly chasm,

I shall not fear any harm. 

Because you are with me. 

Your crook and your walking-stick give me comfort, not hurt. 

You spread out a great feast for me

Even when faced by persecutors. 

You pour calming lotion on my head;

The cup before me overflows with wine.

I am sure that with you,

Kindness and compassion will be at hand as long as I live,

And it is in your house that I will make my home forever.” (Psalm 23 TAB)

 

The cross undoes not just the mutual accusation between groups.  The division within ourselves that each of us experiences, the sense of not being worthy, of not being a “good person,” is also undone.  The fact is, most of our accusations we hurl at others are projections of the very faults we ourselves suffer from.  We are responsible for the narratives we bear in our hearts and tell our fellows about those we identify as “other.”  Paul says Jesus “erased the record against us from all legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross”  (Col. 2:24).  He thus destroys the alienation within each of us because of the accusation built into our individual lives. 

 

Even in this, “Christ is our peace; in him we are one.”  The cross and resurrection tell us that we ought not accuse ourselves or others.  They tell us that we are one, that we are beloved. 

 

Loved ones, alienation is real, whether between groups or within our hearts. We are all strangers and foreigners.  We try to make ourselves feel better about it by clinging to our group, our family, our tribe, defined in part by making strangers and foreigners of others.   We accuse scapegoats or blame enemies for our very own crimes; we also accuse ourselves as desolate losers.  Those political and religious leaders who milk such alienation to gain power and wealth are guilty of great sin.  For Jesus took this all with him outside the wall, and it died with him.  In the light of Easter morning, we can see that it is all a sham. 

 

In Christ, we are one.  In Christ, we are no longer strangers and foreigners.  He has broken down the dividing wall, and has nailed the accuser’s power itself to the cross.   He is our peace. 

 

Thanks be to God.  

 

The Lord's Service (mid-week message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

The Lord’s Service

July 14, 2021

 

“For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me” (Mark 14:7). 

 

“And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?  If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest?”  (Luke 12:25-26)  

“James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to {Jesus] and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;  but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John.  So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:35-45)

As I prepare for a three month sabbatical and we all prepare for a mutual ministry review, I have been giving a lot of thought (and prayer and dream work) to ministry and its joys and sorrows.  Ministry can be at times an odd mix of ecstasy and agony.  In recent months I have been doing a lot of pastoral care visits and spiritual direction meetings.  In a great variety of settings, I have seen joy and pain mixed, whether it was counseling and giving blessing to a newcomer to Trinity fleeing from pain in another congregation; hearing confession of  deepest shames and regrets and then giving counsel, absolution, and blessing; listening to and empathizing with heartfelt terrors about growing old, losing one’s memory or balance, and perhaps not being able to continue to manage independent day-to-day life, then trying to give gentle encouragement and counsel that might help; and reading the complaint of a parishioner bitterly unhappy with how the vestry and I had managed an issue in parish administration, in not having given what they considered due attention to a parish committee.  I was happy for this input and investment the person had in the issue, yet pained that they had not talked to me directly about it.  “What are the committees for?” they asked, not really wanting an answer.

 

What strikes me is this: ministry is sharing, and we share both joy and pain.  We are all imperfect creatures, and imperfect Christians.  We all do the best we can, and are well advised to not beat up on ourselves or others when we do not meet expectations.  Sometimes, expectations are unreal:  for our own serenity, we have to be willing to accept imperfect outcomes.  “The poor are always with you” is on Jesus’ lips even as he tells us to keep on in compassionate giving and service.   We need to listen to each other as we give helpful suggestions.  We also need to phrase our suggestions in ways that are helpful and encourage better ministry rather than present time and energy drags on precious time and affect that otherwise could be used to accomplish the very ministry we seek to enhance.  A key in such helpfulness is remaining open when it comes to outcomes: not to “lord it over” others or expect our will be done, but rather, accept whatever it is that God and our fellows have in store for us.  This does not mean we shouldn’t stand up for what we consider the right path.  But it does mean we should lose resentment and affect at the door when we do not have things our way.    

 

Trinity is a loving, kind, place.  Our people have taken to heart the admonition “Life is short and we have little time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to be love, make haste to be kind.”   But on occasion we—like all human beings—can, for all our niceness, work in ways that undermine, intentionally or not, others in their ministry.   I include myself here—this is part of being human and one goal of all our various spiritual exercises is to remedy this tendency, Again, we are all imperfect creatures, and Christians just beginning to learn to follow Jesus.  We cannot ground ourselves in a hope of achieving outcomes, only in hope of doing our best.  But just as our church service can perhaps never really solve the real problems that face us, our following Jesus in ministry will always entail accepting part of his suffering and cross: “The cup that I drink you will also drink.”

 

What is ministry all about? Not to achieve our own will, that’s for sure.  And not to fix all the problems, either.  In ministry we are given opportunity to serve, and to give the grace and blessing of Jesus to others, especially when this means sharing in their pain.  What are parish committees for?  To give us a chance for work in ministry directly, and the responsibility of providing advice and counsel based on our ministry to those directly charged with oversight and leadership, the Vestry and the Rector.  Again, turning over outcomes to God is key in maintaining our own groundedness and serene following in the way of Jesus. 

 

I intend to continue prayerfully reflecting on these issues as we go forward into my sabbatical and our mutual ministry review.  I hope and pray that we all can follow God’s voice in our heart, pass on the grace of Jesus to others, and do better in all ways. 

 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+     

The Only Person Jesus Personally Insulted (Proper 10B)

 

 

 

The Only Person Jesus

Personally Insulted

Proper 10B
11 July 2021; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

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

 

Amos 7:7-15; Psalm 85:8-13; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:14-29

 

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

 

 

 

When I worked at the U.S. State Department, we had a way of describing an officer or political appointee who built their careers and lives by ingratiating themselves to the powerful and lording it over others once they had a little power: kiss up and kick down. 

 

The Herod in today’s Gospel is a perfect example.  Known to history as Herod Antipas, he was the youngest son of the King Herod who kills the babies in Matthew’s nativity stories.  Antipas was the ruler of the Galilee in which Jesus grew up, the king who ordered the huge Greco-Roman construction projects at Sepphoris and Tiberias where our Lord, a young building contractor from Nazareth, most likely worked.  

 

Pragmatic, practical, and goal-driven, Antipas makes all of his decisions on the basis of one principle: “how does this get me ahead in the world?”  In portraits, he is a handsome man, clean cut and shaven in the Roman style.  He follows the philosophy of Epicureanism, which said that pursuit of pleasure, rightly understood and properly limited from excess, was the highest good in life.   He was Machiavellian, extremely good at manipulating things in his favor, no matter how he might lie, bully, or on occasion appeal to high and noble ideals.

 

Antipas starts low in the line of possible heirs to Herod: three other brothers precede him.  But he does all he can to enhance his royal prospects—he marries a Nabatean princess.  Maybe he can’t follow his father as the Roman-appointed “King of the Jews,” but he might end up as “King of the Nabateans” next door if he plays his cards right.  But then Herod the Great executes his two oldest sons for treason.  “”Business is business” as Don Vito Corleone might say.  

 

Antipas, now second in line to this Mafioso’s throne, acts.  The Romans have marked his remaining older brother as ineffective—clearly he didn’t suck up well enough—and they want to sack him and divide up Herod the Great’s Kingdom.  That is the real reason Antipas seduces this brother’s wife, Herodias.  She is Antipas’ own niece, daughter of one of the executed older brothers.  She is beautiful and desirable, but more important, she is Hasmonean royalty, having the blood of Judas Macchabeus in her veins through her mother.  Marriage to her makes Antipas a shoo-in for whatever thrones the Romans might be handing out to those who know their place.  Antipas divorces his Nabatean wife, arranges for his brother to divorce his wife, and then marries Heriodias, happy to step back onto the fast track of the social escalator. 

 

But the prophet John the Baptist objects:  the marriage violates Torah commandments against corrupting family relationships by having sexual relations with the spouse of a living sibling.  It is incest, and John calls it this.  Like Amos in today’s reading, come up to Israel from south of the border Judah and preaching truth to power, John holds up a plumb line and says what is straight and what is crooked.

 

The Jewish Roman Historian Josephus says that Antipas feared the Baptist because his popularity posed a threat to Antipas’ political power.   Antipas has John locked up to separate him from his audiences, and then after a while quietly executes him. 

 

Josephus says that Antipas’ ex-wife returns humiliated and shamed to her father’s palace in Nabatea.  A war ensues, and Antipas almost is overthrown. But the Romans intervene and defend their puppet who sucks up so well.   Josephus says that the war was God’s punishment for John’s murder.

 

Mark tells a different story, one woven from popular rumor, not unlike tabloid news:  the deadly dinner party, Salome’s dance whether with seven veils or not, the drunken promise fueled by lust and ego, and Herodias’s revenge on John for calling her no better than a prostitute.   Kick down indeed.  Mark sadly here is guilty of cherchez la femme: it was all a wicked woman’s doing, working her vengeance by manipulating a weak, drunk man.

 

Mark’s telling detail that Antipas did not want to execute John because “he enjoyed listening to him” fits elements of Antipas’ character that we see elsewhere in the Gospels.  Once, people in Galilee warn Jesus that “Herod is plotting to kill him” (Luke 13:31).  Jesus replies bitingly, giving the only personal insult about an individual recorded on the lips of Jesus.  “Go tell that female fox,” he says, “that I’m safe, because prophets seem to be killed only in Jerusalem.”   “Tell that vixen!”   Jesus thus says that Antipas’ Realpolitik, however tarted up for public consumption, really is just narcissism and self-promoting manipulation, smelling to high heaven.  He is not even the alpha male he pretends to be, not up to murdering a prophetic opponent in his own territory.  That might provoke a reaction, and get in the way of Antipas’ enjoyment.

 

Later, on Good Friday, Pontius Pilate realizes that Jesus is from Galilee and thinks he might be able to get off the hook of having to condemn a person he thought unjustly accused, sends Jesus to Antipas, visiting Jerusalem but after all still ruler of Galilee.  Luke 23 tells us that Antipas received Jesus, “because he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and he was eager to see some sign done by him.”   Where the Galilean peasantry had sought Jesus and his miracles for healing, for food, and for hope, Antipas sought Jesus and his miracles so he could have a good cocktail party story to share with his Roman buddies.   

 

Jesus, for his part, refuses to speak even one word to Antipas.  What’s the point of engaging such a person? So Antipas, to show this silent upstart his place, orders his soldiers to dress Jesus up in what Luke calls “a gorgeous gown” perhaps with glam make-up to boot. We’ll show him who’s a vixen and who’s leading the fox hunt!  And that is how they send Jesus back to Pilate.  Pilate apparently appreciates a good joke as well, for Luke ends the story with “and from that day on, Pilate and Herod remained friends.”  

 

So what does this sad and ugly story mean for us?

 

Mark often makes his point by juxtaposing stories.  He starts here with the story of Antipas’ deadly dinner party, but immediately follows this with the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000.

 

The party is exclusive:  elite guests, the finest delicacies, amusements and enjoyments, possibly a chance for face time with Antipas, friend of Caesar and aspirant to the title “King of the Jews.”  But Antipas, Narcissist par excellence, Mr. Kiss-up-kick-down himself, has had too much to drink. It ends badly, very badly. 

 

The very next story Mark tells is of a different kind of meal, one offered by Jesus.  It is not exclusive.  It is in the open, and all are invited.  They go to a desert place, and the crowds follow.  “It’s late, we must send them away for them to buy their dinner,” say the disciples.  Jesus is not interested in sending people away.  He is also not afraid of what the guests might think of him if he does not deliver.  “How many fish and loaves do we have?” he asks, “Not many,” they reply.  But then he proceeds to feed all.  No deadly dinner party this.  Just life and love overflowing, inclusive, supporting, and nourishing.    No kiss-up-kick-down here.  Rather, “let the first among you be the last, and the greatest be servant of the least.”  And everyone must share what little they have. 

Antipas was all about self, about pleasure and control, about manipulation and gaining and keeping power by whatever means necessary.  Though superstitious, he uses spiritual things for his own purposes.  He is the ultimate practitioner of “Boutique Religion,” of choosing a little here that suits you and a little there that fosters your political program: anything, as long as it helps you on the way up.   His pathological lying and his habitual abuse of others is just an extension of this narcissism.  

 

The Baptist and Jesus were about sacrifice, and restraint of self.   They wanted true religion, religion of helping the poor, the widowed, the orphaned.  No self-serving manipulation for them, no amusing spiritual-but-not-religious fads.  Like Amos, they hold up a plumb line to reveal the lies of their leaders, and suffer for it. 

 

Ultimately, Antipas too fell from Caesar’s grace.  His estranged nephew, another Herod named Agrippa who judges Paul in the book of Acts, was best friends with the Roman Emperor Caligula when he ascended to power.   Agrippa was, of the five “other” Herods in the Bible, the only one to actually receive Herod the Great’s Roman title “King of the Jews.”  Agrippa made sure Antipas was relieved of his duties and banished, freeing up his territories so Agrippa could claim control of them.  Antipas was sent into a quiet retirement, in, appropriately for such a sybaritic, the south of France.  Herodias accompanies him into exile. 

 

We today continue to live in a world that praises “quality” and the “right kind of people.”  The wicked prosper and the just suffer.  Liars seem to be rewarded for their lies, not punished.  We follow self-promoting hucksters like Antipas and Herodias, who behind all the glam and show are heartless scoundrels, even murderers.   They are, as we also said in the foreign service, nasty pieces of work. 

 

Let us pray that God deliver us from such Herods, and save us from the temptation to mimic them in their kiss up kick down ways.  Let us pray for the strength to speak truth to power. 

 

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.