Primate Grooming (Proper 17C)

 

Primate Grooming (Proper 17C)

Homily Delivered 28 August 2022

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

Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford (Oregon)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP

Sirach 10:12-18; Psalm 112; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

God, give us hearts to love and feel,

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

 

When I first joined the U.S. Diplomatic service, a very wise mentor told me before my first overseas assignment the following: 

 

Tony, always remember to respect the niceties of hierarchy and rank.  You will run into Ambassadors and Department of State under-Secretaries who, as products of the 60s, like to think of themselves as ‘just plain folks.’  Trying to convince themselves that they are as egalitarian and informal as they wish they actually were, they will say, “Don’t use ‘Mr. Ambassador’ or ‘Madame Secretary’ with me.  Just call me by my first name.”  Don’t you believe it for one minute, and never follow that advice, no matter how often or vehemently expressed.  Use “Sir” or “Ma’am,” always stand when an Ambassador or the President enters the room, and use first names only when you truly have become a hierarch’s friend and then, only away from the office.

 

I thought that maybe he was being a little extreme, and old fashioned, until I saw with my own eyes an example of what had led him to that conclusion: an Ambassador who indeed insisted that his senior embassy staff not rise when he entered the room at “Country Team” meetings.  Everyone continued to rise, despite the Ambassador’s protestations, until one newly arrived Peace Corps Director took him at his word and remained seated, all alone.  The Ambassador gave a look of barely concealed contempt to the newcomer, sat down, and then said, in all apparent gentleness, “I hope you look after that leg, Mr. Country Director.  What is it, a soccer injury?  I wouldn’t want to have to curtail you for medical reasons.”  There had been no soccer injury. 

 

Social hierarchies, the niceties of rank and position—all of these things are part of how we organize our community life.   Here in the casual West Coast, many of us tend to want to pooh-pooh such concerns.  And they are easy to dismiss, I admit. 

 

But we do so at our peril, because what we are talking about here is deeper than mere convention or social tradition.  We are talking primate grooming, the thinking great ape’s method of picking lice off the shoulders of our Silverbacks and allowing the Matriarchs full run of the kinship group.   Social hierarchy would seem to be part an instinctual artifact of our evolution as a species.  It is foolish to disregard such things and pretend that they do not exist.   Standing between a bear and her cubs is dangerous, and all the more so when try to overcome the bear’s dismay by pretending the cubs aren’t there. 

 

The problem, of course, is that the rules for social interaction and rank grow out of and seek to order power relationships, deep feelings and subconscious motivations.   Judith Martin, long-time writer of The Washington Post’s “Miss Manners” column, notes that manners and etiquette are aimed at easing social interaction, keeping calm in the public realm, and enforcing—through shame or embarrassment—the norms that preserve a façade of peace and civility over what otherwise would merely be a brutish and rude life.   In keeping our conflicts somewhat constrained, and in maintaining each other’s dignity, or at least the appearance of it, in giving each other ways to save face, politeness demands at times gentle insincerity.  As Miss Manner says, “Hypocrisy is not generally a social sin, but a virtue.”  And respect for rank means that we must be willing to refer to some people as “our superiors” even when they may not be worthy of the title. 

 

The difficulty, of course, comes when we confuse manners and politeness with ethics.  This not only messes up manners, but cheapens ethics.  The idea is expressed well, again, by Judith Martin when she discusses the tradition of having chaperons for unmarried young people: “Chaperons, even in their days of glory, were almost never able to enforce morality; what they did was force immorality to remain discreet.  That is no small contribution.”

 

The Gospel reading today tells us of Jesus’ take on social hierarchies, manners, and dinner party etiquette.  He is invited to a banquet.  Where generally the attention of a banquet is on the host and the guest of honor, everyone here is looking at Jesus to see how he’ll behave.   In the verses of this story that the Lectionary omits, they have set Jesus up by bringing in a man with edema whom Jesus heals.

 

When Jesus is a dinner guest, people watch. He has a reputation for telling shocking stories with twist endings, of challenging the accepted order, and of breaking rules such as the Sabbath.   They want to see if he is going to commit a faux pas, figuratively leave something unpleasant in the punch bowl.    Inviting a wild man to dinner can provide its amusements, and that seems in part to be what’s happening here. 

 

But Jesus himself is watching the watchers, and he observes their primate grooming behaviors.   He notices people jockeying for good table positions, working the room for social and professional advantage.  Then he quotes a truism found in the Book of Proverbs, 

 

“Do not put yourself forward …

or stand in the place of the great;

for it is better to be told, "Come up here,"

than to be put lower in the presence of a noble” (Proverbs 25:6-7).

 

Better, says Jesus, to be seen as a non-assuming person worthy of being lifted up among the great than to be seen a grasping wannabe who must be put in their place.  He adds, “Don’t embarrass yourselves.  For those who exalt themselves will be brought low, and those who make themselves low will be lifted high.”   Putting on airs inevitably brings humiliating deflation; a self-deprecating low profile will attract praise and honor from others.  As Miss Manners expresses it, “It’s far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.”

 

If that is all, then we are just talking about a truism, a strategy for getting ahead in the game of using rank and manners to manipulate others, to exploit them.  It is part of the practical wisdom of those on the make, of those who go along to get along. 

 

But Jesus knows the difference between good manners and good ethics.  He talks about our motives for throwing parties in an effort to get at the underlying truth of what makes manners, like Law, either good or harmful:            

 

“You invite people so you can put them in your debt, so you can get things out of them.  That’s wrong.  You need to invite people who can never repay you.  You need to invite people who need the meal and the companionship, not those whom you need to build your own network.”

 

Here and in the Gospel readings we have seen in the last few weeks, Jesus tries to describe the perceptions and values of someone who welcomes God’s Reign, of God come fully in charge, right here, right now. 

 

Last week and the week before, he said our approach to written rules and God’s Law—when to apply it rigorously and when to apply it loosely or even ignore it--must depend on whether our actions help those who need help, or simply use them for our purposes.  Manipulative behavior is not Kingdom behavior.  Manipulative legal interpretation is not Kingdom legal interpretation.  Manipulative manners and social relations are not the manners and society of the Kingdom.  

 

“Manipulation” comes from the word manus, Latin for hand.  It means handling people so they do what you want.   You treat them as instruments, a means to an end.   Welcoming God’s Reign rules out manipulating.  We must become servants, handmaids, not handlers. Manners, rank, and social interaction, if they allow us to help and serve others, are good.  Used instrumentally merely to exploit others, they must be seen as what they are:  hypocrisy.

 

The Greek word “hypocrite” simply means “actor.”  Jesus regularly calls his opponents hypocrites, saying they are just pretending to serve God in order to manipulate others.  They pretend they are better than they are in order to continue being the rotten way they are.  But here, as elsewhere, intention makes a great difference.  Jesus calls us to pretend to be better than we think we are in order actually to change, to become better.

 

So it is with the social insincerities of good manners.  If we use them to manipulate others, bad on us.  If we use them to help affirm and give dignity, good.  Jesus expects his disciples to “be as smart as snakes but harmless as doves.”  He wants street smarts and a benevolent heart.  He expects us to have good manners and adept social interaction, never merely to advance our own interests, but always to welcome the Kingdom by serving others.   

 

Jesus says that in the Kingdom, the social order will be turned upside down: the first will be last, the last first, the poor shall be exalted and the mighty brought low. He teaches us to first become a servant of all, and not strive to be a leader, of someone to be served.  We must be handmaids, not handlers.

 

This week, I want us all to take some time to think about how we manipulate others, how we use them, how instrumentally we think of them.  We all do it.  In mediation and prayer, let us identify at least one specific relationship that we have where we manipulate, and then let us think of ways that we can turn the relationship into an occasion of our own service to the other person.   

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Strategic Inaction (Proper 16C)

 

“Jesus and the Bent Over Woman” – Barbara Schwarz, OP, 2014

 

Strategic Inaction (Proper 16C)

Homily Delivered 21 August 2022

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

Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford (Oregon)

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

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

 

God, give us hearts to love and feel,

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

 

When I was a first-year Chinese student, mid-year I had an experience that taught me how profoundly the words we use color our thoughts and feelings.  We had had a long weekend, and my instructor asked me in Chinese what I had done.  I replied in my ever improving but still very tentative Chinese, “I rested (休息, xiuxi).”  He continued, “And how did you rest?”  I replied, “I went to the gym, and then we went hiking and camping in the Shenandoahs.”  He replied, “But you didn’t rest!”  “What do you mean?”  “You played (玩儿, wanr).  You had fun.  That takes energy.  You may have enjoyed yourself, but you did not rest!” 

 

The difference between rest and play: oh how I wish I had learned that distinction as a younger man!   Later, as a student of Buddhism, I would learn in taiqi the importance of lifting your weight off a leg and foot, and using absence of weight and of effort as a tool in the struggle of balance that occurs in any physical confrontation.  In meditation, I would learn that emptying one’s mind was the ultimate presence.  And as a U.S. diplomat, I learned the importance of strategic inaction as a tool in advancing one’s national interests.   Though derided in the West as lazy, laissez-faire, not-so-benign neglect, or mere ineptitude, strategic inaction is a key element of theory behind Sunzi’s Art of War.  The Chinese Taoist proverb says it all:

 

无为而治

Do nothing, but accomplish everything. 

 

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

 

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

 

If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,

from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;

if you call the sabbath a delight

and Yahweh’s holy day honorable;

if you honor it, not going your own ways,

serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;

then you shall take delight in Yahweh….

 

To be sure, the commandment to remember the Sabbath is not just a call for regular down time, periodic torpid rest.  The commandment is to remember the seventh day by keeping it holy.  This means, as the Prayer Book puts it, a duty “to set aside regular times for worship, prayer, and the study of God’s ways” (p. 847).   That is a key part of resting from what usually consumes us.   As Second Isaiah says, this should be a delight. 

 

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

In the Gospel reading today, Jesus gives respite to a woman.  She has been bound down by a debilitating illness, here personified as a demonic spirit, that tautly tied her muscles and held her doubled over and unable to stand up straight and relaxed for years.   He simply lays his hands on her, unbinds her, relaxes her, and restores her natural posture.   She rejoices, thanking God. 

 

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

 

There has been quite a lot of scholarly discussion on whether this is a fair representation of how Jesus’ critics historically may have reacted to such a situation. A scene in John has Jesus’ healing being criticized for breaking the Sabbath.  There, he mixes his saliva with dirt to make a mud as a kind of ointment, rather than just laying his hands on the afflicted.  Since the mixing of mortar for building or clay for potting was a specifically defined form of work forbidden for Sabbath, some believe that it is this, and not the healing per se, that may have been criticized.  

 

Most rabbinic treatments of the Sabbath indeed include the saving of a life as grounds for allowing things otherwise forbidden for Sabbath.   But is being bent over a life-threatening condition?  Perhaps this woman could have waited a few hours until Sabbath was over to be restored to health.  “There are six other days of the week on which you could have done this,” says Jesus’ opponent in our story. 

 

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

 

Since many people thought that illness was a punishment from God, the pointing finger of the community leader implies something else—why should Jesus even try to heal the woman at all, since she is only getting what she deserves?   And to break Sabbath in the process!  Jesus, you lazy keeper of the law! 

 

Jesus will have none of this.  Break the yoke! Remove the pointing finger!  

 

What we may be dealing with here is a Galilean rural flexibility to Law running into an urban or Judean doctrine of legal rigor:  rigidity on the Law versus flexibility.   Generally a critic of rigorists, Jesus himself could have his moments of tightness when it came to the Law:  it is almost certain that the Historical Jesus forbade any taking of oaths or swearing on things, and the casual repudiation of one’s dependent spouse that was the divorce of his day.  

 

But for him, how to decide when to loosen or tighten up a bit depended on how this effected the people involved. 

 

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

 

Knowing just when to give ourselves and each other the grace of rest, and when to get busy to get good things done, is a trick.  No set of external rules can tell us when to tighten up and when to let loose.  This art cannot be mastered without an open heart and open hands, without trust in God and benevolence or good will for all.  It is rooted the principle that Jesus taught: forgive others that we may be forgiven; treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated.   This complex of ideas is covered by what Buddhists call detachment, compassion, and ahimsa, doing no harm. 

 

We all pray for rest at times and we all must be able to give it. We are all in this together, and proper humility demands that we have solidarity with all our other creatures.  It demands that we be gentle. 

 

Remove the yoke, take away the pointing finger. The rule of thumb that Jesus uses here in this story is good—look at the effect of our actions on ourselves and others.  Regardless of the fingers pointing at us or the yokes laid upon us, as we hold on to the line of our lives and our duties, tighten up or loosen our grips as necessary to advance human dignity, love, and freedom.  

 

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

 

He says, “Come to me, you heavy-laden and exhausted, and I will give you rest… My yoke is easy and my burden, so light as not to be noticed.”  He wants to give us rest. We should let him do that.  He calls us to lighten up on ourselves and on each other.  This is how the pointing finger will be removed, and yokes broken.  Let go.  Take a Sabbath, regularly. Give rest to yourself and to others.

 

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Juggling and Spirituality

 

Maurice Lalau illustration for “The Juggler of Notre Dame,” by Anatole France

 

Juggling and Spirituality

Fr. Tony’s Paw Prints Message 

The e-zine of St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Medford OR

August 19, 2022 

 

A few years ago, I was introduced to a great program to help at risk urban youth in Hong Kong.  One of the surprising elements of the program was a focus on public performance as a means of building self-esteem and confidence.  The performance art of choice for most of the kids was, of all things, juggling.  This counter-intuitive choice was explained to me by a program alumnus, who had entered the program as an off-the-rails 14-year-old, had finished it successfully and them, after successful college study, had become a business leader and leading financial contributor to the program and one of its board members:

 

“The problem with most of us was lack of confidence and poor self-esteem.  We wanted to fit into a group whose standards appeared to be low enough to accept us and cover for us. That’s what was getting us into trouble at school and with the law.  We practiced juggling because no one was good at it and everyone looked silly and uncoordinated.  No one made fun of the others because we were clearly all as inept as the next person.  As we practiced, we got better.  But most important, we learned that in public juggling, it was inevitable that we would at some point drop the ball or pin.  The key was quickly picking it up and then continuing as if nothing had happened.  If we stopped, or got flummoxed, the show disintegrated into apology and embarrassment.  If we kept on going, no one acted as if they had noticed.  Perhaps they didn’t notice.  We learned that fear of condemnation or criticism was our greatest enemy, not the failures that juggling by its very nature entailed.  We learned that what other people thought of us was really none our business and important only as a way to help us improve.  When dropping the ball, we needed to just pick it up, ignore the failure, and keep on going with renewed passion.” 

 

 

I have found the same truth in harp playing:  I practice, to be sure, but need regular performance in front of others so that I can learn gracefully to cover the inevitable flubs I will make.  I began to study harp 20 years ago as a meditative practice.  When I practice to the point where my muscle memory lets the harp play itself is when I am most “in the zone,” in the thin-veiled place I sought when I began harp playing.  Being focused and on task leaves little room for self-absorption or fears about how others view us. 

 

Often as Christians, we focus on our shortcomings rather than what is right with us. But in this what is important is amendment of life, not self-absorbed mea culpas.  Otherwise, it is not Gospel, or Good News, we are talking about, but Bad News.  When faced with a failure, or even just a minor flub, it is important to pause, pull up our socks, and get back on task, not worrying about how we look to others, but rather how we can make things right.  Proper focus means not having stage fright or performance anxiety, but rather willingness to improve without crippling remorse. 

 

To be sure, some things cannot be set right, whether because of time lapsed, or the enormity of the harm caused.  But that is why we talk about Jesus being our redeemer, and why “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3) is the first affirmation of the core apostolic preaching.  In Christ, even things that cannot be wholly fixed can be forgiven, healed, and put to rest.  We, even as truly broken people, can find healing and balm in Jesus.  Living in Christ means living without fear, or its distracting step-child, crippling remorse. 

 

Our former bishop, Michael Hanley, was a juggler.  He did it for fun, for relaxation, and perhaps even as a meditative practice: kind of like my harp playing.   The principle in juggling of picking up the ball and keeping on, not worrying too much about how others may judge us, makes me think that it is not too much of a stretch to say that juggling at heart is a spiritual practice. 

 

Grace and peace,

Fr. Tony+

 

Count the Stars (Proper 14C)

 

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

The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
7 August 2022; 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford (Oregon)
Readings:  Gen 15:1-6,  Psa 33:12-22, Heb 11:1-3, 8-16, Luke 12:32-40

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

 

“Count the stars.”  Wow.  Those words in today’s reading about Abram have deeper and deeper meaning the more and more pictures we see from the Webb Space telescope! 

 

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

 

But by that time, I had run into the despair and fear of meaninglessness that my atheism allowed to grow, and had let those non-Christian autobiographies start me on a journey that led me back to trust in God more deeply, albeit with less certitude.  What I had shaved off with Occam’s Razor—the supernaturalist theistic explanations of how the universe works—never grew back.  But in its stead had grown a sense not of how but of why.  Those God-talk stories seemed to tell “why?” better and more parsimoniously than any of the secular tales.   And this, not with a God “out there” somewhere who might break into nature if we did something to impress him, but rather, a mystery of love in whom we live, and move, and have our being. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

“Count the stars”: more descendants than the stars in the heavens!  But this is more than an extravagant simile.  “Count the stars”: after all the glorious visions we have been treated to in the last few weeks from the Webb Space Telescope, we know that this is a call to ponder overwhelming, beautiful, and deep mystery.  God here calls Abram to look at one part of the world before him, calls him to visit a thin place, and contemplate the awe-inspiring night sky. The awe leads Abram to trust. 

 

But note:  it is impossible literally to count all the stars.  Or, if those Webb photos are to be trusted, even count the galaxies, each with billions of stars.  There are just too many. You can’t count the stars.  But you can try.  And in trying you realize that you just can’t do it. 

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Trust is a matter of the heart.  Where we put our efforts is where our hearts wind up.  If you at times just cannot muster trust in God, seek out moments of awe, count the stars.  But then act as if you already have that trust, and it will come. 

 

Like Abram counting the stars, be honest about fears and doubts, but set out anyway, even though we don’t know exactly where we’re going.

 

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

In the name of God,  Amen.