Jesus Goes Slumming (Proper 26C)

 

Jesus Goes Slumming
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 26 Year C RCL)
30 October 2022—9:00 a.m. Sung Mass
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

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

Isaiah 1:10-18; Psalm 32:1-8; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Luke 19:1-10

homily begins at 20:50 

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

“It is harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God than to put a rope through the eye of a needle.”  “Go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor.”  “Woe to you rich, for you will one day go hungry.” 

 

Jesus apparently did not care much for the rich. 

 

Neither did his followers.  The early Church Fathers were pretty unsparing.  St. Basil the Great said that the riches common to all are held by the wealthy not because the wealthy earned them, but because they were the first to seize them.   St. John Chrysostom said that the rich do not enjoy what is their own, but what belongs to others.  St. Jerome said that every rich person is either a thief or a thief’s heir.

 

Yet in today’s Gospel, Jesus invites himself to dinner with a rich man who everyone knows got his money all the wrong ways. Zacchaeus is an architelones, an “arch-toll collector” of Jericho, a wealthy trading center where collaborators with the Roman occupiers could make good money by serving as customs agents, extorting fees, customs, and tolls from their fellow Judeans and skimming from the proceeds.  

 

The crowd criticizes Jesus: “Can you believe it?  He is actually having dinner with one of those sinners.” 

 

The toll collectors, called publicans or tax farmers by various translations, were universally seen by their compatriots in Palestine as quislings, collaborators with the Evil Empire, blood suckers who profited from the misery of God’s people, or anyone kind and good. To let one marry into your family meant being expelled from Synagogue and the society of all decent folk. 

 

Jesus saying he would have dinner chez Zacchaeus would be like one of us saying we would go out partying with a Nazi, or a Mafioso, or a Terrorist.  

 

There is irony here.  Zacchaeus’ name, Zakkai’, means “innocent” or “pure,” and often appears in poetic pairs with Tsedek, or ‘righteous’ or ‘just’ almsgiver.   But he is a toll collector, a traitor on the make looking out only for number one.   

 

But when the crowd tries to dissuade Jesus by telling how bad his intended dinner companion is, this diminutive wealthy man replies, using the present tense, “Look, I give half of my possessions to the poor.  And if I have defrauded anyone, I repay quadruple the sum.”  He is not boasting.  He knows he is an outcast and labeled a crook.  He is only trying to explain that he tries to do the right thing, despite the odious profession he has found it necessary to pursue to get by. 

 

Most people think this guy is a scape-gallows.  But in fact, he is a scape-goat, blamed for the wrongs of others that he himself has not done.  His defense of himself is not so much a boast or a declaration of intended reform, but rather simply saying he is not a scape-grace.   While he is not beating his breast like his fellow toll-collector in that parable last week and saying “Have mercy on me, a sinner,” he most definitely is not following the lead of the Pharisee in that parable and saying “I am better than others.” He is just saying, “See here, I’m not the rotten crook you think I am.” 

 

And Jesus praises him for it.  He even calls this short man’s standing up for himself “salvation.” 

 

Who are the scape-goats we like to point fingers at?  What does it take for us to identify someone as “one of THEM,” beyond the pale, and hopelessly outside of grace? 

 

We hear scape-goating in various ways. 

 

“I just couldn’t take it anymore.  On Facebook, I had to unfriend one of my old pals from high school.  He was just beyond the pale: racist, sexist, and wholly inappropriate remarks about the political campaign.” 

 

“A basket of deplorables.” 

 

“Evil, demonical, Muslim Jihadists who torture and kill people for any reason, however, slight.” 

 

“You Nazi!”    

 

“You Communist!”

 

“You people stole our country from us.  You have ruined it.  No punishment is too harsh for you.” 

 

We can accuse each other of a great variety of really wrong and rotten things.  Such accusation is scape-goating when we reduce the person to that one thing. And label them that and nothing else.  It is when we see only the bad, and none of the good.  But remember what Sister Helen Prejean said abou people on death row:  “People are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives.” 

 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in the Gulag Archipelago, talks about the moment during his decades in Stalin’s prison camps that he recovered his Christian faith, and began to heal even while in prison. In the chapter, “Resurrection,” he notes that he realized that no matter how tightly his interrogators pressured him, he still had some choice, however limited, however constrained. While tortured, he was always forced to tell his tormentors what they wanted, but he still could do this willingly or unwillingly, hatefully, or with empathy. This led him to realize that even his interrogators themselves were constrained. They too enjoyed, even within the constraints placed on them by their roles, small choices between good and evil.

He realized that it wasn’t an issue of good people on this side versus bad people on the other side. The line between good and evil does not lie between interrogator and prisoner, between political parties, between economic classes, countries, or religions. It does not lie between any groups of people, however defined. It lies in that small space of choice, no matter how tightly constrained, in each person.

He writes, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Solzhenitsyn understood the principle behind Jesus’ praise of Zacchaeus.   We are all God’s creatures and all bear God’s image, no matter how we may have distorted and twisted it. We are all in this together.  “Treat others as you would have them treat you” for Jesus means that we should give others—especially those who are deplorable to us—at least the same benefit of the doubt that we expect for ourselves. 

 

In this season of partisan division and mutual reproach, I pray that we can be fair-minded to each other and see God’s hand at work even where we least expect it. 

In the name of God,  Amen.

 

Two Kinds of Lonely (Proper 25C)

 

Two Kinds of Lonely

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25 Year C RCL)
23 October 2022--8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

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

Readings: Sirach 35:12-17; Psalm 84:1-6; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

homily starts at 21:40 

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

A popular song when I was in High School, “I'm in with the in crowd, I go where the in crowd goes.  I'm in with the in crowd and I know what the in crowd knows.”  It was ironic and campy, but it spoke us to teenagers, so unsure of ourselves. At certain moments later in my life, I had glimpses where the song’s idea was not taken ironically. 

 

Once, the executive of a senior political leader took me aside and said,  “Listen I know that you’re not like (here she listed several of my foreign service colleagues).  They just don’t get it.  But you do, and I’m sure you can do this just like my boss wants.”   Another time, in the rarefied air of a research institute in religion, a senior professor said to some graduate students with me, “We are the elite and can handle the truth.   The many out there—pffff—forget about them.  They can’t handle the truth.  Tell them whatever convenient simplification will keep them happy.”  Yet another time, I met with my boss Ambassador Jon Huntsman the senior editor of a major fashion magazine (parodied in The Devil Wears Prada).   In every phrase and gesture, every choice of clothing and mannerism, she passed the message, all so subtly, all so politely, “Noblesse oblige. We have a responsibility to lead all those little people out there, despite themselves.”   

 

Today’s Gospel is a parable that Jesus told against “those who belittled others because they thought they were better than them.” 

Two people who go to the Temple to pray: One is a Pharisee who keeps all the laws, an upright member of the community.  The other is a Tax Collector—a traitor to his people, collaborator with the hated Roman oppressors, who gouges and steals money for his own profit.  The parable praises the evil man and condemns the righteous. 

 

There are three ways that we commonly misread this parable.

 

The first is that Jesus is condemning Pharisees in general, saying that they were all hypocritical, self-satisfied, and holier-than-thou.   But at the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were generally seen as the most democratic, sincere, humble and open groups of the various Jewish sects.   Their principal teachers tried to build personal piety and obeying God’s Law, both in its details and intent.   Jesus is closer to them than any other group in his teaching.  The point here is not to criticize Pharisees as a group, but rather shock the listener into new understanding by contrasting an upstanding lover of God with a wicked traitor.

 

The second misreading is that Jesus is praising the Tax Collector’s chest-beating, over-wrought guilt as the one-size-fits-all proper approach to God.   This view, to be sure, is fostered and popularized by the grim pessimism of theologians like Saint Augustine, John Calvin, and Martin Luther.   But I wonder if that is what Jesus means here.  When Jesus approaches the truly wretched, he does not beat up on them and tell them to further abase themselves.  He just heals them, stands with them, and feeds them, announcing the joyful news of liberation, new life, and the jubilant arrival of God’s Reign.

 

The third misreading is that Jesus here is trying to teach salvation by grace alone apart from works, again, usually as contained in the writings of Augustine, Calvin or Luther.  While this parable may provide a facile proof-text for such a doctrine, there is nothing in it to suggest that deeds do not matter, nor that the Tax Collector somehow has confessed Jesus as his savior.

 

So what does it mean? 

  

Jesus’ parables regularly turn things upside down and try to get each of us to stand in delighted awe of God’s great surprises.   An honored and righteous priest and Levite pass by a gravely injured fellow Jew, and it is a hated and loathed Samaritan that finally helps the poor man and acts as a true neighbor.   A shameless father, unconcerned about his honor and the order of his house, runs out and hugs, and then throws a big party for, a troubled son who had as much wished him dead and then frivolously wasted half of the estate on detested vices.   In his parables, Jesus chooses incongruous or shocking images to represent God at work:  the Reign of God is not seen as a great cedar tree or vine, but rather a wild and scruffy weed, the mustard plant; ritually suspect leaven or yeast represents the Kingdom at work, not pure, unleavened loaves for Passover.   Such scenes shock us out of our regular ways of thinking, and make us look, really look, in wonder at the world around us and the God at work in it.

 

Notice here that the righteous Pharisee stands by himself in the center of things as he thanks God that he is not like all the other sinners around.  He stands by himself in order to draw attention to himself, so that he can clearly point out the differences that separate him from and make him better than other people.  He praises God that he has been able to do all sorts of good acts, in contrast to people like ‘that Tax Collector over there’.   

 

The Tax Collector stands “afar off” to the side, avoiding contact with others because of his shame.  He doesn’t dare raise his eyes up to heaven, and simply asks God “have mercy on me, a sinner.”    Why is he ashamed?   He is one of the telones, a class of entrepreneurs who collected tolls, governmental surcharges, and head taxes.  They were a rough lot, closer to what we would call the “muscle” of a gangster loan shark operation than an IRS agent.  The word translated as tax collector, or publican, is probably better translated by revenue farmer.   They are traitors to their people.  This is what the tax collector bemoans as he beats his breast.

 

Jesus says that it is the Tax Collector and not the Pharisee who went out of the Temple that day having been made right with God.  Why? 

 

Jesus has chosen two stereotypes here:  the righteous, pious, and socially responsible Pharisee and the irreligious, unscrupulous, and morally tainted Tax Collector.

 

The difference between the two is in their hearts.  Though both stand by themselves, though both are lonely, there are two kinds of lonely here.  The Pharisee isolates himself because he has contempt for others and thinks he is better than everyone else.  The Tax Collector is lonely precisely because others look down on him.  His standing far off is actually an act of solidarity with them, since recognizes that they are probably right in judging him.  The loneliness of the Pharisee drives him farther away from others.  The loneliness of the Tax Collector in an ironic way drives him toward them.    

 

There are not just two kinds of lonely, of emotional distance.  At the opposite pole, there are two different kinds of nearness also: what C.S. Lewis calls nearness of proximity and nearness of approach.

A hiker in the mountains comes out onto a ledge and sees, there beneath her, the small town where she wants to spend the night. It is only about 500 meters away—straight down. To get there, she must continue on the path, with its switchbacks and gradual descent. At moments, she must actually go farther and farther away from her goal—800 meters, 1400 meters as the crow flies—before the switchback turns. But all the time, she is actually getting closer to her evening resting spot. 

Jesus’ point in contrasting the two men in the Temple is that from the point of view of nearness of proximity, the Pharisee may be much closer to God than the Tax Collector, but from the point of view of nearness of approach, and this is in the long run the only thing that counts—the Tax Collector is nearer to God by far, despite appearances and what stereotypes tell us to expect. 

 

The Pharisee here, against the better teachings of his own tradition, has let his contempt for others close his heart to any possible movement toward God.  The Tax Collector, against expectation and the normal way these guys behave, senses that he is in this with all the others.  And finding himself in along with all the others, he has a lot to be sorry for. 

 

In a word, the Pharisee here is unable to get any closer to God or to his fellows.  The Tax Collector has made a start at both. 

 

If there is any such thing as a hell, I believe its doors are locked not from the outside by a punishing God, but from the inside by the people there who persist in declining God’s loving call. They reject it because they are afraid of accepting that they are in this with all the others, the wretched “little people,” and are merely (!) one of God’s beloved creatures.

 

Better a wicked person who knows they are one sorry mess than a “righteous” one with no clue as to how hard their heart has become.     The self-satisfied religious person, singing “I’m in with the in crowd,” is unwilling to relate to others except as inferiors, as defectives who just don’t “get it.”  Theyu are unwilling to relate to God except as one who owes them special treatment for being “in with the in crowd.” So he remains stone-cold hearted, and is not justified by God when he returns to his home from the Temple. 

 

I pray that all of us this week can find ways to connect with others in our lives, especially those upon whom we have a tendency to look down upon.   This story makes me wonder whether looking down upon anyone is a sign of dire spiritual illness, a sickness unto death.  Perhaps it’s not just a mild foible.   It might be best to learn to root it out of our hearts and minds, and erase its vocabulary from our voices. 

 

In the name of Christ,  Amen. 

 

A Wound that Heals Us (Proper 24C)

 

A Wound that Heals Us
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24 Year C RCL)
16 October 2022--8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

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

Readings: Genesis 32:22-31; Psalm 121; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

When Ronald Reagan was running against incumbent president Jimmie Carter in 1980, only one presidential debate took place.  Reagan perhaps won the debate by use of a single memorable line.  Exasperated when Carter began to relist the deficiencies he saw in Reagan’s position on Medicare and Medicaid, Reagan interrupted, “There you go again!”  The audience burst into laughter.  Reagan had defused the criticism not through any refutation of fact, but just by strategically expressing well that most human of emotions, desperate exasperation.

 

“There you go again!” These words express frustration at someone’s apparent inability to change, whatever the relapse.  We often silently reproach ourselves with them.

 

Today’s Genesis reading tells the story of a man who has a hard time changing his conniving, self-seeking ways.  Even in the womb, he seems to struggle with his twin brother.  When Esau is born first, the feisty younger twin rejects his second-place by grasping Esau’s heel.  So his parents name him Jacob, “Heel.”

 

A maneuverer from the start, Jacob plays on Esau’s simplicity and hunger to get him to ignorantly trade away his property inheritance for a dish of lentil stew.  Later, he impersonates Esau to steal his father’s spiritual blessing.

 

Esau, exasperated and resentful, plans simply to murder Jacob as soon as their father dies and take back his rightful inheritance and blessing.  So Jacob, ever wily, leaves town to lie low for a while.   He goes to his uncle Laban’s home far away to wait until things calm down.

 

Jacob clearly is in distress.  During his escape, he has a vision of a ladder into heaven, and for the first time connects briefly with the God of his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac.  He calls the place Bethel, the House of God.  But he remains Jacob, the heel. 

 

Uncle Laban too is a trickster.   When he settles on a bride price for Jacob to marry one of his daughters, he tricks him into paying double—a work contract of fourteen years instead of seven—and taking on an unwanted daughter as well.  Jacob’s hard work and business savvy pay off. When the shared assets grow to a size worth arguing about, tensions develop.  Jacob knows it is time to return to Canaan when, as he says to his wives, “Your father is not treating me a nicely as he used to.”

 

Now comes the problem of divvying up the wealth. Jacob still has tricks up his sleeve, turning the tables by tricking the trickster.  He rigs the process of selecting flocks in his favor, and ends up with the lion’s portion.  So he has to flee his uncle by night too, just as he had to flee his brother.  “There you go again!”  

 

As Jacob returns to Canaan, he is afraid that Esau still will murder him.  So he sends messengers with kind words.  They return and say that Esau is coming to welcome him home—accompanied by 400 armed men!

 

Yikes.  The big hairy man may be dull, but he clearly does not forget a grudge. 

 

Jacob is prudent.  He divides his large caravan into two camps:  if Esau takes the first by violence, at least Jacob might have half his family and goods left.  Then he sends all the huge baggage and livestock train in several small groups ahead, all with the instructions that if Esau challenges them, they are to say they are gifts from Jacob for his dear brother Esau.   Finally, he sends his own immediate family.   But he still is too afraid.  He alone goes back to spend the night on the riverbank.

 

That is when today’s mysterious story occurs.  A stranger accosts Jacob and wrestles with him in the dark until the break of dawn, when the stranger, desperate to end the match, performs some kind of ninja trick on Jacob’s hip.  Jacob can no longer wrestle.  He might as well give up.  But he continues to hold on for dear life.  The stranger says, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”  Jacob replies, “Not until you bless me.” 

 

Jacob has run out of tricks.  He is desperate, unsure that his maneuvers will turn away Esau’s wrath.  He might lose everything in the next few hours.  The struggle in the dark in some ways represents the struggle going on in his heart:  his fears and plots versus the hope for a new day.  All he can do is hold tightly.  “Bless me,” he begs, “Bless me.” 

 

The stranger asks, “What is your name?  Who are you?”  “Jacob,” is the answer, “a heel, a trickster.” 

 

This confession, this avowal of stark truth when all options and plans are gone, marks a real change in Jacob’s life.  The stranger blesses him in reply, “Jacob is not your name, but Yisrael: ‘It is God who Struggles.’”  “You are a heel no more.  You don’t need to struggle any more, for God is the one who struggles.” 

 

The day comes, and Jacob, forever changed, limps back to cross the river to his family.  His limp will stay with him the rest of his life.  He greets Esau later in the day, and the brothers are reconciled (with Esau in fine Asian style first refusing all the gifts, and then, after his brother’s urging, accepting many of them.)  

 

Today’s Lectionary includes this story along with other scriptures telling us to persist in seeking God: Jesus’ parable of a corrupt judge cowed into granting a petitioner’s request simply to gain some peace and quiet, 2 Timothy’s counsel to persist whether the times are favorable or hard.

 

But the story of Jacob’s wrestle is not just about holding on tight, bulldozing ahead come hell or high water.  The key is in the words of blessing:  you don’t need to be a heel.  You don’t need to struggle.  Because God struggles with us, God struggles for us.  Be still and know that I am God. 

 

How many of us are Jacob here?  Do we say to ourselves: “There you go again! What can I do to get out of this fix? How can I turn back the clock?  How can I keep from the bad same old same old?”

 

When others have hurt us, how many of us are like Esau here?  Do we want to blurt out “There you go again,” and never again have anything to do with them, or worse, want to work them harm?

 

In all of this, God is there, loving us, supporting us, and holding us tightly.  In our desperation, we have to hold tightly onto God, and not let go, even though everything is going wrong and we may get hurt in the struggle. “I won’t let go, not until you bless me. Not until you tell your name, show me who you really are!” 

 

The good news is this:  our failings and the failings of others are ways that God shows his love and grace.  St. Paul knew this when he spoke of the mysterious “thorn” God had placed in his flesh: “but [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’…  for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12: 9-10).

Charles Wesley wrote a poem about this story that captures the need for persistence: 

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,
whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
and I am left alone with thee.
With thee all night I mean to stay
and wrestle till the break of day.

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell,
to know it now resolved I am.
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.

My strength is gone, my nature dies,
I sink beneath thy weighty hand,
faint to revive, and fall to rise.
I fall, and yet by faith I stand;
I stand and will not let thee go
till I thy name, thy nature know.

Yield to me now—for I am weak,
but confident in self-despair!
Speak to my heart, in blessing speak,
be conquered by insistent prayer.
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
and tell me if thy name is Love.

‘Tis Love! ‘tis Love that wrestled me!
I hear thy whisper in my heart.
The morning breaks, the shadows flee,
pure, universal Love thou art.
To me, to all, thy mercies move—
thy nature and thy name is Love.

Such prayer must begin in honesty about who we are.  Jacob must speak his old name before he can be given a new one.  Each and every prayer, each and every eucharist is a revolutionary act, subverting the system of oppression and accusation, including self-accusation. It tells us “heel,” “deceiver,” “fighter,” is not our true name. 

 

This week, find something in yourself that needs forgiving, needs remedying. And in your prayers, pray that God will help you with it, simply help.  And then be patient.   Say you won’t let go until he blesses you.  Be like that persistent annoying woman in the Gospel reading.  And forgive yourself.   

 

Also find something in someone in your life that needs forgiving, needs correcting, something that makes you angry.  And just forgive them.  If that’s not possible, ask God to help you forgive.  And say you won’t let go until he blesses you in this. 

 

In the name of Christ, 

 

Amen. 

 

 

What is to Prevent (Paw Prints Article Oct 14 2022)

 

“What is to Prevent?” 

Fr. Tony’s Paw Prints Article

October 14, 2022

 

This last Tuesday, October 11, was the feast day of St. Philip the Deacon or Evangelist.  He is one of the seven Greek speaking Jewish Christians called by the Twelve in Jerusalem to help in assistance to the poor, particularly Greek-speaking widows and orphans who felt that they had been neglected by the alms-distribution organized under the Hebrew and Aramaic speaking Church leadership (Acts 6:5).  He plays a major role in how the Book of Acts portrays the increasing spread of Christian witness: from Jews in Jerusalem and Judea, to Samaritans, and then to Gentiles as far as “the end of the earth” (i.e., Rome) (Acts 1:8).  After the martyrdom of another of the 7 deacons, Stephen, in Acts 7, but before the conversion of St. Paul (Acts 9), Peter baptizing the gentile Cornelius (Acts 10), or Paul’s missions to the gentiles in Acts 13-14 and 16-28, it is Philip who takes the Gospel to Samaria (Acts 8:4-25), and then baptizes the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-39).  The Ethiopian eunuch represents an expansion of the scope of God’s grace:  though it is unclear in the story whether he is Jewish or a gentile attender of Synagogue, or whether he is actually a physical eunuch or merely a man who holds that name as a title for a court official, he is clearly seen as a foreigner beyond the pale of Judaism’s embrace, and thus is a key part of the expansion of God’s call to humanity.     

 

The story sees the eunuch reading a text from Isaiah.  Philip asks if he understands what he is reading, to which the eunuch replies in words that resonate to most of us who have been puzzled and stumped by Bible passages, “How can I, unless someone explain it to me?”  Using the passage, Philip explains the hope he has in Jesus, raised from the dead, and (presumably) mentions how baptism is the way we accept this grace: 

 

“As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.”  (Acts 8:37-38)

 

“What is there to prevent me from being baptized?”  Philip could have pointed to many reasons for not baptizing the Ethiopian: there were many such possible impediments.  A foreigner was not allowed to eat the Passover without circumcision (Exodus 12:48), and castrated men were barred from ever becoming part of the Congregation of Israel (Deuteronomy 23:1).  But Philip, recognizing that God’s grace and welcome is bigger than any of our little rules, baptizes away.  And in so doing, he becomes part of that major theme of the Book of Acts: the increasing scope and spread of God’s welcome. 

 

The process was challenging and painful.  Acts 15 tells of how the early apostles in Council developed rules of minimal standards of behavior for all to help bring unity to the expanding Church, split by division over admitting “unclean” gentiles without following the scripture-given rules to make them Jews and rid them of their uncleanness.   Despite divisions, the Church thrived as it set aside the old ways of doing things and followed the inspiration of the Spirit. 

 

Today, many evangelicals take issue with what they call “turning away from scripture” in a whole range of areas:  women’s roles, gay and lesbian priests, same-sex marriage, and transgender folk.  But at heart, I think, their argument is a call to preserve the Levitical distinctions between clean and unclean.  And in this, they are dead wrong.  Acts 15’s call to “avoid fornication” almost certainly means avoiding marriage within forbidden degrees of kinship rather than a generalized set of specific rules on sexual ethics.   The Holiness Code of Leviticus 17-27 does not make a distinction between ritual and moral rules: weaving a blended fabric garment or sowing a field of hybrid grain are both considered “abominations” every bit as much as “a man lying with a man.”  Such efforts at holding the line and keeping “old time morality” looks to me very much like another impediment that limits and places human bounds on God's grace.   We are called to chastity, fidelity, and eschewing promiscuity, to be sure, but beyond that, I doubt the Bible really bears the weight these efforts place upon it. 

 

When we are asked “what is to prevent us” from sharing God’s grace and love, our answer should be “NOTHING AT ALL.” 

 

Grace and Peace. 

Fr. Tony+

Returning to Jesus (Proper 23C)

 

Ten Lepers Healed, oil on canvas by Dennis Kerhisnik

 

Returning to Jesus
Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23 Year C RCL)
9 October 2022--8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist

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

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

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c; Psalm 111; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

take away our hearts of stone

 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

 

Today’s Gospel is a familiar story to most of us:  Jesus heals ten lepers and only one returns to him to thank him.  It is used in many Sunday Schools as a teaching tool for basic politeness:  being nice and following Jesus means always remembering to say thank you.  And that is what most of us remember about the story. 

 

But many things in the story suggest such a reading is too simple.  The story starts with the puzzling “Jesus was going to Jerusalem, and was in the territory between Galilee and Samaria.”   The two territories abut each other; there is no corridor between them. But the storyteller wants you to know from the start that this story is about something that happened between two opposing lands.    It is a story of what happens on the border, the metaphorical space in between. 

 

Jesus heals the ten men and women with the contagious skin disease. Keeping with the teachings of his Jewish faith, he tells them to go to the Temple, and seek out a priest to inspect them, perform a ritual, and declare them healed or clean.  All go, but one returns to thank Jesus.  The one who returns is a Samaritan.

 

The nine are following Jesus’ instructions because they can:  they are Jewish and, even if leprosy keeps them at a distance, they can go and do exactly what Jesus asks them.  But the Samaritan is in a fix:  even though his Samaritan Pentateuch has the same instruction to show oneself to a priest to be cleaned, clearly in this story he has no Samaritan priest available.  And he cannot go to Jerusalem:  a priest there would most certainly not perform the ritual and declare him clean.   Samaritans were considered to be permanently unclean and forbidden access to the holy sites.  The Samaritan, hearing Jesus say, “go to a priest,” hears Jesus commanding him to do the impossible.  He has nowhere to go.  But when he realizes he is well, the joyful gratitude that overwhelms him drives him to turn back, go to Jesus, and thank him.   Jesus notes ironically:  what about the nine others? 

 

How often do we find ourselves in a like situation, where we find we are just completely unable to do what Jesus tells us, what God commands?  Usually this makes us feel unworthy to come back into Jesus’ presence.  It makes us reluctant to want to engage him, since it looks like it’s a losing proposition.     But then grace happens and we return to Jesus, if only out of gratitude and thanks.   Sometimes the very weaknesses and disabilities that we would beat ourselves up with turn out to the very instruments of God’s grace in our lives—in strange and unexpected ways. 

 

I just got back from the conference of my religious order, the Society of Catholic Priests of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, in Providence Rhode Island.  What a grace it was to see once again face to face many of my dearest friends.  I wept in awe and joy at the sung compline service with benediction of the Blessed sacrament: it was the first time I had been to a sung compline since the death of my wife Elena.  In the last few months of her life, in order to help her go to sleep at night, I had sung compline to her each night, sometimes together with other members of my family who are singers.  We sang compline to her as she died.  Compline includes many prayers and chants also found in the Prayer Book’s burial office—it is basically a high end contemplative expression of “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my should to keep, and should I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”  Hearing the chants in that cloud of incense touched my heart.  Grace touching me through what had been deep pain. 

 

Years ago at an SCP conference, I heard my friend and fellow SCP brother former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold share this quote from French poet Charles Péguy:  “Grace is insidious.  If it doesn’t come straight, it comes bent.  If it doesn’t come bent, it comes broken.  If it doesn’t come from above, it comes from beneath.  Grace is insidious.” 

 

If it doesn't come bent, it comes broken.  Broken is how God gets in.  The ground is broken before you plant it; then when you harvest wheat, you break the heads of wheat and then the grains themselves as you  grind flour and meal.  You use the broken grain to make bread.  And the broken bread is what feeds you.  Brokenness lets God in. 

 

As Leonard Cohen says in his song “Anthem,”     

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

 

It doesn’t matter if you can’t do what Jesus asks you to do.  Just think of all the blessing and good he has given you.  He still comes through and gives you grace and love, and if you take time and be quiet, you’ll notice.  And you will be thankful.  And gratitude will drive out fear, guilt, and, one way or another, whatever it is that made you feel guilty in the first place.   If grace doesn’t come in just the right, expected way, it will come, nevertheless.  That’s because grace comes from God because of the way God is, not the way we are. 

 

That’s why in today’s collect we ask God to send us grace, both to precede and to follow us.  The grace that comes before—prevenient or, as the old Prayer Book calls it, “preventing” grace—makes us able to yearn for God and love Jesus despite ourselves.  The grace that comes after—what theologians call “effectual” grace—is what empowers us to actually accomplish God’s will and accept the limitations that God gave us when we were created.  

 

When Jesus says “and where are the nine others?” he is saying that sometimes it takes the feeling of being rejected—of not being able to do what we ought, not able to make it on your own—to awaken us to the presence of grace and kindle gratitude in our hearts.  And gratitude, once burning, is what lights the fires of service and generosity so that we become means of grace to others. 

 

What has Jesus asked you to do that has proven impossible so far?   How can you turn this into yearning for him, and awaken your sense of the grace that is being poured out upon you?  How can you let it turn you back to him in gratitude?  

 

In the name of God, Amen.