Begotten by Water, Borne on Wind (Lent 2A)

 

Begotten by Water, Borne on Wind

 

1 March 2026

Homily Delivered the Second Sunday in Lent Year A

9:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist;

Sat. Luke’s Episcopal Church

Grants Pass, Oregon

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

 

Genesis 12.1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4.1-5,13-17; John 3.1-17

 

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

 

When I was very small, our family went on vacation to a warm spring in the Rocky Mountains, and spent an afternoon at a swimming pool there.  I remember very clearly, because I almost died there.  I loved the water.  My family sat on the edge, talking and watching me as I played on the steps going into the shallow end.  On the middle step I could splash and play, and put my face under. But I stepped too far back, off the steps. I took a breath, and sunk down.  Standing as tall as I could, I was about 4 inches short of the surface.  I bounced up and took a breath, and sank again.  But I had not gotten enough air.  I could see my father through the surface, but he was looking at my mother and not at me.  I bounced up again.  Again, not enough air.  I started to panic.  I couldn’t breathe.  I bounced again, gulped, but to no avail.  I looked up just as things started to go dark, when my sister started pointing to me.  My father’s strong hands were at once around my arm, pulling me into the air, sputtering and gasping.  

I went on later to become a competitive swimmer, lifeguard, and swimming instructor.   But that early experience left a mark.  I had a very hard time learning how to float on my back, perfecting it only when I was 14 years old.  All my teachers said, “Oh, but it’s so easy! All you have to do is put your head back and relax!  Let the water hold you up!”  But try as hard as I could, every time I put my head back, it felt like I was falling.  I tensed up and sank, the water rushing up my nose.  I had learned from that earlier experience fear, and the need to be in control.  And to float, I had to learn to relax, and give up control. 

 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus meets a man who wants to stay in control.

 

As we read in the verse just before this story begins, Jesus knows “what is in each person’s heart.” (John 2:25).  And then our story begins, “now there was a person, a Pharisee named Nicodemus.”  In the story, Jesus sees Nicodemus’ heart, and tells him what he needs to hear, not what he wants to know. 

 

Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night, in private, away from the crowds that surrounded Jesus during the day.  This “Pharisee” this “teacher in Israel” says, “I know who you are, Jesus.  I have seen the signs that you perform. I know you are from God.”  He calls Jesus “Rabbi,” wanting to ask him questions about scripture, the commandments, and how to enter God’s royal domain.

 

Jesus answers, “Unless you are begotten from on high, you cannot see God’s royal domain.”   Spiritual rebirth is required, not discussions about religious rules.  

Nicodemus misunderstands: he thinks that Jesus is speaking of biological rebirth, tripping over the fact that the word used for “from above” can also mean “over again.”  Jesus corrects him by contrasting the physical body and the breath that animates it (or the “wind” or “spirit” that gives it life--it’s the same word in Greek and Aramaic). “Truly, I tell you: no one is able to enter God’s royal domain unless they are begotten of water and wind. Flesh begets flesh, but wind begets wind.”  Spiritual life is unpredictable and as invisible as the wind:  You can hear the sound it makes, and see its results, but cannot see it directly. “So it is with everyone who is begotten by the wind.”  

 

Nicodemus still misunderstands.

 

Jesus tells him that it won’t make sense unless Nicodemus accepts Jesus’ own explanation of who he is rather the conclusions he has already drawn.  “How can you understand my teaching on heaven when you can’t even understand a simple example drawn from day-to-day life?” 

 

At this point, it is clear that Jesus is no longer talking to Nicodemus. The Evangelist is talking to us.  In a phrase Martin Luther called “the Gospel in miniature,” he concludes “God went so far as to give over the only Son, so that everyone who puts their trust in him might not perish but rather have boundless life.” 

 

OK—the story is complicated, relying on many puns and plays on words not apparent in English. But basically, the drama of the story is pretty straightforward:  Nicodemus says, “I know who you are.  The signs that you perform show you are from God. Tell me what you know.”  Jesus replies, “You don’t have a clue about who I am. You heard about me supplying wine for a wedding feast, and driving out money-changers from the Temple, so you think I am worth listening to, and come here. But you do this in secret.  If you think you’ve just professed faith or trust in me, you don’t know what that means.  Faith is not about opinions privately held, conclusions safely stated.  It’s trust. It’s commitment. It involves risk.  It requires a totally new orientation, a new life.  In fact, it’s like a new birth.”  

 

Nicodemus again misses the point, and asks, “How? How can this happen? How can these things be?” Nicodemus has questions, but not the right questions.  He wants Jesus to give him a formula, a check-list on how to be born of God.  Jesus sees that Nicodemus will not get closer to God without relaxing, without giving up control. So he tells Nicodemus about water and wind.

 

Scripture uses many different images to describe what Jesus is talking about here: turning back, surrendering to God, being washed clean, becoming a child, getting married to God, finding a treasure buried in a field and selling everything to buy the field, being sprinkled with purifying water, new creation, new life, waking up from a deep sleep, coming to one’s senses, regaining eyesight.  Some passages describe it from how it feels on the inside and call it forgiveness; others look at its results and call it a healing.  Though Jesus here calls it a new begetting or a new birth, some passages call it a death, or dying to one’s old way of life. 

 

Early Christians, who borrowed from John the Baptist a rite of full immersion into water as a way of effecting this process of death and new life, called it a burial in the water.  That is why Jesus here says we must be begotten both of water and of wind. Though the Gospel of John never directly refers to sacraments like baptism and the Eucharist, it does make passing meditative allusion to them, as it does here. 

 

Jesus has in mind being pushed backwards into water, once and for all, with that feeling of falling, with that feeling of drowning.  The contrast could not be sharper—this is not Nicodemus’ view of tidy purity ritual washings, done regularly and on schedule according to the rule book he wants from Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t give Nicodemus the rule book he wants. Though Jesus is no slouch when it comes to the demands of justice and faith, he knows that without God breathing in us, rules only bring frustration and arrogance:  flesh begets flesh.  Nicodemus wants a list of things he must do; Jesus talks about being begotten.  Nicodemus wants rules; Jesus talks about the wind seemingly randomly blowing here and there.  Nicodemus wants to play it safe; Jesus wants us to take risks. 

 

The wind blows where it will, the breath breathes where it wants—giving up control to God, living in the Spirit, cannot be mapped out, counted up, or predicted. This confuses Nicodemus, who knows how to trust the security of the rules, rituals, and moral aphorisms of conventional religion.  He asks Jesus “how can I make this new birth happen?”

Jesus replies, “This is not about what you need to do. You cannot give birth to yourself. This is about God, who breathes life and makes the wind blow.  Take the risk.  Relax and let go.  Let God do whatever God wants to do with you. God may just surprise you.”

 

Some people misread this story just as badly as Nicodemus misunderstands Jesus’ words. They think that “being born again” is an action they must take.  Like Nicodemus, they think their salvation lies in taking an action, even if it just confessing Jesus with their lips and believing in him with their hearts.  But Nicodemus confesses Jesus in the opening line of the story.  And Jesus says that is not enough.  We have to open ourselves to God, trust him fully.  It is that simple. It is that risky.  It may feel like drowning until God reaches down and pulls us into the breath of new life. 

 

Nicodemus later in the Gospel learns to allow himself to be carried away by the wind.  He speaks up for Jesus in the Council, and after Jesus’ death, with a friend asks to help bury Jesus’ body.   Risks, indeed, but exactly where the wind blew. 

 

What happens when we learn to let go and let God wash over us?  What happens when we let ourselves be borne up on the wind of God? 

 

We are more sure of the love of God, but less sure of our own formulations about God. 

 

We stop trying to use rules to limit God and control others.

 

We begin to listen to God’s Word without prejudgment, without fear.  

 

As in the beatitudes, we begin to notice God where we least expect Him.  

 

Our heart is more and more open, and our mind less and less closed.

We can look at true horror in the face, even the decline and death of those we love, the decline and death of even the truly saintly like Father Jim Boston, and not be afraid or resent God. 

 

Siblings and Friends, we are damaged goods, all of us.  We are like Nicodemus in the night.  But God made us for a home we have never yet seen, and that we can barely even imagine now. Jesus tells us of that home, because he came down from there. He loves us dearly, each and every one.

Jesus not only showed us the way, he is the way.  He accepted and opened himself to the will of his Father, risked all, and let himself be borne away on the wind, even to the point of being lifted high upon the cross.  Through this and his glorious coming forth from the grave, he is reaching down to pull us from the deep water.  

 

Let us all learn to relax as we let ourselves fall back into the mysterious love of God.  Let us lose our lives so that we may find them.   Let’s not struggle as he buries us in the waves and pulls us up again, sputtering, into new breath and life.  Let us allow ourselves to be borne away on his wind.   

 

In the name of Christ, Amen.

 

Finding our Ground (Ash Wednesday ABC)

 

Finding our Ground

Ash Wednesday (Year ABC)
18 February 2026; 12 noon Sung Mass with the Imposition of Ashes;
Homily Delivered at The Parish Church of St. Luke,

Grants Pass, Oregon

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

Joel 2:1-2,12-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21; Psalm 103:8-14

 

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

 

The burial rite in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer has the following instruction:

 

“Then, while the earth shall be cast upon the Body by some standing by, the Priest shall say, ‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself.’”

 

Note the conflation of the ideas of dust, dirt, and the ground in which we are buried with ashes: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Marking the forehead with ashes was the sign of mourning and penitence in ancient Judaism.  That’s why we use it in this rite calling us to the practice of a holy Lent. 
 

 

The Chinese character for ashes is telling:  it is a hand combined with the character for fire.  Ashes, in this view, are fire you can touch.  The ashes we use today are made by burning the palms from last Holy Week.  The ashes remind us of fire that consumes, but also of the life and verdure consumed in the fire.  Ashes are fire we can touch. 

When we impose the ashes, we are told the words said to Adam and Eve as they were cast out of the Garden, “Remember you are but dust, and unto dust you shall return.”  Dust and ashes.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

This season is not about going through the motions, about public display, about drama queen horror at our lowly state.  That’s what Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel—don’t make a big show of this.  What counts is what is going on inside, in your secret places.

English Civil War era Anglican priest and poet Robert Herrick is best known to most of us for his great Christmas anthem "What Sweeter Music" with its line "that sees December turned to Spring?"  But Herrick also wrote a poem for Lent: “To Keep a True Lent”: 

 

Is this a Fast, to keep
The larder lean?
And clean
from fat of veals and sheep?

 

Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish?

 

Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg'd to go
Or show
A down-cast look and sour?

 

No: 'tis a Fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat
And meat
Unto the hungry soul.

 

It is to fast from strife
And old debate,
And hate;
To circumcise thy life.

 

To show a heart grief-rent;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin;
And that's to keep thy Lent.

 

Jan Richardson expresses this a bit more intimately in her poem “Rend Your Heart: A Blessing for Ash Wednesday”: 

 

To receive this blessing,
all you have to do
is let your heart break.
Let it crack open.
Let it fall apart
so that you can see
its secret chambers,
the hidden spaces
where you have hesitated
to go.

Your entire life
is here, inscribed whole
upon your heart’s walls:
every path taken
or left behind,
every face you turned toward
or turned away,
every word spoken in love
or in rage,
every line of your life
you would prefer to leave
in shadow,
every story that shimmers
with treasures known
and those you have yet
to find.

It could take you days
to wander these rooms.
Forty, at least.

And so let this be
a season for wandering
for trusting the breaking
for tracing the tear
that will return you

to the One who waits
who watches
who works within
the rending
to make your heart
whole.

 

We often miss the point when we talk about Lent as a season of “repentance,” “penitence,” and “confession of our sins.”  We often think of these terms simply as turning aside from violating God’s laws or commands, making amends, and making nice with God to get him (and this view always has God as a him) over his anger at us. 

 

But sin as a concept is far broader than this petty legalistic view.  And God is most definitely NOT a crotchedy, peevish, and angry old man.  Most modern theo-logians define sin either teleologically or relationally:  something that turns us aside from what God intends when God creates us, or anything that separates or alienates us from God, ourselves, or others.    God loves us regardless, and so it is more a question of talking about things that in our own hearts and minds separate us from the love of God. 

 

Danish theologian Soren Kirkegaard said

“Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God . . . Faith is: that the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God.” 

 

We must not forget the fact that we fall short of what God intended when he made us.  1 John says: 

 

⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; ⁷ but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. ⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10)

 

In all of this, we must remember the truth expressed in the collect for Ash Wednesday:  God hates nothing God has made and forgives the sins of all who are penitent, that is, who turn back.  

 

Confession and repentance are processes that help us know who our real selves are, and make us more and more accepting of that and less fearful of standing before God as who we truly are. 

 

The English word confession comes from the Latin Confiteor, meaning acknow-ledge as true.  It comes from the prefix con (with) and fateor “allow or admit”.  The point is that we allow or acknowledge the truth together with someone, whether God, our community, or simply another person, perhaps a friend, a counselor or spiritual director, or, as the 1662 Prayer Book says in its exhortation to a holy Communion, to a “discreet and learned Minister of God’s Word.” 

 

Lent is a time to intentionally reconnect, both with what God intended when God made us, and with God himself.   We are told that to do this, we must be humble.  The Latin word for humble, humilis, is related to the noun for the ground, humus. In Vergil’s Aeneid, the vines of Italy are described as humilis, not “humble” so much as “trained to grow close to the ground”.   In the story of creation, the man and woman are called human because they are made from the soil, the humus: “Unto dust thou shalt return.”  So being humble means being down to earth, close to our origin the dirt, sending down roots and being grounded. 

 

For a holy Lenten fast, let us not rend our garments, but our heart:  open it to Jesus, and use these forty days to wander through our secret rooms at our leisure, seeking grounding.  

 

Accepting who we are is the key in this grounding, in this getting close to earth, in this humility.  We are God’s creatures, whom he declared “very good” when he made us.  But we have turned aside from the beauty he saw in us when he declared us “Very good!”

 

If we open our hearts to Jesus, he will heal us.  He will give us strength, and the inner peace needed for the journey.  He will indeed make us anew in his own image, and bring us to his glory and joy.  

 

Thanks be to God.

 

Sudden Clarity

 

 Sudden Clarity

Last Sunday of Epiphany (Year A)
15 February 2026; 9 a.m. Sung Mass

Sunday Last next before Lent (Transfiguration Sunday)
Homily Delivered at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

Medford, Oregon  

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

Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9; Psalm 2

 

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

 

Transfiguration Sunday ends the season of Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.  In a very real way, the scene here is what we call in popular parlance an epiphany, a moment of clarity when all of a sudden we see things as they really are. 

We all have seen such a moment of clarity, both happy and sad.  It is when you realize you have found the love of your life.  It is when a person in discernment comes to know what it is that God is calling her to.  It is when you suddenly are sure what your passion in life or work is.  It is what makes a destructive drunk "hit bottom" and begin to reach out for help.  It is when you realize you are in a destructive relationship and need to break it off.  It is when a diagnostician suddenly puts together all the symptoms, pathology, and life details of the patient and intuitively knows what disease she is dealing with. It is when you realize that a person you voted for is not what you had hoped, and actually the opposite of your values.  It is when a scientist suddenly recognizes the pattern and comes up with a new hypothesis or theory.  It is when, of a sudden, we know that we love and trust God. 

But this epiphany—God’s glory shining in the face of Jesus—overwhelms Peter.  Seeing the two great icons of the Jewish tradition alongside Jesus—Moses for the Law and Elijah for the Prophets—he thinks it is they who are giving his friend and teacher this new power and glory.  He wants to set up three little shrines to commemorate it.   He does not realize this is a revelation of how Jesus has always been, just hidden.

 

Peter is thinking about Succoth (tabernacles, or booths), temporary shelters set up for the duration of the major harvest festival.  They stood for the tents of Israel during the 40 years of wandering in the desert while being fed on the Manna, the bread from Heaven, and symbolized human reliance on God, an appropriate sentiment for a harvest festival.  The prophet Zechariah had said that when the Messiah came, all the nations of the earth would go in pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Succoth Festival and build such Booths as commanded by Moses.  God would punish any nation not doing by withholding the rain and sending drought, the punishment that Elijah had famously brought on King Ahab for three years (Zech 14:16-18; Exod 23:16; 34:22; 2 Kings 17).  

Peter wants to build the Succoth for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah to show that Jesus is another great figure in his religion, perhaps even the Messiah who would force all Gentiles to become Jews by invoking Elijah’s curse of drought. 

But God intervenes and sets Peter straight.  A light-filled cloud appears and covers everything. A voice identifies Jesus as the first thing, the real item. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to what he says!’   The cloud disappears, and all that remains is Jesus himself.  Moses and Elijah have dropped from view. 

 

The transfiguration is a moment of sudden clarity for the disciples that they don’t fully “get” until after the resurrection: the realization, in the words of John’s Gospel, that “Whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father.” 

 

As today’s pseudonymous epistle puts it on the lips of St. Peter: “we have been eyewitnesses of God’s majesty,” and “have heard the voice from heaven saying ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”  For this reason, “we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed” (the King James here has “the more sure word of prophecy”).  That is, we understand the inner meaning and direction of the prophets’ words, having seen the Glory of God directly revealed in Jesus.   And this being so, “You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”  Paul elsewhere says that “gazing upon the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus” makes us ourselves undergo transfiguration or metamorphosis, changing from glory into glory, closer and closer to Jesus.

  

How can we “be attentive to” this epiphany, this revelation, this moment of sudden clarity when the early disciples first had an inkling of who Jesus truly was?  How do we “gaze upon the face of Jesus?” 

 

It is important to reflect on our Lord and Savior often and regularly.  That is why daily prayer and scripture reading is an essential part of any Christian’s intentional spiritual discipline.  Regular Church attendance helps, but in gazing upon the Lord's glory, we must be the Church, not simply go to Church.  It is not just a passive act of admiration.  Following Jesus in doing corporeal acts of mercy, in serving our fellows, in standing with the outcast, the downtrodden, and the sick--all these give us an experience of who Jesus is and what he does. 

Given the stresses of life, it is easy to lose heart.  It is easy to believe that people cannot change, that we cannot change.  But the miracle and mystery of our faith is this—we can change because God promises to change us.  In the Apostles’ Creed we affirm that we believe in “the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”  This makes no sense at all if you don’t believe that God is at work transforming us, and that we shall all be changed. 

 

Just as God sent that shining cloud to drive away Peter’s silly preconceptions and plans, God works with us as we look into the glorious face of Jesus and try to hear his voice.   God changes us.

Such change is sometimes hard, so hard that at times we do not know whether we will be able to bear it.  At other times it is a relief, as easy as taking off a heavy winter coat in the summer heat.  

 

When Paul says this turns us into "the image of Christ" he is not saying it removes our individuality.  What he describes is a transformation into our true selves, the individual people God intended when He created each of us, with all that makes us who we are, but absent the brokenness that we so often mistake for what makes us who we are. 

One of the greatest foundation stones of my personal faith is the experience of seeing transformed brothers and sisters around me, and seeing ourselves over the years as God works with us and transforms.  It doesn’t mean we are perfect, only that God is making progress in finishing his creation in us.   In the words of the classic line from African-American preaching quoted often by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Lord, I know I ain't what I outta be.  And I know I ain't what I'm gonna be.  But thank God Almighty, I ain't what I was!”

Charles Wesley in one of his hymns summed it up this way--

Finish then, thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see thy great salvation perfectly restored in Thee:
Changed from glory into glory,
'Till in heaven we take our place.
'Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.  

 
It is not just in heaven when all of God's creation is done that this happens.  As we are transformed here and now, quickly or slowly, it makes us look around us in amazement at tokens of God's love about us, ourselves experience sudden clarity.  And then we gaze all the more, "lost in wonder, love, and praise," on the author and pioneer of it all. 

  

Thanks be to God.

 

Salt, Light, and Courage (Epiphany 5A)

 

Salt, Light, and Courage

8 February 2026

Fifth Sunday After Epiphany Year A

Homily preached at 11:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist

Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Sutherlin, Oregon

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

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12); Psalm 112:1-9, (10); 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16); Matthew 5:13-20

 

God, give us the great infallible sign of your presences, Joy. Amen

 

Jesus in today’s Gospel says we are “salt for the earth.”  He says we, just by being who we are, can spice up this bland and sometimes rotten-tasting world we live in.  He says we can be light in this dark place, so obvious that no one will mistake us for part of the darkness.  He is not giving us a commandment that we must obey, a goal that we must work on.  He is saying that that is just who and what we are if we are his disciples.  

 

In recent years, I have seen too often hatred and condemnation in the faces of others.  I have seen it in the faces of pious “religious” people taking issue with those of us they condemn as departing from God’s pure ways.  I have seen it in true practitioners of faith who have suffered hurt from “righteous” people, reacting in anger.  We all have seen it, more and more, in the faces of our compatriots in this sad broken country of ours that has lost its way so badly. We see it in the face of agents of a police state who kill innocent protestors.  We see it in the face of us people who mourn those deaths and the loss of our democracy.  Sometimes, the more justified the anger, the more bitter the contempt.     

 

Such barely contained anger and resentment contrast with my memories of a former mentor and spiritual director of mine:  a Buddhist nun in a small temple in the mountains north of Taipei Taiwan.  She was joyous.  I can’t think of a time when I did not see her smiling.  She clearly expressed her beliefs and opinions, but always as an affirmation, never a contradiction to others.  She had more than anyone else I have met cause to be resentful and angry over horrible abuse she and her family had suffered at the hands of others.  Her family had fled from Mainland China to escape persecution from Chinese Communists.  But there was never even a whiff of anger or resentment in her.  All she did was done with joy, gratitude, and empathy for others, especially those who disagreed with her. She always talked about cultivating the “Buddha nature” within each of our hearts, of being more compassionate, less judgmental, and kinder to every sentient being.  

 

I also had a Christian spiritual director like this in Hong Kong when I was preparing for ordination, an Australian Anglican priest, an out gay man.  He too was joyous and almost always wore a genuine smile.  

  

We are called to be Jesus’ disciples.  That means following him, and emulating him.  He had his enemies, to be sure.  And he said that in following him, we would have enemies also.  But he taught clearly: love your enemies.  Now at times, Jesus Jesus got angry or impatient with those who used religion and political authority to brtalize and oppress others.  But I think that tells us how bad things were, not about Jesus' heart.  

 

When I was a grad student at the Catholic University of America, I prayed regularly in the nearby National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. The main nave is cavernous. On the ceiling above the high altar is an immense mosaic of Christ on the Day of Judgment. As you look up, he peers down at you accusingly, eyes ablaze in anger.  Looking up at that mosaic, I always felt condemned, and bound for hell. I always retreated to the crypt church in the basement for prayer. Te icons of Jesus there are loving and kind.  That mosaic upstairs was just too threatening. I just couldn’t pray to Jesus in the nave.

So when I think of Jesus, I think of him with that gentle smile of deep joy of my Buddhist and Christian masters, not with the condemning grimace of barely concealed contempt we see so often in others and ourselves.  That grimace tells us we have lost hope that others might actually turn from their abusive ways.  I don’t think Jesus ever lost that hope, and God knows, he had plenty of reason to. 

    

Jesus invites us all into metanoia, often translated as “repentance,” but better understood as “a change of the mind” or “a turning of the heart.”  Jesus invites us to close relationship with God, who in his mind was not a warring tribal leader or dour judge or policeman, but rather an intimate and loving parent.   Gratitude should be our default position.  Gratitude drives out fear, alienation, and contempt.  It encourages empathy and forgiveness.  That is why he asks us to pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive the debts owed us.”   

 

The fruits of the spirit according to Galatians are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (5:22).   If we think we are being touched by the spirit or spoken to by God, but what we get is anger, resentment, fear, and contention, we are  most certainly mistaken.  Joy and peace are what the spirit give, what God inspires in our hearts, not partisan posturing or manipulation of others so that they give us what we want in a constant struggle for dominance of submission.  

 

Perhaps as a check on ourselves and the lies we tell ourself, we should ask ourselves, throughout the day, “Am I smiling?”  “Am I trying to understand this person so different from me?”  “Am I thankful?”  When angry, we should ask, “What is it about me that makes me react in this way? What fears and insecurities?”  and not “why can’t that creep over there just change?”

 

But what about grief?  How can we be joyful when we are mourning?  When we have lost those we love, or those we care about?  Isn’t resentment okay then?  Isn’t anger and hatred justified just a little?  Grief is an emotion we must go through and not suppress or stifle.   

 

But we must never let grief overwhelm us so that we lose hope and turn to hatred.   The Chinese have a proverb for this, one taught me by my Zen master,:  节哀顺变  [節哀順變] jié'āishùnbiàn, “bind up your grief so you bring about change.” 

 

C.S. Lewis, in his magnificent but painful “A Grief Observed,” writes that no one ever explained to him how much grief as an emotion feels like fear.  Part of our “binding up grief” in fact is an act of courage in the face of the unimaginable. And courage it is that Jesus calls us to! Courage is Martin Luther King Jr.'s  struggling against racists precisely because he never gave up on them.  It's like Alex Pretti still trying to help those attacked by ICE and CBP and holding up a mirror of conscience to the brown shirts. Courage.  Binding up our grief to promote change.    

 

When the French want to tell you to be strong, find joy or at least calm in the face of trouble, and deal with what life dishes out, they say “du courage!”  It’s like saying “buck up!” or “hang in there.” 

 

 

 

One of the pivotal moments in my life, and one of the greatest bits of counsel I ever received, took place in Beijing China on June 6, 1989.  I was working at the U.S. Embassy there.  In the closing days of May, things in Beijing had gotten more and more chaotic as the pro-democracy demonstrations in Tian’anmen Square dragged on.  The evening of Saturday June 3, the army moved in to recapture the Square, re-exert control over the city, and terrorize the people back into compliance with the Communist Party’s leadership.   Many of you saw the picture of the single protester standing his ground before a column of tanks.  That scene was unusual.  Generally people who stood in the way were simply run over by the armored personnel carriers, crushed and chewed up by the treads.  I know, because I saw it.  For days the army used random shooting toward crowds as a way of cowing people to get off the streets.  More than a thousand lay dead, murdered by “the People’s Liberation Army,” and rumors of dissenting Army units firing on each other raised the specter of Civil War.  

 

In all this, the U.S. Embassy granted refuge to two of the leading dissidents in the country, marked for summary execution by those who wanted to make their country great again.  Those two came in through my office.  The next day, the army opened fire at U.S. diplomatic apartments—some with children in them—in an hour-long shooting spree in which, fortunately, no one was killed.   

 

 

The Hon. James R. Lilley and Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping

 

Ambassador James R. Lilley called us all together to announce that our dependents were being evacuated from the country and that we would mount a full-scale evacuation effort to take stranded Americans in remote parts of the city to the airport.  As we were meeting, automatic weapons fire opened up just outside the Embassy compound where we were meeting.  People crouched beneath the window levels as the cement walls around us were chipped and shattered by bullets.  Finally, silence returned.  

 

Ambassador Lilley, a former marine and CIA officer, called us back to order.  What he said then is deeply etched in my memory.  Calmly, with emotion, he said, “We are not often called upon to show courage.  Courage is grace under fire, keeping your head and your heart focused on what you need to do, and why, and then doing it regardless of all the things you cannot control going on around you.  As you go out to help evacuate  Americans, you must keep your cool and stay focused. Bring them reassurance and calm.  As we send off our spouses and children, not knowing when or if we might see them again, we must give them confidence and hope.  Stay on task, remember our values and the oath to the Constitution we took when we entered into Federal service.  Though things might not turn out how we wish, we will have the calm of knowing we’ve done everything in our power.  It’s a matter of faith, both having faith, and keeping faith.  It’s called courage, and that is what we must step up to now, so we can make the best of this bad, bad situation.” 

 

The words had particular impact on me as we drove the next two days in convoys across the barricades all over the city, facing the muzzles of AK-47s held by PLA teenage recruits from the provinces shaky with amphetamines to keep them awake.   

 

I have always thanked God that Jim Lilley knew exactly what to say to us and then modeled courage for us.  He taught where courage comes from: remembering the joy of times past, then focusing on what we need to do, and sharing our calm with others.  As African American Spirituals say, “Keep your eyes on the prize! Keep your hand on the plough!  Hold on, hold on!”  This lesson has stayed with me from then until now.  

What Jim Lilley knew was this:  if we keep our minds on the goal and stay on task regardless of how bad things are, if we are true to the better angels in our hearts, grace under fire just happens.  We are no longer overwhelmed by the things over which we have no control.  And we find we can even find humor, satisfaction, and yes, even joy in pursuing our course, come hell or high water.  We find that we can spice up this life, and be a light, not a judge. 

 

Siblings in Christ: Du courage!  Let us go forth from this Eucharist today, this Great Thanksgiving, renewed and recommitted to joy, to love, to caring for each other, to supporting and healing the ill and reconciling hurt, and to forgiveness.  Let us mourn with those who mourn, but always be ready to find joy and hope and share that with others.  For Joy and hope are there.  We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  We are in God’s hands.  

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.