Drop the Rock (Proper 9A)

  

Drop the Rock

Proper 9 Year A

5 July 2026 9 a.m. Sung Holy Eucharist

Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford Oregon

Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145: 8 - 15; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30            

 

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

 

When I was in discernment for holy orders, I had a vivid dream:  I am standing on a pier, with one foot on the ground and one foot on a boat ready for departure.  The distance between the boat deck and the pier grows and grows, until I am stretched between the two.  I know I have to jump one way or the other, the boat or the shore.  But I want both:  I want to be on shore, with its restaurants, familiar friends, and the comforts of home.  I want to be on the boat, traveling to a far off and new land.  I want both, but cannot have both.  I’ll end up in the drink if I don’t jump soon.  And yet I hesitate.  Just as fall into the water and begin to sink, I wake up.

 

In my life, I have often had that feeling: torn between two goods, knowing I cannot have both. Sometimes I’ve been torn between a good and a not-so-good thing, that I wanted all the same.  One foot here, one foot there.  Indecisive, or decisive and rapidly changing my opinion.   I felt this when as a teenager I first came to faith.  I felt it when I married Elena and we started our family.  I felt it when I chose to pursue Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America instead of Classics at Urbana-Champaign. I felt it when I joined the Foreign Service, and when Elena and I became Episcopalians.  I felt it when I was in discernment for holy orders.  I felt it when Elena died and I retired from full-time ministry.  I felt it when I came out of the closet and started dating men, and when Will and I fell in love and decided to get married here at Sat. Mark’s.  Sometimes, I felt this being of two minds as a “temptation” or test of my will when there seemed to be a moral dimension to the decision, when the choice was not between two good things, but between a good and an evil. But the structure underlying the feeling was always the same:  conflicting and unformed desires at war with each other. 

 

C.S. Lewis once made a profound comment about those who have difficulty with faith because they can’t get God to answer their questions or grant their petitions in prayer.  In his retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros, the main character says bitterly near the end of the story that the gods cannot speak to us openly, nor answer us, until we ourselves find the ability to express the real desire of our hearts. Most of us, most of the time, desire what we know not, or want things that in and of themselves preclude other things we want:  profligate spending versus building up a hefty savings, health vs. the habits or vices that destroy it, a life of unrestrained pleasure vs. a happy family life--of any shape of family--built on trust and faithfulness, top professional success vs. high quality family life. The problem is that we often do not even have a clue what our real desire is, or are sadly mistaken about it.  Lewis writes, “[God] cannot meet us face to face until we have faces.”

 

This division within our minds and wills, this fuzziness of what we want, the contradictions between our competing desires are often put into metaphorical form by that image we know from the cartoons: a little angel sitting on one of our shoulders arguing with a little devil sitting on the other one, both of them looking like us, but one with halo, wings, and harp, and the other with horns, tail, and a pitchfork.  The image, as laughable as it is, comes a very real experience in our hearts. Sometimes our competing desires are so acutely at odds with each other and we are so conflicted that it feels like we are actually in the middle of an argument apart from us, that we are being enticed by different personalities rather than simply arguing with ourselves or being indecisive.  This feeling, I believe, is where the ancient tradition of personifying a tempter, a devil, or a Satan, actually came from. 

 

In today’s reading in Romans, St. Paul describes the problem somewhat differently:  I don’t really know who I am or what I really want.  I decide to do some good thing, and then fail to do it.  I make a resolve to avoid some bad thing, and then find myself in the act.  The fact that I cannot really make up my mind, or that I change my mind, shows how important it is to have objective standards, a written Law: “If do the very thing I do not want to do, I by that fact agree that the Law is good!”  Paul goes on to describe his inner inconsistency and experience of obsession or compulsion almost as if he is divided or split: a Law of Sin in his members at war with a Law of God in his mind.   A little more abstract, perhaps, but basically: a little devil Paul on one shoulder and a little angel Paul on the other.   

 

This passage is often misread.  St. Augustine and then later Martin Luther took it in light of their own personal sense of guilt in struggles with sin, and thought Paul was talking about same guilt-ridden introspective conscience through which they saw the world.  Thus the great division between Law and Grace in Protestant theology arose.  But Paul elsewhere shows that he is perfectly happy in saying that he is “blameless” in keeping the Law, and “righteous” in the works it requires.  Paul is no lust-haunted Augustine or guilt-ridden Luther.  He simply is describing how hard it is to know who we are and what we want given how changeable and double-minded we are.   And he sees this as an intolerable burden, because it not only separates us from God, but alienates us from others and from our very selves.  This struggle, what he calls “this body of death,” makes it hard even to know who we really are.  Who will deliver us from it, he asks. Jesus Christ is his answer.

 

People in the thrall of addiction, whether to drugs or alcohol or bad relationships, or whatever, find themselves bound by obsession and compulsion.  Paul’s words “the evil that I do not want, that I find myself doing” rings truer to addicts than for most of us.  Most modern recovery programs aim at breaking the cycle of addiction by requiring a psychological reorientation, a spiritual change, a radical redirection of one’s attitudes, relations, and whole life.  That’s what the Twelve Steps seek to bring about in a person.  If you want what they have, they say, “You only have to not drink today, come to meetings, and change everything in your life.” 

 

An extremely influential keynote address at an AA national convention several years ago tells of us walking about in life with a burden:  one’s bad habits, attitudes, fears, hopes and desires, however messy and conflicting.  It’s like you are carrying a great rock.  But, we all say, “No.  You can’t take that away! It’s MY rock! It’s who I AM!  I gathered this together over the YEARS. Sure, it’s heavy, but it’s MINE.”  Like me at the end of that dream so many years ago, or Saint Paul with his "body of death," the addict finds herself drowning, helpless and hopeless, unable, like Paul, to follow through on the most solemn of resolves.   The people in the AA or NA or Al-anon rooms are on the shore, calling to the drowning person to try to save her.  And what is it they are calling?  “Drop the  rock!” 

 

Photograph (c) Charlotte Piho 

The Gospel today also speaks of conflicting desires.  The same critics had condemned both John the Baptist and Jesus:  John for being too conservative and austere and Jesus for being too welcoming and liberal.  Jesus rebukes these critics.   He quotes a popular proverb and compares them to naughty children in the marketplace who cannot be satisfied with anything because of their conflicting desires.  They taunt each other: little girls tease the boys who want to dance and play music which men used in wedding celebrations; little boys tease the girls because they want to practice the mourning songs and ululations women sing at funerals.  You can’t have it both ways, says Jesus. “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” he concludes, that is, “doing the right thing is what shows whether you are wise, that is, whether you are integrated and have truly find yourselves.”   Then Matthew adds that saying that sounds so much more like the Gospel of John than it does any synoptic: the Father has given all things to the Son.  The point is that in Jesus, there are no self-contradictions, no competing desires, no alienation from God, others, or one’s self.  So Jesus ends the passage by telling us, basically, to “drop the rock.”  He offers to take on our burdens for us if we work alongside of him and learn from him.   The Message, a modern paraphrase translation of the Bible, puts it this way: 

 

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

 

“Get away with me and you’ll recover your life, you’ll find what your true desires are.”  The blessing I give to those who come to the altar rail asking for a blessing instead of taking communion is this:  May God bless and keep you, and give you your heart’s true desire.” 

 

We are a sorry lot, whether we have active addictions recognized by others or not.  We all are subject to obsession and compulsion at times, and all carry heavy burdens created from all our conflicting desires, hopes, and fears.   And God cannot really talk to us face to face until we begin to develop faces that are truly our own, hearts that hold our real desires.  It is by taking on Jesus’ yoke, taking on his task of announcing the kingdom in word and deed and healing the broken world, walking with him and working with him, that we begin to learn from him who we each really are and what we truly desire.   It is not something forced, regimented, or produced by a technique.  It is not the result of willing it, or submitting to some standard.  We let go, and let God.  Our new self distills like the dew in the morning.  We gain a true vision of ourselves and others.  Losing our false desires is like taking off a blindfold, like finally removing the pebble from our shoe.  It is like, in the middle of the summer heat, taking off a heavy winter coat.  It is wonderful.  Come with me to Jesus, and let’s let him show us how. 

 

Thanks be to God. Amen.