Shine with Radiance (Epiphany 2A)

 

Shine with Radiance
Homily delivered the Second Sunday after Epiphany (Epiphany 2A RCL)

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
15 January 2017; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
Readings:  Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42; Psalm 40:1-12

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

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

  

When I first became an Episcopalian, I was puzzled by the use of the word “collect” to describe the opening prayer.  I wondered what it had to do with taking up a collection, which clearly happened much later in the service.   I finally asked about it in an Inquirer’s Class we took and found out that the word was not pronounced col-LECT, but rather COL-lect, and had nothing to do with passing the plate.  It is a summing prayer that gathered together the themes of the various readings.  Its form starts with one of the attributes or actions of God, and then offers a petition responding to it.

So today’s collect:  “Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world” there is your attribute of God.  Then a petition growing from it:  “Grant that your people, illumined (enlightened) by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory.”

“I have placed you as a light to the nations” says the Isaiah passage.  The Psalm talks about God’s song as if it were light that gives people the ability to see: 

“He put a new song in my mouth,

a song of praise to our God; 
many shall see, and stand in awe,
and put their trust in the Lord.”

Paul in 1 Corinthians connects the joy we feel in the gospel with the witness we bear to others through our deeds and words: “the grace of God … has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind… [thus] the witness you bear to Christ has been strengthened among you.” 

In the Gospel reading, we hear John the Baptist give his witness to the Light of the world, and see the reaction of some of his disciples to meeting that Light: Andrew immediately finds his brother Simon Peter and says to him, “We have found the Messiah” and introduces him to Jesus. 

Being formed in Christ’s light, and passing it on to others: this is the essence of living as a follower of Jesus.   “Grant that your people, enlightened by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory.”  Jesus, the word and sacrament of God, made present to us in scripture, preaching, and such things as baptism and Holy Communion, brings us light.  He stirs us to joy.  He challenges us to grow into what God intends us to be.  

Jesus teaches clearly:  “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.  No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”  (Matt. 5:14-16)

It’s all there in the spiritual: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.  Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” 

As good as life is, it is really easy to get depressed at times.  Our relationships and families only approach, but never arrive, at the ideal of loving kindness that families should have.  Our friends and loved ones get sick and die.  Sometimes we experience betrayal and abuse by those who should be giving us care and support.   In our church life, we sometimes make it so hard on each other.  Church is supposed to be light and life, not petty squabbles or infighting.  It is supposed to form us as disciples of Jesus, not judges and condemners of others.  And we are hard on each other in our community and national life.  The nation is the most divided and bitterly conflicted, I think, than we have been for over 150 years.  

Jesus says in the face of all this: let your light shine!

The change in administrations has caused a controversy in Episcopal Church circles.  Some say we cannot pray for the President-elect.  His name is just too painful for many, especially those who have suffered sexual abuse or harassment, bullying, or discrimination based in race, national origin, handicap, or religion.  Others reply rightly that scripture teaches us to pray for our national leaders, even if the prayer is only to change their hearts and behaviors. We are all children of God and need prayers. 

The Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, issued a statement this week saying that given scriptural teaching, the Prayer Book, and the example of Jesus, we must pray for the new President.  All Saints’ Pasedena announced that even as they continue to pray for the nation’s leaders, they have dropped the new President’s name from petitions, since it is so traumatic for some.   Others insist that fair is fair, and say that “we pray for our President Donald” is in order if we prayed for “our President Barack.”  The other side replies, “We prayed for George W. Bush by name.  But Trump is different.”     

The fact is, the Prayer Book’s suggested forms of prayer give petitions for the President and leaders of the nations, but do not instruct us to use their names.   In Anglican churches in countries where the British monarch is head of state, the authorized prayers usually include the sovereign’s name.  This practice was part of Tudor and Stuart political control of religion to ensure that a state-sponsored church supported the monarch’s line.  But this has never been the American Prayer Book’s way.  I saw the real dilemmas it causes while serving as a priest in post-1997 Hong Kong at a Church of England rite cathedral and seeing the agonies of some Chinese parishioners who had earlier fled bitter persecution in Mainland China when they heard Anglo- or left-wing Chinese prayer leaders pray in the Cathedral Intercessions for “our President [Jiang] Zemin” or “our President [Hu] Jintao,” the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party.  I can only imagine what praying by name for such an active persecutor of Christians as current leader Xi Jinping must do.

This week, as noted in your bulletins, Trinity has reorganized our instructions for Prayers of the People.  We seek better focus and shorter public prayers.  We have decided to follow our Prayer Book’s usage and simply forgo the use of names in Prayers of the People except for those on our short, urgent list of those needing healing or support in time of trouble.    So President Trump will not be named in Prayers of the People even as we pray for him, that he may have the strength and wisdom to know and to do God’s will, serve the common good, and be, to use the Prayer Book’s words, “ever mindful” of his “calling to serve this people in [the fear of God].” We have not announced that we will not pray by name for the incoming President.  We will also usually not be naming church leaders or others whose names appear on our larger prayer list.  We do not want to reduce prayer to political partisanship.  But we do want to live the gospel and pray for all in need of prayer.  

What is key here is this:  we must let our light shine.  We all must be fair-minded in dealing with those who differ from us politically.  We must not let labels or name-calling dictate our behavior.  A new administration always brings with it uncertainties and fears, and this is particularly the case with this one, presided over by a man who made a point in the campaign of vilifying and dehumanizing his opponents and whole classes of people.  We must focus on the policies and behavior of all of our political leaders.  If any pursue policies that are hurtful to the marginalized, that puts the Kingdom of God farther away rather than draws it nearer, then we must oppose those policies and actions clearly and effectively.  If any try to do things that help advance the common good and the lighten the burden of those suffering, then we should make common cause with them on these things, not vilify them for being “insincere” or “deceitful.” 

In such a divisive climate, we must call policies and actions by their true name, and not worry so much about labels and the names of those we support or oppose.  Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and those of the Confessing Church who wrote the Barmen Declaration were careful not to oppose the Nazis on the basis of partisan labels.  Rather, they named and opposed specific actions and teaching of the Nazis that violated gospel truth and scripture.  I am very troubled by Mr. Trump’s exclusive choice of “prosperity Gospel” ministers as prayer leaders this week at what should be a united national ceremony of transferal of power.  I must say clearly:  the doctrine that wealth is a sign of God’s approval and poverty a sign of God’s curse is heresy, and opposes much of the teaching of our Lord.    

“Letting your light shine” in the current context means activism and public witness.  It means taking the power of prayer seriously, and praying for our enemies.  It means listening to our opponents fairly and carefully.  It means letting the joy of the gospel, the love of God, and the fellowship and friendship given us by the Holy Spirit bubble up from our individual hearts and minds, from our limited church community, and pour out in abundance into our private and public affirmations and actions.   It means, to borrow words from the departing First Lady, “when they go low, we go high.”  It may mean civil disobedience to unjust and immoral laws.

Sisters and brothers at Trinity:  As Saint Paul says, “Now is the day of salvation.  Now is the acceptable time.”  Now more than ever, we must live the gospel, follow Jesus, and let his light shine out through us.  The Kingdom is ever in our midst, and we must not lose heart. 

In the name of Christ, Amen.        

One Flock, One Shepherd (Good Shepherd Sunday; Easter 4B)

One Flock, One Shepherd

Easter 4B
29 April 2012; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Homily Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Anthony A. Hutchinson 

at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18 

“The day after they had arrested Peter and John for teaching about Jesus and the resurrection, the rulers, elders, and scribes assembled in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, "By what power or by what name did you do this?" Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, "Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead. This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:5-12) 

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

We have been having a lot of funerals here at Trinity in the last weeks.  At a couple of them we have used as the Gospel reading the passage from John 14, where Jesus says that in his Father’s House there are many way stations.  The passage is warm, reassuring, and comforting.  It ends with Jesus saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father, except by me” (John14: 6).   One of the deacons asked me somewhat abashedly if she could read the Gospel but end the reading before that last half-verse, “no one comes to the Father except by me.”  “It might be offensive to some of the visiting bereaved, who might not be Christians.” 

She asked as if she were afraid my response might be “But this is the BIBLE we are talking about here, and I’ll not have a verse of GOD’S WORD edited out because it might be offensive to those who are going to destruction anyway!”  But she asked it anyway, because she knew that I am no fundamentalist, and believe that in order to be understood, God’s word on occasion needs to be reframed or even rephrased. 

Today’s Gospel reading, shares the same problem.  “I am the Good Shepherd” Jesus says, not “a good shepherd.”  And he adds, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”  Likewise, in the Acts reading, St. Peter ends his short speech on Christ being the stone once rejected but now made head cornerstone by saying, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

We here at Trinity Church glory in the fact that we are inclusive.  One of our core values is hospitality.   We believe that inclusiveness and hospitality are what God calls us to.   We believe that because of what scripture teaches us. 
During the life of Jesus, everyone knew that one of the great images of the Hebrew scripture for God’s saving act at the end of time was that of a great banquet. Even though there were plenty of passages that said, like Isaiah 25:7, that this banquet would be for people of all nations, many of the religious teachers around Jesus taught that this would be an exclusive event limited to a few of God’s chosen only.

Jesus replies to such a stingy image of God with parables. He points to the weather and says that God gives his rain and sunshine to both good and bad people alike (Matt. 5:45). He says this tells us about God’s love for all and should be a model for us in how we treat others. Jesus points to families and notes that when children ask for bread to eat, parents do not give them stones, or when they ask for an egg to eat, do not give them a scorpion. “If even average parents try to give their children good things, how much more generous will God be?” (Matt. 7:9-10; Luke 11:11-13)

Jesus’ actions matched his words. He regularly ate and drank with people that his religion told him would make him unclean. He had dinner parties with drunkards and prostitutes, much to the horror of Jesus’ “righteous” opponents. “It is the sick who need a doctor,” he would say, “not healthy people.” (Matt. 9:12)

But not everyone wanted a God as generous as the one Jesus described. They would quote scriptures that “proved” God was picky and exclusive. Jesus would reply by quoting other scriptures, where God looked more loving. 

Jesus reserved his deepest anger for people he accused of “refusing to enter God’s door, and also barring the way to others” (Matt 23:13). He told other parables to explain why it was that despite God’s overwhelming goodness and generosity, some people were right with God and others were not.  The ones who were not truly thankful for God’s generosity, and were not likewise generous to others, were the butt of such parables (Luke 18:10-14).

When Jesus described what he believed the dividing line on the Last Day will be between those who stand and dwell with God and those who do not, he said that it was whether people had been hospitable, and whether they had cared for the marginalized  (Matthew 5: 35-40). 

So inclusiveness and hospitality are core to the Gospel, not just affectations of Trinity Ashland.   

What, then, are we to make of the verses of the New Testament that seem exclusionary? 

Here in post-modern America, with its wide diversity of religious and non-religious traditions, it is always a temptation to simply ignore these verses or deny that they hold any truth or value.   In a landscape of radical diversity, all religious options seem equally valid, valuable, and true, with the exception of views that exclude or subordinate others, or claim unique truth or authenticity.   This often finds expression in a consumer’s approach to religious belief:  pick and choose those things of religion—any religion—that appeal to you, that suit you, and moosh them all together into your particular faith.  “I’m spiritual but not religious” is a common tag line of such boutique faith.  A little bit of Christianity, of Buddhism, of mystic Islam or Judaism, stripped of their authoritative claims or difficult doctrines, of their craziness, and you can arrive at a pleasant blend all your own, like some customized pipe tobacco or drug stash.

To those who might find boutique religion attractive, it is important to remember wise words from the Dalai Lama.  He says that if you take a little of this faith and mix it with a little of that one, you have neither the one nor the other and cannot be properly formed by either. You never will sink your roots deeply enough into a single tradition to truly grow and mature spiritually.  It is only when you sink your roots deep, with an open heart and mind, and acquire some spiritual maturity that you can “branch out” and truly enjoy the fruits of another tradition.  “If you are Christian it is better to develop spiritually within your religion and be a genuine, good Christian. If you are a Buddhist, be a genuine Buddhist.” (H.H. the Dalai Lama, The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, p. 46).

Historically, the Church has read these verses and taught that Christ is the sole savior.  This usually entails claims that other faiths are deficient, and are only true or valid in the degree that they copy or agree with elements of Christian faith.  The most exclusionary form of this for the Roman Church has been the doctrine of extra ecclesiam nulla salus (“outside of the Church, there is no salvation”).   Protestants have their own form of the doctrine, based on Romans 10:9.  Paul’s “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” in this view becomes, “unless you declare this with your mouth and believe this in your heart, you will not be saved.   

But this exclusionary doctrine has undergone a great shift in the last 40 years, primarily due to the work of Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, who developed the doctrine of the Anonymous Christian.   The idea is that a person can live in God’s grace and attain salvation through Jesus even outside explicitly constituted or stated Christianity.  If a person, say a Buddhist nun or a Muslim imam, tries to do the right thing, be right with whatever God they conceive of, and follow his or her conscience, that person might be considered an anonymous Christian and be saved through Jesus’ victory over death and sin.  They would not have to explicitly accept Jesus or Christianity, or might even, because of circumstances and constraints, have rejected these explicitly.  But God’s universal salvific will and the greatness of God’s grace would save them too. 

The idea of the Anonymous Christian was promulgated as official Roman Catholic doctrine in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. 

The idea is also found among Protestants. The final book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, has the character Emeth, a Calormene prince who had fought against Aslan and Narnia and served his own god, Tash.  He has done his best to live uprightly within the traditions he as raised in.  In the end, Aslan receives him as one of his own with these words, “I and [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.^”  

The doctrine is also found in our Prayer Book, where we pray, “Remember all who died in the peace of Christ, and those whose faith is known to you alone; bring them into the place of eternal joy and light” (p. 375).

Some have criticized this effort at Christian inclusivity saying that it is condescending.  “I’m Jewish, thank you very much, and do not want to become Christian, even anonymously” expresses the idea.  These critics say that a tradition is truly inclusive only when it recognizes that other traditions have truly separate paths and confesses that these too are valid, without need for any “anonymous” adoption into our tradition.  

There is, however, a prior issue here.  The verses that Christians use to endorse exclusivist claims, when examined carefully, don’t actually teach the doctrine of exclusive, brand-conscious religious truth.  They are concerned, rather, with something else.    Remember that Paul in Romans did not write, “if you don’t confess and believe, you won’t be saved.” 

Take also the verse at the end of today’s Acts reading: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”  That phrasing should strike you as odd if indeed what Peter had meant to say was “there is no other name by which we can be saved.”  The problem is starker in the Greek of the passage, which says “by which it is necessary for us to be saved.”  The context of the verse provides the clue necessary for us to see what it is actually trying to say:  Peter is answering the authorities’ question of how, or under whose authority (“by whose name”) he has performed a miracle.  In verse 9, Peter says he is explaining “how this man has been healed.”  The word healed translates the verb sosthenai, “to be saved,” the same verb he uses when he says “there is only one name given under heaven by which we must be saved.”    The logic of the argument in the passage requires that the verses in question mean something like this: It is through Jesus’ name that we healed this man.  Such healing does not come from just anywhere.  For Jesus is the only one God has ever raised from the dead.  Thus, if you use his name, you just have to be healed. You can’t say that about any other name that I know of.” 

Similarly, when Jesus in John says “I am the Good Shepherd, … and there will be one flock and one shepherd,” this is more an affirmation of the reliability of Jesus and an exuberant expression of how good this is, not how deficient others might be.  Though the text contrasts this model shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep with other “hireling” false shepherds, it chooses the Greek word for “one” that means “one among many” (heis) rather than the Greek word for “one and only one” (monos).   

We often lose the point of the image of the model shepherd:  shepherds, to be effective, need to establish a caring relationship with their sheep, being attentive to their various wanderings, bad choice of plants to eat, and the first signs of sickness.   It is the quality of the relationship with Jesus experienced by the believer that is at heart of the Good Shepherd image, and lies behind all the passages that might be construed as exclusionary. 

This is why we should not ignore these verses or believe they have nothing to teach us. 

We who have experienced the joy and sweetness of being shepherded by Jesus are bound by the quality of that experience of faith to share it with others.  But this is sharing, not sales promotion or brow beating, and must be based in the joy of our experience and our love for others, not some silly and misdirected fear that somehow they won’t be saved or blessed by God if they aren’t like us.   And this joyful sharing to which our experience and God calls us can only be cheapened if it is linked to a looking down our noses at the experience and faith of others as deficient or inadequate.   

Bishop and theologian Krister Stendahl once said that Christ calls us Christians to be the kind of people that others want to be around, not to constantly harp at others to become like us.  We must so show the joy of the good news that others will wonder at and want what we have, whether in their own tradition or by adopting ours.   

St. Francis said that we should preach the Gospel at all times and in all places, and only occasionally open our mouths to do so.   

That is why I told the deacon to go ahead and not use that half verse.  “I am the way, the life and the truth” was sufficient for our purposes at the funerals, and “no one comes to the Father except by me” raised far too many questions with little time to answer them. I happen to agree that it is almost inconceivable to experience God as Father in as an intensely personal way as Christians do apart from a faith in Christ as the Son of God.  But that does not mean that God is not at work in other faiths. 

May the love of the Good Shepherd, the power of this Jesus who calls us into relationship both with him and with those who differ from us, help us be the more respectful of others, and more intent listeners when their stories diverge from ours.

In the name of Christ, Amen.   

Grace and Courage (Li Tim-Oi January 24)

Grace and Courage 

(Rector's Letter in the "Trinitarian," January 2012)

Gracious God, we thank you for calling Florence Li Tim-Oi, much beloved daughter, to be the first woman to exercise the office of a priest in our Communion: By the grace of your Spirit inspire us to follow her example, serving your people with patience and happiness all our days, and witnessing in every circumstance to our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

In the Episcopal Church’s calendar, January 24 is the feast day of Li Tim-Oi, the first woman to be ordained a priest in any of the churches claiming the “apostolic succession” of an historical episcopacy.  Though part of our “Lesser Feasts and Fasts,” it is a day we should celebrate big-time, not only for the great blessing of having sister priests, bishops, and primates serving among us, but also because her ordination was a moment of real grace, when the Church despite itself did the right thing and followed the Gospel.   

Li Tim-Oi’s ordination was a bit like that great turning point in early Christian history recounted in Acts 8-15 when the Church, again despite itself, reached out and brought in the gentiles as equal partners to what previously been a Jews-only affair:  Philip privately preaches to the Ethiopian Eunuch and baptizes him (Acts 8:26ff).  Then, after Saul’s conversion, Peter openly baptizes gentile Cornelius, against Peter’s native sense of religious duty to God.  It took a dream vision and huge amounts of “coincidence” to bring Peter to do the deed (Acts 10).  Saul, now Paul, preaches widely and succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.  And so the Church must meet and figure out in Council how to manage the new reality, Gentiles as Christians (Acts 15).   The story recounts a brilliant chapter in the Church’s life, one mirrored in Li Tim-Oi’s ordination. 

 The Rev. Canon Christopher Hall (on left)

I know a little bit about Li Tim-Oi because I was ordained in the same place she was made a deacon by Church of England Bishop Ronald O. Hall—St. John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong.  St. John’s still has Bishop Hall’s Chair in the chancel.  The Anglican College where I taught there, Minghua Theological Seminary, is named after him.   (His Chinese name is “He Minghua.”  “Minghua” was Hall’s Chinese given name.)   Many of the older St. John’s congregants remember Mother Li’s ministry.  I have often preached and celebrated at Morrison Chapel Macau, where Li Tim-Oi served for several years.  Last October, when I went to Hong Kong to tidy up loose ends in preparing to move to Ashland to serve you, I had the great pleasure of meeting and talking to Bishop Hall’s son Christopher, there on vacation from the U.K.

 Li Tim-Oi, her mother, Bishop Mok, her father, Archdeacon Lee Kow Yan after her ordination 
as Deacon by Bishop R 0 Hall at St John's Cathedral HK. Ascension Day 22 May 1941

When Li was born in Hong Kong on 5 May 1907, her father named her Tim-Oi ("Much Beloved") because he valued his daughter even if others in his patriarchal culture preferred sons.  She was converted to Christianity as a student at an Anglican school, choosing as her Christian name “Florence” after Florence Nightingale, the famous 19th century English nurse known for her unselfish service.  

In 1931 at the ordination of a deaconess at St. John’s, Florence heard a call to ministry for herself.  Completing 4 years of seminary in Guangzhou, and was ordained deacon on Ascension Day 1941, and given charge of an Anglican congregation in the Portuguese colony of Macau (about a four hour boat ride from Hong Kong, now an hour by jet foil).  Macau then thronged with refugees from war-torn China, as its neutrality was respected even after Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in 1942.  

Since there was no way for Anglican priests to get to Macau to serve the community there, Bishop Hall took the emergency measure of authorizing Li Tim-Oi to celebrate the Eucharist as a deacon 1942-45. Then in January1945, he asked Li to meet him in a non-occupied area of South China, where he resolved the priest shortage by ordaining her “a priest in the Church of God.”

Known in the conservative press as "the red bishop" for his progressive positions 

on social justice, Bishop Ronald Owen Hall served in Hong Kong for 30 years, 

unable to return to the U.K. to serve as bishop there because he ordained a woman to the priesthood.  

He had previously been in correspondence and conversation with his fellow Bishops back in England, who had all uniformly told him that by ordaining a woman—regardless of the circumstances and the need—he would make himself a pariah in the Church of England and would never be able to serve as a Bishop in the U.K.  One of the reasons for Hall’s long tenure as Bishop in Hong Kong (30 years) was that he could not return to the U.K. except to retire.  This caused his family great hardship, since they were generally living in the U.K.  

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, otherwise a social and theological progressive for that day and age, privately expressed his divided mind on the matter: "If we could find any shadow of theological ground for the non-ordination of women I should be immensely comforted, but such arguments as I have heard on that line seem quite desperately futile."  Nonetheless, he publicly condemned the ordination: “I cannot think that in any circumstances whatever an individual Bishop has the right to take such a step which is most certainly contrary to all the laws and precedents of the Church  . . . I do profoundly deplore the action that you took and have to regard it as ultra vires [beyond your legal authority]. ”

Bishop Hall knew, however, that it was God, not Ronald O. Hall, who made Tim-Oi a Priest. Later in his life, he joked that at the time of the ordination, he was tempted to give Tim-Oi a new Christian name, Cornelia, seeing her ordination as significant an increase in the scope of God’s grace as the baptism of Cornelius the gentile.  Consistently throughout his life, Hall said that he did not regret ordaining Tim-Oi, and indeed claimed it as one of his finest hours and greatest acts.

After the war, the controversy over Tim-Oi’s ordination forced her, in the interest of preserving peace in the Church, to give up her diocesan priest's license.   She declined, however, to renounce Holy Orders, since she agreed that it was God, not Bishop Hall, who had made her a Priest.  Living in Guangdong Province after the communist takeover and during the Cultural Revolution, she was persecuted bitterly, but later said that knowledge that she was a priest had sustained her during the hardest assaults of the Red Guards.  

As the example of her life worked on the Church and times changed, Tim-Oi was able to practice her priesthood again.  She was recognized as a priest again in 1971 for the Diocese of Hong Kong.  When she retired to Canada in 1981, she was appointed a non-stipendiary priest in a Toronto parish, where she spent the remainder of her life.

At the provincial synod of the Chinese Anglican Church in Shanghai in 1947, Bishop Hall had tried but failed to get retroactive approval in canon law for Li Tim-Oi's ordination.  One of those attending was Gilbert Baker, who later as Hall’s successor as Bishop of Hong Kong would ordain Anglicanism's first two women priests legally with the blessing of the Anglican Consultative Council, in 1971.   The ordination of women as deacons, priests, and, increasingly, bishops, has now become the general norm throughout most of the Communion.   

Thank God for prophetic voices in our age.  Thank God for moments of grace when the Church, despite itself, better embodies hospitality, love, welcome, and mercy in its life and practice.  As we consider the divisive issues currently facing the Communion, where names like “Jeffrey Johns” and “Gene Robinson” appear instead of “Cornelius,” or “Li Tim-Oi,” let us remember the centrality of grace in God’s economy.  And let us too be courageous, like St. Peter and Bishop Ronald O. Hall.  

Father Tony+

What Sweeter Music (Chrismas Daily Office Year 1)

 

What Sweeter Music?

25 December 2010 

Daily Office Christmas Year 1

Zech 2:10-13; 1 John 4:7-16; John 3:31-36

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. (1 John 4:7-16)

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

“Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God; … those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” 

We often miss the point of these phrases in the first letter of John.  We tend to turn them on their head and read them as if they say “whoever knows God and is born of God learns how to love, and those who abide in God and in whom God abides practice love.”  We might be lead to do so by the fact that the passage says “God abides in those who confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God” 

But this text argues in the opposite direction—the author says the practice of love brings about and embodies personal closeness to God, not the other way around.   The distinction is an important one, since we generally tend to think that the experience of love in some form or another is more generally common and shared among human beings than is having knowledge of God or being born of God, particularly when we associate such “God-talk” with submission to a particular religious tradition. 

The “love” referred to here, of course, is not just our love for other human beings: “God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son.”  

This is not an argument that we simply “confess Jesus as Lord” with our lips and “God will take care of everything.”   For 1 John, love comes first, and God’s action in our lives takes care of the rest, including the personal attachment to Jesus that he says from his experience is at the heart of having abiding love.  This is not a sectarian call to sign up for a doctrinal program or a partisan religious affiliation.   It is a call to love and trust, with all that those words imply.  And he bases this call on the fact that God sent Jesus, i.e., that God took on flesh and became truly human.

At root here is a key element in classic Christian theology of the incarnation.   Christians have long reflected on what it means when we say, together with the Gospel of John that “the Word of God took on flesh and became truly human.”

That God somehow took on flesh and became truly human marks a radical continuity between our human lives and God’s, and that implies a sacredness in all it means to be human.   Human love, friendship, the enjoyment of the simple pleasures of our world, and even our sorrows and pain—all these are taken up into God the moment God takes on our flesh.  As one of the great theological doctors of the Eastern Church, Saint Athanasius, wrote: “[God], indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.” (De Incarnation 54). 

We often miss the point, wrongly thinking that somehow God came among us without truly being one of us. This “God incognito” paid for our sins and somehow made it possible for us to be more like God, and less like human beings.  That is a total warping of the meaning of the incarnation.

God became truly human in all ways (except in resisting God), and that means it’s O.K. to be fully human.  In fact, it means God calls us to be fully human, and to do that he calls us to follow his example when he was among us, and not resist God so much. It is only thus that we can find our true and full humanity.
We often hear this time of year calls to “put Christ back in Christmas.” People complain about commercialization, too much partying, and not enough praying.  This phrasing of the question gets the issues all wrong. It separates the partying and celebration from spirituality. Granted, some people see the holiday solely as a consumer or marketing event. The holiday is thus diminished, often becoming a source of stress and depression.

The problem, however, is not too much celebration, but too little. “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God” says Isaiah. It is not just “the spiritual side” of us that should rejoice. To want to turn Christmas into a sectarian prayer meeting rather than the public, boisterous, and commonly shared party that it currently is—regardless of beliefs—stems from bad theology.

In the history of the Church in England, this issue once came to a real crisis point and literally caused the government of England to “cancel Christmas” for two decades.  After the English Reformation, some Christians there believed that the Church had not been reformed thoroughly enough, that it was not sufficiently “biblical,” and that it still was corrupted by what the early reformers called “the enormities of Rome.”  They wanted to get rid of fancy vestments, bishops, organs, and even the daily or weekly celebration of the Eucharist itself.   These Puritans focused their political activism in Parliament on eliminating corruption and privileges of the Royal Court and the nobility, including the bishops, whom they tended to call “certain popish persons.”  

When the Army raised by Parliament won the Civil War, the Puritan regime that came into power was narrow, fundamentalist, and harsh, somewhat like an English Taliban.  They banned Prayer Book worship and bishops, and set into Law a whole range of austere measures aimed at purifying the country.

One of these measures banned the celebration of Christmas.  Its very name—Christ’s Mass—was far too Roman for the Puritans’ tastes.  The fact that is was marked by twelve days of mid-winter partying, singing, drinking, and, for the more religious, Eucharists, were equally distasteful.  Special church services, mince pies, hanging holly, big parties were banned from 1644 to 1660.

Now in fairness to the Puritans, it must be said that they were rightly concerned at the excesses of some of the partying:  then, as now, serious public drunkenness and debauchery were among the abuses attendant to the celebration of the season by some. 

 Sir John Hutchinson

(I feel the need here to be fair to the Puritans.  One of my ancestors, Col. John Hutchinson of Nottingham Castle, was one of the “Parliament men” who signed the death warrant of King Charles I after Charles was tried and found guilty of war crimes and mass murder.  Col. Hutchinson, concerned with the excesses of the Court of Charles I, had initially supported the Roundhead Army in opposing the “King’s men” or Cavaliers.  But he was spared a traitor’s execution after the restoration of the monarchy because he equally opposed  the excesses of the Puritan regime headed by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell and had prevented retaliatory war atrocities being perpetrated on Cavalier prisoners of war.  The fact that his wife Lucy’s father was a royalist nobleman who helped in restoring the monarchy after the Commonwealth did not hurt either.  Despite the fact that the Puritans “won the war but lost the peace” only to have the monarchy restored, the whole affair changed the nature of the British crown, and prevented in England the kind of traumatic revolution that happened in France in 1789.   Many of the political ideas and slogans of the Roundhead puritans were taken up part and parcel by the American revolutionaries in 1776.)   

The Puritans, throwing away the baby Jesus with the bathwater of overdoing it in Christmas partying, banned the holiday outright.  “Christmas is a pagan celebration,” they said, “and must be done away with by true Christians.”

Note the theology at work here—it was exclusionary, not inclusive:  “true Christians” needed to show their “trueness” (and, in so doing, point out who were “false” Christians and pagans).  It shows a contempt for many of the simple pleasures shared by people regardless of their belief or tradition.   It gets the "first love, then know Jesus" process described in 1 John backward. 

 

At Midnight Mass last evening at the American Cathedral in Paris, I was moved very deeply when the choir sang John Rutter’s setting of a modern adaptation of a poem by Cavalier poet Robert Herrick written just after the monarchy and Christmas celebrations were restored.  Herrick, an Anglican priest who had lost his living during the Parliamentary interregnum, wrote the poem for a Christmas party of the newly-restored King.  In it he argues for the celebration of Christmas against the position taken by the Puritans, and he does so wholly on religious and theological grounds.  He uses good incarnational theology:  the sacredness of all of human life , love, and enjoyment in the wake of God becoming flesh.    I love the poem, and have sung it with other choirs over the years:

What Sweeter Music

What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this day,
That sees December turned to May.

Why does the chilling winter’s morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To heaven, and the under-earth.

We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart.

Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?

--Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

May we all during this season sing, eat, drink, and love each other well.  Let us reconcile with each other and mend family and friend relationships that have gone bad.  Let us celebrate with our whole being, since in Christ our whole being is being made one with God.   Let’s not begrudge our neighbors who celebrate and love without recognizing the source of their joy and love, the source that our experience tells us is God made flesh in Jesus Christ.  Merry Christmas, one and all.

In the name of God,  Amen.  

Salted with Fire, Living Peace (Proper 21 B RCL)

Salted with Fire; Living Peace

17th After Pentecost (Proper 21 B RCL)
27th September 2009
Congregation of the Good Shepherd, Beijing China
10:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Word without Communion
Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

God, breathe into us a desire to change— take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In today’s Gospel in Mark 9, Jesus is having a bad day. The disciples have just argued about who was most important (Mark 9:33–37). Just after this story, they will start to argue again when James and John ask Jesus for promotions (10:35–45). In the middle of all this, John comes to Jesus and complains about an otherwise unnamed healer who is casting out demons in Jesus' name.

"He is not one of us," the disciples whine, "so we told him to stop." They presumably want Jesus to tell the man to stop, and maybe punish him in some way. After all, he is using the name Jesus to perform the healings.

Why are they so concerned about this stranger doing unauthorized healings? It is clear that Jesus’ uncanny ability to heal was what attracted the large crowds to him to hear his message of the arrival of the kingdom of God. Healing was part and parcel of his proclamation. “If by the spirit of God I cast out demons” and illness, he says, “then the kingdom of God has come within your midst” (Matt 12:28, Luke 11:30). When he gives instructions to the twelve he has chosen to send out to spread his joyous proclamation wider, he gives healing the sick and casting out demons as their principal work (Mark 6:6-13).

The disciples thus see themselves as defending the integrity of Jesus’ core ministry. In modern commercial terms, they are complaining about this strange exorcist because he is encroaching on their market niche by infringing on their trademark. They are worried about brand integrity and don’t want anyone claiming credit for deeds of power done in Jesus’ name without a proper connection to them. They see themselves as Jesus’ exclusive agents, the sole proprietors of the franchise.

Mark portrays their complaint somewhat ironically: the disciples have just failed to drive out an evil spirit from a boy afflicted since childhood (Mark 9: 14-28), but this interloper seems to be succeeding just fine.

Many of us recognize the dynamics of the scene instantly. When Elena and I were raising our four kids, we often had one or another of them coming to us indignant, complaining of some misdeed by a sibling, with the outraged and sometimes tearful demand, “Punish him.”

Most of us who are managers of workers have had the experience of being mediators between quarreling employees, trying to get people to make nice with each other, to restore the calmness of the group, if not its peace, so it can get back to productive work.

You would think that Jesus would see the logic of the complaint.

But no, says Jesus, don't stop this man. Don’t stop interlopers at all. Just using Jesus’ name might bring the stranger closer to the announced kingdom. “Whoever is not against us is for us,” he says, adding, “after using my name and successfully driving out the evil spirit, the stranger certainly won’t speak ill of us.”

This inclusive attitude of Jesus clearly did not find universal welcome among his followers. Some probably thought it was altogether too naïve. The early source of Jesus sayings used by Matthew and Luke (Q), for instance, has Jesus actually saying the opposite: “whoever is not with me is against me” (Matt 12:30; Luke 11:23). To his credit, Luke also includes Mark’s story of the strange exorcist together with its version of the saying (Luke 9:49-50), while Matthew drops the whole story as inconsistent with what he believed Jesus would have said.

The story as told in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, however, preserves what almost certainly was Jesus’ position: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Mark’s version of the story places these words in the context of several other sayings of Jesus that Matthew and Luke put in other contexts or delete. In Mark, Jesus comments on the strange exorcist and adds that even a simple kindness like giving someone a sip of water advances the kingdom. And petty nastiness, sticking out your leg to trip up any of Jesus’ “little ones” will lead to worse things than being drowned in the ocean.

The Greek word used for “place a stumbling block before” here is skandalizo or “scandalize.” In Matthew’s separate use of the same saying, it refers to non-believers tripping up Jesus’ disciples (Matt. 18:6). Here in Mark’s context, it refers to the offense caused by Jesus’ own over-zealous disciples running roughshod over the feelings and sensitivities of people like the unnamed healer and the people he has successfully healed.

And then comes one of the so-called “hard sayings” of Jesus. None of these are more macabre than the command to pluck out one's eye, or cut off a hand or foot (Matt 18:8-9; Mark 9:42-48). The image is so grotesque that Matthew, who normally follows Mark when he uses material from that Gospel, reduces it from Mark's seven verses to two, while gentle Saint Luke omits it altogether (cf. Luke 17:1-4).

Origen (but not St. Origen)

The saying is often misread as if it were a pronouncement of ethical law, a misreading promoted by the fact that Matthew places it in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:27-37). But read this way, it is a very troubling and sick pronouncement. Taken literally, it actually led third century Church father Origen to severely mutilate himself in an effort to obtain chastity. This rash and extreme act led both the Eastern and Western Churches to never consider Origen—one of the age’s best preachers and scholars of scripture—as a saint or a doctor of the Church.

But the context in which Mark places this harsh command gives a clue to its most likely meaning on the lips of the historical Jesus. This answer about cutting members off is indeed cutting: an ironic and overstated argument that if you want to call for punishment, then you must remember that all deserve to be punished, including you.

“Bad people?” says Jesus, “You want me to punish them, to cut them off?” “Well, then, if it’s punishment you want, it’s punishment you’ll get. And not just of those for whom you ask it. Cut those people off? You might as well cut your own body parts off.”

Remember that even when the saying appears in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is arguing for a moral law far beyond the human norm, as if to underscore the point that it is only with God’s help that we can live as we should, and that there is little hope for any of us if “Rules are rules, law is supreme; no exceptions, mercy, or grace allowed.”

Jesus wraps up the little speech here in Mark with the curious expression, “"For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

This image, so puzzling at first glance, draws on commonplaces well known to the people in Jesus’ culture.

Salt and fire were powerful images, both related to the idea of change and stability. Another powerful image in this complex of ideas was that of yeast, or leaven.


Any of us who have made bread know how amazing yeast is. If you don’t add the right amount and give it adequate time and sugar for food, your bread will come out flat, heavy, and ruined. Without any yeast at all, it will simply be a hard, inedible clump of baked dough. Spread out thin that way, it might make crispy crackers; but unleavened bread is not really what most people call bread. Too much yeast, or too long a rising time, makes the dough sour and turn bad. Adding salt for a tastier bread slows down the yeast; if you add too much salt, it kills the yeast altogether.

The whole process seemed somewhat mysterious to the early Hebrews, and this almost magical agent of change was early on identified with the processes of change and resistance to change that they saw as evidence of their God’s ongoing creative work in the world. It was akin to the mysterious difference between a living animal and a dead carcass, that so quickly would turn bad and rot.

Matzos (unleavened bread) and Wine

This sense of awe and wonder at change versus stability, decay versus life, fermentation or leavening versus stillness and preservation, lies at the heart of many of the distinctions between the ritually pure and impure in the Law of Moses, particularly the Levitical Code. Little details jump out at you when you read these codes with this in mind. No yeast is allowed during the Passover—God’s covenant time should not be corrupted by change. Wine, fermented though it is, has reached a stasis and the alcohol in it preserves it from further rapid decay. It is used at Passover, and indeed is a symbol for the covenant, making hearts glad and being an important part of celebration.

Animals being sacrificed in the Temple must be killed quickly in ritually prescribed ways that of themselves delay the process of decay. Salt, that great preservative and inhibitor of decay, is added to all meat sacrifices. They are to be put into the fire almost immediately, and the parts of the sacrifice that are not to be burnt up wholly are to be eaten by the priests and Levites quickly after the rite.


Fire itself—able to change things totally by reducing them to ashes—is also seen as purifying, since it seemed mysteriously to inhibit change and decay after it had touched an object. (Obviously, after Louis Pasteur, we recognize that many of these qualities of yeast, salt, and fire seen by ancient Jews as mysterious relate to the encouragement or inhibition of microbial activity.) But for the people who wrote the Levitical Code, fire meant purification either through radical change (things burnt to ashes) or through its ability, like salt, to preserve against change seen in the process of fermentation and rot.


Salt, seen also as purifying, was seen as a symbol of steadiness and unchanging stability. So sharing it at table was the ultimate sign of friendship and hospitality. Often a ritual sharing of salt sealed covenants and promises.

The ancient Jews realized, to be sure, that not all change was bad or in the direction of decay. They also liked their leavened bread and wine. It was in this spirit that Jesus compared the Kingdom of God to a little lump of yeast in a large mass of flour dough—only a little bit would make the whole loaf rise (Matt. 13:33; Luke 13:20-21). But those welcoming the Kingdom were for Jesus also the salt of the earth—what would make it tasty and pleasant, but also what would preserve it from overall rottenness (Matt. 5:13). But leaven for Jesus could be bad also, as when he told his followers to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15).

Saint Paul also used the image of yeast in both ways—good leading to nice bread and bad leading to rottenness—when he advised the Corinthians to discipline a notorious sinner in their midst whom he saw as likely to corrupt the Church (1 Cor 5:1-8). Using the image of cleaning out leaven from the house before the Jewish celebration of the Passover, he wrote, “Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch . . . Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

Valley of Hinnom

Again, change is what yeast is all about as a symbol—change for good or for bad. Salt is a symbol for inhibiting bad change, for steadiness, unchanging stability, and purity. Fire similarly is about eradicating bad change, whether through destruction or through purification and inhibition of bad change. The great garbage dump just outside of ancient Jerusalem’s city walls in the Valley of Hinnom (in Aramaic, Geihenna) was marked by the continually burning fires there for reducing to ashes and disinfecting the foul detritus of the city. These fires became of symbol for the purifying burning of the Day of Judgment or the eternal punishments of the damned. Gehenna is the Greek word translated as “hell” in today's Gospel. The quotation in today's Gospel from second Isaiah about "their worm never dies, their fires never cease" is used by Jesus to describe the state of those who refuse God's call. It is vivid image of continued corruption and rottenness despite ongoing purification and disinfection.

So when Jesus in Mark says, “Everyone will be salted with fire, therefore live in peace,” he is saying this: We need to live in peace with each other, and not constantly go about seeking the punishment or correction of others who may seem to differ from us or not meet the standard we think God has set. And why? Because purification is a serious business that must touch all of us, and eventually will touch all of us, regardless of who we are or what group we now appear to belong to. Purification will come to all, either through preservation or destruction, either through saving change for the good or damning change for the bad.

As C.S. Lewis said, in the end, there will only be two groups: those who say to God “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God finally must say, “Alright, then, have it your own way.”

Why is that a warrant for living in peace? Is this just another way of saying “Do not say to your neighbor ‘you have a speck in your eye’ while you ignore the log stuck in your own eye” (Matt. 7:3)? No, there is more to it than that.

Jesus’ demand that the disciples accept marginal believers or even possible competitors is rooted in his understanding of God.

God is not a mere tribal deity. God is not a petty partisan. God makes the sun rise on ands sends the clouds to rain on both the righteous and the wicked (Matt. 5:45). He is Israel’s God, to be sure, but only so that Israel can be a city on a hill, a light on a candlestick (Matt. 5:14-16). As the unshakable Rock, this God provides the reliable unmoving ground for pathetic creatures caught up in the confusion, decline, and suffering they see about them. And that, not just for Israel, but for all. Not just for Jews, not just for Jesus’ authorized franchise-holders, but for all. Because we are all in God’s hand, we must be tolerant of difference.

That ultimately is what the parable of the wheat and the tares (or the wheat and the weeds) is all about—don’t worry about which plants are good or bad, because by pulling up the bad you’ll surely kill good ones as well. Wait until the harvest comes, and God and his angels will sort it out (Matt. 13: 24-30).

Jesus recognizes our common stance as God’s creatures in a world where we can say, in the words of the hymn, “change and decay in all around I see.” Jesus recognizes that God is creator and parent to all, and that we are all beggars before God. Though he sees his announcement of the arrival of Kingdom as addressed to Israel, this is so Israel can be a light to all.

All are invited to God’s great feast. All of God’s creatures are called to respond to the Kingdom’s arrival. So Jesus urges solidarity among all God’s creatures. That’s why even unbelievers’ offers of glasses of water build the Kingdom. That’s why Jesus in Mark talks about the strange exorcist as if he were one of his own “little ones” in need of protection from being tripped up.

We all have our buttons that people can push that really set us off, that make us want to go running and demand “punish him.” Even the most sterling “righteous” anger in most of us is mixed with self-interest and fear. Think about it carefully. In this messed up world, why is it that only some things cause us to lose our serenity and calm?

In my office this week, I became outraged when I saw a colleague behaving in a way that I thought was deliberately petty and hurtful toward a subordinate. This totally pushed one of my buttons. I was flummoxed and undone. I wanted bureaucratic vengeance, I wanted to beat the person into submission so he would learn to play well with others. I wanted to humiliate and make an example. I realized that this had truly upset me, and unreasonably so. I have learned as part of my spiritual discipline to identify things that throw me off as opportunities to learn about what is going on in my heart. I had a long talk with a close friend. My friend confessed that where I had a “hurtful behavior” button, he had a “that’s not fair” button. Instead of asking what was wrong in what the colleague had done (I had no problem coming up with a list for that), I asked what was it about me that made it so easy for me to lose my composure about this. Probably fear of losing my own sense of self-worth at work: I suspected that I had not adequately moved work along in a timely fashion and this had placed my subordinate in an untenable position vis-à-vis the badly behaving colleague. It was easier to get totally angry and blame the bad behavior than to realize that what motivated my emotions actually was fear rooted in my own sense of not measuring up.

But this saying of Jesus isn’t just about overcoming the buttons we have that people can push. It is about how we deal with true evil as well.

It is really hard to be magnanimous to people we know are doing evil, especially when the evil is patently hurtful to others. Our hearts rightly cry out “punish them.” Ignoring evil or making nice with it can be a subtle form of enabling such evil, and helping perpetuate and compound the harm.

With even such, Jesus says, “live in Peace.”

But living in peace doesn’t mean making nice, papering over evil, or thickening our conscience with an amoral detachment. Ask any marriage or family counselor, any labor mediator, or any mediator or negotiator in international or inter-ethnic conflict. They’ll all tell you that truly seeking peace is not easy, and not harmonious. It is not a false “let’s all forget about the past and try to make up.”

It is about honestly addressing real problems and real differences. It is about doing so in a spirit of shared endeavor, a sense of being in a common plight, of mutual desire and effort to let common desires and aspirations force us to listen carefully to our own story and the story told by the other party.

Jesus teaches us, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Wish well for those who spitefully use you. (Matt. 5:44)
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Police photograph of Solzhenitsyn, 1953.

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 versus bad people. The line between good and evil did not lay between interrogator and prisoner, between political parties, between economic classes, countries, or religions. It did not lay between any groups of people, however defined. It lay 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’ statements here in Mark. 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. And that is so regardless of what we think of each other, regardless of how right or wrong we may be in our judgments of each other.

Jesus proclaimed the coming of God’s rule. Through his perfect submission to God, he showed the way for the kingdom to fully come.

He continues today to call us to be good yeast leavening the loaf of the world, bright lanterns of fire enlightening the world. He calls us to be salt for the world, effectively enriching and preserving its good. He does not call us to demonize, exclude, or ostracize. These things are bad leaven that leads to rottenness and decay. He calls us to include, reach out, and leaven the whole loaf.

God himself will bring this world right. We will be rubbed through and through with God’s salt. We will be put through God’s fire. And because of this, we simply must live humbly, pray for each other, including our enemies, seek to help each other, work for justice, and live in peace. Pray God that we may do this.

In the name of God, Amen.