Faithful
Proper 16B
23 August 2015; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
23 August 2015; 8:00 a.m. Said Mass and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Homily Delivered by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
at Trinity Episcopal Church, Ashland, Oregon
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of
flesh. Amen.
Most of us have heard the witticism
about the Episcopal Church, how it is “Catholic lite”: All the pageantry and none of the guilt.
What many of us don’t realize is
that historically, we have also been seen as “Protestant lite.” Calvinists accused us as being “Arminian,” or
“semi-Pelagian,” talking about
salvation through grace, but still thinking that our works matter. Puritans
felt that we were crypto-Papists. Today’s evangelicals think we have sold our
biblical heritage for a mess of social justice potage.
I have always thought such
characterizations a cheap shot.
Christianity as practiced in the Episcopal Church has nothing “lite”
about it, however much we Episcopalians might want this to be so.
When I first came to an Episcopal
Church and stayed after for coffee hour, I was struck by how measured and
restrained it all was: bread and butter cucumber sandwiches with the crust
trimmed off, some coffee for the real addicts, but mainly weak black tea with a
cloud of milk. Not at all like the
hearty church dinners of my Mormon youth! The liturgy had none of the sappy
sentimentality and maudlin moralism I had grown up with, where church services
aimed at making you feel convinced, getting you committed: follow the
commandments, shoulder your responsibilities to God and others. You needed to “bear your testimony,” give a
public and heartfelt affirmation of your certitude of the faith. This may have worked for many, but it no
longer worked for me.
One of the things I found most
appealing about Episcopalianism was its restraint. It seemed thin broth indeed compared to what
I was used to. And I was ready for thin
broth.
We Anglicans want to have things
moderate, rational, balanced and done in good taste. Remember the 18th century Bishop
of London, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Edmund Gibson.
He blasted John and Charles Wesley’s call for a faith of the heart: “Enthusiasm,
Mr. Wesley, enthusiasm! This simply will not do!”
Most of us Episcopalians are
refugees from some kind of pastoral or ecclesiastical abuse elsewhere, whether
in Biblicist churches, sternly dogmatic churches, censorious churches, churches
with traditions of unbalanced and immoderate community life and doctrine. So we
are cautious.
But here’s the thing: faith has to be strong and central if it is
going to make any difference in our life. A faith that does not demand our all is not
strong enough to save us. That’s just
the way we are hardwired. Moderation taken to extremes is itself deadly—to
emotions, to relationships, to community, and to emotional health. Religion without passion is vapid: “enthusiasm,
Mr. Wesley, it will not do!”
I knew I had become an Episcopalian
when I quit my old Church choir and joined the choir at All Saints’ Chevy Chase. I was grateful for Episcopal moderation, but I
still needed sustenance, affirmation of my faith: Real faith in Christ, not merely an aesthetic
or intellectual experience; A faith that made me try to be a better person,
that demanded sacrifice and consecration; One that touched the core of my heart,
if I were to have any sense of purpose at all.
If it had only been about escaping a faith I
could no longer stomach, I would have lasted as an Episcopalian for just a few
months. It was only later, after I
became accustomed to the rhythms of the prayers, the rites, the hymns and choir
anthems, and liturgical seasons, that I realized just how rich this new soup
was: rich at a deep level of sentiment and thought, not on the surface of
sentimentality and slogan, and rooted in the truth at the heart of things, not
the external authority of the teaching office of the Church. It focused on Jesus, not the Church. And it was this rich, thick and at times
sensuous worship and community life that rebuilt my heart.
It’s all about faithfulness in
relationship, in community, the subject of today’s scripture readings. Joshua tells his people that if they reject
Yahweh, it really doesn’t matter which god of the land they follow. “Stick with God,” he says. And they do.
In the Gospel, people who have been following Jesus reject him because
his teaching is getting just too weird.
He asks his close disciples if they are going to leave too: Peter
replies “we’re sticking with you, no matter how weird, because we hear in you there
is eternal—that is the timeless, reliable, unchanging—life. Jesus in faithful, so Peter must be faithful.
Ephesians tells us to put on the armor
of God so we won’t be shaken by the things that destroy our relationship with
God and the Church.
Faithfulness and reliability is a
key part of relationship. It’s in our
hard wiring. This seems to be lost to
commentators on the sad story from this week’s news: a hookup website for
intending adulterers was hacked and the list of subscribers published, among
them, a famous young reality-TV evangelical husband of an archetypically large family. People are titillated, and point out the
hypocrisy and stupidity of those involved.
But few note the true tragedy, the horrible fact that so many misunderstood
themselves and the nature of human relationships so profoundly that they
pursued such things. If we want to have
healthy relationship in loving marriage, it means being faithful to your spouse.
Wandering, as exciting as it may seem, in and of itself damages
relationship, even if your spouse never hears about it. You yourself are changed by your
actions. Emotional distance and
manipulation are inserted into what had been, if not joy, then something aspiring
to it.
It is the same with us and our
relationship with God, not because God needs to be faithful (He is, by his very
nature), but because we need to be.
I have learned many things from visiting
the sick and the dying and giving last rites.
Most important is this: The people who keep their relationships with
others, including their relationship with God, in a little box off to the side,
controlled and managed, are, in the end, left with nothing. You may want to keep things moderate,
balanced, and reasonable. But
debilitation, dementia, and death rob you, little by little, of each and every
one of the things you put before relationships and faith. The more focused on balance, control and
management a person is, the greater their bewilderment and fear, even terror, at
death.
Those who realize that their relationships
are the key thing do better. And those
whose relationship with God is the core of their relations with others do
best. God is the one relationship
partner who is wholly faithful, and who cannot be taken from you. Those who believe that God and love must
trump all other concerns are those who in the end are left with an abiding
sense of calm and hope at death.
When you put faithfulness in
relationship, particularly in relationship with God, first, other things, the
transient and impermanent things, take care of themselves. “Seek first the reign of God and its justice,”
says Jesus, “and everything else will fall into place.”
We can usually tell when we are
putting other things first. When they
come up in the context of more central things, we feel uncomfortable, get angry
or annoyed, or simply want to say, “I’m outta here!” This is
a good sign that this is a place where we still want to maintain control, where
we have not let Jesus in to heal and transform.
Politics from the pulpit is a one example.
Partisan activism from the pulpit is
pastoral abuse and should be discounted out of hand. But preaching the Gospel and applying it to
the questions of the age is what the prophetic voice is all about. And if we can’t abide what prophets are
saying, we just haven’t let God into that part of our life.
Another example is letting our
tastes and preferences dictate how we pick and choose our church. The teaching must be just this way, the
liturgy that way. The music must be just
so. If not, I’m outta here. Boutique religion, consumer Christianity is
spiritual death.
Money is another. Trinity’s financial response campaign is
coming up in a little more than a month from now. I know as well as anyone here how
uncomfortable talking about money at church can make us feel. We just don’t want to hear that the Episcopal
Church teaches that the Biblical tithe—10% of our income—is the minimum
standard of giving for building God’s kingdom.
We squirm when told that everything we have is from God, and we need to
give back. It all seems so immoderate,
so extreme, so unbalanced, too much like cheesy televangelists hucksters or
cold-hearted organization men in green eye-shades who say God is behind their
fund drive.
Jesus criticized religious
institutions that bleed people dry with a promise of blessing from God: that’s
what the widow’s mite is all about. But here’s
the deal: if we cannot face the issue, or talk about it with an open heart and
mind, that’s a warning sign. The real issue
here is generosity and spiritual devotion, and wanting to avoid it should tell
us that this is an area in our life as yet untouched by Jesus, untransformed by
grace.
I am not saying that there is a
single payment schedule or standard for all.
And I am not saying that the Church is the same as God and Jesus and the
kingdom. All I am saying is that
letting such talk unhinge us or make us so uncomfortable that we are ready to
walk, at least metaphorically, well, it’s like those Israelites who didn’t
follow Joshua and Yahweh, and like those followers of Jesus who stopped
following him because they just couldn’t bear him talking about his body and
blood as food, disgusting cannibalism.
It is a sign that we have put our faith and religion in a little box off
to one side, and that maintaining control—not squandering our annuity, keeping
our nest egg solid, or aiming at a certain standard of life—is more important
to us than relationship. Make no
mistake: this is about relationship, and the gratitude and generosity that must
be part of a healthy and faithful relationship.
Jesus bids us follow him, and always
seems take us to places that are new and uncomfortable. And that is true whether we are talking money
stewardship, society and policy, liturgical style, or the interpersonal stress
of parish politics writ small. The more
passionate we are about other things, the greater the risk. We must not abandon
Jesus, or lose the faith. We must be
faithful. For his words are life that
lasts forever.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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