Beautiful Feet
(Sept 4; Blessed Paul Jones)
Homily at the Noon Healing Mass
Sept 5, 2019
Trinity Parish Church, Ashland OR
God, give us hearts to feel and love,
take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.
“How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” (Isa 52:7)
Jews and Christians are
not the only ones who associate peace bringers with beautiful feet. One of the famous descriptions of the Buddha
is found in Maitreya’s Abhisamaya
Alankara (chap. 8): “He has chakra
wheels engraved in the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet; he has
perfectly aligned nails, and turtle feet.”
Bishop Paul Jones of Utah
was a pacifist who spoke out against war in general. In 1917 he spoke out against war with Germany
in particular, as the United States entered World War I. Most of the Church leadership followed the
position of most Americans at the time: entering the war was a moral duty and it
was immoral to oppose it. This was to be the war to end all wars.
Pressure from pro-war
organizations and newspapers led two of the larger parishes on the Missionary
District to appeal to the House of Bishops to remove Jones. It convened in the Spring of 1918 to consider
the issue.
In our post-1960s, post-Vietnam,
post-Vatican II, post-Gandhi, post-Martin Luther King Jr., world increasingly
appreciative of Girardian theology, it is hard for us today to recognize what a
small minority Jones was part of, how contrarian his position looked, and even
how unpatriotic and dishonorable he seemed to those about him.
There was a lengthy
history of Christian theology lying behind the accusations. The earliest Christians had taught that peace
was the way of Christ. Though Paul had
written that the police and military power of the state were powers set up by
God to punish evil doers (Rom 13:12), this was not seen as something that
recommended itself as a Christian form of life.
Hippolytus of Rome, writing around the year 215 C.E., listed professions
that were impediments to being considered for baptism: soldiers and gladiators were forbidden
baptism, as were prostitutes and agents of the state who could impose capital
punishment. But that all changed with Constantine, who
co-opted the church as he legalized it.
Augustine, and then centuries later Thomas, defined the doctrine of
“Just War” outlining the conditions and circumstances when Christians in good
conscience could go to war. From that
point on, pacifism for Christians was seen as the exclusive preserve of what
were characterized as cranky sects: the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers
and their offshoots, or Anabaptists following such people as Menno Simons. It was only after the faithful Christian witness
of such groups had worked its miracle of bringing an end to slavery that
pacifism began to attract larger numbers of theologians in the larger
mainstream Christian groups.
Although many defended
his right to express his opinions, however shocking, in the end Bishop Jones
was forced to resign by his brother bishops.
In his defense to the
House of Bishops, Blessed Paul Jones said this:
“We all feel that war is wrong, evil, and undesirable. Many even feel that war is unchristian but unavoidable as the world is now constituted, and that the present situation forces us to use it. Some contend that this is a righteous war, and that we must all fight the devil with fire, even at the danger of being scorched, or all the ideals which we hold dear will go by the board, and therefore we are solemnly, sadly, and earnestly taking that way.“In spite of my respect for the integrity of those who feel bound to take that course, and in spite of the knowledge that I am occupying an unpopular and decidedly minority point of view, I have been led to feel that war is entirely incompatible with the Christian profession. It is not on the basis of certain texts or a blind following of certain isolated words of Christ that I have been led to this, for I am not a literalist in any sense of the term; but because the deeper I study into it the more firmly I am convinced that the whole spirit of the gospel is not only opposed to all that is commonly understood by the word ‘war,’ but offers another method capable of transforming the world and applicable to every situation which the individual or the nation is called to face.“If we are to reconcile men to God, to build up the brotherhood of the kingdom, preach love, forbearance and forgiveness, and stand for the good even unto death, then I do not see how it can be the duty of the church or its representatives to aid or encourage the way of war, which so obviously breaks down brotherhood, replaces love and forbearance by bitterness and wrath, sacrifices ideals to expediency, and takes the way of fear instead of that of faith. I believe that it is always the Church’s duty to hold up before men the way of the cross; the one way our Lord has given us for overcoming the world.”
He elsewhere said, “Christians are not
justified in treating the Sermon on the Mount as a scrap of paper” and “… the
methods of modern international war are quite incompatible with the Christian
principles of reconciliation and brotherhood, and … it is the duty of a Bishop
of the Church, from his study of the word of God, to express himself on
questions of righteousness, no matter what opinion may stand in the way.”
Blessed Paul Jones resigned as bishop,
but he never stopped working for peace. He never stopped working for the
church. He was tireless as a witness for the Gospel of Peace. He was accepted back into the House of
Bishops in the 1930s because of his tireless service to the Church, focusing on
social services and justice, including advocacy for full civil rights for
African-Americans.
He helped found the interdenominational
Fellowship of Reconciliation and served as its secretary for 10 years. He helped create what is now known as the
Episcopal Peace Fellowship. Just before
his death in 1941, during the early years of World War II in Europe, he helped
resettle Jews and others who fled Nazi Germany.
Bishop
Jones is an attractive model for us all.
As a seminary student at ETS in Cambridge in 1906, he heard Utah Bishop
Frank Spaulding describe the difficult missionary service environment in
communities that were 85%-95% Mormon.
Spaulding preached, “Whom shall we send?” Jones stood and answered, “Here I am, send
me!” He planted and built churches that
are still active and thriving person by person, baptism by baptism. He is probably the only person in the Saints
Calendar who served regularly as a referee for collegiate football, a skill
left over from his undergraduate glory days at Yale. He came by his pacifism, socialism, and
moderately high churchmanship honestly.
They came from his belief in Christ, his commitment to the Reign of God,
and his experience of God in the sacraments and Common Prayer.
May we have the beautiful feet of those
who bring peace, if not the turtle feet of those who bring enlightenment.
Amen.
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