School for Love (Proper 11A)

  

Photo by Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash

 

School for Love

Proper 11 Year A

19 July 2026 10:30 a.m. Sung Mass

Mission Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Crescent City (California)

Wisdom 12:13, 16-19 ; Psa 86:11-17 Rom 8:12-25 Matt 13:24-30, 36-43

 

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

 

What is the Church?  Is it a gathering of righteous people, screening out bad influences so the righteous can become even better, or is it a kind of hospital ward where all and sundry—the wicked, the mean, the lustful, the morally weak, the heretical, the just plain bizarre—come together to help heal each other?  If the former, is it the ultimate exclusionary, elitist club?  Is it the acme of hypocrisy:  pretending to be better than we are while trying to remain the same or even sink lower?   And if latter, is it merely the blind leading the blind?  Or is it a bunch of imperfect people pretending to better than they are so that they can actually improve?  So they can fake it till they make it? 

 

Today’s Gospel, the parable of the wheat and the weeds, is about life in the church.  It is simple enough:  Jesus tells us “It’s a mixed field out there, so don’t be too quick to weed out the bad.  You’ll end up killing the good plants too!  Let them grow together.  It will sort itself out at harvest.”

 

Jesus is arguing not for laziness of laxness, but for strategic inaction.  He chooses a particularly deadly weed, sown maliciously by a nasty business competitor, to make his point.  The Greek word for the weed is zizania, bearded darnel, which when it first begins to grow is almost indistinguishable from wheat.  But later, it grows taller than the wheat and produces very little grain.  It is usually infected with ergot fungus, the source of LSD-like hallucinations, convulsions, and death.  

 

And still Jesus says, “Don’t weed.  That will kill the good plants too. Let them grow together.”  Wait until harvest time, when the good and poisonous plants can be distinguished:  strategic inaction, intentionally doing nothing to let the course of events accomplish your goal for you.    Taoism expresses the idea in the phrase, 無為而治 wu-wei er zhi  “By doing nothing, accomplish everything.” 

 

The tale ends with a promise that the weeds will be gathered together and burned.  This may lead us to think, “We may not be able to weed as we’d like now, but in the end GOD AND THE ANGELS WILL PULL THE DAMN WEEDS AND BURN THEM UP.”   This ignoble pettiness is like St. Paul saying that we should be kind to our enemies because by so doing “we will heap burning coals on their head” (Rom. 12:20). It misses the point of how the story ends: overwhelming joy at the harvest (rather than smug self-satisfaction that one’s enemies got their just deserts.) 

In this, as in so many other parables, Jesus is taking apart our preconceptions, reworking our definitions, deconstructing our world-view.  Our rules for distinguishing between weeds and wheat may be flawed.  If we try to root out the weeds, no matter how noxious, we will in the process kill good plants too.   

But why shouldn’t start weeding?  We know evil when we see it.  We know who fits in and who doesn’t! 

 

But this is just because we have set up boundaries for our little gardens.  We have established categories and demarcations that label some as good and some as bad.  

 

In our nation, we have borders, and try, with varying degrees of success, to keep undesirable people from coming in.  But look at the cost of labelling any human being an “illegal (!)” How many innocent people have been harmed and even killed by the current regime’s “get tough” approach on immigration, that more and more clearly looks like the hatred and racism that drives it.   

 

In church, we divide people into categories: saints or sinners, orthodox or heretics, people who respect or flout tradition. And we vilify anyone who we think is on the other side of whatever group we identify with. 

 

We Episcopalians have one particular besetting sin: being snooty about “good taste” and “proper form.”  We may not talk about righteousness vs wickedness as much as evangelicals, but we turn up our noses up to those with what we see as poor taste or maudlin sentimentality.  We distinguish between solid contributors to the community and ‘the needy,’ between those who value ‘traditional and beautiful worship’ and those who prefer the latest “flavor of the month” liturgy.    

Human beings are tribal creatures, always wanting labels and markers:  Outsider or insider.  Citizen or alien.  Posh or tawdry.  Saint or sinner.  Wheat or Weed. 

But Jesus says:  your definitions are flawed.  Your boundaries are wrong.  You don’t know the garden’s plan well enough, or the plants well enough.  Let it be.  Let them grow together.  Don’t try to sort this out, let God sort it out.

Jesus calls us to live in peace, non-judgment, and mutual support.  That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want us to confront and work against evil.  No.  He wants us to fight evil with good, not with evil.  Meet hatred with love.  He sees tribal divisions, factions, dividing God’s creatures into “us and them,” and violence, all as evil.   

 

Jesus is teaching something very close to the idea of Satyagraha, the power of truth, l that was at the heart of the programs of action pursued by Mahatma Ghandi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. King once said: 

 

 “Every time a riot breaks out it actually helps the cause of [racists] …  [W]e must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.… [T]here is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies … We see [them] in a new light. We recognize that … hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched in [each human] being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love…  [So] we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win [their] friendship and understanding.” 

Implied here is the idea that the division between good and evil is not between different groups of people:  it is actually down the middle of each of our hearts. We do not know enough—either about each other or about God’s plans—to judge.  

Look at Jesus’ words.  “Judge not so you yourself won’t be judged.”  “Be perfectly compassionate like your Papa in heaven, who gives the blessing of rain and sunshine both on the good and the wicked.”  “This man was born blind not because God was punishing him or his parents—this happened so we can help the poor fellow!”  “Be salt, be light.”  “Don’t be a judge.  Don’t sit there criticizing others.”   “A truly wicked person who goes to God in sorrow is healed by his prayers.  The so-called righteous person who prays only to feel superior to others will never find that prayers help at all.” 

Look at Jesus’ example.  He didn’t weed out Judas. He never rejected him, but loved him to the end.  He also refused to weed out Peter, as conflicted, impetuous, and changeable as he was.  He counseled against violent resistance of the Roman Imperium and its religious establishment toadies in Judea, yet remained so constantly engaged with it, good and evil alike, and was so effective challenging oppression and injustice that in the end the Roman authorities finally felt they had to kill him as a political rebel. 

   

When we see evil or malice in front of us, we go into fight or flight mode. In the Church, we often try to prettify flight as “finding a better match” or “not having time” for a person.  We prettify fight by making it all beneath the surface:  love the sinner hate the sin, appear to try to respect boundaries even as we wage decades-long skirmishes of passive aggression and subtle undermining.  It’s still fight or flight, regardless of how it’s tarted up. 

 

But Jesus’ advice is peaceful engagement, strategic inaction.  Jesus teaches us, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Wish well for those who spitefully use you (Matt. 5:44). Let God decide.  Be a light, not a judge.

 

God knows it is all too easy to point fingers at weeds out there needing to be plucked up and burnt rather than looking at our own heart.   It is hard not to want to fight fire with fire or pray that God fight fire with fire, or just totally give up on people when they push our buttons, pull our triggers.

 

We all have deep-seated emotional triggers that can really set us off and make us want to go running and demand that those weeds be plucked and thrust into the fire.  But 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 bad things cause us to lose our serenity and calm?

My spiritual directors have taught me over the years to identify things that throw me off as opportunities to learn about what is going on in my heart.    I have found that at root of things that really throw me off kilter is fear: fear of loss of status or prosperity, fear of embarrassment or humiliation, and most importantly, fear of losing my own high opinion of myself.

 

We tend to want to avoid the ultimate questions by looking at side issues. We don’t look at the weeds in our own hearts, but want to label other people weeds.  We prefer instead to be judges—partisans of tribalism, sectarianism, and faction—instead of looking at what in our own hearts keeps us from being lights.

 

I invite us all this week to identify or review our triggers, what really makes us lose it, what rmakes us blame and demonize others and want to weed them out.  Let’s reflect on what it is about us not about them that causes this.  There is little we can do about weeding out the evil in their hearts, but plenty we can do about what is in ours. 

 

God loves us, each and every one. So we must learn to love each other. Not pretend to love each other.  Not fight fire with fire, or practice passive aggression as we continue to despise and judge.  But love.  Despite faction, tribe, party, or sect, we must learn to focus on the weeds in our own heart, and not label others as weeds.   We must learn to love as God loves, which almost always means challenging the beloved and being patient, very patient. 

 

What is the Church?  I believe it is the same thing that St. Augustine said that Marriage was:  a school for love. 

  

In the name of God, Amen. 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Champagne-Urbana. 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 St. 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.

 

Trust Beyond Understanding (Proper 8A)

  

 

Detail of a mosaic from Beit Aleph, a 6th-century CE synagogue in Isra'el, 

showing the Akedah Yitzach, the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac 

 

  

Trust beyond Understanding

Proper 8 Year A

28 June 2026

9 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of St. Mark the Evangelist, Medford, Oregon

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

 

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

  

Several years ago, I had a conversation with one of my Hebrew teachers, an Israeli Jew, about faith.  He explained that he experienced the holy through identity, being a Jew living in the land his tradition tells him God promised to his people, and through, as he put it, “going through the motions” of being a Jew, saying the prayers, going to Synagogue, keeping, “within reason” as he said, the distinctive practices of his people. 

 

I told him that the heart of my faith was experiencing a sense of forgiveness of my sins and failings because of what Jesus did for me, suffering and dying on the cross.  Trying to link my faith to something more familiar, perhaps, for him, I said that my sense of relief of having Jesus’ sufferings substitute for the punishment I thought I deserved was like the story of Abraham binding Isaac in Genesis 22.  There, Abraham is told by God to sacrifice his son, and at the last minute an angel stops Abraham’s knife by saying that “God himself will provide a ram for the sacrifice,” and lets Isaac off.  My friend’s response stunned me:  “No, no, no. You’re getting it backward, aren’t you?  In Genesis, Abraham is going to sacrifice his child and God tells him not to.   But you think that God moves from animal sacrifice and sacrifices his child?  And this is a good thing?  You Christians seem to be going in the wrong direction on this one.”

 

I have since come to understand that the doctrine of atonement as substituted punishment is non-Biblical, and an outright slur against God and Jesus.  I have also come to understand that this story in Genesis 22 is a renegotiated understanding of a horrible practice of early bronze age Palestine, the killing of children to placate an angry deity who might kill your successive children if you didn’t put him first.  In the original story, Abraham probably actually kills Isaac.  But this is too horrible, so the story has been adapted to let Abraham, as well as God, off the hook.  

 

“God said, ‘Take your son Isaac, your only son, the one whom you love, ... and kill him … for me.’” This is a text of terror, a tale of horror.  It raises all sorts of questions, without a doubt one of the most troubling and disturbing stories of the Bible. 

 

Many commentators discuss it.  Eric Auerbach, in his great tour of Western literature, Mimesis, uses the story to show how Biblical narrative reaches out to the listener and demands acceptance or rejection, submission or revolt.   It demands that you react.  This narrative element is, I believe, why many universities are uncomfortable in teaching the Bible, even “as literature.”  The Bible, and this story most of all, does not want to be taken as mere literature.

 

Episcopalian writer Madeleine l’Engle retells the story with a twist: God puts Abraham to the test as in Genesis, but then expresses to the angels disappointment in how Abraham did.  God says that Abraham has failed the test that She has given him. 

 

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim understandings of the story have differed wildly, another indication of how uncomfortable the story makes us. 

 

A 4th cent CE mosaic in the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna depicting the (near) sacrifice of Isaac.  

 

Christians traditionally have seen Abraham as a model of deep faith, who trusts God so much that he gives up all his hopes for the future.  We usually call the story “the sacrifice of Isaac,” and liturgically read it, as today, during ordinary time, when readings focus on day-to-day living and growing in the faith.  Christians often see in Isaac the beloved son as a prefiguring of Jesus as God’s beloved son. 

 

Jews call the story “the Binding (of Isaac)” and usually see it through his eyes.  They identify with Isaac, seeing themselves as the chosen but suffering nation, blessed and at times afflicted by a demanding Deity.  Like Isaac bound on the altar, they are miraculously saved, again and again, through God’s loving kindness.  They read the story on the Rosh ha-shanah, the first day of the Jewish year, and the beginning of the High Holiday season in the fall, which culminates in the Day of Atonement.   The high point of the service is the blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn trumpet that brings to mind the ram caught in the thicket that serves as a substitute for Isaac at the end of the story. 

 

Muslims tell the story somewhat differently. The festival Eid ul-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, commemorates the story.   I lived in West Africa a few years ago.  I remember very vividly the days before Adha, called "Tabaski" in that part of the world, Muslim shepherds would drive large herds of sheep to the beach and then wash them in the sea before buyers would take them home, slaughter and roast them stuffed with rice, raisins, and dates, and them serve them as the main dish in their holiday meal.

 

The Quran says that when Ibrahim's only son reaches the age of adolescence, Ibrahim tells him that in a dream he has been commanded to sacrifice him (Surah as-Saffat 37.102-03).   The son, as devoted to Allah as his father, readily accepts. Ibrahim lays his son face down for the sacrificial slicing of the throat, but a voice calls out telling him that he has fulfilled the vision and passed the test.  Ibrahim is then rewarded with a large feast, in oral tradition said variously to have been a ram, a goat, or a sheep.  Though the Quran does not name the son, Muslims have always understood that it is not Ishaq or Isaac, the ancestor of the Jews, but rather his older half-brother Ismail or Ishmael, the ancestor of the Arabs. 

 

However this troubling story has made us all so uncomfortable over the centuries and produced such wildly different interpretations, we must remember one thing when we read it.  This story does not attempt to explain God to unbelievers or newcomers to faith.   No—it is for people already in a deep relationship with God.

 

Ellen Davis, Professor of Bible at Duke University, says this, 

 

“[T]he hard truth is that the world turns upside down for the faithful, more often than we like to admit. … The 22^nd chapter of Genesis is the place you go when you do not understand at all what God allows us to suffer and it seems asks us to bear – and the last thing you want is a reasonable explanation, because any reasonable explanation would be a mockery of your anguish. This story … is the place you go when you are out beyond anything you thought could or would happen, beyond anything you imagined God would ever ask of you, when the most sensible thing to do might be to deny that God exists at all, or deny that God cares at all, or deny that God has any power at all. That would be sensible, except you can’t do it, because you are so deep into relationship with God that to deny all that would be to deny your own heart and soul and mind. To deny God any meaningful place in your life would be to deny your own existence. And so you are stuck with your pain and your incomprehension, and the only way to move at all is to move toward God, to move more deeply into this relationship that we call faith. That is what Abraham does: without comprehension, nearly blinded by the horror of what he was told to do, Abraham follows God’s lead, for the simple and sufficient reason that it is God who is leading – to what end, Abraham has no idea.” 

 

Reading this story as if it’s about obedience and testing makes it an ugly story indeed.  Many rabbis in the Talmudic tradition note that Sarah dies in the next chapter, probably of a broken heart, and that this is the last time scripture says Abraham walked with God.  In Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard says that an Abraham willingly obeying this wicked command is an Abraham whose hand is not stayed by the angel at the end.   No—this is not about obedience.  It is about trusting God and religion even when they demand horrible, inhuman things, and not accepting the horror as a permanent fixture of the universe or truly reflective of the heart of God.  That’s an important lesson for us, especially pertinent on this Pride Weekend here in Medford.   Just as God doesn’t demand human sacrifice, God does not ask us to loath, reject, and persecute people who love differently that we do.   

 

 

In the story, God commands something that is against everything God has promised.  God behaves in a way that is contrary to everything Abraham knows about God.   The child Abraham is called to sacrifice is the very child through whom God’s promised blessing to Abraham would come.

 

The great post-Holocaust Jewish theologian Eliezer Berkovits, in With God in Hell, explains that this trust beyond understanding is what kept Jewish faith alive despite the Nazi mass murders.   He imagines Abraham saying to this God during the heart-broken walk to Moriah: 

 

“In this situation I do not understand You. Your behavior violates our covenant; still, I trust You because it is You, because it is You and me, because it is us….

 

“Almighty God! What you are asking of me is terrible…. But I have known You, my God. You have loved me and I love You. My God, you are breaking Your word to me…. Yet, I trust You; I trust You.”   (Eliezer Berkovits, With God in Hell: Judaism in the Ghettos and Deathcamps [New York and London: Sanhedrin, 1979], 124.

 

I had a spiritual director once who told me that love was risk.  “Love means putting your heart out there where the beloved can break it.   This is all the more the case when it comes to loving God. This is certain:  sooner or later, God will break your heart.  At least that’s how it will feel.”   That is just the nature of an intimate relationship.  When we go through hell, we go through hell with those we love, for good or for ill.   Abraham goes through this with the very God who he thinks is causing him the pain.  He does so because he loves him. 

 

Saying God here was testing Abraham merely expresses how things look to us when we are suffering. We feel that maybe God is putting us to the test, though we know that God has no need of such evidence, since he already know our hearts completely.  It is an insult to God to say that somehow God was actually checking to see whether Abraham would obey such a horrible command.  Again, this story is about the human heart, not the heart of God.

 

Loving the Living God, the God of Abraham and Jesus, is dangerous, fraught with risk.  Sometimes it will hurt like hell.  It will rob us of any meaning or sense.   Our heart will be broken by the one we love best. We will find ourselves, in the words of Dante, “midway in our life’s journey lost in a dark wood.”  We must descend into hell and come out the other side into joy. 

 

Only the stark cross stands before us.  But beyond the cross, is resurrection morning.  Hidden in the bush, there is a ram.  God’s angel stands where we cannot see, ready to keep us and save us though we have no idea how.   All we need to do is in bewilderment keep on putting one foot in front of the other as we climb Mount Moriah.  All we need is trust beyond our understanding. 

 

Amen.   

 

A Believing Heart (Easter 2A)

 

The Doubt of St. Thomas, James He Qi 

   

“A Believing Heart”
Second Sunday of Easter (Year A)
12 April 2026
Homily Delivered Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Sutherlin, Oregon

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

10 am Sung Mass 
Acts 2:14a, 22-32 ; 1 Peter 1:3-9 ; John 20:19-31 ; Psalm 16

 

God, give us hearts to feel and love,

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

 

Moments of hopeless despair come to us occasionally.  One for me occurred in Lewes Delaware in the early 80s:  my wife Elena and I had taken our still growing family to the beach.  After a long, relaxed day, the sun was about to set. No one was left on the beach but us.  Elena was sheltering from cool evening wind under a blanket; I was reading.  We each thought the other was watching the children, playing in the sand beside us. Elena suddenly said with terror in her voice, “Where’s Lonnie?”  We looked up and down the beach as far as we could see.   Our four-year old was nowhere to be seen.  Panicking, I began to run along the beach in the direction we had last seen him, trying to spot him on the beach in the lowering mists and scanning the water: that vast Atlantic Ocean only feet from us, its rising treacherous surf just high enough to sweep our little boy off of his feet.  The last people we had seen on the beach, maybe 15 minutes before, looked sketchy at best.  Now, in our imaginations, they seemed like monstrous threats to children.   The growing twilight focused our fear into one spot of sharp despair in our hearts. Holding hands, Elena and I prayed against hope, “God please help us find Lonnie.  Please keep him safe.”   Then Elena said, “It’s a distance to the changing room, but maybe he went to the bathroom without telling anyone. You know how private he is.”  So I ran back toward the barrier dunes. Just as I got to the boardwalk, there was Lonnie, walking calming and quietly back from the rest room.    I hugged him hard. He seemed puzzled at all the sudden attention from Mom and Dad.

 

Elena and I were very thankful.  Lonnie was safe as we had prayed.  Thinking about it afterward, we wondered, had God answered our prayer?   Or had we just misunderstood things and gotten very frightened needlessly?  No one had bothered Lonnie in the restroom, and he had not lost his way.  And he most certainly had not drowned.  From his point of view, nothing remarkable had happened at all.  From ours, the world itself had changed, and we were very thankful. 

 

It’s like that a lot with answers to prayers and miracles in our lives:  though from inside they seem to be overwhelming evidence of God’s care and love, perhaps even providence or supernatural intervention, from the outside they can be explained as misunderstandings, the resolution of groundless fears, the normal working of nature, or, perhaps mere coincidence. 

 

When I was a boy, I was taught that God heard and answered prayers, and that miracles just like those in the Bible could happen to us, if we were righteous enough.   But then I grew up.   We live in an age of science and of sophistication.  Growing up means absorbing that. 

I admit it: Doubt is a good thing, something that helps keep us safe from hucksters, grifters, and con-men, and from misunderstanding the varied and puzzling sense perceptions that pour in.   God placed doubt in our hearts, and made it a part of growing up, to help keep us safe.  It is part of our survival instinct. 

 

But we are diminished if we let doubt rob us of our sense of gratitude and wonder.   A subtle, niggling voice in the back of my head now is almost always there, ready to chime in at moments of joy and thankfulness and say, “An answered prayer?  A miracle? Maybe not so much.”  It discourages me from praying, or at least actually asking God for what I desire in my heart.  I am afraid of having my heart broken:  asking what I desire deeply, something good and right, and then getting that hope slapped down.  

 

I admit this by way of confession:  whatever change has happened in my heart, it is not entirely good.  I can confess it publicly today without much embarrassment because I think that most of us have suffered a similar loss as we became adults. 

 

In today’s Gospel, it is clear that Thomas has suffered such a loss of innocence: “I won’t believe Jesus has come back from the dead unless I see it with my own eyes touch it with my own hands!”  It’s really unfair to sum up this story and the whole of St. Thomas’ life by saying that he, Doubting Thomas, was the lone skeptic among the disciples.  In every one of the stories of the resurrection of Jesus, all the disciples—bar none—at various times expressed doubt or fear at what they were told or even what they saw. 

 

The heart’s disposition reflects who we are.  As the Proverbs say, “As a person thinks in their heart, so are they” (Prov 23:7).  And as we see in the story of the choice of David as king, “Human beings judge people on outward appearances, but Yahweh looks on their heart” (1 Sam 16:7).

 

So in today’s story, Jesus tells all of us, along with Thomas, “do not doubt, but believe.”  The Greek text is clearer than our translation here:  do not be apistos, but be pistos— do not be unfaithful but faithful, do not be untrusting but trusting, do not be untrustworthy but trustworthy. 

 

Be believing.  Be faithful.  Be trusting.  There are so many scriptures that play on this theme!  Jesus ends most of his parables with “let the one who has ears, hear!”  Without a trusting disposition of the heart, we are deaf to any voice that matters. 

 

Paul says, “We walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).  And because of this faith, he says, we are not afraid, either to live or to die.  Trust and love have replaced fear. 

 

Jesus in John’s Gospel says it is how we react to his words, in a trusting or a rejecting manner, that reveals who and what we are: “I came not to judge, but to save.  It is my word that has already created a judgment of sorts—how you react to it tells who you are” (John 12).  

 

I suspect that most of the stories of miracles and deeds of wonder in scripture tell things in such a way that this implicit judgment is evident in the telling of the story:  how could the Egyptians, the backsliding Israelites, or the Pharisees not be wicked when they persist in fighting God and Jesus in the face of such clear evidence of the miracles as narrated?

 

But I think that events in real human lives lying behind such stories probably were for the people there a bit more ambiguous.   For whatever reason, God seems to have made the world in such a way that we are never forced by evidence to believe in him.   God wants willing trust, not coerced obedience.   I suspect this is because forced trust is not really trust; compelled love, not really love.    To be sure, moments occur that seem overwhelmingly convincing.  But usually this is at the end of a series of small steps in the ambiguous dark.  We draw close to God in faith by little steps, and God responds once in a great while with a giant step toward us.  But then the moment is gone, and we are left with our memory.  And memory itself is very ambiguous.  Faith often consists in persisting in our trust and love from those high moments even in the dark, dry periods that follow. 

 

Whether you believe in God, or the Bible, or religion, is not the issue.  But having a trusting, believing heart is at the core of being a happy and balanced person.  It is at the heart of being a Christian.  Having a trusting heart is at the core of being trustworthy: honesty breeds honesty. A believing heart wisely lets the niggling voice raise its doubts, but does not let it rob us of our thanks, trust, and hope.  A believing heart persists in openness to the strange, the unprecedented, and the as yet unseen.  It does not belittle the faith of others, even when it seems strange or silly.  A believing heart continues to pray, and to act and serve as if all the good stories are true, even when doubt comes.  A believing heart is a great bulwark against fear.  It senses intuitively that there is no problem so big, no disaster too awful, no corner so dark that God cannot help us through it.  While a believing heart is not belief in magical control of things to suit ourselves, it cultivates and honors a sense of wonder and magic at the heart of everything.  It recognizes the love that is beneath and behind all things. 

 

Trusting God through the dark, expressing thanks through the ambiguity, praying and asking for help despite our niggling interior voice, and trying to be honest with God and ourselves through all of this leads us through the doubt and finally brings us to that light where there is no room for anything but thanks, just like for Thomas in today’s reading. 

 

John Bell and the Iona Community set words about this story to the traditional Scots Gaelic tune Leis an Lurghainn, and called it Tom’s Song:  

 

Where they were, I’d have been;

What they saw, I’d have seen;

What they felt, I’d have shown,

If I knew what they’d known.

 

Refrain

“Peace be with you,” he said,

“Take my hand, see my side.

Stop your doubting, believe

And God’s spirit receive.” 

 

So I made my demand

That unless, at first hand,

I could prove what they said,

I’d presume he was dead. 

 

All their tales I called lies

Till his gaze met my eyes;

And the words I’d rehearsed

Lost their force and dispersed.

 

When I stammered “My Lord!”

He replied with the word,

“Those who live in God’s light

Walk by faith, not by sight.” 

 

Some, like me, ask for proof,

Sit and sneer, stand aloof.

But belief which is blessed

Rests on God, not a test. 

 

Refrain

“Peace be with you,” he said,

“Take my hand, see my side.

Stop your doubting, believe

And God’s spirit receive.” 

 

Tom's Song  

 

As we go forth into our ambiguous world, marked with beauty and joy but also with terror and despair, a world that demands doubt from us as a self-defense mechanism but also gives us a hope for miracles, let us take faith and trust and belief to heart, and with hope transcending this world’s threats and fears, including death itself, come joyfully to that locked away upper room and with blessed Thomas take hold of our risen Lord’s hand. 

Thanks be to God, Amen