Faithful (Proper 16B)

 

Faithful

Proper 16B
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

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18; Psalm 34:15-22; Ephesians 6:10-20; John 6:56-69

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 18^th 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. 

A Soldier's Faith (Proper 4C)

 

“A Soldier’s Faith”
Second Sunday After Pentecost; Proper 4 (Year C)
2 June 2013
Homily
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland

The Rev. Dr. Anthony Hutchinson, Rector

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43; Psalm 96:1-9; Galatians 1:1-12; Luke 7:1-10

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

A friend of mine, when hearing that I was to be ordained, told me that he had once thought he was being called to the Roman Catholic priesthood.  “But that was long ago, and I was so wrong.  I don’t really know if I have any faith in God today, and perhaps I’m an atheist.  It all got so very confusing when I started facing up to who I was and where my life was headed when I was just out of college.  I realized I was gay, and that that wasn’t ever going to change.  And ‘Mother Church’ teaches my urges are deep, deep sin, that I am “objectively disordered.”  So I am unworthy, and ever will be.  I tried to do better, to conform to the rules, but I finally gave up.  And I lost my faith in the Church, and along with it, faith in God, I guess.” 

In a recent conversation with an elderly friend, I heard this: “I was so blessed for so long.  I’m still so blessed.  But I have so much pain in my body now, and in my life so many cherished things and people that I have lost.  I am depressed all day, every day.  I try to mediate and think positively, but it’s useless.  I pray, but God just doesn’t seem to hear or care.  I’m afraid I’m losing my faith and giving in to despair. I’m so unworthy, and it seems it will only get worse.  I’m helpless and hopeless. What can I do?” 

“We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”  I hear this phrase often enough to wonder at times whether I am in some kind of reality-imitates-art warped replay of the 1992 film “Wayne’s World.”    

Christians have been worried about worthiness from the very beginning,  

St. Hippolytus was Bishop of Rome in the early third century.  Around the year 215 C.E., he wrote a description of the “Apostolic Tradition” of his age, one of the earliest records we have of Christian Church rules and Eucharistic celebrations.

Hippolytus lists who is worthy to become a catechumen, that is, join what was at the time a three-year class to prepare for baptism.  More importantly, he lists who is not worthy.  Slaves had not only to receive the permission of their masters, but their recommendation as well. Married people needed to be faithful to their spouses; unmarried people, abstain from fornication.  In addition, professions of dubious moral character made you unworthy.  You had to give these jobs up if you wanted to be baptized: pimps and those patronizing prostitutes; anyone involved in the violent games of the Roman arena (including promoters, gladiators, wild animal handlers, and audience members); soldiers, lawyers and magistrates (because they gave or followed orders taking peoples’ lives in executions or war and took pagan oaths of obedience and loyalty); teachers in pagan schools (though if you had no other work and said you were sorry, you could keep your job and still be baptized); sculptors or painters of idols; and even actors (presumably because this was seen as one step away from prostitution).   

Some jobs or conditions of life simply were beyond the pale:  if you were one of these, you could never prepare for baptism.  If you were a “Magus” or practitioner of esoteric lore, you could never be baptized, though petty psychic readers, astrologers, amulet-makers, and enchanters, if they weren’t full-bore Magi, would have to quit their day jobs like anyone else to become Christians.

Hippolytus adds other classes of the permanently disqualified:  prostitutes, and what he calls “wanton men and those who do unspeakable things to each other,” and men who had emasculated themselves to become eunuch priests of the Magna Mater cult that was the Roman Empire’s functional equivalent of modern popular “New Age” Asian religions of the month.  

Such great sinners as these could never be allowed to be baptized, for “they are impure.”  “Not Worthy! Not Worthy!” (Apostolic Tradition, 16:1-16).   

Note the logic of patriarchy here—a man could leave his job as a pimp and be baptized, but a woman who had ever stooped to prostitution, never!  Similarly, a man could repent and leave off his fornicating and join a Catechumen class, but one whose mode of life or identity raised questions about what it was to be a man in a world run by men, never!

Worthiness or lack thereof is a subtext in today’s Gospel reading, Luke’s story of Jesus’ healing of the Centurion’s servant or slave (Luke 7:1-10).   The story is also told in Matthew (Matthew 8:5-13), where the one healed is simply called the Centurion’s “boy-servant.”  A much later form of the story seems also to show up in John (John 4:46b-54), where it is about a “Royal Official’s son.”  

All three versions of the story take place in Capernaum, near Jesus’ hometown in Gentile-rich Galilee.  Luke says a Roman Centurion has a slave “who was dear to him, and who was ill and close to death.” 

Now a “Roman Centurion” is almost a cartoon-character flat image in the writing of the period.  It is almost as if we said, “A Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant.” Centurions led cohorts with a full complement of 100, and they were responsible for ensuring that they were the fiercest and most effective warriors of the age.  Centurions bore the burden of making the Roman Army work: training, discipline, loyalty and submission to orders, logistics and equipment, fighting skills.  They were terse, powerful men of action.  Order and discipline ruled their lives.  They, together with their soldiers, were forbidden by law to marry while in active service.  As a result, brothels were common near their encampments, as was the practice of turning to other men.  The Romans had at first resisted what they called “Greek love” as effeminate and undermining of old Republican virtues, but by the time of the Empire, it was common enough to be the subject of banter and jokes. 

So when we hear that a Roman Centurion is sending Jewish intermediaries to Jesus, the image is striking indeed.  This is a man who normally would just take whatever the situation demanded.  But here he becomes a supplicant, asking Jesus for the favor of healing his servant.  

This Centurion has been doing a good job of fostering local goodwill toward the Empire, part of an effective rural pacification strategy.  Though a Gentile, he has built the local Synagogue.  Part of maintaining good order in the Roman ranks was a decent practice of Imperial religion—oaths to the Emperor and Jupiter, occasional sacrifices or votive offerings expressing gratitude to the Imperial deities or any local deities that may have contributed having one’s prayers being heard.  All over Europe there are Roman ruins strewn with sponsored building projects by similar Centurions marked by the initials VSLM—votum solvit libens merito—that is, “they freely and willingly fulfilled their vow.”

So the Centurion sends elders from the Synagogue to help convince Jesus to heal the servant: they say what a great guy he is, and how much he has helped the local Jewish community.  They will say that he is “worthy.” 

So Jesus goes with them, but before he gets to the house, the Centurion sends the message: “Sir, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.”  A centurion indeed:  “sir” and a short, terse message from a man of action and not of words. 

“I’m not worthy.”  What is it that the he has in mind?   He is a gentile, and a military man.  That means he makes pagan oaths, kills people, has blood on his hands. 

In the original form of the story in the Sayings Source shared by Luke and Matthew, there may be another hint:  there, the initial message to Jesus is this:  “Sir, my boy is lying paralyzed at home, in distress.”  The Greek word for boy, pais, can mean a younger house servant or slave, and even a son as the story appears in John.  But in pagan Greek and Roman literature, it often describes a younger male pair-bonded with an older man.   The erastes-pais relationship often seen in Greek and later Roman culture, often in military settings, is not a relationship of equals, and should not be called a “same sex marriage.”  It is not anything that modern GLBT activists endorse or approve of.  But just as chattel patriarchal marriage could on occasion produce intimacy and love, this flawed erastes-pais institution could have on occasion seen true tenderness and intimacy.  It is possible that this Roman Centurion knows how profoundly troubling such a living arrangement would be to devout Jews, and this is one of the sources of his sense of unworthiness. 

We must not make too much of this—Luke understands the Sayings Source phrase clearly as “household slave” without any explicit sexual connotation.  But Luke does note that the Centurion and servant are intimate at least on some level: the slave is dear or highly valued to the Centurion; this is why he approaches Jesus.

“I’m not worthy.”  Then the Centurion adds, “You mustn’t come under my roof.  But only speak the word, and he will be healed.”

These words are a profound expression of humility and submission.  They have been taken up in the post-Vatican II Roman tradition as a kind of Prayer of Humble Access for the people before taking Holy Communion:  “Lord I am not worthy for you to come under my roof, but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.” 

The Centurion then explains, appealing to his Gunnery-Sergeant view of the world:  “For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this, and the slave does it.”

When Jesus hears this he is amazed.  He turns to the crowd and says, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  Jesus is not following the rulebook that says, “You’re not worthy, you’re not worthy.”  His playbook is one of amazement and trust.  

The Centurion by no standard lives up to Hippolytus’ “worthy to prepare for baptism” standard.  But his is a simple faith.  “I may be unworthy, but you, Jesus can help me.  God working grace in this world has to be at least as efficient as the Empire working its control.” 

So Jesus healed the Centurion’s servant, just as elsewhere he welcomed drunks and whores, casting their demons out.  And so he heals us, regardless of the reasons we think we are unworthy.  We only need to turn to him, trust in his ability to fix things regardless, and let Jesus do what Jesus does. 

“I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.  But speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed.” 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.

Mid-week Message March 21 2012 -- Teilhard's Prayer

Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

Mid-Week Message

March 21, 2012

Fear and Faith in the Aging

Recently, I have been making a lot of visits to parishioners who are ill, some of whom are direly ill and preparing to die. Again and again, I have seen how fragile our lives are, and how dependent we are on God and others for our well-being, health, and balance.    In extremis, in the depths of suffering, we often find ourselves challenged in our trust in God, but then find our trust reaffirmed when our hope in God is all that remains when everything else seems taken from us.  This is a matter that Fr. Morgan Silbaugh’s Thursday Bible Study, which just finished the Book of Job and now has moved on to the Book of Qohelet (Ecclestiastes), has seen again and again in those texts. 

Teilhard de Chardin was one of the great anthropologists and theologians of the early 20^th century.  He was one of the discoverers of the Peking Man pre-human fossils and the author of The Phenomenon of Man, one of the great progressive theological efforts to place Christian faith in the context of modern science.  Teilhard died in 1955 at the Jesuit House in New York City.  He died after a long degenerative dementia.  When he first encountered its early signs and knew that he was going to lose the intellectual skills that he so valued, he wrote the following prayer.  It expresses very well the interplay of fear and trust, of hope and faith in old age’s illness. 

When the signs of age begin to mark my body
(and still more when they touch my mind);

when the ill that is to diminish me or carry me off
strikes from without or is born within me;

when the painful moment comes
in which I suddenly awaken
to the fact that I am ill or growing old;

and above all at that last moment
when I feel I am losing hold of myself
and am absolutely passive within the hands
of the great unknown forces that have formed me;

in all those dark moments, O God,
grant that I may understand that it is you
(provided only my faith is strong enough)
who are painfully parting the fibres of my being
in order to penetrate to the very marrow
of my substance and bear me away within yourself.

Peace and Grace, 

Fr. Tony+