Sermon delivered Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014 (1 Advent, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37).
Our Gospel passage from Mark today is one of those “end times” passages, talking about the sun and moon being darkened, and stars falling from heaven, and “the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and although our culture is jumping quickly from Thanksgiving into the Christmas season, we’re not there yet in the church calendar.
Although we have a tendency to think of the season of Advent as just a prelude to Christmas, Advent actually has an additional theme, a theme about end times. In fact, the last few Sundays after Pentecost and the first few Sundays of Advent are the only place in our lectionary where we specifically focus on the “end times,” the final judgment of the world, but so often it gets glossed over in the rush to Christmas. So today, let’s take a moment to reflect on that “end times” theme.
The reason we think about the end times during Advent is because Advent is not just about the first coming of Christ in his birth in a manger in Bethlehem, but about his Second Coming to judge the world at the end of time. The word “Advent” means “coming,” and if Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem was his first Advent, his return to judge the world at will be his second Advent. As we anticipate our celebration of that first Advent during this season, we also watch and wait for the Second Advent.
In a sense, this anticipation of Christ’s Second Coming reflects the core of the Christian experience as we currently know it. Every week in the Creed and the Eucharistic prayer, we assert that we are waiting for Christ’s coming again – not just during Advent, but throughout the church year. Every day of our lives as Christians, we live in an “in between” time – after Christ’s first coming in Bethlehem, but before his return at the end of time. Some theologians speak about this in between time with the phrase “already but not yet.”
As Christians, we believe that Christ has already redeemed the world and delivered us from the power of sin and death, but we do not yet see that redemption clearly in the world around us. We can see the transformative power of Christ at work in the lives of individual believers, but we still feel the effects of sin in our lives, and the world continues to worship many things other than God, including money, power, and human achievements. To the skeptic, Jesus’s life and death seems not to have changed much in the world. If Jesus has redeemed the world, why is it still so broken?
The Christian answer to that question lies in the “already but not yet.” The world is still broken because we live an in between time. We do not yet know the fulfillment of Christ’s redemptive work for all creation, which will be completed when he comes again.
What will that look like when it happens? In our current state, we can only imagine. Jesus gave us some clues in the parables he told while he was here on earth: we know that the kingdom to come will have something to do with turning the current state of affairs upside down – with exalting the humble and humbling the exalted, with making the last to be first and the first to be last. We know that Christ the King whom we await to be our judge is a king who rules in an unconventional manner – by becoming completely vulnerable in the form of a child. And despite the passages about throwing certain people into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, we also know that the Christ who will come to be our judge is the same Christ who taught us to forgive not seven, but seventy-seven times, and who practiced the ultimate act of forgiveness on the cross when he prayed for his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So often, when we think about the “end times” or the Second Coming, we tend to think of Hollywood movie images of the end of the world: death, destruction, asteroids, chaos. And somehow in this midst of this scary picture, the Jesus who taught us the way of love and forgiveness morphs into a harsh, cruel judge, someone of whom we need to be afraid. Despite all the scriptural predictions of stars falling and wars and famines and the like, we should remember that the Christ who will return is the same Christ we have known from the Scriptures and from our own relationships with him, someone who is a comforter and lover of our souls. When he comes again, Jesus will come not to bring death and destruction, but to save us from it.
The anthem that the choir will sing at the 11:00 service today is a beautiful illustration of the Second Coming as something to be longed for, not feared, of a Christ who comes to comfort us, not to destroy us. (Since you won’t get to hear it today, I highly recommend that you look up a version of it on the internet and listen to it when you get home. The piece is called “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come,” and is written by the composer Paul Manz.) The piece has a haunting and plaintive quality to it, and expresses a depth of longing difficult to put into the spoken word. It is based on a text from the book of Revelation that speaks about the Second Coming, in a vision that tells us that when Christ comes again, “there will be no more night,” and those gathered at the throne of God “will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light” (Revelation 22:7).
What makes this piece even more powerful and poignant is the fact that the composer wrote it when his three-year-old son was deathly ill and he and his wife feared they would lose him. In the midst of that great anguish, Paul Manz composed this brilliant, beautiful piece expressing praise and glory to God, and expressing a deep longing for Christ to come again. We know that Christ will return someday, but the piece pleads, “e’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come” – please, God, come quickly, come quickly to deliver us from the pain and sorrow and despair of this world. You can imagine the composer sitting at his son’s bedside and pleading for Christ to come to him and to his son, to come and bring his redeeming work to fulfillment, to grant us a world where “death will be no more, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4).
As this particular story goes, the composer’s son survived his illness, despite the fact that doctors had given up on him. But we all know of similar stories that do not have a happy ending, and for all of them, and for all of us in our brokenness this Advent, we plead for Jesus to “quickly come,” to come not to bring destruction, but to deliver us from it. From that perspective, the Second Coming becomes not some abstract matter of doctrine, but a very real longing and desire for this life. Please, God, deliver us. Come to us. Help us.
This Advent, amidst all the busy preparations for Christmas, I invite you to take time to reflect on that Second Coming, to imagine a world where all the promises of the Christmas carols would finally be fulfilled, a world where the Prince of Peace would truly reign. As we live in that in between time of the “already but not yet,” we long all the more expectantly for that fulfillment of the promise. And even in our moments of sorrow this season, no matter what our personal grief or struggles, we can reflect on the hope of the Second Coming and pray with the words of our anthem today,
E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come
And night shall be no more
They need no light nor lamp nor sun
For Christ will be their All!
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Complaining: a sign of lack of trust in God
Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 (15th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 20), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
(Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16)
There’s a lot of complaining going on in today’s readings. The Israelites complain to Moses, saying that it would have been better to have stayed in slavery in Egypt than to come out into the desert to die of hunger. The workers in the parable complain against the landowner for paying the same wage to those who have worked all day as to those who have worked only an hour. In both cases the people complain because they feel that something that has happened is not right, that things are not as they should be.
It’s easy to relate to that sentiment, isn’t it? For many of us, complaining is not exactly a foreign concept. There is plenty in the world to complain about, plenty of things that don’t seem to be as they should be, whether big or small. As a child, one of the first phrases we learn to protest the way things are is the age-old complaint, “That’s not FAIR!” Whether it’s the fact that our sister or brother got to do something we weren’t allowed to do, or the fact that our piece of cake wasn’t quite as big as everyone else’s, our innate sense of justice cries out in protest, “That’s not FAIR!”
And in some ways, that’s what we keep saying throughout our lives. Although the complaints may be over larger and more complex issues, ultimately what we continue to express is that same visceral pushback that we feel when something just isn’t right. Whether it’s the fact that some people in the world grow up with far more access to education, clean water, and healthcare than others, or the fact that some of us, not just in parables but in real life, are paid less than our colleagues for the same or more work, all our work for social justice in the world is in some sense an expression of that earliest protest: “That’s not FAIR!”
You can hear it in both of these stories from today’s readings, that age-old protest and complaint. It’s not FAIR that we’re now hungry in the desert while the Egyptians are still eating their fill around the fleshpots. It’s not FAIR that those who were hired last and worked only one hour were paid the same as those who were hired first and worked all day. That’s not right. It’s not FAIR!
But in both cases, the message of the passage is that things actually are as they should be, even if people do not realize it, because God is in control. We are asked to trust that God will provide and that God is just, even when all the evidence around us seems to suggest the contrary.
The Israelites are asked to trust that God will provide food, even when they see no way that they will be able to find food in the desert. God does indeed provide food, in the form of manna, the “bread from heaven” that falls upon the camp each night. God specifically instructs them only to collect what they can eat for one day – asking them to go against every instinct for self-preservation and not to store up extra for the future, but trust that God will provide them each day with their “daily bread,” with enough to sustain them until the next day. This part of the story is not in our passage for today, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that the Israelites don’t do very well following the instructions. They do attempt to collect more than they can eat so they can guarantee that they will have enough for the next day – but all the extra they gather spoils and rots overnight. The experience of receiving the manna was designed to teach them that they were utterly dependent on God for their sustenance, that they could not guarantee their survival by “taking matters into their own hands,” but only by leaving them in God’s.
That’s a hard enough lesson to learn, but we have yet another lesson about trust in the Gospel reading. The workers are asked to trust God’s wisdom and judgment in paying those hired last the same as those hired first. But it’s important to remember that this parable is not really about workers in a field and the wages they are paid. Jesus says this story is a metaphor for the “kingdom of heaven” – so this is not a story about fairness in wages on earth, but about fairness in God’s judgment about who will be rewarded in heaven. According to this parable, all who have worked in God’s vineyard will receive the same reward, no matter what amount of “good work” we have done in this life. Despite our initial protests at this story being “not fair,” this parable is actually the ultimate expression of fairness, in that everyone receives exactly the same thing.
This is a common theme in Jesus’s parables about what the kingdom of heaven will be like – there will be an equality among all people that we do not see in our earthly interactions with one another. In order to achieve that equality, in many cases there will need to be a reversal of the earthly circumstances, so that “the last will be first and the first will be last” – to level the playing field, so to speak. The very fact that this upsets us, that we are worried about being cheated out of what is “owed” to us shows that we haven’t yet understood the meaning of God’s grace. None of us is “owed” anything; it is all purely a gift of grace. And God doesn’t play favorites in heaven. Jesus did not say, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms – but some of you will get bigger and better rooms than the others!” No, he simply said that there are many rooms, and he goes to prepare a place for us – for each one of us – no preferential treatment for anyone. It is said that death is the great equalizer, and according to Jesus, so is the kingdom of heaven.
In both these stories, the people’s complaining is evidence of their inability to trust God’s sovereignty, to trust that maybe, just maybe, God knows how to run the world better than they do. As Moses tells the people, “Your complaining is not against us, but against the Lord.”
All too often we fall into the mistaken view that we can and should run the world ourselves – that we know what is best for us and for those around us. But the scriptures are constantly reminding us that we are actually not great judges of what is best for us, and we’re not the best at running the world, either. We’re too focused on measuring and assessing who is “deserving” of a reward or punishment, too focused on our own sense of entitlement and pride to be able to see what Jesus is trying to show us about God’s mercy and grace. In Jesus’s parables, it is often those we think are the least likely to make it into the kingdom who are there – showing us what poor judges we can be about who’s in and who’s out. There is a saying that “you know you have made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.” Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of heaven challenge our assumptions and push us to acknowledge that God’s mercy is often wider than we’d like. “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the landowner asks the workers in the parable, and we must constantly ask ourselves that question as we consider God’s generosity toward others.
Of course, we can hope that once we actually make it to the kingdom of heaven, we won’t be concerned about earthly things like who “deserves” to be there and who really “earned” it and who didn’t, but instead will be overcome with love in the presence of God. Hopefully, the kingdom of heaven will take us to an entirely different plane of existence, where those things that once mattered to us in the earthly realm will fall away.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with fairness and justice here on this earth. But given what a large and seemingly insurmountable task it is to pursue those goals in this broken world, it is important to remember where our hope lies – not in the promises of justice or fairness in this world, but in the promise of God’s grace and love for us, both in this world and in the next.
Our collect for today reminds us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly,” and to “hold fast to those things that shall endure.” If we can let go of “earthly things” like our constant measuring and comparing ourselves to each other, if we can let go of the earthly concern with “getting what we deserve,” or even helping others get what they deserve, we can open ourselves to see the things that will endure: like the eternal love of God that is equally available to each one of us. When we place our focus there, the anxiety about earthly things begins to fade away and we are more at peace – more able to trust God’s guidance, and less likely to complain.
(Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16)
There’s a lot of complaining going on in today’s readings. The Israelites complain to Moses, saying that it would have been better to have stayed in slavery in Egypt than to come out into the desert to die of hunger. The workers in the parable complain against the landowner for paying the same wage to those who have worked all day as to those who have worked only an hour. In both cases the people complain because they feel that something that has happened is not right, that things are not as they should be.
It’s easy to relate to that sentiment, isn’t it? For many of us, complaining is not exactly a foreign concept. There is plenty in the world to complain about, plenty of things that don’t seem to be as they should be, whether big or small. As a child, one of the first phrases we learn to protest the way things are is the age-old complaint, “That’s not FAIR!” Whether it’s the fact that our sister or brother got to do something we weren’t allowed to do, or the fact that our piece of cake wasn’t quite as big as everyone else’s, our innate sense of justice cries out in protest, “That’s not FAIR!”
And in some ways, that’s what we keep saying throughout our lives. Although the complaints may be over larger and more complex issues, ultimately what we continue to express is that same visceral pushback that we feel when something just isn’t right. Whether it’s the fact that some people in the world grow up with far more access to education, clean water, and healthcare than others, or the fact that some of us, not just in parables but in real life, are paid less than our colleagues for the same or more work, all our work for social justice in the world is in some sense an expression of that earliest protest: “That’s not FAIR!”
You can hear it in both of these stories from today’s readings, that age-old protest and complaint. It’s not FAIR that we’re now hungry in the desert while the Egyptians are still eating their fill around the fleshpots. It’s not FAIR that those who were hired last and worked only one hour were paid the same as those who were hired first and worked all day. That’s not right. It’s not FAIR!
But in both cases, the message of the passage is that things actually are as they should be, even if people do not realize it, because God is in control. We are asked to trust that God will provide and that God is just, even when all the evidence around us seems to suggest the contrary.
The Israelites are asked to trust that God will provide food, even when they see no way that they will be able to find food in the desert. God does indeed provide food, in the form of manna, the “bread from heaven” that falls upon the camp each night. God specifically instructs them only to collect what they can eat for one day – asking them to go against every instinct for self-preservation and not to store up extra for the future, but trust that God will provide them each day with their “daily bread,” with enough to sustain them until the next day. This part of the story is not in our passage for today, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that the Israelites don’t do very well following the instructions. They do attempt to collect more than they can eat so they can guarantee that they will have enough for the next day – but all the extra they gather spoils and rots overnight. The experience of receiving the manna was designed to teach them that they were utterly dependent on God for their sustenance, that they could not guarantee their survival by “taking matters into their own hands,” but only by leaving them in God’s.
That’s a hard enough lesson to learn, but we have yet another lesson about trust in the Gospel reading. The workers are asked to trust God’s wisdom and judgment in paying those hired last the same as those hired first. But it’s important to remember that this parable is not really about workers in a field and the wages they are paid. Jesus says this story is a metaphor for the “kingdom of heaven” – so this is not a story about fairness in wages on earth, but about fairness in God’s judgment about who will be rewarded in heaven. According to this parable, all who have worked in God’s vineyard will receive the same reward, no matter what amount of “good work” we have done in this life. Despite our initial protests at this story being “not fair,” this parable is actually the ultimate expression of fairness, in that everyone receives exactly the same thing.
This is a common theme in Jesus’s parables about what the kingdom of heaven will be like – there will be an equality among all people that we do not see in our earthly interactions with one another. In order to achieve that equality, in many cases there will need to be a reversal of the earthly circumstances, so that “the last will be first and the first will be last” – to level the playing field, so to speak. The very fact that this upsets us, that we are worried about being cheated out of what is “owed” to us shows that we haven’t yet understood the meaning of God’s grace. None of us is “owed” anything; it is all purely a gift of grace. And God doesn’t play favorites in heaven. Jesus did not say, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms – but some of you will get bigger and better rooms than the others!” No, he simply said that there are many rooms, and he goes to prepare a place for us – for each one of us – no preferential treatment for anyone. It is said that death is the great equalizer, and according to Jesus, so is the kingdom of heaven.
In both these stories, the people’s complaining is evidence of their inability to trust God’s sovereignty, to trust that maybe, just maybe, God knows how to run the world better than they do. As Moses tells the people, “Your complaining is not against us, but against the Lord.”
All too often we fall into the mistaken view that we can and should run the world ourselves – that we know what is best for us and for those around us. But the scriptures are constantly reminding us that we are actually not great judges of what is best for us, and we’re not the best at running the world, either. We’re too focused on measuring and assessing who is “deserving” of a reward or punishment, too focused on our own sense of entitlement and pride to be able to see what Jesus is trying to show us about God’s mercy and grace. In Jesus’s parables, it is often those we think are the least likely to make it into the kingdom who are there – showing us what poor judges we can be about who’s in and who’s out. There is a saying that “you know you have made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.” Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of heaven challenge our assumptions and push us to acknowledge that God’s mercy is often wider than we’d like. “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the landowner asks the workers in the parable, and we must constantly ask ourselves that question as we consider God’s generosity toward others.
Of course, we can hope that once we actually make it to the kingdom of heaven, we won’t be concerned about earthly things like who “deserves” to be there and who really “earned” it and who didn’t, but instead will be overcome with love in the presence of God. Hopefully, the kingdom of heaven will take us to an entirely different plane of existence, where those things that once mattered to us in the earthly realm will fall away.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with fairness and justice here on this earth. But given what a large and seemingly insurmountable task it is to pursue those goals in this broken world, it is important to remember where our hope lies – not in the promises of justice or fairness in this world, but in the promise of God’s grace and love for us, both in this world and in the next.
Our collect for today reminds us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly,” and to “hold fast to those things that shall endure.” If we can let go of “earthly things” like our constant measuring and comparing ourselves to each other, if we can let go of the earthly concern with “getting what we deserve,” or even helping others get what they deserve, we can open ourselves to see the things that will endure: like the eternal love of God that is equally available to each one of us. When we place our focus there, the anxiety about earthly things begins to fade away and we are more at peace – more able to trust God’s guidance, and less likely to complain.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Conflict in the church: treat them like an outsider?
Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014 (13th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 18), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Matthew 18:15-20).
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus addresses one of those subjects nobody wants to talk about in church: conflict.
Many of us tend to think there should be no conflict in church, because if we were being “good Christian people” we wouldn’t disagree or argue with one another. But that simply isn’t true. Relationship therapists will tell you that in any relationship with any depth, conflict is bound to arise at some point. The problem in a relationship is not the presence of conflict, but how conflict is handled when it does arise.
Jesus outlines a very reasonable process for addressing conflict in this passage from Matthew chapter 18: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone,” he says. The first step is to approach the person directly and privately, and almost all conflict can be addressed effectively at this level. Where we often get into trouble is when we avoid this step of talking directly to the person we are at odds with and instead start talking about that person to other people in unhelpful ways. If we approach the person directly and privately, in a spirit of respect and compassion, we can often address the issue right there and come to some kind of reconciliation between us.
But, in cases where that reconciliation is not forthcoming after a one-on-one encounter, the next step in the process Jesus outlines is to take along one or two other people with you to speak to that person. The reason he gives for this is so there will be a witness to your conversation, but a third party can also be a helpful mediator, especially if the person is trained to do such work. Often a third party can help broker peace between two people in conflict.
But if that doesn’t work either, the third step Jesus outlines is to take the issue to “the church.” It’s not entirely clear what “the church” means here, but most probably it means the local parish, not the entire denomination at large or the entire Christian community around the world! This step implies an appeal to the authorities – someone with the ability to issue judgment in the case, to make a decision about the matter; this is not an invitation to air your dirty laundry in front of the whole community at coffee hour!
If that step doesn’t work and the person still continues in the offensive behavior, Jesus says to “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” This phrase can be somewhat confusing, since in many places in the Gospels Jesus welcomes tax collectors and Gentiles to his community. But in this context, Jesus is probably using a phrase that would easily be recognized by his first century Jewish audience as meaning “outsider,” one who is not part of the fold. What Jesus probably means here is if the person has refused all attempts at reconciliation as outlined in this process, eventually you must come to a point where you treat that person as an outsider rather than as a brother. Hold them at arm’s length, in other words, because that person has violated a trust between you. This distancing is a way of ensuring that you don’t continue to get hurt, and to ensure that the offender doesn’t continue to hurt other people.
This process has much wisdom in it, but like anything else, it can be abused. As we attempt to follow Jesus’s teachings in this matter, we must be careful not to take this “formula” and make it the standard in all things rather than love. The Apostle Paul reminds us in our reading from Romans today that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” and “love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Romans 13:8, 10). We must be careful that in seeking to address a conflict or confront someone about unethical behavior that we do not wind up doing wrong to that person, that we do not allow ourselves to become prideful judges whose focus is on exclusion and punishment rather than reconciliation and love.
I’m sure many of us know of situations where churches have taken the instructions in Matthew 18 to an extreme – where they have made it a practice to publicly humiliate anyone who is seen as a “sinner” in their midst, who are so concerned with purifying their ranks that they seem to forget that God also calls us to be merciful. The film Chocolat is a good example of a community who has taken the instruction to confront and condemn sin to an extreme.
If you haven’t seen this film, it came out in the year 2000 and was nominated for several Oscars. The plot centers on a woman named Vienne who moves to a small French Catholic village and opens a chocolate shop in the middle of Lent. Vienne is not Christian; she follows various spiritual practices of some of her ancestors from Latin America, so the fact that it is the middle of Lent means nothing to her and she proceeds to begin making delicious, sumptuous treats that of course none of the villagers are supposed to eat during the Lenten fast.
The mayor of the town, who essentially runs not only the town, but also the local parish church, is outraged. Not only does Vienne attempt to sell chocolate during Lent, she also associates with the so-called “river rats,” the gypsies that travel through town on the river. He stirs up opposition against Vienne and begins a campaign to “boycott immorality” designed to drive the gypsies and Vienne out of town.
Although he never references this passage from Matthew about dealing with sin and conflict in the church, it’s clear that the mayor thinks he is doing God’s work in treating these people like outsiders. He eventually whips himself into such a frenzy over Vienne’s presence in town that he is convinced that God is telling him to literally destroy Vienne’s shop. On Easter eve, he breaks in to her store with a knife and attacks all the chocolate statues in her front window.
On Easter morning, the new priest in town, a young man who has thus far been a puppet for the mayor, even allowing the mayor to write his sermons, finally has to come into his own. The mayor didn’t get a chance to finish the Easter sermon because he was so busy with his anti-chocolate crusade, so Pere Henri delivers his first real message, and breaks the ice of judgmentalism and exclusion in favor of a more open and inclusive approach. After citing the example of Jesus’s life and his tolerance and kindness to others, he ends his short homily by saying: “Listen, here's what I think. I think we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do; by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”
After the service, the whole town goes out for a huge Easter feast, with the desserts provided by – guess who – the local “pagan” owner of the chocolate shop.
I cite the example of this story because it raises an important question for us as we strive to live together as the body of Christ, as we try both to live out the example of Jesus’s welcome of outsiders and also attempt to deal with conflict and sin within the church. As much as some within the church would like to think that matters of sin and judgment are clear-cut and simple, there will always be questions among us about what exactly constitutes a sin that requires the use of this process Jesus outlines in Matthew 18. Exactly how sinful does someone have to be before we make the decision to treat them as an outsider rather than a brother? As we consider our response to that question, will we err on the side of judgment or on the side of mercy? Will we measure goodness by what we resist and who we exclude, or will we measure goodness by what we embrace and who we include?
If we look at the picture of Jesus’s life and teachings as a whole and do not allow this one passage to become the lens through which we read the Gospels, we will find a picture of abounding love and mercy, not a strict calculation that leads to expulsion in four easy steps. Immediately following this passage about dealing with conflict that ends with an instruction to treat the offender as an outsider, Jesus tells Peter that if another member of the church sins against him, he should forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22) – a figure meant to express a large, generous approach to forgiveness rather than a literal calculation of the number of times one should forgive. By that standard, our forgiveness should be boundless – so that even the Gentiles and tax collectors – even those we see as outsiders because they are not part of our group and those within our group who we have come to see as outsiders because of their sin – are still within the reach of God’s all-embracing love. As much as it is humanly possible, we should seek to model that love for others, knowing that even when someone has broken the bond of trust between us because of their sin, God’s forgiveness is still just as available to them as it is to us.
The God who we know through the person of Jesus Christ reminds us that above all, God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13, Micah 6:6). The God we know in Christ forgave the woman caught in adultery, saying “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). The God we know in Christ told Peter to forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22). So although there may be extreme cases where we must make the decision to hold someone at arm’s length and treat them as an outsider because of their refusal to engage in reconciliation, even then we must remember how Jesus treated outsiders overall: he loved them and invited them to the table. May we always do the same.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus addresses one of those subjects nobody wants to talk about in church: conflict.
Many of us tend to think there should be no conflict in church, because if we were being “good Christian people” we wouldn’t disagree or argue with one another. But that simply isn’t true. Relationship therapists will tell you that in any relationship with any depth, conflict is bound to arise at some point. The problem in a relationship is not the presence of conflict, but how conflict is handled when it does arise.
Jesus outlines a very reasonable process for addressing conflict in this passage from Matthew chapter 18: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone,” he says. The first step is to approach the person directly and privately, and almost all conflict can be addressed effectively at this level. Where we often get into trouble is when we avoid this step of talking directly to the person we are at odds with and instead start talking about that person to other people in unhelpful ways. If we approach the person directly and privately, in a spirit of respect and compassion, we can often address the issue right there and come to some kind of reconciliation between us.
But, in cases where that reconciliation is not forthcoming after a one-on-one encounter, the next step in the process Jesus outlines is to take along one or two other people with you to speak to that person. The reason he gives for this is so there will be a witness to your conversation, but a third party can also be a helpful mediator, especially if the person is trained to do such work. Often a third party can help broker peace between two people in conflict.
But if that doesn’t work either, the third step Jesus outlines is to take the issue to “the church.” It’s not entirely clear what “the church” means here, but most probably it means the local parish, not the entire denomination at large or the entire Christian community around the world! This step implies an appeal to the authorities – someone with the ability to issue judgment in the case, to make a decision about the matter; this is not an invitation to air your dirty laundry in front of the whole community at coffee hour!
If that step doesn’t work and the person still continues in the offensive behavior, Jesus says to “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” This phrase can be somewhat confusing, since in many places in the Gospels Jesus welcomes tax collectors and Gentiles to his community. But in this context, Jesus is probably using a phrase that would easily be recognized by his first century Jewish audience as meaning “outsider,” one who is not part of the fold. What Jesus probably means here is if the person has refused all attempts at reconciliation as outlined in this process, eventually you must come to a point where you treat that person as an outsider rather than as a brother. Hold them at arm’s length, in other words, because that person has violated a trust between you. This distancing is a way of ensuring that you don’t continue to get hurt, and to ensure that the offender doesn’t continue to hurt other people.
This process has much wisdom in it, but like anything else, it can be abused. As we attempt to follow Jesus’s teachings in this matter, we must be careful not to take this “formula” and make it the standard in all things rather than love. The Apostle Paul reminds us in our reading from Romans today that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” and “love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Romans 13:8, 10). We must be careful that in seeking to address a conflict or confront someone about unethical behavior that we do not wind up doing wrong to that person, that we do not allow ourselves to become prideful judges whose focus is on exclusion and punishment rather than reconciliation and love.
I’m sure many of us know of situations where churches have taken the instructions in Matthew 18 to an extreme – where they have made it a practice to publicly humiliate anyone who is seen as a “sinner” in their midst, who are so concerned with purifying their ranks that they seem to forget that God also calls us to be merciful. The film Chocolat is a good example of a community who has taken the instruction to confront and condemn sin to an extreme.
If you haven’t seen this film, it came out in the year 2000 and was nominated for several Oscars. The plot centers on a woman named Vienne who moves to a small French Catholic village and opens a chocolate shop in the middle of Lent. Vienne is not Christian; she follows various spiritual practices of some of her ancestors from Latin America, so the fact that it is the middle of Lent means nothing to her and she proceeds to begin making delicious, sumptuous treats that of course none of the villagers are supposed to eat during the Lenten fast.
The mayor of the town, who essentially runs not only the town, but also the local parish church, is outraged. Not only does Vienne attempt to sell chocolate during Lent, she also associates with the so-called “river rats,” the gypsies that travel through town on the river. He stirs up opposition against Vienne and begins a campaign to “boycott immorality” designed to drive the gypsies and Vienne out of town.
Although he never references this passage from Matthew about dealing with sin and conflict in the church, it’s clear that the mayor thinks he is doing God’s work in treating these people like outsiders. He eventually whips himself into such a frenzy over Vienne’s presence in town that he is convinced that God is telling him to literally destroy Vienne’s shop. On Easter eve, he breaks in to her store with a knife and attacks all the chocolate statues in her front window.
On Easter morning, the new priest in town, a young man who has thus far been a puppet for the mayor, even allowing the mayor to write his sermons, finally has to come into his own. The mayor didn’t get a chance to finish the Easter sermon because he was so busy with his anti-chocolate crusade, so Pere Henri delivers his first real message, and breaks the ice of judgmentalism and exclusion in favor of a more open and inclusive approach. After citing the example of Jesus’s life and his tolerance and kindness to others, he ends his short homily by saying: “Listen, here's what I think. I think we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do; by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”
After the service, the whole town goes out for a huge Easter feast, with the desserts provided by – guess who – the local “pagan” owner of the chocolate shop.
I cite the example of this story because it raises an important question for us as we strive to live together as the body of Christ, as we try both to live out the example of Jesus’s welcome of outsiders and also attempt to deal with conflict and sin within the church. As much as some within the church would like to think that matters of sin and judgment are clear-cut and simple, there will always be questions among us about what exactly constitutes a sin that requires the use of this process Jesus outlines in Matthew 18. Exactly how sinful does someone have to be before we make the decision to treat them as an outsider rather than a brother? As we consider our response to that question, will we err on the side of judgment or on the side of mercy? Will we measure goodness by what we resist and who we exclude, or will we measure goodness by what we embrace and who we include?
If we look at the picture of Jesus’s life and teachings as a whole and do not allow this one passage to become the lens through which we read the Gospels, we will find a picture of abounding love and mercy, not a strict calculation that leads to expulsion in four easy steps. Immediately following this passage about dealing with conflict that ends with an instruction to treat the offender as an outsider, Jesus tells Peter that if another member of the church sins against him, he should forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22) – a figure meant to express a large, generous approach to forgiveness rather than a literal calculation of the number of times one should forgive. By that standard, our forgiveness should be boundless – so that even the Gentiles and tax collectors – even those we see as outsiders because they are not part of our group and those within our group who we have come to see as outsiders because of their sin – are still within the reach of God’s all-embracing love. As much as it is humanly possible, we should seek to model that love for others, knowing that even when someone has broken the bond of trust between us because of their sin, God’s forgiveness is still just as available to them as it is to us.
The God who we know through the person of Jesus Christ reminds us that above all, God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13, Micah 6:6). The God we know in Christ forgave the woman caught in adultery, saying “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). The God we know in Christ told Peter to forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22). So although there may be extreme cases where we must make the decision to hold someone at arm’s length and treat them as an outsider because of their refusal to engage in reconciliation, even then we must remember how Jesus treated outsiders overall: he loved them and invited them to the table. May we always do the same.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Walking on water: Overcoming fear to do things we didn't think we could do
Sermon delivered Sunday, August 10, 2014 (9 Pentecost, Year A, Proper 14), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Text: Matthew 14:22-33)
Today’s Gospel reading about Jesus walking on water is one of the most famous stories in scripture. There are countless representations of it in art, and it has made its way into our everyday language as an idiomatic expression for being idolized or worshipped: “His fans think he can walk on water!” We often read this passage as a story about Jesus’s divinity, but today I’m going to suggest we look at it from another perspective: as a story about Peter, and by extension, all of us, and our life of faith.
Although we tend to think of Jesus’s ability to walk on water as one of the “proofs” that he was God, we forget that, according to Matthew’s account, Peter was also able to walk on water, however short-lived his journey out of the boat was. If this is true, then walking on water must not be something only God can do, since Peter clearly was not God. Perhaps this was Jesus’s way of showing the disciples what amazing things they would be capable of doing if they could let go of fear and be completely and totally focused on God.
Notice what happens to Peter. He is able to walk on the water after Jesus calls him, but when he notices the strong wind and becomes frightened, he starts to sink. It is his fear, and the distraction from his focus that that fear causes, that thwarts his attempt to walk on water.
I can imagine a bit of what Peter might have felt in that moment, and I bet you can too. If you have ever learned to ride a bike or helped a child learn to ride a bike, you know how much of that initial inability to balance is psychological, how much fear plays into the constant falls and skinned knees.
I remember how terrified I was when the training wheels first came off my bike when I was a child. The first time I got on a bike without training wheels, I put my feet up on the pedals and promptly fell over sideways. After slamming into the concrete, I was wary about getting back in the saddle again, so my father quickly intervened and assured me that he would hold on to the back of my seat while I pedaled, to keep me upright and balanced. He did so, and knowing that my dad was behind me, holding on to me so that I couldn’t fall, I pedaled happily around the driveway for some time, enjoying myself and feeling safe, until suddenly I noticed my dad was on the other side of the driveway! And he wasn’t holding on to me anymore! My parents beamed with pride – “Look, you’re doing it!” they cried – and then of course, I promptly fell over again.
As soon as I realized I wasn’t being held, as soon as I realized what I was actually doing, the fear returned. It distracted me from my focus, and I fell. More recently, I’ve experienced this dynamic in my practice of yoga. As I’ve begun to work on some of the balancing poses, trying to perch my body on top of my forearms or do a headstand, I’ve found that fear is the biggest obstacle, more so than physical strength. When the teacher instructs us to lean forward into the pose, it’s difficult to do so when that feels like it’s going to make you fall flat on your face – but if I listen and do what they say, I find that they’re right – the balance point is there, just a bit farther forward than feels comfortable. Just this week I was working on a headstand in class, and had the teacher spot me – and once I realized she wasn’t holding on to me anymore, that I was actually there, hanging out in a headstand, I started to fall. It was like being a child learning to ride that bike all over again – “Look, I’m doing it – um, wait a minute – help!!”
I’m sure many of you know the feeling of that moment – that moment where you realize you’re doing something you didn’t think you could do, without the support you thought you had, and the realization of that shakes you – the fear returns, it makes you lose your focus, and suddenly you fall. I can imagine that that feeling is what Peter felt in that moment where he suddenly realized, “Look! I’m walking on water here in the middle of a storm…. um, wait a minute, HELP!”
Fear is the ultimate issue here, whether learning to ride a bike or to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. In the Gospel story, it wasn’t just Peter who was afraid, but all the disciples in the boat. The text says they were “terrified” and “cried out in fear,” and of course it is fear that causes Peter to slip. Jesus’s response to Peter, after rescuing him, is, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” The doubt he’s referring to is not about intellectual questions, but about a lack of focus and trust, about allowing fear to take over. His question to Peter is not, “Why did you have questions about what you believe,” but “Why did you allow your fear to be stronger than your trust in me?” Jesus had just said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid,” and almost universally throughout the scriptures, the message from heavenly beings when they first appear to humans is, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear.” The divine messengers first tell us not to be afraid because God knows we cannot do anything until we are able to overcome our fear.
In our life of faith, we are constantly learning to walk on water – to do what seems impossible to us, to let go of fear and step out in trust. We are learning to do things that are counter to what our natural inclinations might be, counter to how we might do things if we relied solely on our own thought processes and reasoning: love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, if someone takes from you your coat, give him your cloak also – all these teachings of Jesus can seem just as difficult as walking on water, and require just as much trust. And sometimes, when we begin to live our lives the Gospel way, we get scared – we suddenly look back and realize we’re doing something that we didn’t think we could do, or something that seems crazy to us. “What did I just do? I just gave up an opportunity to get revenge on someone who hurt me? What if they hurt me again?” We feel vulnerable, and we get scared, and we start to sink. But the good news is that Jesus is always there, ready to catch us, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And as he catches us, he reminds us of where our focus ought to be: on him. It was when Peter was completely and totally focused on Jesus that he was able to step out onto the stormy waters and not be overtaken by them. We too must have that kind of focus on Jesus, so that we can overcome the fear that would prevent us from living Gospel lives.
If we can let go of fear and turn our complete focus on Jesus, we too can prevail over the stormy waters. And as we step out of the boat, we will look over and see the Father beaming with pride and saying, “Look! You’re doing it!” And this time, maybe we won’t fall.
Today’s Gospel reading about Jesus walking on water is one of the most famous stories in scripture. There are countless representations of it in art, and it has made its way into our everyday language as an idiomatic expression for being idolized or worshipped: “His fans think he can walk on water!” We often read this passage as a story about Jesus’s divinity, but today I’m going to suggest we look at it from another perspective: as a story about Peter, and by extension, all of us, and our life of faith.
Although we tend to think of Jesus’s ability to walk on water as one of the “proofs” that he was God, we forget that, according to Matthew’s account, Peter was also able to walk on water, however short-lived his journey out of the boat was. If this is true, then walking on water must not be something only God can do, since Peter clearly was not God. Perhaps this was Jesus’s way of showing the disciples what amazing things they would be capable of doing if they could let go of fear and be completely and totally focused on God.
Notice what happens to Peter. He is able to walk on the water after Jesus calls him, but when he notices the strong wind and becomes frightened, he starts to sink. It is his fear, and the distraction from his focus that that fear causes, that thwarts his attempt to walk on water.
I can imagine a bit of what Peter might have felt in that moment, and I bet you can too. If you have ever learned to ride a bike or helped a child learn to ride a bike, you know how much of that initial inability to balance is psychological, how much fear plays into the constant falls and skinned knees.
I remember how terrified I was when the training wheels first came off my bike when I was a child. The first time I got on a bike without training wheels, I put my feet up on the pedals and promptly fell over sideways. After slamming into the concrete, I was wary about getting back in the saddle again, so my father quickly intervened and assured me that he would hold on to the back of my seat while I pedaled, to keep me upright and balanced. He did so, and knowing that my dad was behind me, holding on to me so that I couldn’t fall, I pedaled happily around the driveway for some time, enjoying myself and feeling safe, until suddenly I noticed my dad was on the other side of the driveway! And he wasn’t holding on to me anymore! My parents beamed with pride – “Look, you’re doing it!” they cried – and then of course, I promptly fell over again.
As soon as I realized I wasn’t being held, as soon as I realized what I was actually doing, the fear returned. It distracted me from my focus, and I fell. More recently, I’ve experienced this dynamic in my practice of yoga. As I’ve begun to work on some of the balancing poses, trying to perch my body on top of my forearms or do a headstand, I’ve found that fear is the biggest obstacle, more so than physical strength. When the teacher instructs us to lean forward into the pose, it’s difficult to do so when that feels like it’s going to make you fall flat on your face – but if I listen and do what they say, I find that they’re right – the balance point is there, just a bit farther forward than feels comfortable. Just this week I was working on a headstand in class, and had the teacher spot me – and once I realized she wasn’t holding on to me anymore, that I was actually there, hanging out in a headstand, I started to fall. It was like being a child learning to ride that bike all over again – “Look, I’m doing it – um, wait a minute – help!!”
I’m sure many of you know the feeling of that moment – that moment where you realize you’re doing something you didn’t think you could do, without the support you thought you had, and the realization of that shakes you – the fear returns, it makes you lose your focus, and suddenly you fall. I can imagine that that feeling is what Peter felt in that moment where he suddenly realized, “Look! I’m walking on water here in the middle of a storm…. um, wait a minute, HELP!”
Fear is the ultimate issue here, whether learning to ride a bike or to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. In the Gospel story, it wasn’t just Peter who was afraid, but all the disciples in the boat. The text says they were “terrified” and “cried out in fear,” and of course it is fear that causes Peter to slip. Jesus’s response to Peter, after rescuing him, is, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” The doubt he’s referring to is not about intellectual questions, but about a lack of focus and trust, about allowing fear to take over. His question to Peter is not, “Why did you have questions about what you believe,” but “Why did you allow your fear to be stronger than your trust in me?” Jesus had just said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid,” and almost universally throughout the scriptures, the message from heavenly beings when they first appear to humans is, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear.” The divine messengers first tell us not to be afraid because God knows we cannot do anything until we are able to overcome our fear.
In our life of faith, we are constantly learning to walk on water – to do what seems impossible to us, to let go of fear and step out in trust. We are learning to do things that are counter to what our natural inclinations might be, counter to how we might do things if we relied solely on our own thought processes and reasoning: love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, if someone takes from you your coat, give him your cloak also – all these teachings of Jesus can seem just as difficult as walking on water, and require just as much trust. And sometimes, when we begin to live our lives the Gospel way, we get scared – we suddenly look back and realize we’re doing something that we didn’t think we could do, or something that seems crazy to us. “What did I just do? I just gave up an opportunity to get revenge on someone who hurt me? What if they hurt me again?” We feel vulnerable, and we get scared, and we start to sink. But the good news is that Jesus is always there, ready to catch us, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And as he catches us, he reminds us of where our focus ought to be: on him. It was when Peter was completely and totally focused on Jesus that he was able to step out onto the stormy waters and not be overtaken by them. We too must have that kind of focus on Jesus, so that we can overcome the fear that would prevent us from living Gospel lives.
If we can let go of fear and turn our complete focus on Jesus, we too can prevail over the stormy waters. And as we step out of the boat, we will look over and see the Father beaming with pride and saying, “Look! You’re doing it!” And this time, maybe we won’t fall.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Parable of the wheat and the weeds: Let God be the judge
Sermon delivered Sunday, July 20, 2014 (6th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 11), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43).
“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?”
This question from the parable in today’s Gospel reading gives voice to one of the oldest questions known to humanity. If God is good and intends good for the world, why do bad things happen? It is the classic “problem of evil,” the problem of why evil exists if there is an all-powerful and all-good God in control of the world.
There are two aspects to the problem of evil: one is the question of why people do bad things, and the other is the question of why bad things happen outside of human initiative: natural disasters and the like, things that no person or people caused to happen and so they are called “acts of God” by the insurance companies because there is no one else to blame. Today’s parable deals with the first aspect of the problem of evil: why people do bad things, or why there are “bad people,” so to speak, in our world.
The answer we get from the parable is that the bad people, the “weeds” in our world, to follow the parable’s analogy, are put there by the “evil one,” or the devil. According to the parable, God only planted the good seeds; the weeds were planted by an enemy trying to sabotage God’s harvest. This explanation gets God off the hook in that it attributes responsibility for the existence of the “bad people,” the “weeds,” to someone other than God, but the question still remains as to why God allows these weeds to continue to grow in his field – why not go out and pull them up? In fact, that’s exactly what the slaves in the parable suggest – “Do you want us to go and gather them?” they ask about the weeds. But the master says “no, because in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” He instructs them to let the two grow together until the harvest, at which time they will separate the wheat and the weeds.
In the original Greek, the word translated as “weed” in this parable does not mean just any weed in general, but a specific plant, most likely a plant called bearded darnel [1]. The darnel plant is a weed that is bitter and mildly toxic, but in its early stages it looks almost identical to wheat, so that it is nearly impossible to tell the two apart [2]. This is why the master says that in gathering the weeds the slaves would uproot the wheat along with them – they wouldn’t be able to tell what was wheat and what was weeds. It is only after the plant has reached maturity that the darnel turns a slightly different color and is distinguishable from the wheat. But by then, the roots of the two plants have become intertwined and it would be impossible to uproot one without uprooting the other: so the master’s solution is a wise one: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest,” and at the harvest the two can be separated. The wheat and the weeds are allowed to coexist together for the good of the wheat – so that the wheat is not destroyed accidentally in the attempt to destroy the weeds.
Thus, the parable’s answer as to why bad people are allowed to coexist along with good people is twofold: first, it is often impossible to distinguish the two. We can’t always tell which people are the “wheat” and which are the “weeds” in the fields of our lives. Only God truly knows, the God who, as our psalm says, knows us intimately, all our thoughts and motivations and desires.
Secondly, it would be impossible to get rid of the “bad people” without also harming the good – a truth that we see illustrated in the way most of our armed conflicts play out in this world. Every time we as human beings try to “kill the bad people,” we usually wind up killing a lot of innocent people along with them, the so-called “collateral damage” of war. But the master in the parable is not willing to take the risk of “collateral damage.” He knows that every grain of wheat in that field is precious to him and wants to bring them all to the harvest.
And so, we are asked to have a lot of patience, and a lot of trust. Paul says in our reading from Romans that “we hope for what we do not see,” and we “wait for it with patience.” Sometimes when we look around us and we see the weeds growing along with the wheat, we can feel like there is no justice, there is no order or purpose, there is no God. But we are asked to trust that although the wicked seem to prosper and we do not yet see justice in this world, that ultimately God will straighten things out in the end. It is easy to be tempted to take matters into our own hands and try to pull up what we think are the “weeds” in the world around us, but in doing so we may actually do more harm than good. This parable is as much a warning against being judgmental as it is an answer to the problem of evil. We cannot distinguish the wheat from the weeds, so we have to trust the one who knows us the most intimately to make that call.
And even though Jesus explains the parable by saying that the “good seed” are “the children of the kingdom” and the “weeds” are the “children of the evil one,” I’m not so sure that there isn’t a bit of “good seed” and a bit of “weeds” inside each one of us. Our myths, both religious and secular, tend to split the world into the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” but I think a more accurate word would be that there is a bit of “good guy” and “bad guy” in each one of us. Although the moralisms of the Bible always assume there are two clear-cut categories of people, “the righteous” and “the wicked,” the actual people in the Bible are hardly ever so cut and dried. Take Jacob, for example. In our passages from the Hebrew scriptures over the past few weeks, we’ve been reading along in the history of the people of Israel, starting with Abraham and Sarah and moving along through their descendants, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Esau. Just last week we saw Jacob, the man after whom the entire people of Israel comes to be named, cheating his brother out of his birthright. Not exactly hero behavior, is it? Two chapters after that story, Jacob also steals his father’s blessing from his brother Esau. While his father is on his deathbed, Jacob can think of nothing but tricking him into doing something for his own personal gain. And then this week we have a nice story about Jacob encountering the Lord at Bethel, where God tells him that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you,” this man who was a such a liar and a cheater! Although Jacob had a lot of unsavory personality traits, God allowed the wheat and the weeds to grow together in Jacob until the harvest. (We can only hope that God straightened Jacob out for all his dishonest dealings when the time came for him to meet his maker!)
The Jewish tradition teaches that inside each one of us is the yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, and the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil, and both those inclinations compete for our attention. Our spiritual task is to choose to follow our yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, rather than the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil. If we apply this understanding to the parable of the wheat and the weeds, perhaps it tells us that the reason God does not do away with what we think are the bad parts of ourselves is that in uprooting those parts of us, he would also uproot and destroy the good parts of us. And maybe, just maybe, those thoughts and actions that we think are “weeds” might just be wheat. Perhaps we’re not any better at telling apart the good from the bad inside ourselves than we are at telling it apart in others. And so, we leave it to God to do the judging – about what is “good” and “evil” in other people and about what is “good” and “evil” in ourselves, trusting that at the final harvest, the One who knows all of our innermost thoughts will separate the weeds from the wheat.
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[1] Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 545. Accessed online via Google Books, 15 Jul 2014.
[2] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer, July 20, 2014 (Proper 11A).
“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?”
This question from the parable in today’s Gospel reading gives voice to one of the oldest questions known to humanity. If God is good and intends good for the world, why do bad things happen? It is the classic “problem of evil,” the problem of why evil exists if there is an all-powerful and all-good God in control of the world.
There are two aspects to the problem of evil: one is the question of why people do bad things, and the other is the question of why bad things happen outside of human initiative: natural disasters and the like, things that no person or people caused to happen and so they are called “acts of God” by the insurance companies because there is no one else to blame. Today’s parable deals with the first aspect of the problem of evil: why people do bad things, or why there are “bad people,” so to speak, in our world.
The answer we get from the parable is that the bad people, the “weeds” in our world, to follow the parable’s analogy, are put there by the “evil one,” or the devil. According to the parable, God only planted the good seeds; the weeds were planted by an enemy trying to sabotage God’s harvest. This explanation gets God off the hook in that it attributes responsibility for the existence of the “bad people,” the “weeds,” to someone other than God, but the question still remains as to why God allows these weeds to continue to grow in his field – why not go out and pull them up? In fact, that’s exactly what the slaves in the parable suggest – “Do you want us to go and gather them?” they ask about the weeds. But the master says “no, because in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” He instructs them to let the two grow together until the harvest, at which time they will separate the wheat and the weeds.
In the original Greek, the word translated as “weed” in this parable does not mean just any weed in general, but a specific plant, most likely a plant called bearded darnel [1]. The darnel plant is a weed that is bitter and mildly toxic, but in its early stages it looks almost identical to wheat, so that it is nearly impossible to tell the two apart [2]. This is why the master says that in gathering the weeds the slaves would uproot the wheat along with them – they wouldn’t be able to tell what was wheat and what was weeds. It is only after the plant has reached maturity that the darnel turns a slightly different color and is distinguishable from the wheat. But by then, the roots of the two plants have become intertwined and it would be impossible to uproot one without uprooting the other: so the master’s solution is a wise one: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest,” and at the harvest the two can be separated. The wheat and the weeds are allowed to coexist together for the good of the wheat – so that the wheat is not destroyed accidentally in the attempt to destroy the weeds.
Thus, the parable’s answer as to why bad people are allowed to coexist along with good people is twofold: first, it is often impossible to distinguish the two. We can’t always tell which people are the “wheat” and which are the “weeds” in the fields of our lives. Only God truly knows, the God who, as our psalm says, knows us intimately, all our thoughts and motivations and desires.
Secondly, it would be impossible to get rid of the “bad people” without also harming the good – a truth that we see illustrated in the way most of our armed conflicts play out in this world. Every time we as human beings try to “kill the bad people,” we usually wind up killing a lot of innocent people along with them, the so-called “collateral damage” of war. But the master in the parable is not willing to take the risk of “collateral damage.” He knows that every grain of wheat in that field is precious to him and wants to bring them all to the harvest.
And so, we are asked to have a lot of patience, and a lot of trust. Paul says in our reading from Romans that “we hope for what we do not see,” and we “wait for it with patience.” Sometimes when we look around us and we see the weeds growing along with the wheat, we can feel like there is no justice, there is no order or purpose, there is no God. But we are asked to trust that although the wicked seem to prosper and we do not yet see justice in this world, that ultimately God will straighten things out in the end. It is easy to be tempted to take matters into our own hands and try to pull up what we think are the “weeds” in the world around us, but in doing so we may actually do more harm than good. This parable is as much a warning against being judgmental as it is an answer to the problem of evil. We cannot distinguish the wheat from the weeds, so we have to trust the one who knows us the most intimately to make that call.
And even though Jesus explains the parable by saying that the “good seed” are “the children of the kingdom” and the “weeds” are the “children of the evil one,” I’m not so sure that there isn’t a bit of “good seed” and a bit of “weeds” inside each one of us. Our myths, both religious and secular, tend to split the world into the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” but I think a more accurate word would be that there is a bit of “good guy” and “bad guy” in each one of us. Although the moralisms of the Bible always assume there are two clear-cut categories of people, “the righteous” and “the wicked,” the actual people in the Bible are hardly ever so cut and dried. Take Jacob, for example. In our passages from the Hebrew scriptures over the past few weeks, we’ve been reading along in the history of the people of Israel, starting with Abraham and Sarah and moving along through their descendants, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Esau. Just last week we saw Jacob, the man after whom the entire people of Israel comes to be named, cheating his brother out of his birthright. Not exactly hero behavior, is it? Two chapters after that story, Jacob also steals his father’s blessing from his brother Esau. While his father is on his deathbed, Jacob can think of nothing but tricking him into doing something for his own personal gain. And then this week we have a nice story about Jacob encountering the Lord at Bethel, where God tells him that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you,” this man who was a such a liar and a cheater! Although Jacob had a lot of unsavory personality traits, God allowed the wheat and the weeds to grow together in Jacob until the harvest. (We can only hope that God straightened Jacob out for all his dishonest dealings when the time came for him to meet his maker!)
The Jewish tradition teaches that inside each one of us is the yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, and the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil, and both those inclinations compete for our attention. Our spiritual task is to choose to follow our yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, rather than the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil. If we apply this understanding to the parable of the wheat and the weeds, perhaps it tells us that the reason God does not do away with what we think are the bad parts of ourselves is that in uprooting those parts of us, he would also uproot and destroy the good parts of us. And maybe, just maybe, those thoughts and actions that we think are “weeds” might just be wheat. Perhaps we’re not any better at telling apart the good from the bad inside ourselves than we are at telling it apart in others. And so, we leave it to God to do the judging – about what is “good” and “evil” in other people and about what is “good” and “evil” in ourselves, trusting that at the final harvest, the One who knows all of our innermost thoughts will separate the weeds from the wheat.
---
[1] Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 545. Accessed online via Google Books, 15 Jul 2014.
[2] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer, July 20, 2014 (Proper 11A).
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Incarnational theology: everything is holy
Sermon delivered Sunday, July 6, 2014 (Fourth Sunday After Pentecost (Year A, Proper 9)) at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25a
You may have noticed that we read a canticle instead of a psalm as one of the readings today. The word “canticle” comes from the Latin word for “song,” and means just that, a song. The canticles that we say or sing during Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary are songs from parts of the Bible other than the book of psalms.
Today’s canticle comes from the book of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, as you may have heard it called. Since we don’t often read from the Song of Solomon in our Sunday lectionary, the only place many of us hear it read is at weddings, which is certainly an appropriate place for it, since the whole book is an extended love poem between two lovers.
The Song of Solomon is one of only two books in the Bible where God is not mentioned. This fact, and the fact that its sole focus is romantic, erotic love, has led to much controversy over its inclusion in the Bible. Why is this book, which is focused exclusively on physical, earthly love and does not mention God, considered one of our sacred texts?
From a very early time, both Jewish and Christian readers of this book have argued that the text is meant to be read allegorical or metaphorically, where the two lovers in the poem are not two human beings in love, but either God and the Jewish people, or Christ and the church. When the speaker talks about “my beloved,” she is not speaking of a literal man, but of God or Christ. The message they then glean from this book is that we should direct the passions we feel for love from other people toward God, that only God can truly fulfill the desires for intimacy that we often look to be filled from our human relationships.
This interpretation is not out of keeping with other parts of the scriptures, where God’s relationship with the people of Israel is described using the metaphor of a marriage or romantic relationship, particularly the Hebrew prophets. But the thing that has made some readers of the text skeptical about that interpretation is the fact that the Song of Solomon does not clearly make that comparison, unlike other books of the Hebrew Bible that do. The book of Hosea, for example, makes a very clear and explicit comparison between an unfaithful wife and the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in their relationship to God. If you actually read the text of the Song of Solomon carefully, though, it never claims to be about God or anybody’s relationship with God, but about romantic love between two people. And for some reason, both the Jewish and Christian traditions have insisted that it must be about more than just that for it to be considered sacred.
But why must it? Why can’t we accept that this book is simply a love poem celebrating the beauty of romantic love, and that in and of itself makes it holy? As we reflected on this passage earlier this week in our Tuesday morning Bible study, someone in the group observed that even if this passage does not talk about God specifically, it is very “God-like.” They were recognizing a certain sacred quality to the text that is there even if the word “God” is not specifically mentioned, and we talked about how all kinds of things can be sacred or holy even if they do not explicitly have to do with God or church. In this conversation, perhaps without knowing it, the group was exploring the realm of incarnational theology.
What do I mean by that? Well, the school of thought known as “incarnational theology” affirms the goodness of the material world and all things in it as mediators of God’s presence to us. In contrast to a dualistic theology that sees “the material” as bad and “the spiritual” as good and the two in competition and conflict with one another, incarnational theology affirms that this world, this material place of physical stuff, is good and holy, and that we can find the spiritual in and through the material. It is called “incarnational theology” because it affirms that the material world is good because of the incarnation – God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ and experience this physical world is seen as an affirmation of the inherent goodness in this world. Incarnational theology also affirms that the incarnation was more than just God’s presence coming to dwell in the person of Jesus Christ – through the mystery of the incarnation, the whole world is infused with the presence of God, and all creation is sacred.
Although this view has always been the view of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Western Christianity, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to see “the world” as something negative or even evil, something Christians should try to avoid at all costs. We see this kind of thinking in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and today’s passage from Romans is a perfect example. In this passage, Paul writes about his struggles to do what is right, and says that it is his body, his flesh, the things of this material world, that prevent him from achieving his spiritual goals. Rather than seeing his body as a gift from God to be celebrated and appreciated, Paul calls it a “body of death”! What a contrast to the joyful celebration of the body that we find in the Song of Solomon, where every aspect of the beloved’s body is described in loving detail, with rich metaphors to the beauties of nature.
This notion of a division between the material and spiritual worlds can be found even in the meaning of the word “holy” in the Hebrew language. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the English word “holy” as “having to do with a god or religion” or “religiously and morally good,” the Hebrew definition of the word “holy” means “set apart,” something that is separate and distinguished from regular, ordinary, mundane or “secular” life. In churches that have a high view of the sacraments, as the Episcopal Church does, we tend to think in terms of that Hebrew definition of holiness. Holy water is holy because it is different from other kinds of water, and because a priest or bishop has said a blessing over it to “set it apart” for sacramental use. The bread and wine become holy after the Eucharistic prayer has been said over them and afterwards they are “set apart” from regular bread and wine and treated differently, with more reverence, than regular food. But in terms of our common usage of the word “holy,” we tend to think more in terms of the modern English definition, as something religiously or morally good, something that connects us to God in some way. In that sense, was the bread and wine not already holy in some way before we said the prayers over them? Isn’t all water in some sense holy? Incarnational theology invites us to see sacraments not only in the seven traditional forms that the church has given to us, but everywhere around us, in the most mundane and secular parts of our lives, even in the places where God is not mentioned.
There is a song by folk singer Peter Mayer that illustrates this notion perfectly, and since poetry is so often better than prose at communicating an idea, let me share the lyrics of that song with you. It goes like this:
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
Miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Peter Mayer was raised Catholic and eventually left the church, so in his assertion that “everything is holy now,” by “now,” he means since he left the Catholic Church and came to a broader understanding of how and where God acts and is present in the world. But he didn’t need to have left the church to come to that realization. Within Christian theology, there is strong support for just the sentiments that Mayer expresses in this song – that “everything is holy,” that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, or, as we say each week in the sanctus, the great song of the church that we sing during the Eucharistic liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”
The catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer specifically affirms that God’s activity is not limited to the seven traditional sacramental rites as defined by the church. In response to the question, “Is God’s activity limited to these rites?”, the Catechism’s answer is, “God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us” (BCP 861).
So we’re in full agreement with Mayer when he says in the concluding verses to his song,
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
So, from this perspective, we can read something like the Song of Solomon, a love poem that doesn’t specifically mention God, just as it is and still call it holy, without needing to spiritualize it or read into it a metaphor about the “marriage” between God and God’s people.
What things are sacraments and testaments to you in the big wide world out there? Outside of this building, where does God speak to you? What things have you experienced in life that made you want to bow your head in reverence? What are the songs or poems that you would include in your own personal “Bible” of readings that are sacred to you? This week, I invite you to notice the ways that God is present in the world around you and give thanks for them, whether they are traditional places where you expect to meet God or not. It’s all about paying attention, one of the great spiritual disciplines, and as you do so, remember the words of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expressed her own incarnational theology this way:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Romans 7:15-25a
You may have noticed that we read a canticle instead of a psalm as one of the readings today. The word “canticle” comes from the Latin word for “song,” and means just that, a song. The canticles that we say or sing during Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and sometimes in the Sunday lectionary are songs from parts of the Bible other than the book of psalms.
Today’s canticle comes from the book of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, as you may have heard it called. Since we don’t often read from the Song of Solomon in our Sunday lectionary, the only place many of us hear it read is at weddings, which is certainly an appropriate place for it, since the whole book is an extended love poem between two lovers.
The Song of Solomon is one of only two books in the Bible where God is not mentioned. This fact, and the fact that its sole focus is romantic, erotic love, has led to much controversy over its inclusion in the Bible. Why is this book, which is focused exclusively on physical, earthly love and does not mention God, considered one of our sacred texts?
From a very early time, both Jewish and Christian readers of this book have argued that the text is meant to be read allegorical or metaphorically, where the two lovers in the poem are not two human beings in love, but either God and the Jewish people, or Christ and the church. When the speaker talks about “my beloved,” she is not speaking of a literal man, but of God or Christ. The message they then glean from this book is that we should direct the passions we feel for love from other people toward God, that only God can truly fulfill the desires for intimacy that we often look to be filled from our human relationships.
This interpretation is not out of keeping with other parts of the scriptures, where God’s relationship with the people of Israel is described using the metaphor of a marriage or romantic relationship, particularly the Hebrew prophets. But the thing that has made some readers of the text skeptical about that interpretation is the fact that the Song of Solomon does not clearly make that comparison, unlike other books of the Hebrew Bible that do. The book of Hosea, for example, makes a very clear and explicit comparison between an unfaithful wife and the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in their relationship to God. If you actually read the text of the Song of Solomon carefully, though, it never claims to be about God or anybody’s relationship with God, but about romantic love between two people. And for some reason, both the Jewish and Christian traditions have insisted that it must be about more than just that for it to be considered sacred.
But why must it? Why can’t we accept that this book is simply a love poem celebrating the beauty of romantic love, and that in and of itself makes it holy? As we reflected on this passage earlier this week in our Tuesday morning Bible study, someone in the group observed that even if this passage does not talk about God specifically, it is very “God-like.” They were recognizing a certain sacred quality to the text that is there even if the word “God” is not specifically mentioned, and we talked about how all kinds of things can be sacred or holy even if they do not explicitly have to do with God or church. In this conversation, perhaps without knowing it, the group was exploring the realm of incarnational theology.
What do I mean by that? Well, the school of thought known as “incarnational theology” affirms the goodness of the material world and all things in it as mediators of God’s presence to us. In contrast to a dualistic theology that sees “the material” as bad and “the spiritual” as good and the two in competition and conflict with one another, incarnational theology affirms that this world, this material place of physical stuff, is good and holy, and that we can find the spiritual in and through the material. It is called “incarnational theology” because it affirms that the material world is good because of the incarnation – God’s choice to become human in Jesus Christ and experience this physical world is seen as an affirmation of the inherent goodness in this world. Incarnational theology also affirms that the incarnation was more than just God’s presence coming to dwell in the person of Jesus Christ – through the mystery of the incarnation, the whole world is infused with the presence of God, and all creation is sacred.
Although this view has always been the view of the Eastern Orthodox churches, Western Christianity, in both Roman Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to see “the world” as something negative or even evil, something Christians should try to avoid at all costs. We see this kind of thinking in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and today’s passage from Romans is a perfect example. In this passage, Paul writes about his struggles to do what is right, and says that it is his body, his flesh, the things of this material world, that prevent him from achieving his spiritual goals. Rather than seeing his body as a gift from God to be celebrated and appreciated, Paul calls it a “body of death”! What a contrast to the joyful celebration of the body that we find in the Song of Solomon, where every aspect of the beloved’s body is described in loving detail, with rich metaphors to the beauties of nature.
This notion of a division between the material and spiritual worlds can be found even in the meaning of the word “holy” in the Hebrew language. While the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the English word “holy” as “having to do with a god or religion” or “religiously and morally good,” the Hebrew definition of the word “holy” means “set apart,” something that is separate and distinguished from regular, ordinary, mundane or “secular” life. In churches that have a high view of the sacraments, as the Episcopal Church does, we tend to think in terms of that Hebrew definition of holiness. Holy water is holy because it is different from other kinds of water, and because a priest or bishop has said a blessing over it to “set it apart” for sacramental use. The bread and wine become holy after the Eucharistic prayer has been said over them and afterwards they are “set apart” from regular bread and wine and treated differently, with more reverence, than regular food. But in terms of our common usage of the word “holy,” we tend to think more in terms of the modern English definition, as something religiously or morally good, something that connects us to God in some way. In that sense, was the bread and wine not already holy in some way before we said the prayers over them? Isn’t all water in some sense holy? Incarnational theology invites us to see sacraments not only in the seven traditional forms that the church has given to us, but everywhere around us, in the most mundane and secular parts of our lives, even in the places where God is not mentioned.
There is a song by folk singer Peter Mayer that illustrates this notion perfectly, and since poetry is so often better than prose at communicating an idea, let me share the lyrics of that song with you. It goes like this:
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
And he would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
And Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
Miracles don't happen still
But now I can't keep track
'Cause everything's a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn't one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Peter Mayer was raised Catholic and eventually left the church, so in his assertion that “everything is holy now,” by “now,” he means since he left the Catholic Church and came to a broader understanding of how and where God acts and is present in the world. But he didn’t need to have left the church to come to that realization. Within Christian theology, there is strong support for just the sentiments that Mayer expresses in this song – that “everything is holy,” that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, or, as we say each week in the sanctus, the great song of the church that we sing during the Eucharistic liturgy, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory!”
The catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer specifically affirms that God’s activity is not limited to the seven traditional sacramental rites as defined by the church. In response to the question, “Is God’s activity limited to these rites?”, the Catechism’s answer is, “God does not limit himself to these rites; they are patterns of countless ways by which God uses material things to reach out to us” (BCP 861).
So we’re in full agreement with Mayer when he says in the concluding verses to his song,
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
And singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
So, from this perspective, we can read something like the Song of Solomon, a love poem that doesn’t specifically mention God, just as it is and still call it holy, without needing to spiritualize it or read into it a metaphor about the “marriage” between God and God’s people.
What things are sacraments and testaments to you in the big wide world out there? Outside of this building, where does God speak to you? What things have you experienced in life that made you want to bow your head in reverence? What are the songs or poems that you would include in your own personal “Bible” of readings that are sacred to you? This week, I invite you to notice the ways that God is present in the world around you and give thanks for them, whether they are traditional places where you expect to meet God or not. It’s all about paying attention, one of the great spiritual disciplines, and as you do so, remember the words of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expressed her own incarnational theology this way:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Always be ready to make your defense for the hope that is in you...
Sermon delivered Sunday, May 25, 2014 (at the 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. services; bishop's annual visitation at 8:45 and 11:00 meant the bishop was preaching) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN
6th Sunday of Easter, Year A
(Acts 17:22-31, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21)
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)
This line from our reading from 1 Peter today is one of my favorite scriptures on the topic of evangelism.
Now, I know that the subject of evangelism can make some of us in the Episcopal Church uncomfortable – we tend to associate evangelism with the street corner preacher telling everyone to “repent or perish,” with people who bring a message of “I’m right and you’re wrong.” We tend to think that evangelism is synonymous with that triumphalist message that Ann was talking about in her sermon last week – a message that says Christians have the market cornered on knowledge of God and everyone else is damned.
Many of us who are not cradle Episcopalians chose this church because we liked the fact that it is not about using the Bible as a weapon and shoving our faith down other people’s throats, so whenever the topic of evangelism comes up, we get a little squirmy. Maybe we thought we left that behind with those “other” churches. But evangelism doesn’t have to be synonymous with those negative images. Evangelism simply means sharing the good news – the good news of Jesus’s resurrection and the content of his teachings. Evangelism is about bringing a positive message, a liberating message, a message of love and reconciliation. Evangelism is about sharing with others the reason for the hope that is in us, as 1 Peter says.
Many Episcopalians think about sharing their faith through their actions rather than through words. We certainly don’t want to be the street corner preacher, and we don’t want to push our faith on anyone else, so we figure we’ll just share our faith by example through the good deeds we do in the world. I’ve heard many people within the Episcopal Church – myself included! – reference St. Francis of Assisi’s famous statement on evangelism to describe their approach: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” While there is deep wisdom in that statement about allowing our lives to be our testimonies, sometimes we hear that statement as an excuse never to use words. Instead of “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words,” we hear it as, “Preach the Gospel at all times; it’s not necessary to use words.” But that’s not what St. Francis was saying. It is necessary to use words sometimes. We lose something when, in our desire to not be like those overbearing street preachers, we go to the opposite extreme of never talking about our faith to others. For one thing, we cede the market to the street corner preachers because theirs are the only voices being heard. Our voices are silenced because we’re so focused on feeding the hungry and working for justice that we forget to talk about why we’re feeing the hungry and working for justice – what the faith is that motivates us to do this work.
If we don’t talk about why we’re living our lives the way we are, we really are not distinguishable from any number of other people who may be doing similar things. People of many other faiths and none can and do feed the hungry and work for justice – so those things do not make us unique as Christians, nor are they the definition of what it means to be Christian. What defines us as Christians is our faith in Jesus, and our commitment to follow him as our Lord. Yes, that commitment is fleshed out by the way we live our lives, but our actions in and of themselves cannot express the specific words of our faith. Our actions, by themselves, cannot literally say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We must use words to do that. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP 305) – notice that it says “by word and example” – not just “by example.”
We are reminded of this call to use words to share the content of our faith especially during this Easter season when we recall how the church spread throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century – all through people speaking to others about their faith, sharing the news of Jesus’s resurrection. The tradition of reading through the book of Acts during Easter season reminds us of the evangelism of the early church and how they spread the faith throughout their entire known world.
In today’s reading from Acts, we have Paul’s famous speech to the Athenians, persuading them of the truth of the Christian message and inviting them to join the church. This speech has long been considered a model evangelism speech, because Paul meets the people where they are, acknowledging the truth in their own tradition, quoting some of their own poets, and working to rationally persuade them of the truth of his faith. While Paul certainly had his share of arrogance and triumphalism, tending to think his way was the only right way – whether he was persecuting the church or advocating for it – in this passage we see Paul at least willing to concede that others might have had some glimpse of the truth before Paul came on the scene, and presenting his argument in a way that is framed as good news – “I come to bring you more full knowledge of something that you yourselves have said you do not fully know.”
But even though Paul’s speech has been held up as a model for evangelism, I still prefer the approach in 1 Peter. “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16) The assumption behind this statement is that we are always ready to explain our faith to others, but in general, we wait for them to ask. And, it also assumes that they’re asking because of the way we’re living, because of something about us that is different, because of something they see in us that they wish they had. The impetus behind us sharing our faith comes not from our desire to “fix” others, but from others’ curiosity at how we can live our lives with such hope and faith.
Although Paul was a wonderful wordsmith, even he recognized that all the words in the world are worthless if they are not backed up by actions. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” he says in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:1). And Jesus says in our Gospel today that if we love him, we will keep his commandments (John 14:15). In another passage, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Words by themselves are not enough, just as actions by themselves are not enough. The way I read this statement from 1 Peter, we have to be truly “walking the walk” in order to earn the privilege of speaking about our faith. To me, this seems like a good recipe for ensuring a healthy balance between evangelism by word and evangelism by example. If we want to speak about our faith to others, our lives have to be saying something loudly enough that someone asks for us to translate.
But it also requires that we have done the intentional work of thinking about why we have faith, why we have hope – so that when someone asks us, we have an answer ready. Just because our usual modus operandi is to share our faith through our actions rather than through our words doesn’t mean that we therefore have no words to explain why we do what we do. When someone asks us about our faith, we should be ready to explain it to them. And we should be living in such a way that compels people to ask.
So what is the hope that is in you? What would you say if someone asked you how you can believe in God, about why Jesus is so important to you, about how you can live with faith and hope? Are you ready to give an account for the hope that is in you?
If you feel like you’re not sure what you’d say, or worry that you aren’t the most eloquent speaker in the world, remember that many of our biblical leaders felt the same way. Jesus reassures the disciples that the Holy Spirit will be with them, to lead them into all truth and to give them the words to say. So when someone asks, take a deep breath, ask for guidance from the Spirit, and tell them about your faith.
6th Sunday of Easter, Year A
(Acts 17:22-31, 1 Peter 3:13-22, John 14:15-21)
“Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)
This line from our reading from 1 Peter today is one of my favorite scriptures on the topic of evangelism.
Now, I know that the subject of evangelism can make some of us in the Episcopal Church uncomfortable – we tend to associate evangelism with the street corner preacher telling everyone to “repent or perish,” with people who bring a message of “I’m right and you’re wrong.” We tend to think that evangelism is synonymous with that triumphalist message that Ann was talking about in her sermon last week – a message that says Christians have the market cornered on knowledge of God and everyone else is damned.
Many of us who are not cradle Episcopalians chose this church because we liked the fact that it is not about using the Bible as a weapon and shoving our faith down other people’s throats, so whenever the topic of evangelism comes up, we get a little squirmy. Maybe we thought we left that behind with those “other” churches. But evangelism doesn’t have to be synonymous with those negative images. Evangelism simply means sharing the good news – the good news of Jesus’s resurrection and the content of his teachings. Evangelism is about bringing a positive message, a liberating message, a message of love and reconciliation. Evangelism is about sharing with others the reason for the hope that is in us, as 1 Peter says.
Many Episcopalians think about sharing their faith through their actions rather than through words. We certainly don’t want to be the street corner preacher, and we don’t want to push our faith on anyone else, so we figure we’ll just share our faith by example through the good deeds we do in the world. I’ve heard many people within the Episcopal Church – myself included! – reference St. Francis of Assisi’s famous statement on evangelism to describe their approach: “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.” While there is deep wisdom in that statement about allowing our lives to be our testimonies, sometimes we hear that statement as an excuse never to use words. Instead of “Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words,” we hear it as, “Preach the Gospel at all times; it’s not necessary to use words.” But that’s not what St. Francis was saying. It is necessary to use words sometimes. We lose something when, in our desire to not be like those overbearing street preachers, we go to the opposite extreme of never talking about our faith to others. For one thing, we cede the market to the street corner preachers because theirs are the only voices being heard. Our voices are silenced because we’re so focused on feeding the hungry and working for justice that we forget to talk about why we’re feeing the hungry and working for justice – what the faith is that motivates us to do this work.
If we don’t talk about why we’re living our lives the way we are, we really are not distinguishable from any number of other people who may be doing similar things. People of many other faiths and none can and do feed the hungry and work for justice – so those things do not make us unique as Christians, nor are they the definition of what it means to be Christian. What defines us as Christians is our faith in Jesus, and our commitment to follow him as our Lord. Yes, that commitment is fleshed out by the way we live our lives, but our actions in and of themselves cannot express the specific words of our faith. Our actions, by themselves, cannot literally say, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” We must use words to do that. In our baptismal covenant, we promise to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (BCP 305) – notice that it says “by word and example” – not just “by example.”
We are reminded of this call to use words to share the content of our faith especially during this Easter season when we recall how the church spread throughout the Mediterranean world in the first century – all through people speaking to others about their faith, sharing the news of Jesus’s resurrection. The tradition of reading through the book of Acts during Easter season reminds us of the evangelism of the early church and how they spread the faith throughout their entire known world.
In today’s reading from Acts, we have Paul’s famous speech to the Athenians, persuading them of the truth of the Christian message and inviting them to join the church. This speech has long been considered a model evangelism speech, because Paul meets the people where they are, acknowledging the truth in their own tradition, quoting some of their own poets, and working to rationally persuade them of the truth of his faith. While Paul certainly had his share of arrogance and triumphalism, tending to think his way was the only right way – whether he was persecuting the church or advocating for it – in this passage we see Paul at least willing to concede that others might have had some glimpse of the truth before Paul came on the scene, and presenting his argument in a way that is framed as good news – “I come to bring you more full knowledge of something that you yourselves have said you do not fully know.”
But even though Paul’s speech has been held up as a model for evangelism, I still prefer the approach in 1 Peter. “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” (1 Peter 3:15-16) The assumption behind this statement is that we are always ready to explain our faith to others, but in general, we wait for them to ask. And, it also assumes that they’re asking because of the way we’re living, because of something about us that is different, because of something they see in us that they wish they had. The impetus behind us sharing our faith comes not from our desire to “fix” others, but from others’ curiosity at how we can live our lives with such hope and faith.
Although Paul was a wonderful wordsmith, even he recognized that all the words in the world are worthless if they are not backed up by actions. “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal,” he says in 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 13:1). And Jesus says in our Gospel today that if we love him, we will keep his commandments (John 14:15). In another passage, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). Words by themselves are not enough, just as actions by themselves are not enough. The way I read this statement from 1 Peter, we have to be truly “walking the walk” in order to earn the privilege of speaking about our faith. To me, this seems like a good recipe for ensuring a healthy balance between evangelism by word and evangelism by example. If we want to speak about our faith to others, our lives have to be saying something loudly enough that someone asks for us to translate.
But it also requires that we have done the intentional work of thinking about why we have faith, why we have hope – so that when someone asks us, we have an answer ready. Just because our usual modus operandi is to share our faith through our actions rather than through our words doesn’t mean that we therefore have no words to explain why we do what we do. When someone asks us about our faith, we should be ready to explain it to them. And we should be living in such a way that compels people to ask.
So what is the hope that is in you? What would you say if someone asked you how you can believe in God, about why Jesus is so important to you, about how you can live with faith and hope? Are you ready to give an account for the hope that is in you?
If you feel like you’re not sure what you’d say, or worry that you aren’t the most eloquent speaker in the world, remember that many of our biblical leaders felt the same way. Jesus reassures the disciples that the Holy Spirit will be with them, to lead them into all truth and to give them the words to say. So when someone asks, take a deep breath, ask for guidance from the Spirit, and tell them about your faith.
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