A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church Bantam, Connecticut, on August 29, 2004
Notice sometime how many books on the best-seller list have to do with food – whole major sections of bookstores about food – and the Bible. Have you ever noticed? The Bible story begins with a forbidden meal and ends with an invitation to a feast in heaven. And in between a very large part of the five books of the law have to do with food: what you can eat and what you can’t eat and how to prepare it. The Gospel begins with John the Baptist who had a low carb diet: locusts and wild honey. How much time did Jesus spend sharing meals – with publicans and sinners, with crowds of thousands, with Mary and Martha, with the disciples at the Last Supper, with the disciples after his resurrection in the upper room and on the shore of Galilee?
But after all, what is more central to your waking hours except for breathing. We have to eat. So it’s a necessity, but it’s also a celebration. There’s hardly ever a wedding or birthday or anniversary or even a funeral without a meal. You can’t celebrate Thanksgiving Day or Christmas without a meal and probably not Easter or 4th of July. And families who don’t share meals probably don’t share much else either.
So we spend a lot of time with food and our problem is that evolution left us well-adapted to deal with famine but not with a MacDonalds on every corner. Our bodies are designed to store up energy in the form of fat and science hasn’t yet discovered a fool-proof way to help us cope with a society that only knows about famine by reading about it somewhere else. I read just recently that half of all adult Americans are overweight and the expectation is that in the next twenty years that will grow to 75%. All the concern for fitness and diet is not solving the problem.
So let me suggest you look to the Bible for help. Why not? There’s more about eating in the Bible than there is about sin, more about eating than love, and half as much about eating as there is even about God. So why not start with the Bible? Why not start with today’s readings which have a lot to say on the subject if you stop to look.
The Bible does have some answers when we’re thinking about food. And the first advice is to share. “Do not neglect to show hospitality,” says the second reading: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have . . .” And the Gospel gives very specific, practical advice: “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”
And don’t tell me you don’t know anyone who is poor, crippled, lame, or blind. You see them every night on the news, and some of them not that far away. And, you know, one reason Americans are eating too much is that we don’t share what we have. And not just with people elsewhere. More children in this country live in poverty than in any other developed country – one out of every five. But world-wide, do you know that 23 children die from hunger every minute of every day? In this country, the last survey I saw by the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that nearly 32 million Americans live in homes at risk of hunger, 2 million more than the year before.
There was a time when they thought that the world couldn’t feed any more people, but since then the world population has doubled and tripled, and the rich nations have more than is good for us and there is enough for all – if it’s shared. Thirty-six years ago, in 1974, world leaders at a World Food Summit committed themselves to end hunger in ten years. Thirty-six years ago. It was agreed that the means were available; only the will was lacking. So, in 1996, 22 years later, world leaders committed themselves to cutting hunger in half in twenty years – half as much in twice as long and six years to go to get there.
But why should our leaders push when we followers don’t care? Have you ever written your Congressional representatives on the subject? Have you asked what the candidates this year plan to do on the subject? Have you looked at web sites for the two parties to see what they say about food and hunger – or don’t say? I did, and I found it more interesting than I imagined.
The point is simple: where there is enough food for everyone and some have too much and some are starving, the obvious thing to do is share: contribute to the Episcopal Relief and Development Fund or any other, take part in a Crop Walk or sponsor someone in it, vote for candidates who understand the issue – if you can find one. And cut back on your own food intake so you can share more. Some people set an extra place at the table and put something into a box or jar at each meal to contribute. That’s one way of inviting the poor and hungry to your table; one very simple and practical way of sharing what we have. Keep using those ERD mite boxes.
Sharing does two things: it helps keep us from over-eating and it keeps others from dying. Jesus provides the solution in today’s gospel. That program has been in place for 2000 years. But sharing is more than just feeding others. Sharing is also about our own lives. Sharing food brings us together in all sorts of ways: as a family, as a congregation.
It’s no coincidence that what we do here in Sunday is share a meal. It’s what Jesus did so often with his disciples; not just at the Last Supper. And it’s not just about bringing us together with each other; it’s about uniting our lives with those of our Risen Lord. It’s his life we share in this meal, his life that renews and strengthens ours. Notice that we always bring to the altar not just bread and wine but food to share with others, that’s critically important: this meal is about sharing.
And maybe it’s also not surprising that the food we share here comes in very small portions. When my wife and I go out to eat we almost always come home with enough for another meal. But not here. Here, one small piece of bread, one sip of wine, is food enough to renew us and strengthen us. That probably won’t do for your evening meal but it is, I think, a reminder that we don’t need to stuff ourselves to have enough. This simple sharing unites us and renews us and there’s more than enough for all. Compare serving sizes here and at your favorite restaurant and your own table and think about it. What is it telling us? How much do we really need?
Let me point out quickly that all three readings today deal with food issues. In the Old Testament reading God says: “I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things.” God provides more than enough. In the second reading we are told what to do with it: to show hospitality to strangers. Share with others. In the Gospel, Jesus tells us very specifically what to do and this central act of worship provides the example. What is it all about? Unity, first of all: sharing our lives with others, God sharing life with us. Second, it’s about renewal. We eat to live, we eat to renew our strength. But we need more than vitamins and minerals. Jesus said, “We do not live by bread alone but by the word of God.” So here, as in every meal, we are renewed inwardly and outwardly.
One of the great tragedies of Christian history is that this meal was so misunderstood that some churches gave it up almost entirely. Still today there are churches where it is seldom provided. But we need more than sermons and hymns; just as we need more from our parents than good advice. We need to share food. We need the Eucharist. We need it for unity, we need it for renewal, and we need it for joy.
The prophets and the Book of Revelation both describe heaven as the sharing of a great feast. How could it not be? It’s the joy of coming home at last, the joy of being loved completely and powerfully, the joy of being united with God and all God’s saints. the joy of victory. And what we do today is a foretaste of all that, a reminder of what will be and what could be now if we only learn to do better such a simple, instinctive thing: share – share what we have with others who are still in need.
A sermon preached at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut, on August 22, 2010, by Christopher L. Webber
Last weekend we were having a mini family reunion, the kind of occasion when stories get told, and my wife likes to tell the story of how her father, as a little boy growing up on a Connecticut farm, went for a walk with his brothers one Sunday afternoon and came to a stream with trout. My father-in-law’s older brother spotted a very big trout and got down beside the pool and reached in and tickled the trout and caught it and brought it home only to be whipped by his mother for violating the Sabbath. Times have changed.
Yes, times have changed, but the Bible has not changed. It still calls for keeping holy the Sabbath Day. It seemed obvious to people a hundred years ago that keeping the Sabbath holy meant not catching trout. I had a friend in college who was a Southern Baptist and who wouldn’t study on Sunday even for a Monday test. But he was from Texas and I doubt even in Texas today there are many people who see it that way. Certainly in this part of the country it seems obvious to most Christians today that about all the Sabbath requires of us is attendance at church when it’s convenient.
But the law is still the same. It’s the same law that led people in Jesus’ day to think that even healing was wrong on the Sabbath Day. When Jesus challenged that law, as he did in the gospel story we read today, some were indignant and some decided he was evil and deserved to die.
Now, the question of the Sabbath is part of a much larger question: What is God’s will for us and how do we know it? We have a book called the Bible and we have laws such as the Ten Commandments. Wouldn’t you think that having everything written down in a book and summed up in Ten brief commandments would make it perfectly clear what we should do? Why should there be a problem?
Well, but there is a problem and I think we are all too likely to pretend there isn’t. Life is simpler if we just don’t worry about it; do what we want on Sunday, take God’s Name in vain, covet whatever is trendy, and worship God when convenient. It’s called “The Reader’s Digest Version” of the Ten Commandments or, sometimes, the Ten Suggestions, and however convenient it may be, I’m not convinced it will do the job. At the last judgment, I’m not sure God will ask, “Did you serve me when it was convenient?” I’m not sure God will compliment us for being usually nice to people who were nice to us. I think, in fact, that the law is not a maximum standard that most people can’t be expected to honor. I think in fact it’s more like a minimum, s starting point, a guideline that points us in the right direction and expects us to move far beyond simply not working on the Sabbath and merely not stealing, not blaspheming, not committing adultery – to move toward a holiness of life that completely transforms our use of time, our use of possessions, and all our relationships with God and our neighbor.
Look again at Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel reading. His opponents have some very good points. It’s clear that you should rest on the Sabbath. It’s clear that healing is work; ask any doctor or nurse. It’s clear that a condition of eighteen years standing could perfectly well wait one more day. How can you argue with that? If you begin to make excuses for breaking the law, where will it end? Next thing you know there will be malls open on Sunday and Little League games, and you’ll have to have services Saturday evening because people will be just too busy on Sunday even for a one hour service.
Jesus doesn’t seem to care. He seems to feel that a day set aside to honor God is dishonored by even one more day of needless suffering. “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?” So it’s not the letter of the law that matters but the spirit behind the law.
A few years ago, I was compiling a book about significant American Christians and I read a lot of 18th and 19th century history. I came on a man called Samuel Hopkins who was born in Waterbury in 1721 and ordained in the Congregational Church in Great Barrington in 1743. When the Revolution came along, he was for it, but he began to wonder how he could defend a battle for human freedom in a country that recognized human slavery. He became the first abolitionist in New England and aroused a good deal of opposition from good Christians who owned slaves. They said, Look at the Bible: it recognizes slavery implicitly and explicitly, the Jewish people had slaves, Christ never condemned it, it was simply part of the social order and now, they said, it’s actually good for the African people because it gives them access to the Bible and the Christian faith. In response, Hopkins said, all that may be true, but the spirit of the Bible favors liberty and the spirit is what matters. And so it is.
So it is. But that makes our lives more complicated because it requires us to enter far more deeply into the spirit of the Bible; not to stop with a simple, “It says here” but to ask why it says it and what it means by saying it and how people would have understood it then and how its meaning may be changed in times like ours. “The Bible says” is not an answer but a question and it requires us to search and ponder and argue and reconsider and weigh our judgments against those of others and then in fear and trembling, in patience and charity, attempt to live by the guidance the Spirit gives us, not condemning others who see it differently, but reaching out always in a spirit of love to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
I think today’s gospel asks us to do some hard thinking about some basic aspects of American life. Is it possible, for example, to keep the Fourth Commandment in today’s world? If you are on the staff at Geer, if you work in the kitchen there or serve as a nurses’ aid, and it’s your turn to work on Sunday, that’s surely in the spirit of Jesus’ teaching. But do you then find Sabbath time elsewhere in the week? Do you keep the spirit of the law by finding time for rest and time to honor God?
The Sabbath is for us also; we need times of rest and times of worship. It would take an extra bit of planning to find that time if we work on Sunday, but it’s not impossible. Not impossible, but a faithful Christian needs to do that planning for his or her own sake as well as God’s. And, of course, all this applies very much to the whole debate about sexuality. Just as 18th ands 19th century Christians found texts to justify slavery, so 20th and 21st century Christians can find texts to condemn same sex relationships. But is that the last word on the subject or does the spirit behind those texts lead us on to look at things now in a different light? There are some who think the answers are simple and maybe they are, but there are enough deeply committed Christians on both sides of the issue so that no one can simply condemn those who disagree or read them out of the church. I can understand why people have real trouble coming to grips with this issue or understanding the other side, but I can’t understand those who simply condemn and who would rather divide the church than find ways to live together with others who are sincerely seeking to find God’s will for God’s church in a new world and new circumstances.
It seemed obvious to Jesus’ opponents that he was tearing down important Biblical guidelines, but they were wrong. At least, as a follower of that same Jesus, I have to side with him. It seemed obvious to lots of people in 18th century America that Samuel Hopkins was tearing down an ancient and accepted institution which the Bible accepted. But they were wrong. Not many today would rally to the defense of human slavery or cite the Bible in its defense. And that perspective requires us, it seems to me, to be more open to new ideas, less quick to condemn, more patient, more careful in our approach to issues. We could be wrong. I could be wrong. And if that’s true, I need to work much harder than I usually do to understand, to question what everyone else accepts, to seek God’s will more deeply, to spend more time in prayer, to ask God’s help in being more patient, more loving, more like Jesus. I do not want to find either now or at the end that I have been on one side and Jesus on the other.
August 22nd, 2010 in
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A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber on August 15, 2010, at St, Barbara’s Church, Newcomb, New York, and St. Christopher’s Church, North Creek, New York.
TEXT: Do you think that I have come to bring peace to earth? No, I tell you but rather division. From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and twom against three; they will be divided father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. St. Luke 12:51-53
There’s an old story of the nineteenth century evangelist who was upset by the new top-knot fashion in women’s hair and went around preaching sermons on the text, “Top-knot, come down.” Finally someone asked him where to find that text in the Bible and he told them it was Mark 13: 15, which, when they looked it up, said “In that day, let him that is on the housetop not come down into the house.”
I’ve told that story more than once because it’s the perfect illustration of the problem of taking a text out of context. So take this morning’s words in the Gospel:
“Jesus said, Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, 1tell you, but rather division. From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
So now, if we are being faithful, we need divided families; right? And if your family isn’t divided that way, maybe it’s evidence that God is not at work in your family? And how does all this fit with last week’s gospel: “Do not fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom . . .”
So God will give us the kingdom and divide our families? Is that good news? And then why did Jesus say, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.” And why did St. Paul write, “Be at peace among yourselves?” (I Thess. 5:13) If today Jesus says he came to bring division, not peace, why did the angels proclaim peace to all at his birth and why did he tell the disciples that peace was his parting gift?
Thomas Jefferson, you know, went through the Bible and chose the passages he liked and cut the rest and produced a Bible with no problems. It’s very tempting to do that: to read only our favorite passage and skip the parts we don’t understand or don’t like. And I would certainly skip this. But Luke gives us a picture of Jesus moving slowly toward Jerusalem preaching a gospel of peace and well aware that the very attractiveness of that gospel was leading some to conspire against him. The bigger the crowds he drew, the more threatening his presence was to others. The more people listened to his words of peace, the more likely it was that there would be conflict. The awareness of that danger had led his own mother and brothers and sisters
to try to get him to stop and led him to say, in effect, that they were no longer his family. The peace he proclaimed divided his own family and certainly divided others. What did James and John’s parents think when their sons put down the nets and went off following this new preacher? What happened when Jesus sat down to speak of peace in the home of Mary and Martha and one listened and the other complained?
There was a message of peace and that message produced conflict. Jesus was well aware of that and had to be honest enough to tell his disciples, “I’m bringing division, not peace.” And how realistic would we be, then, if we were to proclaim a gospel without problems and without conflict?
Newspaper reports on the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion these days tend to focus on the conflict over homosexuality and the deep divisions among us on that issue. But suppose you brought together a cross section of Americans – two or three million Americans - and found no differences of opinion. Suppose Anglican bishops came together from Texas and Massachusetts and Albany and California and Rwanda and the Middle East and found themselves in perfect agreement on everything. Wouldn’t you wonder what they’d been smoking? They say that the first world-wide conference of bishops at Nicaea in 325 a.d. that produced the Creed we’ll be saying in a few minutes came to a point where they literally threw bricks at each other and that was in the good old days when the church was still young and filled with the Spirit and deeply faithful. Why should it be different now?
Maybe it’s a sign of unfaithfulness and lack of concern when we have a conference and come away saying that everything’s fine and we all love each other. Maybe we’d do better If we oared more. Maybe we’re not divided enough.
Jesus was heading for Jerusalem. He could have stayed in Galilee and tried to avoid crowds and conflict but he headed straight for .Jerusalem and he knew what the consequences would be and he tried to prepare the disciples for it. Faithfulness meant death. But that faithfulness would also bring peace and unity beyond what any avoiding of conflict could ever have done.
What except the gospel could possibly bring Anglican representatives of every race and many nations to sit down together seeking solutions, seeking understanding, with so little selfishness involved? At the so-called United Nations the bottom line is always, “What’s in it for us?” When the United States fails to pay its dues to the United Nations it’s because some members of Congress don’t see what we get out of it but this church and every church worthy of the name sends money off to help others we will never meet or see
and who can never possibly help us except by their prayers.
Because Jesus faced the conflict and died for us there is a world-wide church working and praying for a peace beyond what the United Nations will ever be able to create. And it may well be because of that church and those prayers that the world has somehow not destroyed itself over the last sixty years.
What could have been harder for Jesus to face than the dividing of his own family? But his goal was far greater and could endure the immediate division for the sake of the greater peace. And I would imagine that every one of us faces that same conflict in some form or other sooner or later If we live with others in a household, we won’t all have the same agenda and there will be times when our sense of faithfulness will cause conflict “How come you have to go to that service, that meeting? Seems like you care more about that church of yours than about me or the rest of us.” There will be times when someone we care about is going to want to read the paper or play golf rather than go with us. And it may be that only by facing and accepting that conflict will we be able to keep the greater unity and peace
I’ve always liked the blunt realism with which Saint Paul wrote to the Romans: “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” If it is possible . . .” “So far as it depends on you . . .” There will be times when it isn’t possible and there’s nothing we can do except remain faithful and say our prayers and do what God calls us to do. And it may cause conflict and that may have to be faced. But the peace we might gain by avoiding the issue is no real peace and will rob us of the strength and inner peace we need to overcome the immediate conflict and receive the gift of God’s peace.
Last week we came to church and heard reassurance: “Do not fear not . . .” This week it’s the same message in a different form: There will be conflict; we can’t change the world without making a difference and an unchanged world is bad news for everyone. So, yes, there will be conflict. There’s no way to the kingdom except by the cross. But we know it’s the way to the kingdom, the way we need to go, the way to get where God wants us to be because Jesus faced it and overcame it and brought us the peace that not only lies ahead but is here already in our hearts.
August 15th, 2010 in
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A sermon preached at St Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut on August 8, 2010, by the Rev. Christopher L. Webber.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” St. Luke 12:32
it seems to me in the nature of things that sermons are designed to make you worry.
The preacher’s professional responsibility, I sometimes think, is to make people worry. Either there is something you’re supposed to learn or something we’re supposed to do or maybe other people we should worry about because they aren’t up to snuff or need converting or something. So the sermon gets us to worry about it.
I guess it goes with the territory. All this last month, we’ve been reading passages that set standards and point directions: “Love God,” “Listen to God’s word,” “Don’t set your mind on wealth” – – that kind of thing: things to worry about.
So it’s nice to come to church in the middle of August and hear a gospel that says, “Don’t worry.” The Gospel said, “Don’t be afraid, little flock…” but right there is one of the things we worry about: we are a little flock. 25 or 30 people on a typical Sunday is not much more than one Bantamite in a hundred. And just to keep the church doors open takes a certain number of committed people, and generally just a few more than seem to be on hand.
So we do worry. We’d like a bigger flock. Even on a national basis, two or three million Episcopalians in a population of over 300 million is not good odds. And worldwide, 70 or 80 million Anglicans in a population of several billion is even worse. But even if you take the biggest church, the Roman Catholic, maybe one third of the world’s Christians and easily a third of the population of Connecticut – with all those people they don’t have enough priests to hold services in many of their churches nor can they avoid really serious divisions over the direction the church should go. They have lots of numbers but still lots of problems. Even if you take the whole Christian population of the world, maybe one third of the world’s population, that sounds good until you realize that a lot of them are not really involved or committed and those that are are badly divided, even hostile to each other.
So Christians are, and maybe always will be, a little flock: seldom overwhelming in numbers, divided, conflicted, and seldom seeming to have the resources or manpower needed, and yet here is Jesus saying, “Don’t worry.”
It’s not surprising actually that Jesus would need to say this. Jews had been worried about numbers for centuries before Jesus came. Way back in the Book of Deuteronomy we find Moses saying, “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.” There is a feeling of smallness and inadequacy right from the beginning, but always the reassurance that God does not save by numbers. So relax; God promises that we will always have the resources we need. Not the resources we might like to have or the resources that would make us feel confident about doing the job. But enough. And it always has been enough. That’s why we’re here.
They say that God made the universe – – the sun and stars and planets beyond any counting – – out of a tiny ball of matter which exploded out into everything that exists, and here is this tiny earth floating along in infinite space, a mere grain of dust in the expanse of the universe, but big enough, big enough for God’s purpose. Don’t be afraid. It’s enough.
We have a way of borrowing trouble, fearing possibilities rather than realities, and it’s probably part of the human tendency to want to be independent and self-sufficient and in charge of our lives. But we’re not. We are not any of those things. We are not in charge. Neither Barack Obama nor Bill Gates is wise enough or smart enough or rich enough or powerful enough to control events, much as they might like to, nor are we. But we keep trying and keep scaring ourselves to death at the thought that the situation is not really under control. But you know, what’s scary is not the situation but our presumption. If we hadn’t been trying to go it alone, if we had accepted our status as totally dependent beings, we would have had nothing to worry about except the nature of the One who is in control. And the evidence of that is what the Bible is all about, what the Gospel is all about: that God is good and is in charge and loves us and can be relied on.
Don’t be afraid. that comes first, and why? Because “It is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” I wish all the worried people in the world could hear this, really hear it. You know, there are people out there with guns and dynamite who think God’s will depends on them. In the name of God they blow up federal buildings and abortion clinics and airplanes and villages because they don’t trust God, don’t believe God’s promise, or have never heard it. And so they create the violence that is absolutely opposite to all that God wills and promises. Does that make any sense at all?
God promises to give us the kingdom. It’s a gift; it would have to be. We ourselves can’t take it or make it. Human beings have been trying to do that now for thousands of years, trying to create the ideal society, and you see what we’ve got. And the societies that do best if you notice, are the ones that are so set up that it’s almost impossible for human beings to get anything done. Dictators can get the trains run on time, but not democracies. Dictatorships can reduce crime and produce unity, rallies of people all shouting the same thing, whether it’s “Heil Hitler” or “Down with the great Satan.” Some churches try just the same. The worst moments at the last Lambeth conference, from what I hear, came when some bishops tried to coerce other bishops, tried to coerce rather than understand, tried to enforce their vision of things rather than wait for God’s vision. So we need to hear this Gospel and live by it.
Of course, that’s the part where we begin to worry: “What do I have to do?” “When do I have to do it?” Again, there are churches with answers. I was talking about that several weeks ago. Do you remember hearing about Pelagius and the idea that we can save ourselves? I was talking about churches that set rules to follow about doing this and not doing that, and they may all be good things but they don’t save us. God saves us. And see what Jesus tells his little flock to do? Wait. Just wait. Be like servants waiting for their master to come home. Yes, be on the lookout, stay awake and be alert, remember who you belong to and what you ought to be doing when he comes; don’t wander off and get so engrossed in your own concerns that you forget your primary allegiance. But basically, have an attitude of expectant waiting, joyful expectancy, because what’s going to happen? When the master comes, what will happen? Everyone will run around in a dither trying to meet all his demands? No, not at all. They will open the door and then, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.” Now isn’t that incredible! He will serve us!
It’s amazing, but that’s the promise: he will serve us. And it must be true because it’s happening already. Every day we wake up and find air to breathe and water to drink and the sun to warm us and it’s all free of charge, and when we come here to give thanks for all God’s gifts, what happens? God gives us still more: feeds us at God’s own table. And, you know, if we happened to whisper to others what kind of God we know and invited them to come and share the gifts instead of worrying so much, we might even become a slightly bigger whole flock.
SIN.
A sermon preached at St Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut, August 1, 2010, by Christopher L. Webber
Let’s talk about sin. You probably know the old story about Calvin Coolidge, President 85 years ago, who was asked one Sunday what the sermon had been about. “Sin,” said Coolidge, a man of few words. And what did the preacher say about it, he was asked. “He was against it,” said Coolidge.
Today I’m going to preach about sin, and I’m against it. Calvin Coolidge can go home now, but I think there’s more to be said. Maybe it’s useful from time to time to talk about sin and ask ourselves what we really mean y that word. I think maybe things were simpler in Coolidge’s day – or seemed to be. Back then it sometimes seemed that sin was all the church ever talked about and all Christians were supposed to worry about. Maybe we’ve gone too far the other way.
You can probably come here for weeks and never hear about sin and maybe that’s because there are Christians who think that sin is all God cares about and Episcopalians know better. We know God has a much bigger agenda and we also know or need to know that sin is more than sex, and more than lying and stealing. I think that one of the reasons we talk about sin less these days is because for centuries the church had such a narrow view of sin that the word itself became too narrow.
One of the things the church has come to realize in the last century or so is that some of the worst disobedience to God’s will isn’t that easy to spot, is often strangely impersonal – not a matter of direct personal action – but indirect and a lot more subtle. For example, if I reach into your pocket and take any money that’s in it, that’s stealing and we all know it. When someone like Bernie Madoff finagles the accounts so that thousands of people wind up without their jobs or their savings, that’s also not too hard to diagnose, but when major banks put their money into subprime mortgages and wind up needing to be bailed out with tax payers’ money while the bankers still get their million dollar bonuses why can’t we recognize that as theft and put the bankers in jail? More complex still, when Connecticut representatives in Congress knock themselves out to get the Defense Department to award helicopter and submarine contracts to local industry using tax payer money to create jobs here to build helicopters and submarines the army and navy may not even need: what is that? Or when WalMart creates a new store, putting local stores out of business and creating new jobs so poorly paid that those who work for them have to rely on food stamps which are paid for by my taxes – who is stealing what from whom? Sin is such a simple word, but the reality is far more complex than most of us usually realize. It’s not enough to say, “I’m against it.” It’s not even enough to identify culprits. We need also to find remedies and to remedy sin we need people who are deeply committed to loving God and loving their neighbor and who are willing to explore this complicated world of ours and try to see how best we can serve others and especially those in need.
Now, that’s all a background for what I really want to talk about today which is just plain, old-fashioned sin, the kind St. Paul is talking about in the second reading and that Jesus is talking about in the gospel and that Calvin Coolidge’s preacher was talking about: sins with the old fashioned names in the second reading like fornication and passion and greed. Paul is exhorting Christians to live like new people. “You have been baptized,” he points out, and therefore you are a part of the Body of Christ and you represent Christ in this world and therefore you can’t live like other people. You have to be different. You have to put to death, kill, wipe out, the things you see in yourself that are inconsistent with your faith. And we do. We have to change.
The Gospel, you see, is about change: it’s about reversing the world’s values. It’s about being different and making a difference. And where does Paul begin? Well, naturally, with sex. But here’s a funny thing:he begins with a list of five words: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, and if you look at it twice, it suddenly looks very strange. Fornication is pretty clear, but what is impurity as distinct from fornication and what is evil desire as distinct from either fornication or greed? And then notice that Paul follows up with another list of five completely different words: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language, which, again, isn’t a logical list. What’s the difference between anger and wrath, for example? And when would you use abusive language without anger? We stopped with verse eleven this morning, which is a shame, because verse twelve would have given us another list of five, but good words: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Three lists of five, and the experts tell us it’s no accident that each list has five words. They can tell you that ancient Persian documents have lists of five sins and it seems to have been a standard method of teaching to make lists of five. Well, obviously, you can tick them off on the fingers of one hand. If you found lists of six, you might imagine a society of six-fingered people. So it’s not that fornication and impurity are radically different ideas but just a way of stressing certain kinds of behavior and providing a handy way to remember.
Now, I don’t have time this morning for all the sins on the fingers of both hands so I want to simplify the whole thing by suggesting that this list of ten can be boiled down to three to make it possible to deal with it at least briefly. In the days when they really talked about sin, they used to preach for an hour. I get maybe fifteen minutes at the outside. So I want to boil Paul’s list of ten down to three categories: sexual sins and language sins and economic sins and let me skip over economic sins pretty quickly because I’ve already talked about stealing. Just notice one more thing: Paul says greed is idolatry. Greed creates a false god. Greed says there’s something material that I have to have: another serving of cholesterol, another technological gadget, another lottery ticket so I can dream about being a billionaire. Jesus said in the gospel today: “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” A contemporary version says: “Owning a lot of things doesn’t make your life safe.” Greed creates substitutes for God and there are none.
So let’s talk about sex: “fornication” is the word in today’s reading. Here’s the Shorter Oxford Dictionary definition. “Voluntary sexual intercourse between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. In Scripture, extended to include adultery.” (in other words, men and women married to someone else) Why should we not do that? Just because God says so? Well, that’s a good enough reason, but also because it destroys society. We need stable relationships to live together. We need to be able to rely on each other. Children need that, of course, but so do adults. We need to be faithful. God is faithful. God is a dependable God. God makes promises and keeps them. God has created a reliable universe in which water boils at 212 degrees and freezes at 32 and light travels at 186,000 miles a second and E=MC squared. If you drop a book it will fall, not float upwards. God created a universe as dependable as God is. We are called to be like God: to be faithful, reliable, dependable. That, by the way, is why divorce is so bad and why same sex relationships aren’t necessarily bad. Does it make sense to you that some Hollywood star can get married six times before breakfast and still claim all the benefits of the law while a same sex couple can live together faithfully for fifty years and get none of them? The Bible denounces unstable, unfaithful relationships for good reason. God is not like that. Sexual sins are sins because they fail to reflect a faithful God.
Two down, one to go. That leaves what I called “language sins:” anger and wrath and evil speaking. Lump them in with passion and evil desires. It’s about losing control, or maybe, more accurately, it’s about letting the devil control you rather than God. Passion, in this reading, is not the appropriate love two people may have for each other or the commitment you have to playing the violin or your desire for another ice cream sundae; it’s disordered affections, emotions out of control. It’s what lies behind fornication and wrath and evil speaking and all the rest. It’s the expression of someone whose life has no secure foundation: it’s the difference between a rock and a wave, between a cloudless day and a storm. And, again, the point is that we need lives built on God’s unchanging love.
Let me add just one more word about evil speaking. I could preach on that from now until New Year’s; maybe especially from now until Election Day. Yes, it’s all the slander and libel and twisting of words that’s a standard part of election campaigns; the half-truths, the character assassination. Don’t blame the politicians without also blaming everyone who falls for it. It’s our fault. We encourage them. But we also do it ourselves. Do we repeat rumors without checking? Do we say things about each other that are unkind or unfair? So why should we be surprised if our leaders are just like us?
And one word especially about blasphemy. The third commandment is still “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” You know, I don’t think we even hear it any more, don’t even notice, when people say “O my God” and they aren’t praying. But that’s blasphemy. It treats God irreverently. It suggests to others that we have no sense of awe and reverence in God’s presence. But I hear church members do it, I hear clergy do it, and worst of all, I hear children do it. How can a child grow up to reverence God when they have learned from grownups not to?
God is made known to us through the Word: the sacred Scripture is God’s word written. Jesus is God’s word in human flesh. Words matter. A society that has no respect for words, that uses language carelessly, will lose the ability to think and understand. It’s language that separates us from animals – or not. It’s language that unites us with God – or not. So language sins are serious business. Fornication, greed, evil speaking: this is sin. And, yes, I’m against it. I hope you are too.
Sin comes in many forms but it’s still out there and it needs to be recognized, diagnosed, dealt with. It’s pervasive. It infiltrates. It destroys. If you aren’t careful, if you don’t ask God’s help, It can destroy you. We need to know that. We Episcopalians may not talk about sin a lot but we do say a confession of sin every Sunday. We do ask and receive God’s forgiveness and we come to the altar as we need to do to be given new strength for the battle.
August 2nd, 2010 in
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God Has a Purpose: for Baruch, James, and You
A sermon preached at St. Paul’‘s Church, Bantam, Connecticut on the Festival of St. James the Apostle, July 25, 2010, by Christopher L. Webber, Vicar
If there are Sundays when the Old Testament is read and you find yourself thinking, “What was that all about?” I want you to know that there are days when I feel that way too. I spent five years in seminary and I’ve been ordained quite a while and I’ve been reading the Bible on an almost daily basis for a very long time, but when I first looked up the Old Testament reading for today I thought of changing my mind about marking St James Day after all.
I mean, we are free to celebrate the saints who fall on Sundays in Epiphany and Pentecost and I think by and large it’s a good idea. I’ve never forgotten the church school child who told me once, “Only Roman Catholics have saints.” Well, No! This, after all, is St. Paul’s Church and there’s St. Michael’s in Litchfield to the east and St. Andrew’s Marbledale to the west and St. John’s Washington to the south and there are Episcopal Churches in this diocese named for St. Francis, St. Alban, St. George, St Monica, St. Gabriel, and Bishop Seabury, among others. We don’t have a pope to tell us who’s a saint and who’s not; we have a General Convention to list Christians worth knowing from Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereshewsky to Enmegabowh and Kamehameha IV You can find most of them listed in the calendar in the front of your Prayer Book.
So here we are with St James – and an enigmatic passage from the prophet Jeremiah:
The word that the prophet Jeremiah spoke to Baruch son of Neriah, when he wrote these words in a scroll at the dictation of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah: Thus says the LORD . . .
I did some quick Bible study this week and I need to fill you in. Go back in your minds 2600 years . . . Or let me put it this way: God had been trying for centuries to get it across to the Chosen People that they had been called for a purpose and not for their own profit. The idea was not that they should have their own country and get rich but that they should keep the commandments and be an example and witness to the power and justice and love of God as they had experienced it themselves. But Jeremiah looked around as the prophets had been doing for two hundred years and he saw injustice and faithlessness and he saw inevitable judgment in consequence.
Jeremiah hated the job he had. Nobody likes to be negative all the time. But there were things that needed to be said and Jeremiah had to say them. And Jeremiah had a disciple named Baruch who was a scribe and who wrote down what Jeremiah said. And Baruch didn’t like his job either and I guess he had been complaining and so God gave Jeremiah a message for Baruch. “You say, ‘Woe is me; I am really tired of all this negativity.’ Well, listen up: God is on a mission to tear down and destroy and if you’re looking for some benefit for yourself, don’t bother. It’s not going to happen. The only good news is, you won’t get killed yourself.”
So that’s the history. Why do we get to read that on St James’ Day? Well the story of James comes in the second reading, from Acts, that tells us how James died. Herod was looking to score some points in the popularity polls and he found out he could push his ratings up by killing Christians so James became the first of the apostles to die as a martyr. So what we have here is a pair of readings, one from the Old Testament and one from the New that tell us something about the hazards of serving God. It was St. Teresa who said, “O God, if this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!” Maybe the empty pews on Sunday belong to people who figured that out!
The Gospel, the third reading, as it usually does, gives us the message in much simpler terms: Jesus is talking to the apostles: James and John and Peter and Andrew. James and John, you know, were brothers, and their mother had just come by to tell Jesus he ought to give her boys some reward: thrones in the kingdom. And Jesus didn’t turn her down. They probably do have thrones in the kingdom. But first, he said, you have to get there, and between here and there it isn’t always an easy ride. What Jesus wanted them to know was that the kingdom he proclaims has different priorities, a different agenda, a different style of leadership and it’s not about big rewards here and now.
There are those who go for power and use it for their own agenda. There were then. There are now. But that is not what serving Jesus is all about. Jesus said, “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave . . .” So, yes, Baruch: it’s not always easy. And, no, Mrs. Zebedee and James: it’s not about front row seats. It’s about looking around you and seeing a world in need and knowing that God put you here for a purpose and the only way to live your life to serve God is to help meet that need.
Now the bright side of it is that you and I are not Baruch and not James. We get to be Christians in the richest state in the world’s richest country and Herod has gone to his reward and the Assyrians are not coming – not right away. The world we live in isn’t an easy place all the same. We may have sons or daughters or near relatives deployed to the middle east; we may have relatives who are unemployed or be worried about our own jobs or facing our own particular challenges. But would you rather live in Haiti? Would you rather live in the Middle East and never get rotated home? For that matter, would you rather be Bill Gates and have everyone in the world after your money or Barak Obama and get blamed for everything that goes wrong? Count your blessings! But the point is very simple: Jesus calls us to serve. The examples we get in today’s readings are pretty dramatic, but once you figure them out, they make the point: God’s value system is the reverse of ours. We are not here for our own sake, but for the sake of others.
I happen to be more interested than many people in politics and I often see examples out there to help me make a point. I try not to chose up sides in public, but if you watch television at all and don’t mute it when the ads come on, you know we have an election coming up and a stranger assortment of candidates you will seldom find. All of them, however, tell us that they want to create jobs and cut taxes and so on. “I have a plan” they tell us, to get things going again.” Well, I’m not interested in their plan. I want to know one thing: “What have you done to serve others? What have you done already to meet the needs of the world?” I don’t ask whether the candidate is in church every Sunday or even if they are Christians. but I want to be able to vote for someone whose priorities are somewhat similar to the gospel’s, who seem to have a deep understanding of the needs of the neediest and put those needs first. As a Christian, I am not looking for the candidate who will do something for me but the one who wants to do something for others.
Jesus and James and Jeremiah and Baruch knew about oppressive governments in a way we probably never will. The tax system was unbelievably unfair. There were no good schools. There was no health care system. But the message was “Go and serve. Serve those whose needs are greater than yours. That’s what God made you to do. That why you are here.”
I kind of like the fact that that strange Old Testament reading features Baruch complaining about the hand God dealt him. “Woe is me!” says Baruch, “I am so tired I could die.” And God says to Baruch, “You know what? It’s going to get worse. You live in a country so far from my purpose that they will be wiped out. But your bonus is, you will go into exile with everyone else but you will survive. You will survive.”
I can’t help but worry when I read that. God does have a purpose and the purpose is not the good life for Americans. The purpose is justice and mercy and peace.
When we give in proportion to our income,
when we find time to serve others in some way,
when we make political choices in keeping with the needs of others,
when we pray regularly for justice and peace,
when we pay attention to the Bible readings
and think about them from time to time during the week,
when we try to see our world in terms of God’s purpose,
you can’t count on getting rich or having all your problems solved but you will have the peace of mind of knowing that you are part of that great company of saints who chose that same path and served God’s purpose and changed the world.
July 25th, 2010 in
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Mary’s Faith
A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut on July 18, 1888
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Somewhere around the year 400 a British monk named Pelagius traveled to Rome and wrote some books. He had just read a book of St. Augustine’s and he was really upset to read that human beings cannot save themselves by their works. “What’s the point of trying to be good,” asked Pelagius, if what we do makes no difference?”
Well, that’s a tough question and Augustine and Pelagius fought it out for quite a while. They wrote books and their supporters wrote books and councils of leading Christians gathered and debated and finally the decision was that Augustine was right and that Pelagius was a heretic and you shouldn’t read his books. If you agree with Pelagius, that you can save yourself, you’re a heretic, too. Lots of people are. Now, I think you can sum up the story of Mary and Martha, in terms of Augustine and Pelagius. Here’s Martha, rushing around trying to get everything done that has to be done when you’ve got special guests and here’s Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, just sitting and listening. Where do your sympathies lie? Be honest: Do you side with Mary or Martha? If Jesus came to your house, would you be rushing around in the kitchen or would you be sitting and listening?
It used to be, of course, that it was always the women who were in the kitchen, but now-a-days, at least ln barbecue weather, it’s as likely to be the man who’s doing the cooking. Or, if you’re like me, you won’t be doing the cooking – nobody would benefit from that – but you’ll be gardening. There’s always something to be done and the notion of sitting around when there’s. company – or sitting around at all – isn’t comfortable for most of us.
Pelagius was condemned but his influence lives, his way of thinking is maybe more popular than ever – and especially in this country. They say that Americans invented the rocking chair so they could keep moving even when sitting down. And the game of golf was invented, I’m sure, so that you needn’t sit idle even on your day off or after retirement. But here is a gospel that says it is better to sit still. Christian councils have always voted for Augustine, but I’m not sure our hearts have ever really been in it. Down through the ages, the church may have taught salvation through faith but when people have continued to ask for things to do, the church has always been happy to oblige: yes, come serve on the Vestry, the Altar Guild, be an usher, work at the soup kitchen, help with the barbecue, teach church school. You want work? Fine, it’s available.
What was the Reformation all about? The fundamental issue was faith versus works. Luther proclaimed salvation through faith. He thought the medieval church had been offering a system of salvation through works and that needed to be changed. Everybody now, from the pope on down would agree that Luther was right and yet how many funerals have you gone to at which the emphasis was on works, at which there was a eulogy reciting accomplishments, good works? Why do we have eulogies at all if we are saved by faith?
Augustine and Luther were right but you would never know it to see what goes on in our Churches. Down through the years, I think it has been the so-called “reformed churches” that have tried harder, and have put up standards like tithing and Sunday observance and no drinking or card playing: all kinds of things you can do and can’t do so you can know, so you can do what the church says to do to get into heaven. And it’s obvious why, isn’t It? You can measure works but you can’t measure faith. Work puts you in control. Faith is beyond your control. Faith puts God in control and leaves God to be the Judge, and that, of course, rightly makes us nervous. If there’s nothing we can do, after all, what can we do?
Yes, it makes us nervous, to be made to rely on faith, but finally Pelagius really was wrong and the gospel really is good news because if salvation depends on us, we’re in trouble. Do you really think that God will decide our eternal fate on the basis of bake sales? Do you want it that way? What if the Last Judgment comes and we didn’t make enough muffins?
But you see, that was the world into which Jesus came. The Pharisees, in particular, were always fighting Jesus on that issue: keep the law, they said; obey the commandments, do this, don’t do that, and that’s what God wants. God gave us a law, a set of hurdles to jump, and if we get it right, do right, we’re set for life hereafter. Jesus said, That misses the point. The point is your relationship with God and you can call it faith or you can call it love, but the relationship is essential, and it’s created not by what you do but by your response to God. Initiative, your response to God who loves you, seeks you, calls you, and asks only that you say, “Yes.”
Now, if you want, you can bring up last week’s Gospel and the story of the Good Samaritan which sounds as if God is telling us what we have to do: serve our neighbor in need. It sure sounded that way didn’t It? Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” But if you remember, that was the answer to a lawyer who had zeroed in, as lawyers do, on the least important point. He began with the big question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” and the answer to which Jesus pointed him, the answer every faithful Jew knew already, was “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” The needs of the neighbor come second. But the lawyer zeroed in on that and got an answer. But Jesus did not say, “To Inherit eternal life, you must serve your neighbor in need.” No, he said, “You must first of all love God.” First of all, respond to God’s call, first of all say, “Yes.”
God will do everything possible to get your attention, even lie beside the road and hope that you’ll stop and help. But it’s not what you do that matters near as much as the fact that you did stop, that you did respond, that God’s love for you elicited your response of love to God wherever God is, even in your neighbor.
All God asks is that response of faith and love. But what about Martha out there in the kitchen: isn’t that a response? Isn’t she-responding to God’s love and showing her love by fixing the potato salad? Maybe she is; it’s not always wrong to work In the kitchen; please don’t go home with that message! The point is that the response comes first, faith comes first; works come afterward.
The point is also that God never needs our works. Remember the feeding of the 5000? If a meal is needed, Jesus can provide. We’re not necessary; we’re here only because God decided to put us here out of love. And God shows us love by giving us work to do. And we can show our love by doing it. But that part is always second. And Martha had put it first.
Suppose Martha also had sat down at Jesus’ feet: do you think they would all have starved? The 5000 didn’t starve. The wedding at Cana didn’t run out of wine. Or do you remember that time when the disciples had been out fishing all night and caught nothing and looked up to see Jesus on the shore, baking fish and inviting them to come eat? I think they’d have been alright that day in Bethany too if Martha had just had faith. Martha was doing the expected thing in a society where a woman’s place was in the kitchen. It takes no faith to do the expected thing. Mary was daring to be different; somehow she knew that Jesus was changing things and the human race was going to have to learn some new ways of living. And that took a lot of faith.
How much faith do you have? Do you have faith enough to set aside time each day to sit at Jesus’ feet, to spend time in prayer and time with our Bibles and trust that the rest will still get done – and if it doesn’t, well, maybe it wasn’t as important as we thought, or maybe, because we have put first things first, we’ll have the patience and strength and love to get things done faster and better than before. God requires only one thing. God asks a response of faith. Is that your response to God?
This you should know: raccoons love corn above all other things.
When I first planted a garden in Sharon I caused an eight foot high chainlink fence to be erected around it. This was to deter deer and other local herbivores. Deer could probably clear it, but are just as happy to eat other things so why bother? For a number of years, the fence did the job. I have had to contend with voles and mice and chipmunks that can go through or under the fence but that’s a story for another day.
For a number of years I grew corn untroubled by raccoons but five or six years ago they found a way. They do not tunnel under – I would see that – so they must go over. But how? Do they climb the fence itself or do they come up the wooden posts that support the fence? There are diagonal posts at the corners and these seem to have little claw marks. Maybe that’s their method. But somehow they get in and wipe out the corn crop. I think we got two or three ears last summer, but not very good ones. I have tried all sorts of remedies – repellent spray, auxiliary fences, etc. Nothing works. They get the corn and I don’t. This is annoying.
This year they have come by early to check the product. The corn isn’t even in tassel yet but ten days ago I found a stalk or two bent down as if they had come to check. A few days later more were bent over.
Meanwhile, planning ahead, I had decided this was the year to upgrade the outer fence. I’ve thought of ribbon wire at the top but don’t know where to get it. Instead, with the assistance of a visiting son-in-law, I have caused beams to be fastened to the top of each fence post to make an L with the intention of putting chicken wire along the Ls so that the raccoon climbing the fence finds itself facing a fence at the top that projects out over him so that he would have to hang on to the wire and pull himself out and over it – which I think is hard for raccoons to do. This is a big project since it’s a big garden. I have three-quarters of it up but that leaves a good deal of opportunity for a motivated raccoon.
Meanwhile, I have two raccoon traps. One is open at both ends but closes with a whang when the raccoon steps on a plate in the middle. I took it down to the garden and discovered something was out of whack and it wouldn’t spring. I left a piece of banana in it thinking I would at least familiarize the raccoon with the concept of walking into a trap. The banana was gone the next day.
Next I took down the second trap that only opens at one end. It’s old and rusty but it works. I put a piece of banana in it and came back the next day to find the trap turned on its side so that the door wouldn’t close. The banana was gone and a couple more stalks were broken down.
Ha! I can fix that, I thought. I will drive a fence post in on either side of the trap so he can’t turn it over. So I did. The next night he had other business to attend to and the garden was undisturbed but the second day – this morning – I arrived at the garden to find that he had pushed or pulled the trap out from between the fence posts, turned it on its side, and gone off with the banana.
Now this is a clever raccoon! It would seem that he has had experience of traps and knows how they work. Perhaps he is one of those I trapped another year and took to the other side of the Housatonic five miles away. There is a highway bridge and the river freezes over in the winter. Maybe he has come back. That’s the trouble with the hav-a-heart trap concept. They live and learn.
OK. It’s a war. I have several moves still to make. I can drive a stake through the back of the trap to prevent it being moved. I can also finish putting up the L fencing. And I have this day ordered to be sent post haste a device that is motion sensitive and emits a high pitched sound that (it says) drives raccoons away. (I suspect this raccoon is too motivated to care about high pitched sounds but I will try almost anything.)
After that? I could rent a coon dog from the local animal shelter – but I don’t think they do that.. I could pitch a tent in the garden and sleep there through the season – but he would wait for me to fall asleep. I could dig a deep trench around the garden and fill it with water – but we’ve been having a drought. I could put up an electric fence – but my father-in-law did that and found that the raccoons knew how to short it out with a stick. I could call General Petraeus for advice - but he’s out of the country. I could also give up and buy my corn at a local farmer’s market – but none of them grows Golden Cross Bantam which is the best corn for eating.
Or I could post my problem on the internet and wait for a better idea from someone smart enough to out-think a raccoon. I await your advice.
July 14th, 2010 in
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I wonder whether any single story ever told has had so powerful an impact on Western civilization as the story of the good Samaritan. Hospitals are named for him, laws are passed on the subject, and news reports tell us frequently about good Samaritans who helped someone else beyond the call of duty.
Let me tell you how I first came to take the story seriously myself.
Many years ago, I was rector of a parish on the South Shore of Long Island: Christ Church Lynbrook in Nassau County, a suburban parish about a half-hour out from Penn Station. It was a very middle-class community and people had worked hard to get there. Some of the men held two jobs to help pay the mortgage. They worked hard to own a home in a good community with a good school that would be a good place to raise children. To the north of Lynbrook was the village of Malverne, a wealthier community, and to the northeast was West Hempstead, a primarily black community, formed long ago as a place for the servants to live who worked for the wealthy people in Malverne and Garden City.
Now, school district lines on Long Island bear little relationship to the village borders. The “Lynbrook school district,” so-called, included two-thirds of Lynbrook but not all of it. There was another school district called school District 12 or, carelessly referred to as, the “Malverne school district,” which included the northeast corner of Lynbrook, which was in the parish I served, but it also included most of Malverne and West Hempstead. So about one third of the parish I served was in school District 12. School District 12, then, contained parts of three communities and, as a result, there were three elementary schools, one in each neighborhood, but there was only one high school serving the whole district. Now, what that meant, of course, was that there were two elementary schools in which children were white and one in which they were black but they all went to the same high school.
About 10 years before I was called to be Rector of Christ Church Lynbrook the Supreme Court handed down its famous decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education which said that segregated education is inherently unequal and that schools designated specifically for black children prevented them from gaining an equal education. It wasn’t long before parents in West Hempstead began thinking about their own situation and brought a suit against the Malverne Board of Education in which they said, “Our children are not receiving an education equal to that in the two other schools and therefore when they get to high school they can’t keep up with the other children. The local school board refused to respond so they appealed eventually to the state courts which agreed with them and established for the first time in New York State the principle that segregated education is an inferior education even if, as was the case here, segregation was not established intentionally.
The court ruled that the school district would have to assign children on a random basis to the three elementary schools and provide buses to get them from their neighborhoods to their assigned schools. The result of that ruling was a series of challenges and counter challenges
that went to the courts as white parents and black parents formed groups and hired lawyers and year after year one side or the other side would win or lose and first one side and then the other would protest and appeal and boycott.
Now all this had begun before I got there, but I remember a time when the white parents had won the latest appeal and the black parents had called a boycott. They said that their children would not go to school at all until something was done and meanwhile they were calling on local institutions to provide space where their children could be cared for during the day with temporary classes and programs. I remember suggesting to the vestry of Christ Church Lynbrook that our parish hall space might be available and I remember that the most support I got for that idea was from the senior warden who didn’t speak at all during the ensuing discussion. So that idea didn’t fly.
I remember going to protest meetings as an observer – since I myself didn;t live in the district – and sitting with a parishioner who had worked and saved to buy a house a block from the school for his three children and was now understandably upset to think that his children would have to ride a bus to a school in another neighborhood.
Somewhere about this time the Sunday gospel was the story of the good Samaritan who stopped beside the road at risk to himself to help a man of another ethnic group who was lying there wounded. I remember preaching that day about that parable without any specific reference to the issue at hand but hoping that somewhere in that story was the way forward, hoping that somehow all those involved, black and white alike, could find the courage to stop considering their own advantage and see the humanity of the others. There was no way everyone could win, but perhaps there was a way that all those involved could begin to risk their own security and welfare for the sake of the broader needs of the human community.
Well, I spent six years in that community and they were still fighting it out when I left. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that what the Gospel had to offer was not specific solutions to specific problems but stories like the story of the good Samaritan that held the potential to become our story, held the potential to reshape a community not by laws and court orders and coercion but from inside human hearts.
A number of years after that I went to a conference in Hawaii. It was a conference of Episcopalians engaged in ministry to Asian people: congregations in this country of people from Japan and Korea and the Philippines and Vietnam and China and India. I was involved tangentially in a ministry to Japanese people in the New York area and that was my excuse for a trip to Hawaii.
One night during the conference each ethnic group was asked to produce a skit based on one of the parables and a group from Karala state in India did a skit about the good Samaritan. In their skit a man was set upon by robbers and left to die beside the road. A school teacher came by and a Christian priest and a lawyer and they all walked quickly past on the other side of the road afraid that the same robbers might also attack them. But then, as they acted out their skit, a communist came by and the communist stopped and picked the man up and took him to the next village and cared for him. When the skits were over each group was asked to discuss their performance and the reasons for it. The group from Karala State explained that for a very long time the Christian church had stood there and preached compassion and help for the poor but people had continued to be poor and hungry and very little had changed. But then, they said, the Communists were elected to govern and things began to change. The poor were given land and the hungry were fed and human needs were being met. Just as the Jews of Jesus time saw no good in the Samaritans, so the Christians in Karala State saw no good in the Communists, but when there was need it wasn’t the Christians who responded but the despised and rejected Communists. Perhaps, they said, we need to see beyond labels and understand that God can work through many agencies to help those in need. Perhaps even a communist can be my neighbor.
I remember on another occasion visiting Manila in the Philippines and seeing in the oldest part of the city signs describing what happened there during the Japanese occupation: how prisoners were put in cells designed by the Spaniards centuries before in such a way that the water would come into them at high tide and drown the prisoners and carry out their bodies. I remember hearing somewhere that the Japanese military administration of Singapore in those years was very different because the Japanese general in Singapore was a Christian and had learned to see even the enemy as his neighbor. I remember discussions with our Filipino hosts about the difference between a society formed by Christian ethics and one formed by Confucian ethics because the one is an open system that has a principle about one’s neighbor and the other is a closed system prescribing duty towards those within the system but nothing for those outside.
Back at the earliest level of the biblical story there is the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. For Jews and Christians it is one of the most fundamental principles. But what a difference there is between a principle and a story. The principle applies to every human situation: school districts on Long Island, poor people in Karala State, the homeless and hungry in Hartford and Bridgeport and Torrington, and the illegal alien in our neighborhood. But a principal is a wooden thing: stiff and unwieldy and hard to bring to bear when my interests are at stake. A story is different: often I can see myself in the story and think about how I might act in a similar situation. So on the one hand there are principles and on the other hand there is a story, a story familiar to every Christian and many non-Christians as well, a story that brings a principle to life and shapes who we are, a story that needs to be our story, something we live out in our lives, a story we have heard in such a way that we go ourselves and do likewise.
July 11th, 2010 in
Sermons |
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A plaintive post on Facebook this week complained of being asked to sing “America the Beautiful” on Sunday morning. I can think of no sadder legacy of the Bush-Cheney years than Americans embarrassed to sing “America the Beautiful” in church.”
At least the individual was not asked to sing “The Star Spangled Banner.” But worse things than that could happen. Imagine being English and having to sing, “God save our gracious queen” or being Canadian and singing about “The true north strong and free.” Worse yet, suppose you were Japanese and had to sing Kimi gayo:
May the Emperor’s rule last
Till a thousand years, then eight thousand years to come
Till sand, pebbles, and rocks
To be united as a ledge
Till moss grows on it
I would never ask a congregation to sing the “Star spangled banner” in church and I think “My country ‘tis of thee” is a silly piece of nineteenth century sentimentalism, but “America the beautiful” is what every national song ought to be: a hymn of thankfulness for gifts given and a prayer to make them better.
I grew up in rock-ribbed Republican country in upState New York where farmers groused about “that man” in the White House and wanted unionized workers shot. My parents weren’t terribly political but we were encouraged to think for ourselves. When I was not yet nine, my parents voted for Wendell Wilkie but I had a mind of my own and was for Roosevelt. Kids in the neighborhood threatened to beat me up one afternoon because they had heard I was a Democrat but I held my ground and got away with it. It was a time of idealism. This country stood in stark contrast to the Axis powers and Russia. It wasn’t perfect. Union workers sometimes got shot and lynchings still took place in the south. The Ku Klux Klan even held rallies in Allegany County. But free elections were held every two years and change was possible. It still is.
Do Americans get very angry with each other now? Yes, but I remember the 1930s and the 1950s. I am unwilling to let Tea Party types define Americanism. I don’t think they really understand what this country is all about. And I am not willing to let them get away with their distorted picture of it.
If some people think the pope on the one hand or a ranting evangelical on the other defines Christianity, should I stop being a Christian? If a majority in the Anglican Communion considers homosexuality a sin, should I stop being an Anglican?
I am writing a biography of James W. C. Pennington, a fugitive slave who became a leader in the abolition movement before the Civil War. He was brought up in slavery and, although he escaped and became one of the best educated men of his day, he couldn’t use public transportation in New York City because of his color. The presidents of Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and Yale among others formed a society to colonize black people back to Africa and Pennington joined with others to fight against them. “I am an American to he backbone,” he proclaimed. He believed in this country not because of what it was but because of what it could be. So do I.
I am reminded of the Beatles’ song:
Hey Jude, don’t make it bad,
Take a sad song and make it better . . .
But “America the beautiful is not a sad song. It recognizes the need for a vision and the reality of where we are. “God mend thine every flaw.” Yes, and sing it in church where that prayer is appropriately offered.
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.
I don’t expect to live long enough to see such cities but I need to hold onto the dream and keep singing about it or we will never get there. Don’t let the fearful and visionless take that way from us!
amber waves of grain
