Monday, September 29, 2014

Musings on the Feast of St. Michael


Images flood together for me on this Feast of St. Michael the Archangel.  There is that wonderful lesson from Bishop NT Wright in "Jesus : The New Way" (Christian History Institute, Distributed by Vision Video 610/584-3500) where he talks about how radically different the message of Jesus was and is from the other more violent liberation movements of first century Judea.  He makes it abundantly clear that love, not war, is the way.  There is my conversation with wife Rebecca after she joined Orthodox friends in Columbus to hear an Indonesian Bishop talk about persecution and the realities of living as a minority Christian in the world's most populous Islamic nation.  (I omit his name because to publicize it could put him at risk when he goes home.)  I think of my comrades in the military who often wore a medal of St. Michael as a regular part of their combat gear.  I think of what goes on today in so many parts of the world where Islamic Militants use extreme force and violence to accomplish their goals of re-establishing the Caliphate and Sharia law. 

These images on such a day as this tempt this old soldier to call for many things, including the use of force against force to a greater degree than has been employed to this point.  But something restrains me.  I believe down to my toes that God gives to government the sword to maintain peace, and no one who knows me would ever say that I am a pacifist.  I also take very seriously Jesus' admonition that we should carry the Good News to all people, and the clear teaching of the Bible that all members of our species are created in God's image.  And so I come to sort of a moving conviction that while governments ought to do what they must do to protect their citizens and interests and the property of their citizens and allies- and to restrain or destroy unspeakable evil, we as Christians probably need to pray a lot more that people who do not know Jesus, be they Muslim or some other faith, or none at all, might come to know Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and ultimately as Brother and Friend.  Sometimes I'm not real sure how to do this.  I can tell folks who think like me and share some of my cultural presuppositions how to know God, but it is harder to reach those from other cultures, because there are so many assumptions we make about how others feel and what they believe.  I pray God will help me to live a life that is winsome to those who are not in Christ, that through my life and the Spirit of God upon me, they might be drawn to Jesus even when my understanding proves inadequate to the task.

Back to St. Michael... It is so easy given my background to imagine myself as the strong arm of God, but that is Michael's calling, not mine.  I am called to be a priest and to dispense the love of God in Word and Sacrament, and in other ways as I may find opportunity.  I dare say there is a time when force is necessary if evil is to be restrained.  There may even be times when I will be called on to be an agent of that force.  But I, we, should all be very careful about assuming that we are called to be the dispensers of God's justice as is St. Michael the Archangel.  Terrible things can ensue when we assume the calling of God to do such things without prayerful deliberation as a community of God's faithful people, or in a body politic.

I give thanks today for St. Michael and for the certain knowledge that ultimately God will deliver and vindicate all of his people.  I give thanks for our military personnel deployed in defense of those things we hold true and dear, and for a government that much more often than not makes good decisions about the use of force (In my humble opinion.)  And I pray that I might be as faithful in my calling as Blessed Michael is in his.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Bad Theology: Teaching for Sunday 28 September at St. John's Lancaster

Statue of St. Michael in Mexico City

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel.  Taken alongside of a discussion we had in Wednesday morning Bible study last week about the second coming of Christ and the state of the blessed dead, I have decided that today might be a good opportunity to address bad theology.  Bad theology comes in many forms.  Sometimes it grows out of the twisting of Scripture to fit our preconceptions or agenda of how society ought to be.  Sometimes it grows out of the angst of injustice or aloneness which causes a person to reject the authority of the Bible or of the Church.  Sometimes it arises from oversimplification (which we call proof-texting), or over complexity (which we call being nuanced.)  Without doubt, there are other sources of bad theology as well.  But today I would like to focus on what I might call folk theology in modern America.  I'll start with the topic of "Angels, Holiness, and the Sovereignty of God."  My second point will address "The cult of self-esteem and the heresy of universalism."  Finally, I will look at "Hippies and Heroes: redefining the kingdom of heaven in our own image."  My hope is that today's brief introduction will call all of us to re-examine our beliefs about God, the Church, and the World, and help us to reconcile our own beliefs with the teachings of the Bible, which is the Word of God.

Card shops all across America are replete with pictures of angels.  For the most part they are either sweet Victorian cherubs with musical instruments and lots of pastel ribbons, or rather dreamy and androgynous winged creatures with harps sitting on rather non-descript and cloudy backgrounds.  They stand in stark contrast to the heavenly messengers of the Scripture.  On the iconostasis of Holy Cross Carpathian Orthodox Church in Columbus, the angels of God are portrayed as strong Byzantine warriors.  In like manner, at Christ Cathedral in Lexington, Kentucky, the four Archangels of Scripture and pious legend flank the great commission clad in full Flemish plate armor.  The Church artists rightly point out that an angel is a fearful being who serves as the divine messenger and representative.  They are emblematic of God's holiness and his sovereignty, that is of his otherness, purity, and power.  Certainly, there are many places in the Bible which show us the mercy and kindness and peace of God, which the card angels might be thought to represent, but when we focus on the false view of God as Santa and angels as heavenly balladeers, we not only perpetuate wrong beliefs, we teach our children and our neighbors that God is someone other than who he says he is.  The upshot of it all is that God tends to become a last resort, a generous uncle, or an understanding mentor.  We lose sight of the fact that as he is our Redeemer, so is he our Judge.  We forget that while salvation brings relief and forgiveness, it also brings purification and transformation and changed behavior.  We tend to value the significance of our own decisions and thoughts over his place as rightful sovereign ruler of all creation.  In short, we as a culture tend to sentimentalize God into a rather kind hearted and indulgent being who can be summoned in our time of need and who sometimes helps us  get through a tough time.  While our culture sometimes imagines that he can be a formidable bringer of judgment and justice, we imagine that he primarily ought to do so in support of our party or national interests.  He becomes in the minds of so many a deity on a rope, god with a lower case g, to be sported as fashion directs and to be called upon as a last resort. 

That brings me to part two of today's teaching: "The Cult of Self-esteem and the Heresy of Universalism."  As you know, pretty much everything in the world is about me.  Everywhere I go, people look at me and say, "wow, what a font of knowledge and fashion plate that Father Pursley is, with his big ears and his thinning white hair and his clothes (and ideas) straight out of the 1970 JC Penny's catalogue!"  Now I hope you know I am joking when I say these things.  But the joke does illustrate the point that we live in a "me centered" era where personal ideals and individual choice are valued above community identity and the common good.  Somewhere along the line we have forgotten President Kennedy's admonition, drawn from Cicero, his great Roman mentor, that we should "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."  I suppose our focus on feeling good about ourselves, even in the face of scarcity of evidence to justify the same, grows largely out of our very civil desire to be nice and to be liked, and out of our very laudable commitment to equality of opportunity in the social, civil, and educational realms.  But in theology, it has led to a very irrational reluctance to accept scriptural definitions and expectations.  We claim the moral high ground and say "I'm not called to be a judge- that is God's job."  It sounds good, and we imagine it is the ultimate fulfilling of the golden rule, that we do unto others as we would have others to do unto ourselves.  I would argue that in reality it is a rejection of Scriptural authority in our lives, and leads us to an ill-considered and extreme form of libertarianism (and I say that as one who leans to libertarianism) which ignores the reality of evil in the world and seeks to avoid the hard and sometimes unpleasant work of living together in an harmonious and mutually respectful society.  Certainly we are not called to be judgmental, nor to control each other for the sake of control, but we can only live together in peace and mutual prosperity as we determine to submit to and enforce the basic tenets of civility, self-control, and respect for each other.  A corollary of this rather out of context "I'm not called to judge" theology has been our general acceptance as Americans of universalism.  Universalism is the idea that a loving God would not condemn anyone, so we must all eventually get to heaven.  One hears this doctrine in country music in songs like "Come on in, you did the best that you could do," or "Go rest high upon the mountain."  The resurgence of belief in what I must call "unprincipled reincarnation" is another evidence of this basic desire that we have to be nice and assume that everyone is in heaven, even if all of the evidence might seem to indicate otherwise.  Note that there is a "principled re-incarnation" which is a part of the unified field theory of several eastern religions.  Those religions are not Christian, but they have carefully thought out theologies and are logically consistent to a significant degree.  The reincarnation I have heard espoused by nominally Christian Americans is a very different belief from that of our Buddhist or Hindu neighbors.  But perhaps the Universalism that impacts us most in the American churches is the propensity of pastors and priests like myself to preach everyone into heaven.  It is the easiest thing to do at a funeral, and it makes the family feel good, but it is very dishonest to so focus on the good points of a person's life (and everyone does have some good points- even Mussolini made the trains run on time!)  To focus on a false view of the goodness of the deceased leaves everyone present with the false view that there is no hell, no judgment, and no holy God and no need for forgiveness.  According to Scripture, the watchman who proclaims such a message dooms his own soul by leading the multitudes astray and away from God.  This is not to say that every funeral must be doom and gloom, and that we ought never to illustrate the grace and character of God by reference to the life of the deceased, but it is to say that we cannot bless what God has cursed, and that we all must be honest with ourselves and each other.  This must be done in an appropriate, kind, and pastoral way, but it still must be done.

Finally, my diatribe against American pop-religion draws to a close with a brief examination of our propensity to define religion according to our own agendas and images.  Let me give you a couple of common examples.  Contrary to popular belief, St. Francis, who's feast falls on Saturday and which we will celebrate today, was not a wandering hippie committed to socialist ideals and free love and preaching to birds.  He was rather a committed Christian called by God to rebuild the church and convert those outside the kingdom of God.  He saw the special needs of the poor in a society where poverty and insecurity and disease were widespread, and in culturally effective ways prophetically led the Church to understand more clearly that people are the true treasury of the church, and that every man and woman and boy and girl is important to God.  He demonstrated great courage in not only confronting the powerful of his day in Europe, but by traveling to Egypt during the Crusades to tell Islamic leaders about the love of Jesus.  Now, from the other side of the political spectrum, lest any of us be left out, the United States, which I love and served for nearly 23 years as a soldier, is not God's nation, nor God's exclusive instrument in the world.  Ancient Israel filled that role, as the Church does today, but when we attempt to portray America as the Commonwealth of God, we are being unfaithful to our own constitution and to the Bible.  Surely God has used this nation to act in the world, as he has used many other nations in history.  To say this does not imply that there is a moral equivalency between the United States and Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, or Mao's China, or the Islamic State.  But it does underline an important truth.  The Bible tells us that even the kings of Persia and Babylon were mere tools in his hand.  The Sovereign God of Heaven and Earth works through all nations and all human institutions to accomplish his will, whether or not they are willing to acknowledge him or his way.  When we attempt to portray our nation above all others as God's nation, we invariably look down on other people made in his image, and often end up putting a human institution, even if it is a very good human institution, in the place of God.  In both of these ways and in so many others throughout history, we humans have redefined the things of God to match our own agendas and dreams- to justify and sanctify our own policies and actions, and that, my friends, is idolatry.  It reminds us of that observation often credited to the great and cynical Rosseau, that we obviously love God, because we are always trying to remake him in our own images.

And so the end of the matter is this.  Let us all as Christians commit to read, study,  and discuss our Bibles prayerfully and in the historic community of the universal Church, so that we come to know more precisely the character of God, and the implications of that character in our own lives.  Let us see the damage that is done to the people we love when we practice un-scriptural theology.  May God help us to understand how we sometimes lull people into a sentimental agnosticism or push them into a troubled rejection of our Lord because we have misrepresented him by our beliefs, our words, our attitudes, or our actions.  Let us comprehend the eternal significance of our theology believed and lived, and let us all be transformed more perfectly into the image of God the Father, through the love of Jesus the Son, and in the power of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

St John's Weekly Announcements for 28 Sept

St. John Weekly Messenger- 28 September, 2014
Worship at St. John's- come and join us!

Prayer Requests
Sun: The Episcopal Church, James Broadway in ICU awaiting diagnosis
Mon: Diocese of Ideato in Nigeria, Wanda and Scott fighting cancer
Tues: Diocese of Idoani in Nigeria, Stuart Perlow and his family as he deploys to Afghanistan
Wed: Diocese of Ife in Nigeria, Schyler’s mother at the loss of her sister and aunt
Thurs: Diocese of Ife East in Nigeria, The work of FairHoPe Hospice and Pickering House
Fri: Diocese of Ifo in Nigeria, Joel and Jessie Strauss at the loss of their parents
Sat: Dioceses of Igbomina in Nigeria, Travis and Janet as they are married in Decatur, Illinois

Video Catechism on You Tube: Check out “kkallsen” for bi-weekly news and commentary from around the Anglican world from “Anglican Unscripted.”

Nursery and Children’s workers are needed to expand our children’s education program. Safe Church Training is available at St. John’s in October.  See Fr. Bill or Mark Conrad if you sense a call or would like more information.  

Daily Office Readings are Year Two, Proper 21, found on page 987 of the Book of Common Prayer.

This Week at St. John’s
Office Hours Monday through Thursday 9-12
Today: 9:15 Adult Forum with Bishop N.T. Wright of The Church of England- discussion to follow
    12:15 -2:30 Children’s and Youth Lunch and Movie CARS
    4:00 St. Francis Day Blessing of the Beasts
Monday: 4:45 Youth Catechism, Pizza, and Compline at Church- Holy Baptism II
6:00 Brown Bag Dinner and Bible Study from All Soul’s London- Open Home, Open Bible
7:00 Choral Evensong
Wednesday: 10:30 Bible Study from All Soul’s, London, I Thessalonians
Noon 1928 Holy Communion
Next Sunday: We welcome our own Kathy Heim to the pulpit.  Kathy is a student in our Diocesan preaching school, and we look forward to her sharing God’s Word with us:
8:00: Service of the Word
9:00: First sunday Breakfast- nursery at 10:30. Invite a friend!
    9:15 Choir Practice
    10:30 Service of the Word
    12 noon- 2:30 Children and Youth Movie and Lunch with discussion.  Cars is the movie this month
    4:00 St Francis Day Blessing of the Beasts!
Remember to put your prayer requests in the alms basin
Confession and Spiritual Direction are available on request- see Fr. Bill

Thanks to everyone who helped with the dinner in Logan

The Rector’s New Blog is at http://anglicaninlancaster.blogspot.com/

Stewardship Note: Have you met St. John’s Garden Angel (as opposed to our guardian angel)? He mows the grass and trims every week, and has been known to show up early to remove ice and snow when the weather is bad.  Children often mistake him for his friend Santa Claus, and he attends our 8 am service.  Tell our angel Steve thanks if you see him.  Did you notice that our doors front and back have been painted? Many thanks to our volunteer and Junior Warden John Eyeman, who is also the owner of Heritage Painting LLC. His research allowed us to select the historically accurate color for the front doors, “Chinese Red,” which is the same color used for historic accents and portals at Colonial Williamsburg.

The New Parish Directories are available at the back of the Church.  One per family please.  Thanks to Schyler, Jean, Carole, and everyone who helped to make this update possible.  Let us know if there are corrections or additions which need to be made.  A directory is always an ongoing project.

Vocations Needed: Ladies, have you ever considered serving on the altar guild?  It is a sacred responsibility to care for the holy things of God and to prepare the church for worship.  Is God calling you?  See Fr. Bill if you are interested.




Saturday, September 20, 2014

Weekly Announcements for St. John's Lancaster, Ohio

St. John Weekly Messenger- 21 September, 2014
St. John's Lancaster, Our Parish


Prayer Requests
Sun: The Anglican Church of the Province of Uganda, for Bishop Breidenthal at the House of Bishops
Mon: Diocese of Hyderbad in Packistan, Food for the Poor and their ministry of development and mercy
Tues: Diocese of Ibadan North in Nigeria, Troops deploying to Africa and South Asia and their families
Wed: Diocese of Ibadan South in Nigeria, Lancaster’s warming station ministry and the homeless
Thurs: Diocese of Ibba in  Sudan, St. John’s upcoming stewardship campaign
Fri: Diocese of Abuja in Nigeria, Deacon Don and Linda Eager as they move to Arizona
Sat: Diocese of Idaho, the businesses of our parish and community, that they might thrive


Video Catechism on You Tube: Check out “Maple Anglican: What is the Difference between Anglicans and Episcopalians?”


Nursery and Children’s workers are needed to expand our children’s education program. Safe Church Training is available at St. John’s in October.  See Fr. Bill or Mark Conrad if you sense a call or would like more information.  


Daily Office Readings are Year Two, Proper 20, found on page 985 of the Book of Common Prayer.


This Week at St. John’s
Office Hours Monday through Thursday 9-12
Today: 9:15 Adult Forum with Bishop N.T. Wright of The Church of England- discussion to follow
Monday: 4:45 Youth Catechism, Pizza, and Compline at Church- Holy Baptism II
6:00 Brown Bag Dinner and Bible Study from All Soul’s London- Open Home, Open Bible
7:00 Choral Evensong
Wednesday: 10:30 Bible Study from All Soul’s, London, I Thessalonians
Noon 1928 Holy Communion
Thursday: 3:45 Leave to serve Community Dinner with St. Paul’s  in Logan
Next Sunday: 8:00 HC I
    9:15 Choir Practice
    9:15 Adult Forum with Bishop NT Wright: The Gospel of John
    10:30 HC II
    12 noon- 2:30 Children and Youth Movie and Lunch with discussion.  Cars is the movie this month
    4:00 St Francis Day Blessing of the Beasts!
Remember to put your prayer requests in the alms basin
Confession and Spiritual Direction are available on request- see Fr. Bill


We need desserts for the Community Dinner in Logan: sign up sheet at back of church


The Rector’s New Blog is at http://anglicaninlancaster.blogspot.com/


Stewardship Note: Did you know that St. John’s, with the encouragement and blessing of our Bishop, seeks to implement a program called “Common Ministry.”  The purpose of the program is to empower  lay people in active ministry whenever possible. Some examples include our lay office volunteers (who replaced our regular paid secretary some time ago.)  Their work saves the church about $10 or $12 thousand every year.  Another example is our lay internal audit, which saves the church another $10k  



Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Homily for Proper 20 A (Revised Common Lectionary)

To be preached at St. John's Lancaster 21 September 2014, God willing.
Exodus 16, Psalm 105(esp vs 42-45), Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16
 
The Children of Israel in the wilderness have always elicited a good bit of sympathy from me.  They were called to forsake all that they had known for 400 years, and against all human odds, to follow God into the wilderness.  It must have been frightening, taking that many people out of Egypt and into a new land.  Certainly, God provided for them, first in the plagues of Egypt through which they were delivered, then in the mighty deliverance at the Red Sea.  There were the gifts of Manna and Quail when they were hungry, and on more than one occasion God instructed Moses where to strike the ground that they might have an abundance of sweet, fresh water.  But still, I can understand why they might hang back and be afraid.  They had families to worry about.  Many of their treasured belongings doubtless had to be left in Egypt.  And there was the continual threat of military action against them by surrounding nations or by renegade tribes.  My heart tells me to understand their fears and their difficulties.

Their fears about the reality of their situation come through loud and clear in today's first lesson. In Chapter 16 alone, they managed to overlook or forget their experience of God's deliverance no fewer than three times.  First, their hunger led them to murmur against Moses and Aaron- in reality against God, saying that they had been better off slaves in Egypt, where at least they had enough to eat.  Then, when God gave them the manna to meet their needs, they refused to follow his instructions about how to receive it gratefully and it rotted in their pots.  Then, when God doubled the miracle to teach them the importance of honoring him with the Sabbath, they did it their own way again, and had the experience of Moses' wrath for their lack of respect for God.  In spite of my initial willingness to give them a sympathetic pass, their history seems to indicate that this was a people who usually considered their own ideas to be better than God's promised provision.

John Calvin was a 16th Century French theologian and religious reformer who is often misquoted, more often misunderstood, and even more often ignored.  His comments on the children of Israel's behavior in this chapter are disturbing because they call us all to examine the real motives of our hearts as we interact with God in this world.  "Moses here recounts that, when he had commanded them all not to take more than enough for their daily food, and to gather a double portion the day before the Sabbath, some were disobedient on both points.  As to the former, since God would supply their food to them just as the breast is given to babes, it was a sign of perverse unbelief that they would not depend on God's providence, but sought for a provision which could last them many days.  It was also a proof of their obstinacy that they would give credit to no warnings until they were convinced by experience that they laid up in their houses nothing but a mass of corruption; for they were not induced to cease from their insatiable greediness till they had received their just punishment."

Those are harsh words, but a quick survey of today's propers confirms that such human attitudes and behaviors are common in every age of man.  Today's lesson from Philippians, taken in context, reveals clearly that in the early church as in early Israel, many considered their own opinions to be those of God.  The parable of the workmen's pay in St. Matthew's Gospel makes it abundantly clear that those workmen, responsible and hard working as they may have been, considered their own notions of fairness and justice superior to the mercy of God given to all who will come.  It is interesting to note in all three of these examples that the bad attitudes: the perverse unbelief, the obstinacy, the mass of corruption, and the insatiable greediness are not located in those who are in open and regular rebellion against God, but in those who largely lead responsible and arguably godly lives, and who yet fail to submit their own druthers and understandings to the revealed way of God.  Here are good people for the most part, who are prone to whine, to negative outlook, and to consider their own plans and solutions superior to those of God.  It is interesting to note that in regards to the first lesson from Exodus, only Caleb and Joshua were allowed to enter the promised land, for only Caleb and Joshua trusted to God and walked in his ways.  Everyone else died in the wilderness.

The answer to this dilemma which is so apparent in the three lessons today is stated specifically in today's Psalm.  This long Psalm recounts the history of God's mercy to his people, and it ends with this truth: "He remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant.  And he brought forth his people with joy, and his chosen with gladness: And gave them the lands of the heathen: and they inherited the labour of the people; That they might observe his statutes, and keep his laws. Praise ye the Lord."

And so the question now turns to each and every one of us.  As you face the vicissitudes and realities of life, do you observe the statutes of God and keep his laws?  Or do you honestly believe that you are special, and that you have a better idea.  It is easy for me to want to believe that because every situation is a little different, every solution is different as well.  I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, realizing that perhaps I don't fully understand everything they are facing.  But I need to recognize and admit before God that at the root of my desire to be nice and understanding there often lurks a Narcissism which says that I am special, and that special considerations are due to special born.  It is a socially acceptable and easy way to convince myself that the way of God as revealed in Old Testament law and New Testament admonition applies to others, but not really to me.  And so in Calvin's words, as I value my own experience above God's Word written, I lay up in my house "a mass of corruption."  A mass of corruption which cripples my soul, destroys my joy, and assures that I will be buried in the wilderness with so many other well meaning people who might have entered the promised land. 

Will you commit today to learn God's will by prayerful study of the Bible and meditation thereon?  Will you commit to gather with real regularity with the people of God to be nourished in word and sacrament?  It is so easy to make excuses and to give ourselves a pass by imagining that our situations are different, but in the end that is a lie of the devil.  God wishes to bring us forth with joy and gladness, and to meet all of our needs, and for that to happen, he has sent Jesus to bear our sins.  Now he asks that we take advantage of this new start by keeping his statutes and obeying his laws.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

 

Monday, September 15, 2014

Lunch As Devotion

Monday Lunch at Briarwood
Sundays wear me out, and so I generally take a half day off on Monday, rise early to do chores at the barn or in the garden, brew a pot of tea and catch up on some reading, and then enjoy an eminently civilized lunch before reporting for duty.  Lunch today consisted of a sort of pheasant stir fry, green beans and potatoes, blueberry rice, garden salad, wine, and acorn squash for dessert.  I take great satisfaction in consuming what I have labored to produce.  Today, the rice and blueberries were from Giant Eagle and the wine was from France and California.  everything else I either raised in my garden or shot.  Each bite seems to bring back memories of honest labor and good friends, and I cannot recommend gardening or hunting enough to anyone who is so inclined.  St. Benedict and others have for years maintained that there is something sacred in labor, in the production of those things which meet our needs and make the world a better place.  I would be the last to suggest that we all quit our jobs and become subsistence farmers or hunter gatherers.  That would probably be a real recipe for disaster, and would bring much evil into the world.  But to have a link to God's creation, however small it may be, is I think a good thing which nourishes the soul and calls us to consider those things which are truly important: God, friends and family, responsibility, and purpose (among others.)  I hope and pray for all my friends today that you might find time and opportunity for a small link to this world in which we live, and in so doing, that you might come closer to the heart of God.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

The Cost of Holding a Grudge: Sermon for Matthew 18:21-35 to be preached September 14, 2014 at Epiphany Nelsonville and St Paul's Logan, God willing.

After Peter, James, and John witnessed Jesus in his transfigured glory, Jesus led them down the mountain and began to teach them about life's truly important things.  He taught them about faith and the sufficiency of God.  He taught them about the cost of discipleship and his coming death for righteousness sake- and the resurrection which would follow.  He taught them about the true nature of heavenly citizenship and what it meant to be a pilgrim in a sometimes hostile world. He taught them about the need for humility and about the destructive nature of what today we might call addiction.  He talked about God's love for his children, and how we ought to deepen our relationships with honest forthrightness in the community of faith, and he talked about the authority of the Church and the power of Common Prayer.  It was a lot to take in.  Peter, who so often did the nervous talking for them all, hazarded to say, "Lord, how often shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me?  Is seven times enough?"  Jesus said, "No Peter, 77 would be enough. (70x 7 in some translations)"  And that is the background to today's Gospel lesson from St Matthew 18.

Blessed Augustine of Hippo tells us that in St. Luke's Gospel, The generations recorded in the genealogy of Jesus are 77 in number.  I counted them, and he is right.  Augustine goes on to say that Jesus was telling the disciples that we need to be willing to forgive the sins of all mankind, as many as they may be.  All the sins of history must be forgiven if we truly aspire to be the sons and daughters of God.  That is a tall order, but Jesus allows no exceptions. 

In the parable which follows, Jesus tells the disciples about a servant, a businessman or overseer of sorts who owed his king ten thousand talents.  That is a lot of money.  A talent was a measure of weight, what an average man could carry.  To put it into perspective, in I Kings 16:24, Omri purchased the village and hill of Samaria for two talents of silver.  In I Kings 9:13-14, King Hiram of Tyre paid King Solomon 120 talents of gold for several cities near his land.  When Sennacherib came down "like a wolf from the north" in II Kings 18:14, he demanded of Hezekiah 300 talents of silver and 30 of gold to withdraw his armies from Jewish land.  Indeed, this servant owed his Lord a veritable King's ransom. 

Obviously, it was more than the man could pay, and so the Lord ordered his wife and family to be sold into slavery, a thing which sound onerous to us today, but which in the ancient world, where slavery was the economic engine which petroleum provides for us today, preachers and teachers saw this reference in a more metaphorical light. Cyril of Alexandria maintains that the servant's separation from his family shows the "complete and utter separation from the joys of God."  When faced by a situation in your life which seems bigger than you, have you ever experienced such a sense of alienation and aloneness, or darkness and hopelessness?  John Chrysostom, "the golden tongued," goes even further.  He maintains that selling the family into slavery only made official what already was in fact, for this man and his family were already slaves to the debt he owed.  They were in his words "slaves to his folly."  Have you or the people you love ever been there?  Have your financial decisions, or you use of alcohol or drugs, or a purchase you made when you could ill afford it, or an ongoing quarrel with someone you had to live or work with, or your sexual license ever landed you in a place where you felt enslaved and without prospect or hope of change?

Chrysostom continues that the King, presumably God at this point, sold the man and his family into slavery to get their attention, in his words "to affect his transformation.  His purpose is to frighten him by his threat, so that he may come to supplication."  I believe our phrase is "give him enough rope to hang himself."  How did God get your attention when you lived in sin?  It was probably painful at the time, but in retrospect, I imagine many of us count the salvation of our souls of much more worth than the punishment we received for our sins which enabled us to see our need of God.  In short, the man did see the error of his ways.  He renounced that arrogance and self-reliance which had characterized his life, and in grateful humility he made obeisance to his Lord.  And the Lord "forgave him the debt."  Blessed day that Jesus washed my sins away and taught me to live in his mercy and not by my own conniving wisdom or imagined strength! 

But unfortunately for our forgiven servant, this is not the end of the story.  He had a fellow servant who owed him a much smaller sum, about 100 denarii.  Now a denarii is what an average workman made in a day in a peasant economy.  If we assume that the poverty level here in the States is in the neighborhood of $28,000, 100/356ths comes in at right around 26 or 27% of that annual wage, which means that this man owed his fellow servant about $7, 560 in today's money.  That's a far cry from the King's ransom the first man had just been forgiven.  His debt had, in the eyes of many, been a lot closer to that debt of which Jesus spoke and which Saint Augustine illustrated, than was the much smaller, and actually pretty serviceable debt that the second man owed. 

You know the rest of the story.  The first servant, the forgiven one, showed no mercy to his fellow, and threw him into debtor's prison.  Other servants, knowing the situation, went to the king and told him all.  "Then his lord summoned him and said to him, You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you? And in anger his Lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.  So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

Chrysostom, the great Bishop of Constantinople continues his commentary in his Homily on St. Matthew 61.4: "In anger his lord delivered him to the jailers, till he should pay all his debt.  This means forever, since he will never pay it. For since you did not become better by receiving blessings, it remains for you to be corrected by punishment. For since you have not become better by the kindness shown to you, it remains that you will be corrected only by vengeance."

If we do not accept the change of heart and motive and behavior that God offers us when he shows us mercy, and if we do not show to others that same mercy he has shown to us, we will in the end lose our souls.  The Bible makes it abundantly clear that as God forgives us our sins, he also transforms us into his own ethical image.  This is not to say that we are ever perfect this side of the grave, or that the transformation occurs overnight, but it is to say that if we are not different after Jesus comes into our lives, then he is probably not really there. 

How are you doing today with that grudge you have held for so long?  What about that hatred you have nursed carefully since high school?  Are you holding onto some well deserved anger in the hope that vengeance or pay back will come to that person who hurt you and your child so badly or so often?  Such thoughts and feelings will separate you utterly from the joys of God.  They will keep you a slave to your folly.  But there is a way out.  Name your sin before God the Father and ask him to forgive it.  Believe that Jesus died for your sins and that God the Father raised him from the dead.  Go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit to live as you have never lived before, having forgiven your enemies as God has forgiven you.  He will heal your memories and bring you peace, and you will know the joys of God.  Now is the time.  As we say the Creed, believe it in your heart, even if you do not understand it.  As we pray the prayers of the people, imagine in your mind's eye that person you dislike and pray God's best for them.  As we confess our sins, acknowledge your own specifically.  When we pass the peace, go to that person you have resented if they are here, and embrace them and make your peace with them.  Offer yourself to God at the offertory.  And then come and receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the sure knowledge that you are, and you will from this time forth act like, a child of God, and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The Blessings of a Rather Mundane Life

Ready for the Hunt!
After a long absence from blogging, I tried to access "The Country Parson," only to realize that I had been gone so long that I couldn't get in!  So here is my latest offering under a new, more descriptive name. 

It has been a great day, complete with a video Bible Study from All Soul's Langham Place in London, 1928 Holy Communion, and all of the regular sort of administrative tasks and personal discussions that priests so often have.  Lovely wife Rebecca called rather late in the day and suggested I bring home some fresh liver to cook with our garden produce and we had a wonderful dinner on the back porch.  Then I read a few articles from "First Things" and just sat and thought for a while.  I couldn't get the song "Be Thou My Vision" out of my mind, so I just sat and half whistled it while my mind walked in what I can only call the presence of the Lord. 

After such a refreshing time apart, I determined to get out the trap machine and do a bit of shooting before Friday's promised ramble with Oscar the Cocker Spaniel in the woods outside junction City, Ohio.  I shot well, about two boxes of 16 gauge from the upland double gun, and another box from the 12 gauge duck gun, also a double, but longer and heavier, and based on the same frame and stock configuration.  After cleaning the guns, I collected the dogs and we went to the barn to feed Ashley's hunter, Little Princess, and to take care of the chickens. 

In the midst of such blessings, it only seemed right to post a testimony to the same to the glory of God, and to the encouragement of anyone who might be amused or interested or inspired by my rather mundane life.  Truly Jesus is Lord, and his blessings abound in this place I love.  I trust that in the weeks to come, I might re-establish the discipline of posting a few sermons and thoughts from time to time, and that someone out there in the blogosphere might come closer to Jesus through my labors.