In my latest pop culture addiction, Billions, there's a poignant moment when the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, separated from his wife because he has violated her trust to build a case, has to sell his treasured set of Churchill's The Second World War to get himself a place to stay. The volumes are, fictitiously, inscribed with a real quote by Churchill:
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
(As a side note, Paul Giamatti absolutely captures the quiet pain of a book lover having to part with a treasured book, one that has encapsulated his own ethos, for cash; his portrayal of the moment was delicate and nuanced, but all the more powerful for it.)
A couple of years ago, I met Ian McNiece, who has played Churchill in Doctor Who, who told he that he treasures Churchill's less grandiloquent statement of the sentiment: "Keep Buggering On." We had a picture taken together, and he inscribed it for me with "KBO: Keep Buggering On."
It's a useful reminder in these days of a divided country that seems determined to keep drifting further away from itself. But how does one keep buggering on? How does one not give up? A 1927 letter from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (then nearing 90) to a young law student offers a clue:
However a man may feels about his work nature is likely to see to it that his business becomes his master and an end in itself, so that he may find that he has been a martyr under the illusion of self-seeking. But we rank men at least partly at least by the nature of their dominant interests, and we think more highly of those who are conscious of ulterior ends--be those ends intellectual ideals, to see the universal in the particular, or the sympathetic wish to help their kind. For your sake I hope that when your work seems to present only mean details you may realize that every detail has the mystery of the universe behind it and may keep up your heart with an undying faith.
Holmes, skeptic as he was, is expressing in secular terms a point much like one made by the great Anglican poet George Herbert in his poem The Elixir:
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.
Not rudely, as a beast,
To run into an action;
But still to make Thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection.
A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heav'n espy.
All may of Thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture—"for Thy sake"—
Will not grow bright and clean.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.
I'm not sure it matters terribly much whose framing is more congenial to you--Holmes's or Herbert's; while Herbert's is rooted deeply in faith, Holmes's is too, albeit in a different faith, a non-Christian one. But both men share a belief in perspective--not the spasm of emotion in response to a momentary emotion, but a true perspective that seeks to see the true value of all acts, of all endeavor. That sees the meaning in a life of dedication to something worthy of one's efforts. Something beyond mere gain, though one may begin in the hope of gain, only to find oneself gaining far more than money through such a life.
Something concrete to be done, a task that one may lose one's own transitory emotions in, even if the details on their own can seem dry, can lead to wisdom, and, ultimately, refreshing one's faith--however you like to divine the word.
A way to endure when the time is out of joint: find a way to make your efforts feed your soul.
A little daub of mud. A river bank. Simple elements, nothing organically and lovingly curated, no experimental procedure. Just some mud spread over the eyes, and washed away.
And a world of darkness dies, replaced by one blazing with light and new clarity.
Today’s gospel reading reminds me a little bit of the old Sherlock Holmes story, “Silver Blaze.” That’s the one in which Holmes, asked by the regular police for a clue to who could have crept into the stable, and stolen the valuable horse who was the favorite to win the Derby, takes pity on him, and tells him to pay attention to the “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” The police detective is confused. “The dog did nothing in the night-time,” he says.
“That was the curious incident,” Holmes answers him.
In “Silver Blaze,” the dog did nothing because he knew the culprit—it was his owner, the horse’s trainer. So of course he didn’t bark. Holmes solves the mystery based on the absence of what would normally be expected.
I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but there’s a curious incident in this story of a miraculous healing by Jesus. And that’s just how little Jesus figures in the story. The absence of Jesus for most of the story is exactly contrary to what we expect. Jesus sweeps dramatically into the life of the blind man, heals him, and leaves. Now, normally when that happens, we may get a sentence or two wrapping up the miracle and go on, and then return to Jesus and the apostles on their way.
Not this time.
Jesus heals the man, and leaves the scene.
For what I think is the only time in any of the four Gospels, we spend an extended time learning what happens in the wake of one of Jesus’s healings. We learn what happens to the person healed and to the community he was a part of. So I’m going to fill you in on part of the story that didn’t make it into the reading today, because it’s illuminating.
After Jesus leaves the scene, we follow the now-healed man, washing the mud from his eyes, and regaining his sight. As he leaves the river, his neighbors and those who had seen him begging are astonished—they debate whether this is the same helpless man they have walked by day in and day out.
He confirms that he is, and, when asked how he regained his sight, answers simply, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight.”
Simple, straightforward answer from a man who has been helpless since his birth. They take him to the local religious authorities—the Pharisees here. When the Pharisees hear the story, they immediately discredit Jesus as a sinner, saying “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." Not all of them—a few defend Jesus on the ground that a sinner could not do such a thing.
So, at this point the Pharisees try to prove that the man in front of them is not the blind beggar, but someone pretending to be him. That fails, because his parents identify him, and they finally turn to the newly sighted man, who has already told his story twice, but doesn’t tell it a third time. Instead, he turns the tables on the Pharisees. He asks them “Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”
Note the “also.” He’s reaffirming his earlier statement that Jesus is a prophet, and by implication rejecting the Pharisees’ claim that Jesus is a sinner. He’s also putting the Pharisees at his own social and spiritual level—which to them is an insult.
They insult him, and then say “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”
And, with a mock-innocence that shows that this man is neither simple nor helpless, he shreds their position:
"Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. “
He then delivers judgment: “If this man were not from God,” he says, no doubt in his mind, “he could do nothing.”
They bluster, they denounce, they drive him out. Because this man, blind from birth, helpless until that very day, has beaten them on their own terms. He has reasoned better than they have, and has shown a far deeper understanding of the law and of the nature of God.
The Pharisees manage to bully his parents, and try to bully him, but the once blind man is having none of it. His manner goes from being respectful and non-committal when they start questioning him, to openly mocking the Pharisees. Whatever he was like when his world was dark, he has come home to his full self as a disciple of Jesus.
But unlike the Twelve, who more often than not need guidance, or explanations, the man once blind becomes a maverick who trounces the intellectual elite by his greater understanding and his accepting heart.
In the Gospels, that role usually falls to Jesus. Here, the newly healed man plays the part Jesus normally plays, and plays it as successfully as Jesus usually does.
He fills the gap left by Jesus’s departure.
Jesus hears about all this and seeks him out. When Jesus identifies himself as “the Son of Man,” and asks him if he believes, the man answers simply, “Lord, I believe.” And Jesus reaffirms that the man once blind now sees clearly, and that the teachers of the law are themselves blind.
The presence of God in our lives can be paradoxical that way. We look for the moment of transcendence, what Maslow called the “peak experience.” But this story doesn’t involve anything like that. Jesus acts through the mundane elements of earth and water, and unleashes the dammed-up potential of one human being. No special effects, no transfiguration in this story.
Just clay and spittle, and river water.
Through the mundane, through the ordinary, God brings healing. A coming to one’s true self, and not only a recovery of sight, but finding one’s own true voice.
As we’re rounding third base in Lent, I’ve found my more heroic plans have not exactly panned out. I haven’t prayed the traditional office from the Breviary, with its eight daily offices throughout the day. The stack of theological classics on my night-table has not been read. I haven’t exercised every day.
But my less spectacular plans, well, they’re holding up better. The Daily Office from the Prayer Book and I continue to jog along, and I find myself thinking before I speak, at home and at work.
And maybe for me--and I offer it to you, if it’s helpful--maybe I don’t need the special effects. Maybe we can make do with the mundane, and save the special effects for some other time.
The early Christians called themselves followers of the Way—you can see it as early as in the Acts of the Apostles. A modest name, but one that captures something that we might lose if we expect to become paragons by an act of will in Lent. A way of life needs to be with us in all seasons, something that we sustain while it sustains us. Maybe like the man whose sight is restored, we don’t need the special effects. We’re here together, a community, and we are hearing the stories, reflecting on what we can take away from them. We’re aligning ourselves with God in prayer and waiting to celebrate the return of God in human form, in the resurrected Christ.
In a time where hate and division are working their evil throughout the world, even in our city, in this very building we are reaching out to the stranger, the hungry, the woman who needs a place to sleep.
So John the Baptist sees the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus like a dove, tells this to the crowd, and then tells them all that Jesus is the lamb of God. The next day, as Jesus walks by him, John calls out “Behold, the lamb of God!” (I know, the NRSV says, “look here is the lamb of God!” but c’mon. If anyone in the whole Bible cries out for the King James treatment, it’s John the Baptist.)
Anyway, John tells everyone who will listen to him that Jesus is the one who was before him, even though he came after him, has had the Holy Spirit descend upon him, and so he—Jesus, that is--baptizes with the Holy Spirit—oh, and that he is the lamb of God.
I mean, have you ever seen anybody with less brand awareness than John the Baptist?
Of course Andrew deserts John for Jesus. Lots of people do. John has rendered himself obsolete.
For those who believed John was a prophet, well, the greater your faith in John, the more imperative it is to ditch John for Jesus. Even if you don’t know what the Lamb of God means exactly, it’s a pretty good bet that it beats hanging around in the desert eating locusts with a side of wild honey.
So they all leave John behind.
Just like that.
In Luke’s Gospel, after John has been imprisoned, Jesus asks the crowd that has left John for him “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who put on fine clothing and live in luxury are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.” (Lk: 7-24-26). He then tells them that “among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
Well, what does that mean?
It means that John is a liminal figure—a man who stands between what is, and what is to be. A liminal person is someone on the threshold, not fully part of the past or of the future. The Jesus Movement that John points to is not what he expects. Jesus is surprising; as Matthew Moretz reminded us just a few weeks ago, “John began with God’s judgment and then proclaimed God’s mercy. This is a great start, but Jesus goes directly to the love of God.”
Jesus surpasses John, displaying more compassion than his stern predecessor, more love, and the world has never been the same.
Thing is, John saw it coming.
Oh, not the details. He didn’t know what was coming, just that something big was coming, and that his part in it was to stand on the threshold and open the door to it.
But John is not of the Jesus Movement. He doesn’t follow Jesus, he points to him, and then he fades from history. He is imprisoned, he is put to death. But even before those things happen, he travels about, pointing to his successor, “Behold the lamb of God!” Opening the door to the new thing is worth John’s life.
John’s entire ministry is about making himself obsolete. He points beyond himself to Jesus. He points to the man who takes his good idea—helping people to accept the forgiveness of God by acknowledging their guilt and symbolically washing away their sins—and transforms it into something far more real and life changing.
John points away from himself. But today I think we could use another look at him. Because we are in a time of transition ourselves.
Transitions are hard. We see it all around us. Transitions bring to light divisions that have been papered over for a long time—don’t tell anyone, but I kinda still miss the pews.
But transitions also can reveal to us that our ideas, our ways of seeing the world, don’t describe it in a meaningful way anymore.
It doesn’t mean that they were wrong when we first found them. Dean William Inge once wrote that “It is the tendency of all symbols to petrify or evaporate, and either process is fatal to them.”[1]
A symbol—or a word—petrifies when we begin to confuse the image with the greater reality it stands for. So we begin by using a metaphor to capture an experience, or an insight, but then we begin to treat the metaphor as fact, not an image. As Inge says, “when we think of time as a piece cut off from the beginning of eternity, so that eternity is only in the future and not in the present; when we think of heaven as a place somewhere else, and therefore not here; when we think of an upper ideal world which has sucked all the life out of this, so that we now walk in a vain shadow,—then we are paying the penalty for our symbolical representative methods of thought.”[2]
A symbol evaporates when the common experience the symbol is based on no longer makes sense to us. Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan needs to be explained, because we don’t live in a culture where we all can just know that a Samaritan must be despicable. If anything, the parable is so well known that we start off already liking the Samaritan.
Or think of Jesus describing the Last Judgment as God separating the sheep from the goats. What’s so bad about the poor old goats, anyway?
Ideas are like symbols. They can petrify or evaporate. They can become so familiar that they lose their resonance. People have heard them so often that they become meaningless.
Or the messengers have been caught not living up to their ideals so often that the ideals are dismissed as hypocrisy. And trust dies. Anger builds.
We’re in a time where faith in just about all of our institutions is falling.[3] We’ve just come through a bitter election, and are about to enter a new political era. I think it’s fair to say that the tensions revealed by the election have not been eased.
Belief in religious institutions of all kinds is is falling.[4] And we Episcopalians have heard all too often that the path of our church is a spiral of terminal decline.
Yet here we all are, worshipping God in community together.
And I’m going to suggest to you that right there, that is a hint to us in how to react to our times.
Right now, we are living through a liminal time.
We’re waiting at the end of a comfortable phase in the history of the Church, wondering what comes next.
We’re waiting for the next thing in our culture, in our society, wondering what comes next.
Will our institutions—spiritual, cultural, political—regain the trust they have lost?
What comes next?
I don’t know, and, frankly, I don’t think anyone does know.
There’s a lot of talk among traditionalist Christians of The Benedict Option". The idea, named after St. Benedict of Nursia, who founded the Benedictine order, is that modern society and culture are so contrary to the good life as envisioned in Christian tradition that Christians need to intentionally build communities in which the values we hold dear, the traditions that shape us, are shared and practiced.
I’m not ashamed to borrow a good idea from our more conservative brothers and sisters. But frankly, it sounds a bit like the St. Barts Option to me. The Eucharist and Evening Prayer are available throughout the week, Morning Prayer on Saturday, Bible study, and adult education offerings. We have active children, youth and family ministries, too.
My point is not to give a St. Barts infomercial, but to suggest that the Benedict Option is an intentional way of being the Church in the modern world. Like John the Baptist, we need to take the next right step. We gather together every week. We pray. We learn, we encourage each other.
And that it’s a good part of an answer to times of transition and uncertainty.
But not the whole answer.
We act. We can give of our time and treasure to our best to serve those Jesus called us to serve: The poor, the hungry, the persecuted. The stranger.
In our daily lives, we often get in a rut. I can’t help but think of Anne Herbert who urged people to “practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty" in the 1980s. I can think of worse things to do in a liminal time.
All of that sounds like I’m saying “keep on keeping on.” And, yes, that’s a big part of what I am saying. But there’s one last piece.
Yes, the world is scary and unsettled.
No, we don’t know what’s coming next.
But listen for what’s coming. New, fresh symbols will replace the dead ones. New, fresh ideas will replace the petrified ones. As a mentor of mine likes to paraphrase St. Ignatius, every time of desolation is followed by one of consolation. We’re just in the middle times, on the threshold.
But as one phase of the dance to the music of time ends, another begins. God is with us always, not just yesterday, but today, and, even more importantly, tomorrow. If we listen, if we keep our hearts calm and receptive, when the next phase of the dance, we’ll hear the music change.
And then we can say, “yes.”
In the Name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
[1] W.R. Inge, Christian Mysticism (1899), at p. 5
[2] Id.
[3]Gallup, “Confidence in Institutions,” June 2016, archived at http://www.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx
[4]Pew Research Center, Nov. 3, 2015, “U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious,” archived at http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2015/11/201.11.03_RLS_II_full_report.pdf
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.
Maybe it’s the time of year. Nearly the end of October, as we near the end of the liturgical year, you have to wonder how all the readings fit together sometimes. Or maybe it’s the fact that we’re in an election year, both here at St. Barts and in the country at large. Whatever it is, I can’t help but connect these readings with the questions of power and leadership. Those themes resonated with the scripture readings I was trying to reconcile with each other, and maybe find some common thread uniting them.
And today’s readings can seem a little out of harmony with each other. We have Jesus, in Luke’s telling of his life, contrasting the ever so respectable Pharisee in the Temple with the wretched tax collector. The Pharisee’s prayer is not really what we’d think of as prayer; it’s more a love letter to himself.
Less prayer, more preening, as the Pharisee exults that he is not like other people. No, he’s special. He follows the law. He fasts, he tithes. And these things make him superior to all kinds of people: rogues, thieves, adulterers, and you know who else? That guy—yeah, that guy over there, the tax collector.
What about him, anyway? What’s he doing? The tax collector doesn’t even look up, just repeating over and over, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”And yet Jesus tells us that it’s that other, the tax collector who goes home with God’s forgiveness, not the Pharisee.
Meanwhile, in the Epistle, Paul is telling us that he has fought the good fight, has finished the race, has kept the faith. There is a crown of righteousness waiting for Paul. So he tells us, anyway.
Placing these two readings back to back is a little uncomfortable. Because Paul does not sound much like the forgiven tax collector. Does he sound a little too much like that Pharisee?
Isn’t that the lesson of this Gospel—that we are all miserable sinners who should be aware of the depth of our depravity, and lamenting our wrongs?
Well, if I were Jonathan Edwards—you know, Aaron Burr’s grandfather, the fire and brimstone preacher who wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” that would be one way to go with this Gospel. I could ignore the Epistle, make us all shiver with the pangs of hell, and stalk off to coffee hour with a big scowl.
But I’d be lying to you. Because knowing and owning up to our failures and worst attributes is only part of the story. It’s a part of self knowledge, but not all of it.
And we do have the Epistle for today, and Paul’s calm confidence is very different from the lamenting of the tax collector. And, I’d suggest, just as different from the self-righteousness of the Pharisee.
So why are these readings paired together? Is there some way that they can be drawn together, instead of ignoring one in favor of the other? What are they trying to tell us in late October of 2016?
I have a theory.
We are introduced to three figures in the readings. We have the Pharisee, a leader considered righteous not just by himself, but by his community. He has the respect of those who see him in the temple. He patterns his life to the law, he gives to the poor.
The tax collector is an outcast, reviled by the community that looks up to the Pharisee, but you’d be very mistaken if you write him off as insignificant, or weak. This is a man of force, of violence even. The tax collector successfully bid for the office and serves the occupying power to his own profit as well as Caesar’s. Tax collectors were hated because they were part of the apparatus of oppression. They exercised power over the people, and were infamous for using force to twist more money than was due out of the people. That’s how they profited from their position. So very much a man to be reckoned with. Hated, yes. But feared, too.
Then we get Paul. The 18th Century theologian Johannes Albrecht Bengel called the Second Letter to Timothy “a last will and a swan song conveying a legacy." Those scholars who believe it was written by Paul himself also believe it was written shortly before his death; those who think it was written in his name by another author view it as similar to Plato’s depiction of Socrates’s final days. A sort of imaginative reconstruction of how he would have said goodbye.
However you view it, today’s Epistle reading depicts Paul’s final summation of himself as an apostle. And more than that, he’s saying farewell to that life of service, and encouraging Timothy to follow his example when Paul is gone.
Each of the three men we meet has exercised leadership. Each has something to tell us about leadership, and presents a different image of what it is, or what it can be.
Each of these men of power has used their position differently. The Pharisee has conformed to expectations but smothers in his own self-regard. Anything he has done has been for his own betterment, and others have only incidentally benefited. The tax collector has abused his power, and bitterly laments it. Paul, at the end of his life, sees that life as one poured out like a sacrifice for the good of others —a libation is a ritual sacrifice, a drink offering to a deity—and he celebrates that life as well worth living.
But there’s more to it than that, even. The tax collector and St. Paul have something in common with each other, something that the poor Pharisee lacks.
They’re self aware.
They know who they are, for good and for ill.
Paul knows that he has run the race, that he has done what he could.
The tax collector knows that he has not. He longs for a second chance.
Paul and the tax collector share a virtue we don’t like to talk about in our competitive, striving, big-talking world. That virtue is humility. And you can’t have that without self-awareness.
I don’t mean thinking little of themselves, or denigrating their abilities and their character. Self-abasement is not humility. In his novel Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope mocks that kind of false humility, saying there are “four degrees; humble, umble, stumble, tumble,” and then you just lay on the ground to be walked on. Mordred in the musical Camelottells us it’s not the earth the meek inherit, it’s the dirt.
The tax collector was not wallowing in self-hatred, as Jesus tells the story. He was, as Luke earlier described the Prodigal Son, coming to himself, recognizing the extent to which he had immersed himself in an evil way of life, and seeking a second chance. He gets it.
The poor Pharisee doesn’t. Why do I say “the poor Pharisee”? Because he doesn’t see himself as he is. He thinks that his compliance with the law is enough, and that his conformity entitles him to look down on those whose lives are messy.
He doesn’t understand the dark secrets of his own heart, let alone the hidden virtues of those whose lives don’t outwardly conform to his expectations. He’s shut off from the complex multi-faceted world around him, and can’t hear or see all the people around him except as mirrors for his own self-admiration. He does not know himself, and that means he can’t know others, including God.
Humility might be viewed as a combination of knowing ourselves, and then getting ourselves out of the way. Trying to understand our flaws and virtues, and seeing ourselves as we are. But then letting it go, and getting on with life. Being open to its joys and sorrows, and seeing those around us as people to relate to and know in their own right, not just as reflections of ourselves. C.S. Lewis wrote that when someone has achieved humility they will not be thinking about it; they won’t be thinking of themselves at all.
I don’t know that humility is a state that can be permanently achieved. I certainly haven’t got there. It’s a process, and there are relapses, backsliding and fits of ego along the way. But that’s ok. We don’t have to achieve that serenity St. Paul displays at the end of his life at any set point in ours. But we need to seek self-awareness. It’s enough if we can start off with the tax collector, seeing ourselves as we truly are, good and bad, and then move forward from there.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.
Maybe it’s the time of year. Nearly the end of October, as we near the end of the liturgical year, you have to wonder how all the readings fit together sometimes. Or maybe it’s the fact that we’re in an election year, both here at St. Barts and in the country at large. Whatever it is, I can’t help but connect these readings with the questions of power and leadership. Those themes resonated with the scripture readings I was trying to reconcile with each other, and maybe find some common thread uniting them.
And today’s readings can seem a little out of harmony with each other. We have Jesus, in Luke’s telling of his life, contrasting the ever so respectable Pharisee in the Temple with the wretched tax collector. The Pharisee’s prayer is not really what we’d think of as prayer; it’s more a love letter to himself.
Less prayer, more preening, as the Pharisee exults that he is not like other people. No, he’s special. He follows the law. He fasts, he tithes. And these things make him superior to all kinds of people: rogues, thieves, adulterers, and you know who else? That guy—yeah, that guy over there, the tax collector.
What about him, anyway? What’s he doing? The tax collector doesn’t even look up, just repeating over and over, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”And yet Jesus tells us that it’s that other, the tax collector who goes home with God’s forgiveness, not the Pharisee.
Meanwhile, in the Epistle, Paul is telling us that he has fought the good fight, has finished the race, has kept the faith. There is a crown of righteousness waiting for Paul. So he tells us, anyway.
Placing these two readings back to back is a little uncomfortable. Because Paul does not sound much like the forgiven tax collector. Does he sound a little too much like that Pharisee?
Isn’t that the lesson of this Gospel—that we are all miserable sinners who should be aware of the depth of our depravity, and lamenting our wrongs?
Well, if I were Jonathan Edwards—you know, Aaron Burr’s grandfather, the fire and brimstone preacher who wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” that would be one way to go with this Gospel. I could ignore the Epistle, make us all shiver with the pangs of hell, and stalk off to coffee hour with a big scowl.
But I’d be lying to you. Because knowing and owning up to our failures and worst attributes is only part of the story. It’s a part of self knowledge, but not all of it.
And we do have the Epistle for today, and Paul’s calm confidence is very different from the lamenting of the tax collector. And, I’d suggest, just as different from the self-righteousness of the Pharisee.
So why are these readings paired together? Is there some way that they can be drawn together, instead of ignoring one in favor of the other? What are they trying to tell us in late October of 2016?
I have a theory.
We are introduced to three figures in the readings. We have the Pharisee, a leader considered righteous not just by himself, but by his community. He has the respect of those who see him in the temple. He patterns his life to the law, he gives to the poor.
The tax collector is an outcast, reviled by the community that looks up to the Pharisee, but you’d be very mistaken if you write him off as insignificant, or weak. This is a man of force, of violence even. The tax collector successfully bid for the office and serves the occupying power to his own profit as well as Caesar’s. Tax collectors were hated because they were part of the apparatus of oppression. They exercised power over the people, and were infamous for using force to twist more money than was due out of the people. That’s how they profited from their position. So very much a man to be reckoned with. Hated, yes. But feared, too.
Then we get Paul. The 18th Century theologian Johannes Albrecht Bengel called the Second Letter to Timothy “a last will and a swan song conveying a legacy." Those scholars who believe it was written by Paul himself also believe it was written shortly before his death; those who think it was written in his name by another author view it as similar to Plato’s depiction of Socrates’s final days. A sort of imaginative reconstruction of how he would have said goodbye.
However you view it, today’s Epistle reading depicts Paul’s final summation of himself as an apostle. And more than that, he’s saying farewell to that life of service, and encouraging Timothy to follow his example when Paul is gone.
Each of the three men we meet has exercised leadership. Each has something to tell us about leadership, and presents a different image of what it is, or what it can be.
Each of these men of power has used their position differently. The Pharisee has conformed to expectations but smothers in his own self-regard. Anything he has done has been for his own betterment, and others have only incidentally benefited. The tax collector has abused his power, and bitterly laments it. Paul, at the end of his life, sees that life as one poured out like a sacrifice for the good of others —a libation is a ritual sacrifice, a drink offering to a deity—and he celebrates that life as well worth living.
But there’s more to it than that, even. The tax collector and St. Paul have something in common with each other, something that the poor Pharisee lacks.
They’re self aware.
They know who they are, for good and for ill.
Paul knows that he has run the race, that he has done what he could.
The tax collector knows that he has not. He longs for a second chance.
Paul and the tax collector share a virtue we don’t like to talk about in our competitive, striving, big-talking world. That virtue is humility. And you can’t have that without self-awareness.
I don’t mean thinking little of themselves, or denigrating their abilities and their character. Self-abasement is not humility. In his novel Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope mocks that kind of false humility, saying there are “four degrees; humble, umble, stumble, tumble,” and then you just lay on the ground to be walked on. Mordred in the musical Camelottells us it’s not the earth the meek inherit, it’s the dirt.
The tax collector was not wallowing in self-hatred, as Jesus tells the story. He was, as Luke earlier described the Prodigal Son, coming to himself, recognizing the extent to which he had immersed himself in an evil way of life, and seeking a second chance. He gets it.
The poor Pharisee doesn’t. Why do I say “the poor Pharisee”? Because he doesn’t see himself as he is. He thinks that his compliance with the law is enough, and that his conformity entitles him to look down on those whose lives are messy.
He doesn’t understand the dark secrets of his own heart, let alone the hidden virtues of those whose lives don’t outwardly conform to his expectations. He’s shut off from the complex multi-faceted world around him, and can’t hear or see all the people around him except as mirrors for his own self-admiration. He does not know himself, and that means he can’t know others, including God.
Humility might be viewed as a combination of knowing ourselves, and then getting ourselves out of the way. Trying to understand our flaws and virtues, and seeing ourselves as we are. But then letting it go, and getting on with life. Being open to its joys and sorrows, and seeing those around us as people to relate to and know in their own right, not just as reflections of ourselves. C.S. Lewis wrote that when someone has achieved humility they will not be thinking about it; they won’t be thinking of themselves at all.
I don’t know that humility is a state that can be permanently achieved. I certainly haven’t got there. It’s a process, and there are relapses, backsliding and fits of ego along the way. But that’s ok. We don’t have to achieve that serenity St. Paul displays at the end of his life at any set point in ours. But we need to seek self-awareness. It’s enough if we can start off with the tax collector, seeing ourselves as we truly are, good and bad, and then move forward from there.
In the name f the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
[Preached at the Deacon's Conference of the Episcopal Diocese of NY, October 1, 2016]
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
So since this is a deacon’s conference, I can probably ask this: How many of you here give your sermons titles?
I admit it; I always do. I’m a little compulsive that way…so every one gets a title.
Which, today, may be something of a problem. Because today’s sermon takes its title from the movie Animal House: “Drop and Give Me Twenty.”
As this is the first time I’ve ever preached in front of our bishop, this title makes me uneasy.
But—famous last words--I can explain.
The Gospel for tomorrow morning, which we’ve just heard read, is Luke 17, verses 5 through 10. Now, this reading contains two separate pericopes:
First, we revisit the parable of the mustard seed in verses 5 and 6, and then, in the second pericope, the rest of the reading, Jesus tells his disciples—that’s us—that when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done.”
Which of course put me in mind of Niedermeyer, the ROTC bully, hectoring his cadets with “you’re all worthless and weak. Now drop and give me twenty.” Push-ups, that is. Twenty push-ups.
So, I’m confessing, in front of my bishop, that at first glance, this gospel has me worried. Almost as worried as the opening of this sermon.
Because Jesus sounds like a really harsh taskmaster here, doesn’t he? Oh, you’ve done all that you were told to do. Great. So what? Any slave does that. Now impress me.
Yikes. How? Where’s “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” when I need him?
And what else are we to do? How else are we to serve Jesus, other than doing what he has told us to do?
Maybe you know, Shirley, with the Soap Closet Ministry you founded at St. John’s in Kingston? Or Denise, bringing the Eucharist and lunch to the park through Ecclesia?
Maybe we all know, with our various ministries, each of which brings us in a special way to the service of God’s people where we find them.
See the two things needed there? Us, and the people of God. We find the people of God, where they are, and respond to their needs as we perceive them. Each of us, by being out and about among God’s people, as one of God’s people, spots the need that we are equipped to do something about, today. It may not be the need we envisioned addressing, but we’re there, we see it, we step in. We use initiative, and instinct, and we step in.
And there it is.
We’re not called to be slaves, merely following direct orders. We are called to be active. We’re called to use what we have to help where we can.
As deacons, we are out in the world, the secular workaday world. That gives us a very different ministry from those of our sisters and brothers who are priests. We have the challenge and the honor of filling in the gaps in that secular workaday world. Often, we get to think through how to respond to those gaps, and create an ongoing ministry. Like Shirley, like Denise. Like all of us, really.
But sometimes it comes at us hard and fast.
We are just a few days after the anniversary of one such experience for me, so let me share it with you. Three work colleagues from my day job and I were driving south from Saratoga to Albany after a work function. I was in the back seat with another lawyer; an administrator from my office, Kim, was driving. Kim saw a motorcycle come off the ramp, and the rider lose control. The bike skidded under an 18 wheeler, the driver went flying.
Even in the back seat, I could see that. I was stunned, but Kim wasn’t. She slewed the car diagonally across the highway to stop traffic. And when the traffic stopped, and other cars joined her, she started to cross the Thruway to get to the rider.
I followed her.
Not that I’m brave; I’m not. I just couldn’t let her go alone. So I followed her.
When I got there, it was clear that the rider was dying or dead. Two young women were standing by him, horror struck.
I felt so useless. There was nothing I could do.
Then I realized there was one thing I might do: Last Rites. I didn’t have my prayer book, or anything to guide me, but I had to perform last rites once during my Clinical Pastoral Training. I didn’t know the words, of course, but I had the sense of it—the topics and the flow of it.
As I fished out my crucifix to help center me, I heard Kim—who knew I’d been ordained just three months before this—ask, “John, will you pray?”
I knelt next to Andrew—that was the rider’s name—and lay my hands on his arm. I prayed for him, and felt Kim and the two young women draw around into a semi-circle. We prayed together.
In this room, we all know that I didn’t do anything praiseworthy that day; I showed up. That’s all. I filled the gap. I answered the call. I did what was required of me at that moment, in that place. I didn’t fail. That’s all.
But the choices we make as deacons to be available to step into those gaps—those choices to be vulnerable to the needs of God’s creation are not the choices of slaves. We have chosen to be accountable, to be responsible, to be present for the needs of the people of God, even if we can only stand vigil.
So we’re not worthless or weak, and not unprofitable slaves who only do the minimum and work to rule. Jesus isn’t looking for slaves, who need to be ordered to perform each task.
The whole point of the pericope is that we aren’t slaves at all. Paul in his letter to the Galatians helps to clarify the point of Luke’s story: We are not called to be slaves but children of God, and through God, heirs. [Gal 4:3]. Or, put it another way; in traditional art apprenticeships, the learner goes from being alunno (pupil) to amicus (friend).[1] In John’s Gospel, Jesus tells the disciples, “I no longer call you servants but friends.” [Jn 15:15]. They have graduated from their apprenticeship. We are walking the same path, following in the same Way, from pupil to friend, from foster child, to heir. And the more we embrace our calling, use our initiative and gifts, the more we leave behind the fear-based life of the slave for the full life in Christ that we are called to live. Never attaining perfection, but growing more and more every day.
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