And it is a particular joy to witness new generations of families with long term ties to this congregation – it gives us a sense of continuity and of hope, reminding us of God’s ongoing presence and love, supporting this family and this parish family through times of change and challenge.
In the liturgy, we speak of baptism as a covenant. Covenants involve agreement and mutuality - and baptism involves both receiving and committing. When I meet with parents bringing child for baptism, I ask why baptism is important to them. Always some version of same answer – We want the child to be in relationship with God – to have God as a fundamental part of their life. Parents also often talk about their desire that the child is connected to something larger, something life-giving: they recognize what an important part of life community is. In baptism and in the early years of his life, Noah will experience the receiving side of the baptismal covenant – He will be receiving God’s grace and blessing as he is named as a child of God – not because of anything he has accomplished or earned, but because it is God’s nature to love and to bless God’s children.As he grows, he will be nurtured in God’s love – through the family, caregivers, teachers, community who support and shape him. Over time, Noah will grow into the responsibility/commitment side of baptismal covenant – that of being not only a child of God, but a disciple of Jesus. He will grow into his adult capabilities, into the capacity to make impact on the world around him. As do all of us, Noah will have the opportunity to make God’s love known in the world, to have God’s love make a difference in the world, through him. In our liturgy this morning, therefore, we celebrate hope and faith, and we meet God in this morning’s sacraments with gratitude. And we have heard some particularly wonderful readings this morning that fit perfectly with the themes of hope and faith and promise. Today’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures is one of my favorites. It is a great story on its own, but it also has special associations for me. As you probably know, I spend thirty two years on the faculties of independent boarding schools. At the beginning of each year, new students always arrive a day before returning students and are given a brief orientation and the opportunity to feel at home before the “old kids” get there to claim their turf. At my last school, we always had a brief chapel service on new students’ first evening, and my colleague in the chaplaincy, Ned Sherrill, would always read and talk about the story of Jacob at Bethel. He would talk about how terrifying it must have been for Jacob to have left his home and be heading into the unknown: you’ll recall that Jacob was actually on the run from his brother’s anger, after Jacob had pulled a pretty nasty trick swindling Esau out of his birthright. Ned would draw attention to poor Jacob having only a stone for a pillow. I pretty sure Ned didn’t explicitly draw the connections for the new students that Jacob’s situation had a lot of similarities to their own on that first scary evening in a completely new environment, but I can’t imagine that many of them missed the parallel. And Jacob, in his dream state, was shown that the place where he was lying, with a stone under his head, was directly connected to the place where God dwells among all of the heavenly beings. And God spoke to Jacob, this kid who was on the run after behaving very badly, and promised that “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go”, and that “all of the families of the earth shall be blessed in you.” So when Jacob woke, he did so declaring “Surely God is in this place – and I did not know it!” I recall appreciating, every year that Ned offered that lesson in that moment, how much it must have offered reassurance to those other scared kids among whom I sat in the school chapel. And Jacob’s story is a lesson for all of us, of course. Whenever we find ourselves scared and alone, with nothing but a metaphorical stone to lay our heads on, especially when facing a new and unknown environment, we can remember that “God is in this place.” When we’re fleeing something for which we feel ashamed and guilty, we can know that just as God promised Jacob, God blesses us and will bless others through us. We are not alone and there is ALWAYS hope. And this morning’s psalm celebrates the very same promise of God’s faithfulness in knowing and caring for us: Lord, you have searched me out and known me; * you know my sitting down and my rising up; If I take the wings of the morning * and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there your hand will lead me * and your right hand hold me fast. Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; * darkness and light to you are both alike. Search me out, O God, and know my heart; * and lead me in the way that is everlasting. This assurance is what we hope Noah will come to know and find comfort in, and in welcoming him today, we pledge to help him learn the faith. And this morning’s gospel, as well, offers hope and assurance, albeit in a somewhat strange way. We’re in Matthew, the gospel of parables, and we are continuing in this same part of Jesus’ teaching ministry we heard last Sunday, in which he is immersing his listeners in agricultural metaphor – planting and growing and harvesting, along with the many things that can make the agrarian life complicated. This week’s farmer is a responsible farmer and sows good seed, hoping and planning, no doubt, for a good harvest that will not only feed the family but also benefit the community. But there is an enemy in the neighborhood, and that person chooses to undermine the work of the responsible farmer, sneaking in while the household is asleep, and throwing the seeds for weeds among the farmer’s good seed. As the plants begin to grow, the other farmworkers are horrified at this bad luck and initially question the farmer’s skills. When assured that the weeds are the work of the enemy, however, they are ready to help out by pulling the weeds before they grow. The farmer declines their offer, however, pointing out that any attempt to uproot the weeds will result in damage to the wheat as well. “Wait until harvest time”, he tells them. When all of the plants are mature, the weeds can be plucked up and destroyed leaving the good wheat to be gathered into the barn. Jesus’ explanation of the parable to the disciples centers on the differentiation of the righteous from the evildoers at the end of the age. The beauty of the parables, however, is that we never need to be satisfied by one explanation; parables work on many, many levels, and the more we dig into them, the more we see. I actually don’t think that any of our lives are entirely wheat or completely weed. We’re all pretty much of a mix, aren’t we? Sometimes we can act as our best selves and do things we are proud of, and sometimes we just blow it, giving in to impulse or acting out of fear, saying or doing things we regret, which can then hang around our necks like the veritable albatross. I think the parable of the wheat and the weeds invites us not to dwell on what is already done, but rather, to move forward, and to trust God that God will do the sorting when the time is right. Just as Jacob arrived in Bethel with a violation of his brother’s trust on his conscience, and was nevertheless shown God’s presence and offered blessing, so it is with our lives. God’s dream for us, God’s beloved children, is lives of a full harvest of joy. We can’t help but sow some weeds along the way. And despite our best hopes for him, Noah will find his times to include both the wheat and the weeds. But the weeds are not the final word, with. God who is Love itself. But the One to whom “darkness and light are both alike” is there beside us and in us – knowing us, accepting us, inviting and challenging us. Let us always be listening for her voice.
I hope to take less than 45 minutes but buckle your seat belt.
Let’s begin by reflecting back on a couple of phrases from the Bidding Prayer Kathryn read to us in the beginning of the service. “We gather as the body of the faithful to remember that God is the Peace which surpasses all understanding. . . “We long for peace, within ourselves, within our communities, within creation. . . . “Make us quick to welcome ventures in cooperation among the peoples of the world … “In the time of opportunity, make us diligent; and in the time of peril, let not our courage fail; . . . ” The fact that all of these are action statements with regard to peace cannot be over stated. I am one of those people who hears peace and I relax and want to sit back and enjoy the quiet and restfulness that I often associate with peace. But peace is not necessarily peaceful. Kathryn read in the Collect just before I started, “Keep us from being content with things as they are, that from this central peace there may come a creative compassion, a thirst for justice, and a willingness to give of ourselves in the spirit of Christ.” No sitting back and resting in peacefulness in that sentence. My second response to getting this assignment was to go to the Oxford Dictionary for a place to start. There were 10 definitions for “peace’ in the electronic version of the Oxford Dictionary that I accessed with numerous sub-definitions among them. Five dealt with political or civil tranquility as among nations or within society; four of them dealt with the quiet restfulness that I mentioned enters my mind on first reflection and one explained the sign of peace we offer during religious services. I am going to guess that the Peace that surpasses all understanding is not defined in those definitions. Jesus would have used the Jewish word for peace in his teachings to his followers. Shalom, does not simply mean Peace. According to Doug Hershey in his article entitled The True Meaning of Shalom on firmisreal.org, “The root word of Shalom is ‘shalam’.” He goes on to say “The ancient Hebrew meaning of shalam was “to make something whole”. Not just regarding practical restoration of things that were lost or stolen. But with an overall sense of fulness and completeness in mind, body and estate.” To make something whole with an overall sense of fulness and completeness in mind, body, and estate. Now to me that sounds a lot more like something Jesus might say. Perhaps a little further investigation of how a Jewish rabbi might view the meaning of peace would be helpful. Dr. Aviezer Ravitzky has done an exploration of shalom in Hebrew scripture in an article entitled Shalom: Peace in Hebrew, on the online site myJewishlearning.com. He writes; ““Great is peace, for of all the commandments it is written: ‘if [emphases added] thou see,’ ‘if thou meet’ (Exodus 23:4, 5), ‘if [there] chance {to be} (Deuteronomy 22:6); that is, if the occasion for this commandment should arise, you must do it, and if not, you need not do it. In relation to peace, however, [it is written]: ‘seek peace, and pursue it’ — seek it in your own place, and pursue it even to another place as well.” (Leviticus Rabah 9:9)” Ravitzky is saying that most of the rules and commandments of the Mosaic and Jewish Law are responsive or reactive to an action taken by a person of the Jewish faith. But peace, peace is affirmative. You don’t wait on peace, you make peace. Dr. Ravitzky goes on to say; “Peace was the ultimate purpose of the whole Torah : “All that is written in the Torah was written for the sake of peace” (Tanhuma Shofetim 18). It is the essence of the prophetic tiding — “The prophets have planted in the mouth of all people naught so much as peace” (Bamidbar Rabah Naso 11:7) — and of redemption, “God announceth to Jerusalem that they [Israel] will be redeemed only through peace” (Deuteronomy Rabah 5:15).” So I reach the conclusion that the pursuit of making something whole with an overall sense of fulness and completeness in mind, body, and estate is what Jesus is saying to us when he says “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27) Wow! Talk about a mission statement. And yet what was it that Kathryn just prayed in Collect? “Keep us from being content with things as they are, that from this central peace there may come a creative compassion, a thirst for justice, and a willingness to give of ourselves in the spirit of Christ.” So how do we do that? I think it sounds more difficult than it really is. Take a trip with me. Close your eyes if you’re comfortable and imagine a place where it is peaceful and you like to go to gather yourself. A park, a beach, a place in the woods. Imagine settling down on a bench or a rock or a log or something to rest from the travel to get here and take in the surroundings. All of a sudden a slightly disheveled person muttering to themselves saunters up and sits down next to you. Of course you’re startled but you can’t find the words to say anything right away. They just continue to talk; not necessarily to you but sort of in your direction. You can’t figure out what the heck you should do or say and your focus on that keeps you from really hearing what the person is saying. You catch a word or two, enough to understand that the person is in distress. Suddenly the person jumps up and turns toward you and says, “Thank you. Thank you so much. You have made my day. No one would listen to me but now you have allowed me to get myself straight. Thank you so very much!” and they walk away as quickly as they came. So what do you feel? I know some of us are still too startled to feel anything but startled. I think maybe some of us are analyzing the encounter and realizing that we accidentally gave someone shalom. We went into our favorite place in search of shalom, thought we lost it, gave it to a stranger, and got it back from the stranger. God’s shalom is like that. Sometimes all we have to do is be present and the Spirit takes it from there. As Charlie said in her sermon three weeks ago, one of our friends, Fr. Warren Hicks, gave us a mantra to guide our work with folks who are not doing as well as might be. He said show up, be present, tell the truth and let go of the outcome. Showing up is just being where we think we are called and sometimes just being open no matter where we are. Being present just means not preoccupied by the noise around us and in our heads. Listen, actively. Telling the truth is not license to judge or condemn but is about responding from your heart to the person in front of you. Letting go of the outcome is understanding that we don’t have all the answers and that sometimes things won’t meet our expectations and that’s alright because we can leave it to the Spirit to finish the work. A short time ago, on a Wednesday night, Charlie and I were watching PBS. We started watching a documentary about a black gay man who did a tour of the South in search of places where gay and trans people can live authentically. It was interesting how much love he found touring a part of our country not know for openness to the other. It was followed by a documentary about Mama Bears, moms of gay and trans children. Let me explain that while I do my best to accept trans people, I have had a hard time understanding their world. Watching how a young trans woman expressed who she was and how it came from inside of her helped me a step further along the way. I highly recommend the show should you get a chance to see it. The reason I tell you this is to show that the Spirit has a way of getting you prepared to do God’s work. The next day, Thursday, was my day for going walking with Dennis O’Rourke to visit with the folks on the streets as we do as members of Emmaus Companions. About mid-way along the walk we entered the Energy Park and Dennis set about teaching a new card game to a group of folk sitting at one of the tables. As he was settling in I noticed one of our peeps sitting off by herself on a rock in the park. I have known and talked with K (not her real initial) since a few months before the pandemic. When I first met her she was homeless. I had not seen her for a couple years so I asked how she was and if she was living inside now. We chatted for a while and I learned she was in a pretty good place with housing and people she liked. She started sharing how hard it was to continue her transition. I thought about how changing your physical self to make it consistent with your psychological self had to be really hard and scary. While I thought that was what she was talking about, the real issue was with her mom. Her mom’s rejection of the transition makes it hard to impossible for K to commit to the rest of her transition even though trying to live as her birth gender has driven her close to suicide more than once. Mom was unable to accept where K was and where she was going. K loves her mom and it hurts really badly that mom doesn’t return the love. Tears ran down K’s face a couple times as she told me her story. To be truthful I didn’t know what to say so I decided to let God tell me what to say and when. God wasn’t talking at the moment. I sat with K for about an hour. Before we parted I reminded her that she admired how her mom was really helpful and caring with people. I told K that K’s care and concern for those around her was evidence that a part of her mom was alive and well within her. I told K that she has a lot to give to the world and we can’t afford to lose her. K thanked me for listening and said people often find it hard to listen. I don’t know how much my listening helped but that is the letting go of the outcome part. I felt peace as she went her way and I went mine. As Joan read from Rumi “Be a precious donor of peace and hope. Give love to all you meet.” We don’t have to be great ministers to offer Shalom to the world. Sometimes we don’t have to do anything but sit and see who sits down with us. Amen
What’s wrong with me? Have you ever found yourself hurling those words out into the darkness of a sleepless night? What do you do when the hamster in your head spins the wheel counting up all the ways you’ve failed yourself and others. Paul says, “For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do.” I like to imagine these words first coming to Paul as he tossed and turned in his bed deep in the dark of a hot and humid Mediterranean night.
There are many angles from which to look at these famous words from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. What interests me this time around is Paul’s very personal sense of failure because that’s what routinely wakes me up at night. Paul had many things to regret about his life, many failures, some of them pretty catastrophic. As Saul in the Book of Acts, he savagely persecuted the early church, most horrifyingly by approving the stoning to death of Stephen in Acts 7 and 8. Was it this that woke him up in his bed in the middle of the night and left him tossing and turning? Theologian Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “What is it about beds at night? During the daytime a bed seems harmless enough. You can take a nap on a Saturday afternoon without waking up wondering how much longer you have to live. You can work a crossword puzzle in one while getting over a bad cold… But, wake up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep, and you can be in for a real workout.” There are many things that will keep us awake at night. But, surely one of the most terrifying of them is counting our failures. What’s especially interesting about failure is that even those we praise as the most successful among us often cite failure as their most frequent companion - failure, not success. I recall a survey some time ago of Fortune 500 CEOs who pretty much to a person said their most frequent experience wasn’t success; it was failure. So, if by some of the most visible and influential standards of our culture many of our most successful people point to failure as their most common experience, what does that say about most of the rest of us? True, some failures are funny. Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is a boisterous and joyful romantic comedy fueled not by success, but by failure: failure after failure of its characters to communicate the truth about themselves with those around them. It’s this flaw that prompts Benedick in the final act to declare, “Man is a giddy thing.” That word ”giddy” has multiple meanings, but in this context Benedick means to say that everyone is a bundle of contradictions.The comedy of Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Constello in our parents and grandparents day constantly relied on the comedians’ contradictions and failings (especially failure to communicate: look up, for example, Abbott and Costello’s hilarious baseball routine, “Who’s on First?” and you’ll see what I mean. Other failures are not very funny. It’s at this point that the concept of original sin, a thesis that has fallen into wide disfavor in recent times, has attracted some highly regarded thinkers as a way of characterizing the flaws in our human nature, flaws, they say, descended with us at birth. The English writer G. K. Chesterton said original sin was acutely visible at that moment on a lovely summer afternoon when bored children begin torturing the cat. A recent book about Picasso recounts how those closest to him considered him a monster to live with. T.S. Eliot, a giant among twentieth century poets, was an anti-Semite. Mahatma Gandhi was an exceptional leader of nonviolent resistance, but his personal failings included violent treatment of members of his own family. Saint Augustine’s sense of original sin is not primarily sexual in nature, as some corners of modern psychology would have it (there has always been more heat than light in that way of looking at the problem). Original sin becomes sharply apparent to Augustine when, as a teenager, he raids a neighbor’s pear orchard with his pals for no other reason than the thrill of it, knowing through every minute of that caper that it was wrong to be doing it, and knowing there were riper, far more delicious pears to be had in their own orchards. Saint Paul and Saint Augustine after him represent a quantum leap in the ethical consciousness of the West. No longer is it enough simply to know what’s good in order to do what’s good, as Socrates and Plato taught. With Paul and Augustine, you must also will yourself to do good. And, it’s the will to do good that is our principal failing. We are giddy things, said the Bard. So did the ancient Greeks in their own way. Their version of what we call original sin, the Greek version of giddiness, goes like this: we are all by nature a bundle of contradictions thanks to traits we’ve inherited from two gods with opposing natures. From Dionysus comes our wildness, our impulsiveness, our irrationality, but also our capacity for unrestrained joy, while from Apollo comes our zeal for order, for reason, for equanimity (calmness, composure, evenness of temper), and equability (serenity and tranquility). The Greeks didn’t see a sharp line between our Dionysian and our Apollonian portions. That’s why their temple at Delphi was sacred to both gods. In the wild, winter months at Delphi, high up on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, they worshiped Dionysus. In the calmer spring and summer months at Delphi, they worshiped Apollo. Martin Luther put our problem this way: “Human nature is like a drunk peasant; lift him into the saddle on one side, over he topples on the other side.” All the more reason, then, to ask: how do we balance the opposing forces within us, the contradictions? And what do we do about it when balance fails us? It’s at this point we need to look at how Jesus deals with the problem. How does Jesus approach the problem of human failure? Unfortunately, it happens most clearly in verses 20-24, a passage that comes in the middle of our gospel for today, but which sadly was omitted from our lectionary, perhaps because it was thought it would be too hard for us to hear on a warm July morning. In today’s reading from the Gospels, Matthew 11, Jesus is bogged down in some rabbinical dog days. In verses 20 to 24, he becomes very angry. He’s in his home region of Galilee where it’s fair to expect his message of repentance would have been more welcome than elsewhere in Roman Palestine. But, the people there have failed to take to heart what Jesus and his old teacher John the Baptist have been so urgently preaching. John himself, chapter 11 tells us, is now languishing in a prison of the Roman puppet ruler. Three chapters ahead in Matthew, he will have his head cut off. And, no, it’s not just the Galilean Pharisees, the religious types, Jesus’ fellow rabbis, who are being a thorn in his side. It’s the ordinary people, too, Jesus’ own people, his neighbors, his fellow Galileans. He singles out whole towns of them, including his own home town of Capernaum. Many of his own people are ignoring the call to repent and begin living lives of loving kindness toward others. At this point comes verse 28, which is in our reading today, the words we so often take away as soothing and comforting: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” I just used the King James phrasing here right out of the Holy Communion service in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the service I grew up with as did many of you other gray hairs out there. When I was confirmed at the age of thirteen my parish gifted me with a copy of that prayer book. The problem is that the 1928 prayer book language may have masked a key point. The words I just quoted follow the so-called “comfortable words” in that service: “Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all who truly turn to him.” This theme is carried over into the concluding lines of the gospel reading today. In verse 30 comes, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light,” words Handel put on that light, soothing, airy soprano line that introduces the final movement of Part One of The Messiah. But, what kind of comfort are we talking about? Not the kind of comfort a thirteen year old kid growing up in rural Delaware understood, and not Handel’s soothing soprano line. Comfortable words? If in our customary everyday La-Z-Boy recliner understanding of comfort this is our takeaway from the gospel, then we’d be very mistaken about what Jesus meant. “My yoke is easy, my burden is light,” is not an anodyne, not an anesthetic to shield us from the pain and uncertainty of life. Just the opposite: it’s a wakeup call. What Jesus is really saying here is, “My yoke and burden aren’t a walk in the park, but they are a whole lot lighter and a whole lot easier than the ultimately self-defeating yoke you hard hearted Galileans have chosen to wrap around your necks and live your lives by, ignoring the truth about yourselves and choosing to persist in your giddiness, ignoring your duty to love your neighbors as yourselves. So, the lesson up to now for us is this: Don’t ignore your failings. Strive to see them and face them. Name them, confess them, and ask God for forgiveness, and reconcile yourselves to the fact that for as long as we draw breath, we will never cease to be giddy; we will never escape our need for confession, repentance, and forgiveness. My way, Jesus says, is in the end just the kind of strong comfort, the right kind of solid, if not soothing, love that will bring our giddy natures and the giddy world around us into right relationship, and open the way for the true rule of God, the rule of love for another, the kind of love that is real comfort, real peace, the peace of God that passes all understanding. Writing a series of reflections on the “comfortable words” for the Prayer Book Society of Canada, the Rev. Dr. Thomas Curran says, “we need to be careful about this word ‘comfortable’; it has nothing to do with our favourite easy-chair or the luxury of a properly heated home, nor does it have anything to do with casual attire; the ‘comfortable words’ are one means by which we feel the presence of Christ’s Holy Spirit in our lives, the presence of the ‘Comforter.’ In its root sense, to comfort means ‘to strengthen’, not to encourage ease, or to enhance leisure.” God is therefore most assuredly not a La-Z-Boy recliner. In this light, the presence of that terrifying question, “What’s wrong with me?,” that we cast out into the darkness of a sleepless night might best be seen not as a mark of condemnation, but rather as a vehicle of confession and repentance, and in the end a sign of our ultimate wholeness with God, our assurance, that, as Paul discovered and Saint Augustine four centuries after him, we rest, not in the so called comfortable La-Z-Boys of our living rooms, chairs that will shred, tear, and one day collapse, become useless, and wind up either on a sidewalk in the rain or in a dump somewhere, but in the eternal love of God. Alright, since we’re looking at night terrors in the light of confession, I want to take a moment for a personal confession. I confess to you that I really, really like La-Z-Boy recliners. I don’t have one only because my wife says we don’t have enough room for one, and she’s right about that. Take that as my confession, but note that I said nothing about repentance. When it comes to La-Z-Boys, confession yes; repentance never. Returning to our discussion, our ultimate comfort, then, is not in La-Z-Boys or similar forms of impermanence, but in the everlasting embrace of our life in God, a life committed to love, the sign of which is our willingness, in the spirit of Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Martin Luther, and countless others to acknowledge and confess our failures, which is what we do when we call out what’s wrong with me. In the end, all is right and good in our relationship with God. Night terrors, then, are nothing to be afraid of. On the contrary, I have come to think they’re paradoxically a sign of robust spiritual health, the kind of robust spiritual health that Saint Paul displays this morning. In this light, that cry of what’s wrong with me should be seen as a sign of grace. This was Paul’s great discovery in Romans. It’s what saves him from the pit of despair that persecuting the church early in his life would have otherwise left him wallowing in. We shouldn’t be troubled when our cries of failure rise up out of those sleepless moments in the dark; but, we should be very troubled if they don’t, and especially if we ignore them. Don’t be afraid of staring your failures in the face. If you love Christ, your failures simply do not count. If this isn’t enough for you, remember this: if you have been baptized, and I’m assuming most of us have, remember that your baptism sealed you as one of God’s own forever. Forever! What else can we do to stop or at least slow down the nighttime hamsters from spinning those wheels in our heads so furiously? Many have taken solace in a prayer that is familiar to many of you: Reinhold Neibuhr’s Serenity Prayer. Please join me as we pray for serenity now. Let us pray God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen. And, Amen! |
