Dressed for Dinner

October 12, 2014 by Saint James Church Fordham

One garment can save your life... and it is free for the asking!

SJF • Proper 23a • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
When the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe… +

Have you ever gone to a dinner party or social function and arrived to find that you were not, as the signs outside some posh restaurants say, wearing “proper attire?” Depending on the degree of the inappropriateness, this can be either mildly annoying or intensely embarrassing! Some fancy restaurants will keep a stock of ties or sports jackets on hand for the sake of gentlemen who show up deficient in one category or the other. Snooty they may be, but they are not so foolish as to lose business by turning away potential customers. Still, you might well risk getting a haughty look and a gesture towards the door, if not a helping hand from a bouncer. And if it’s a private function, you have no recourse, but to endure “the eye” from all the other guests.

It is very uncomfortable to feel out of place, and since, as the politically incorrect saying goes, “clothes make the man,” few things in polite society make one feel more out of place than being improperly dressed for the occasion.

And there are times when being improperly dressed can be more than an embarrassment. It can be a matter of life and death. You probably know the various TV reality shows that consist of amateur video of terrible accidents and disasters. It’s not the kind of show I really care to watch; not because it’s violent — I mean, I like a good action picture as well as anybody — but because unlike the fictional tales of Bond or Bourne, these videos are real, real tragedies of real people in horrible situations, and I just don’t like the idea of real tragedy being transformed into entertainment.

One of them, though, a terrifying one that I did happen to see, starts calmly enough. What you see through the camera is a group of skydivers jumping from a plane; and the camera follows them because the cameraman is one of them. As they descend towards the distant ground they are weightless, and you see them do a wonderful ariel ballet that forms all sorts of lovely patterns, then one by one they open their chutes and disappear.

But then, something goes wrong. The camera starts to shake uncontrollably, then begins a free-fall of its own, tumbling and twisting dizzily as it plummets to the ground, occasionally as it spins catching sight of a terrified man twisting in the air. In the excitement of the filming, the cameraman himself has forgotten his parachute. The most important thing to wear, the thing that would have saved his life is still sitting up on the plane, where it can do him no good.

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Yes, indeed, what you wear can save your life. In today’s gospel we have just such a story of how serious failing to dress properly can be. This isn’t just any old dinner party; this is a royal wedding banquet. And here is one of the guests sitting, as it were, in cutoff shorts, a tank-top, and flip flops. No wonder he is speechless when the king confronts him! What can he say? Before he can say a word, he is bound hand and foot and tossed out into the darkness outside the brightly lit banqueting hall, there to weep and gnash his teeth.

We are apt to sympathize with this poor guy. After all, he wasn’t one of the original invited guests — they refused to come, and they also faced the king’s rage. This man without a wedding garment is one of the second-string guests, the stand-ins, the ordinary folks who just happened to be in the neighborhood going about their business — or lack of business — when the king’s slaves gathered them all into the banquet hall. How could he be expected to have a wedding robe?

Yet that seems to be just what this unreasonable king expects, and out the poor guy goes. As with so many of Jesus’ parables, it doesn’t seem fair. He hadn’t been invited the first time around. He hadn’t asked to be invited the second time around. Yet he is treated as if he deliberately chose, with full notice and plenty of opportunity, as if he had received an engraved wedding invitation stating what proper dress would be, to come to the wedding without the proper attire.

So what is this parable all about? In particular, what is this wedding robe, that makes it so important? The man in question, after all, isn’t the bride or the groom, or a groomsman or the best man; he’s just one of the guests — invited at the last minute at that. What is Jesus teaching us in this parable? What’s is it about?

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First let me note that not all of Jesus’ parables are what’s called “allegories” — that is, a story in which each aspect of the story symbolizes something definite. Most of the parables are not like that; they are intended just to make a single point. And it misses the point in those cases if you try to explain each detail as if it corresponded to something else. But some of Christ’s parables, such as the story of the seeds falling on the different kinds of soils, which we heard earlier this year, do call for this kind of interpretation. Jesus himself demonstrated that by explaining what each kind of soil, or lack of soil, represented. So too this parable of the Wedding Banquet, and the Guests and the Wedding Robe is worth looking at point by point.

Those who refuse to accept the king’s invitation, for instance, represent those who refuse the Word of God. It may well be that the ones who kill the messengers, and have their city burned as punishment, represent the leaders who refused to heed the prophets and whose hardness of heart, according to Jewish tradition, was responsible for the capture of Jerusalem and its destruction in the days of Jeremiah.

In the second part of the parable, the church is portrayed, the church with open doors, where all are invited to join in the feast. But — and here’s where the wedding robe comes in — the heavenly banquet hall is not a fast food franchise. It is serious business, this kingdom of heaven, and there are no “dress-down Fridays” to say nothing of Sundays!

But don’t for a minute think that Jesus is talking about a dress-code for Sunday worship! As Jesus’ brother James reminded the early church, don’t turn away someone from your church who may be dressed poorly; Jesus loved the poor, and he spent most of his time with them. So this is not a parable about us dressing up for Sunday worship.

But remember, at the same time, the symbolism; the elements of the parable are symbols, not to be taken literally. This isn’t about literally dressing up, it’s about a wedding robe that here doesn’t represent a wedding robe: it’s a symbol of something else. The wedding garment is a symbol here: it represents the clothing from above, the new self that is put on in Christ.

One who sits at the Lord’s table is expected to have been clothed anew with the white robe of baptism, the robe that covers all our other clothing, just as Christ’s death covers all our sins. A few of us, on Sunday, literally do wear that ancient white baptismal robe — the ministers who serve at the altar here — you can see them all, dressed in these long white robes. In the early church, that was the kind of robe that would be put on someone when they went to be baptized. (And don’t we still today dress up even little babies in a little white suit, or a little white gown? As I sometimes say, there’s sometimes more fabric than baby, when I’ve done some baptisms here!) So this white baptismal robe is called an “alb” from the Latin word for “white” — as in albino! This alb is what we now have as a relic of that wedding robe. It represent new life that begins when you are baptized, the new self that is reborn in Christ.

For Christ has removed the shroud of death that covered all nations — he has swallowed up death for ever. And instead of that old winding cloth, that old shroud, he has given us this new garment of life. That’s why the man gets into trouble because this garment is available to all, this new creation in Baptism — that’s why the man without a wedding robe had no excuse — the free gift of God in Baptism is available to all who chose it, and the banquet table is open to all who are baptized. God’s heavenly banquet is like one of those restaurants that keeps a supply of neckties and sports jackets to provide for anyone who comes to the door not wearing one — there is no excuse for anyone not to abide by that dress code. The waters of baptism are available to all without cost, flowing freely for all of humanity — available — but not just “available” for Jesus wants all the nations to be baptized in those waters, as he sends out his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, telling them, Go and baptize all nations; baptize them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The church received those marching orders, and it has a mandate to go to all the world, to open the doors and invite everyone in, in to the baptismal waters, and the heavenly banquet.

To be baptized into God’s righteousness: That is what it means to be properly dressed for God’s table. It’s not about the clothes you wear, it’s about the new life that comes from above. As that great old prayer says, “We do not presume to come to this thy table trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.” Those manifold and great mercies take the form of the wedding robe of baptism, into which all are invited to come. The chiefest mercy is the gift of grace through the death of Jesus Christ our Lord, into whom we are buried in baptism, with whom we share in this heavenly banquet, and in whom we rise to everlasting life. We dare to approach this table because we are clothed in the wedding robe of baptism, we are wearing protective garments, the armor of God, the new creation that comes in baptism.

The new garment of the baptismal self is more than proper attire; it is more than a jacket and tie, it is more than a tuxedo — it is even more than a parachute! It is the uniform of the blessed children of God, the robe of state of the royal children of God, the vestment of salvation — it is being clothed with Christ. Beloved sisters and brothers here today, however else we may appear to be clothed, in our ordinary clothes or in our Sunday best, or these ancient relics of earlier days, however we are dressed in physical clothing, let us give thanks to God that we wear as well the wedding robe of baptism. It is the garment whose one size fits all, and is given away for free — but nonetheless it is fit and proper for those who join the chorus of praise at the Lamb’s High Feast, the king’s great wedding banquet. +

What's Coming

November 10, 2013 by Saint James Church Fordham

Jesus on marriage, the life of the world to come, and a put-down for the Sadducees on their own terms...

Proper 27c 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold.

Advent, the season of expectation both for Christmas and second coming of our Lord, will soon be upon us. Every year, it seems, the readings appointed for the weeks before Advent always seem to take on an Advent air a bit early, as if the framers of the cycle of readings just couldn’t wait to launch into the new church year — just as the merchants of the secular world can’t seem to wait until Thanksgiving any more to start the Christmas push; they want to start before Hallowe’en!

This tendency to want to jump the gun, to over-anticipate, is nothing new. Whether a holiday, or a holy day, or the coming of the Lord, there will always be someone pushing the calendar impatiently, trying to reach out into the future and drag it into the present.

One of the reasons that Saint Paul has to write a second letter to the Thessalonians is on account of just this eager anticipation. Someone, somehow, is spreading the word — either by spirit or by word or by a letter (even a letter claiming to come from Saint Paul himself) — to the effect that the day of the Lord has already come. Paul is writing to calm the Thessalonians down with a virtual, “hold your horses.” He warns the Thessalonians not to be deceived, and assures them that the day of the Lord will not come before the antichrist is revealed — though he doesn’t use the word antichrist, referring instead to the “lawless one” who pretends to be a god and even seats himself in God’s temple and proclaims himself to be God — of course, that’s exactly who antichrist is! We tend to hear the “anti” in antichrist as meaning “against” — but the antichrist is not some powerful atheist opponent to God or to Christ, but someone who pretends to be Christ, who pretends to be God: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or in this case, a lawless deceiver who present himself clothed as the Lamb of God. As is often true, the most dangerous villain is the one who looks like a hero.

Paul is concerned for his flock in Thessalonica, and even adds an impatient, “Don’t you remember I told you all this?” Perhaps they do, but perhaps they also remember something Paul it seems has forgotten — that in his First Letter to them he had talked about the coming of the Lord as very likely happening within their own lifetime, urging them to be prepared to be caught up into the clouds with the Lord at his coming, and to stay awake and be watchful for the day of the Lord, that will come like a thief in the night. So it may be that Paul is reaping what he sowed, and trying to put the proverbial toothpaste back into the tube, walking back his words — as politicians have to do from time to time in our own day — because he got them overexcited and over-expectant in his first letter, his second letter has to call them back and calm them down: like the posters in war-time England that said, “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

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There is, it seems, an enthusiasm, an almost inescapable or uncontrollable desire to lay hold of the future and realize it in the present — like children who just can’t wait for Christmas morning to arrive. Give people the slightest hint or encouragement, and they will grab at it and run with it. On the other side, and we see some of them today, there are some people who have no use at all for such a future, who deny it or ignore it, or try to argue it away.

In today’s Gospel, some Sadducees come to Jesus with what they think is a foolproof argument against the life of the world to come, which they don’t believe in. They are among the fundamentalists of their day— they reject the “modern” ideas about resurrection. These notions have only begun to circulate since the Greeks and Romans came to dominate their land. The Law of Moses, as they read it, makes no mention of resurrection. There is no future life, there is no resurrection, no there is no kingdom of God awaiting the virtuous, no heaven. The dead are dead, and that’s it; all that survives when you die is your memory in others — their memory of you; the good are remembered with thanks, and their name endures, the wicked are cursed or forgotten. So the Sadducees believe.

So they try to trap Jesus with what they regard as the absurdity of this idea of the resurrection of the dead, by setting for him a puzzle based on one of the aspects of the law of Moses, an aspect that is very near and dear to their hearts. This is the law that requires a man’s brother to marry his widow if he dies childless — if he dies without children, his brother is to marry her. And the reason for this was precisely so that a memory of the deadman could continue, for the child born to his brother would not be reckoned as the brother’s son but as the son of the dead man. The biological father would be regarded, still, as an uncle. And so the dead man’s name would continue down through the generations.

This fits the Sadducee belief system perfectly: there is no afterlife or resurrection — only the memory passed down through your family, and so it is vital to continue that family, for the family name to continue on, for someone unfortunate enough to die childless; even — and I’m sure this has occurred to you — even to the extent of violating another portion of the Law that forbids a man to marry his brother’s wife. Moreover, the law requiring this exceptional and incestuous marriage also fits their agenda to find fault with Jesus. The Sadducees multiply the problem for him by imagining seven brothers, all of whom die after attempting to fulfill their responsibility. I suppose it’s no surprise that the woman died! The Sadducees set a problem for Jesus that they think is absurd — since the woman, again under the law of Moses, can only have one husband. Under the Jewish law a man can have many wives but a woman only one husband. And so, they are saying to Jesus, in this crazy “resurrection” you talk about how could she possibly have seven? They think they’ve got a “gotcha.”

Jesus rounds on them and he accuses them of trying to put the life of the world in terms of the life of this world. They try to imagine in the life of the world to come something which belongs only to this world — and that is marriage. Now, don’t get me or Jesus wrong about this. Marriage is a wonderful thing, and the love that spouses share can be blessed and beautiful. But marriage, as good as it is, is only a shadow of the all-encompassing love of God that those who are blessed to come to the resurrection will share. The life of the world to come is not just a repetition or continuation of this life, but a transformation of this life into something so beautiful, so surpassing of any joy we can possibly experience here on earth, that all of our former joys — as wonderful as they are, as good as they are — will seem like a snapshot compared to the real thing.

All that being said — which is quite a bit! — Jesus doesn’t stop there, with the teaching that marriage is a state of this life, not the next. For in the next life people do not have to marry and have children because they do not die! In the life of the world to come, life is everlasting. He doesn’t let the Sadducees off the hook at this point, even though he could stop there. He doesn’t let them off on their terms. They want to claim that there is nothing in the law of Moses about resurrection? Jesus says to them, au contraire! You want Moses, I’ll give you Moses.

Jesus goes right back to the beginning, to the book of Exodus, to Moses’ call from God, the moment at which Moses encounters God in that bush that burned but was not consumed (itself an image of the eternal being of God and of God’s kingdom) and the voice of God calling to Moses out of the bush: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” In this passage the eternal God identifies himself by the name I AM — and so if he is the God of the three patriarchs who died centuries before Moses, then they must still be present to God — that is, they are still alive. For God does not say, “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” but “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Somehow those patriarchs are still alive, still worshiping God, in God’s presence. So Jesus confounds the Sadducees with their own authority: with the writings of Moses himself, which they’ve heard read year after year, and yet it hasn’t sunk in; and it testifies that God lives, and that the patriarchs are alive to God.

I’m sorry that our Gospel reading stops with that verse; because the text continues, “Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well.’ For they no longer dared to ask him any questions.” Snap!

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The hardest thing, it seems, is to live in the present as the present, respectful of the past, and hopeful for the future. So many seem stuck either trying to relive past glories or joys and thrusting them into the future, or pulling the future closer to us than it really it is. Sufficient to the day is both the good and the evil thereof. Our call as Christians is to rest in the confidence of God, who is everlasting, who is at all times and in all places, past, present and to come; to rest in the confidence of Job — to know that our Redeemer lives, and that our redemption awaits us — and moreover that it is something that we will behold with our newly awakened eyes in the resurrection. With that kind of hope, standing firm and holding fast to what we have learned through the traditions and creeds of the church, handed down to us from the days of Jesus, we continue to trust that at the last he will stand upon the earth, and our eyes shall see — and what is future now will be now then.+

Death Before Life

November 04, 2012 by Saint James Church Fordham

Our song shall be sung to eternity, in the Spirit -- a sermon for the observance of All Saints Day.

All Saints’ Sunday • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG Some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb and said, “Take away the stone.”

Today is the Sunday after All Saints Day, on which it is our tradition here at Saint James to remember not only the great saints of Christian history but also our own personal saints — our friends and family members who have died and rest in Christ. We remember them with images: the icons at the altar representing the saints in glory who meant so much to the universal church, and the photographs on the bulletin board here, representing our loved ones who have meant so much to us, and to this particular church.

These images are a help to our memory — and whenever a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist Protestant challenges me with, “Why do you have pictures of saints in your church?” I am always happy to reply with the question, “Don’t you have pictures of your loved ones in your house or at your work? Well this is the House of God, and the place where the work of God begins, and so we keep pictures of the members of God’s household and workforce to remind us of the fact that they belong to him as much as they belong to us! They remind us of the core of the Christian faith: that death is not the end.”

No, my friends; death is not the end. In a very real sense death is the beginning. That may sound a bit odd, as we are usually accustomed to thinking about life leading up to death. Many people, in fact, think that death is the end — atheists who have no belief in God at all, or those who believe that there is no more to us than simply the physical stuff that makes us up, and who see death just as the ultimate breakdown of the human machine, like a car whose engine has stopped working, with four flat tires, goof for nothing but the junkyard.

As I’ve noted before, the stuff that makes us up — what our bodies are made from — is constantly changing, even though we experience continuity in who we are. Every breath I take, I draw in oxygen from the atmosphere, and I exhale carbon, each little carbon atom neatly ushered off by two oxygen atoms. When I eat, I take in nitrogen and carbon and phosphorus and who knows what other chemicals that used to be part of some other plant or animal, and they become part of me. And as cells in my body die and are replaced, I am in constant flux and change. The “me” of today is literally physically not the “me” of yesterday, nor will it be the “me” of tomorrow. Most of the cells that have made up my body down through the years died a long time ago — and even some of the ones I carry around now, like the ones that make up my hair — or what is left of it — and the outer surface of my skin, are dead now and just waiting to fall out or rub off. This is the nature of biological life. Each of us is in constant transition.

This conveyor belt of life is the biological life that ends at death. Ultimately all of the cells that make up “you” and “me” will die, and “you” and “I” will be clinically dead before that, since it takes the these cells and systems working together to keep us alive with what the doctors call life. Some of our cells will keep on trying to work — for minutes or even hours — after our hearts have stopped and our brains have stopped functioning.

Yet we know that this is not all there is to life — just as there is a “you” or a “me” that somehow continues to exist in spite of the changes in our bodies. I spoke last month of that long-running play about young lovers, “The Fantasticks.” That play ran for 42 years, and you can well imagine that the actors who played the young lovers

on opening night eventually had to be replaced with even younger actors, as did the older actors too. And yet the play continued to be the play — it continued to exist as such in spite of the change in the actors who made up the cast. Our bodies are much like this: new cells coming into existence to replace the old dying ones every minute of every day.

Now, you might well observe, that just as the play always has to have actors — so too don’t we have to continue to have a body if we are to continue to exist? And the Christian answer to this dilemma has always been Yes. Some religions and philosophies think of the soul as a disembodied ghostly sort of thing that floats around and only temporarily “inhabits” a body. But that isn’t the Christian faith: our creed makes no reference to the immortality of the soul, but rather speaks of the resurrection of the body. Some in the early church insisted that the body that would rise would literally be the body you happened to die with — like Lazarus. The problem with that being that much of what goes into making up one person at any given moment also becomes part of someone else’s body through the very air we breathe. Some in the early church, like Saint Augustine, recognized this problem, and surmised that God would make up the difference by creating new bodily substance — but of course that goes against the whole idea of it being the same body.

Rather than getting tangled up in such speculation, even on the authority of someone like Saint Augustine, it is better to follow the Scripture — isn’t it always? — and follow Saint Paul’s understanding of this, as he wrote to the Corinthians: what dies — when we die — is a physical body, but what rises — when we rise — is a spiritual body. And spiritual here does not mean something less real or less substantial than the physical — but more so. It is the Spirit that gives life.

What is spiritual is strong enough to last for ever — this is why death is the real beginning, the beginning of eternal life, the life that lasts, the life of the Spirit we share with God himself, for as Jesus told the Samaritan Woman, God is Spirit, and as Saint Paul assures us, when we are raised we shall be like him. This is why death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things — the merely physical things of which the cosmos and everything in it is made— will have passed away. Scientists tell us that all matter will one day dissolve, and the physical universe will fade into nothingness as even protons and electrons give up the ghost; and the physical will cease to be. But the Spirit, and what is spiritual, will endure. God in Christ will make all things new — including the gift of new spiritual bodies that will give new life to our being and loving and doing in and with the power of God, who is Spirit.

I mentioned that musical play, The Fantasticks, but this continuing existence in spite of the change in physical make-up is equally true of any play or piece of music. Bach’s Partitas for Violin have been played on countless violins; Beethoven’s symphonies have been played and will be played by countless different orchestras — and each of us is a precious creation of God, more precious than the most important composition by any great composer. You might say, that the cosmos, the physical world, is the mechanism by which God makes souls. The physical body is the first draft, the working score, so to speak; the spiritual body is the eternal performance.

We will at our death take a rest from being performed, but will at our rising in the Spirit find our song sung out to eternity, in the holy city, the new Jerusalem. Death is only the intermission, and the new life that comes at resurrection will begin the true and lasting concert of real life, as we join with all the saints who have gone before, in song around the throne. This is the life that will never end, where the goodness and uniqueness of each one of us, perfected by God and refined by means of this earthly life, like gold as though by fire, will run like sparks through stubble, as we join to sing to Christ the Lamb of God who is the light of the City: as the old Appalachian hymn sings so well, “And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on; and when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on. And when from death I’m free I’ll sing and joyful be, and through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on, and through eternity I’ll sing on.”+

To Be or Not To Be

September 18, 2011 by Saint James Church Fordham

Choosing life over death -- for the right reason. A sermon for Proper 20a.

SJF • Proper 20a • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
To me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard-pressed between the two; my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you.

In this morning’s reading from the prophet Jonah we encountered a rather petulant man prepared to die almost out of spite. Jonah is angry at God on two counts: for letting the wicked Ninevites off the hook because they repented in response to Jonah’s own prophetic warning; and more immediately and selfishly because the bush that shaded him from the harsh desert sun has withered at God’s command. Jonah the Impatient is not one to put up with such things, and one hopes he learns better by the end of the story. At that point Jonah appears to have been struck speechless in response to God’s final question putting things in perspective. He should, after all, be happy that his prophecy was heeded and saved an entire city.

When we turn to our Epistle there is no doubt that we are dealing with a much more positive assessment. In Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians we behold the efforts of a committed servant of God to wrestle with the issue of whether it is better to live or to die, but for the right reasons — not choosing to die out of spite, or even out of a desire to be with God, but choosing life instead in order to serve God’s people.

Living or dying: to be or not to be. That is the issue with which the melancholy Dane Prince Hamlet wrestles, though in very different circumstances from either Jonah or Paul. As you may recall, Hamlet is a philosophy student entangled in the midst of a family drama with supernatural overtones — his father’s ghost has appeared to him and told him that he was murdered by Hamlet’s uncle, who has since married his widow.

Shakespeare’s play is among the richest and most complex ever written, and the character of Hamlet can be played in many different ways. Sir Laurence Olivier’s version resonates most with our readings this morning — in weighing the question of life and death. You may recall that the film begins with Olivier’s voice-over introducing the theme, “This is the story of a man who could not make up his mind.” That is the heart of Hamlet’s dilemma, and it lies in that most famous of Shakespearian speeches, the one that begins, “To be or not to be.” That is, as Hamlet observes, the question — the one that faces him, and Jonah, and Paul, and ultimately every thinking person. Is it better to live or to die?

Hamlet’s short speech is a brilliant summary of the philosophical arguments for and against choosing death over life, or life over death, laying out an “on the one hand this and on the other hand that” kind of argument with himself.

Hamlet really would like to just end it all — in modern terms we would probably say he is suffering from clinical depression. Life itself has just become too much of a burden — especially with his father’s ghost getting into the picture and planting seeds of suspicion — and Hamlet doesn’t know if the ghost is telling the truth or if the ghost is trying to tempt him into committing the murder of an innocent person! So Hamlet is looking for a way out, and is even contemplating suicide. In an earlier speech he has already expressed the wish that he could just die — that his “too, too solid flesh” might simply melt and evaporate and disappear; but he immediately recalls that taking any action along those lines himself has been forbidden, as the Almighty has fixed his law “against self-slaughter.”

So in the more famous speech Hamlet returns to the question, Is suffering a thing that makes you more noble and virtuous by enduring it, or is it something you should overcome or avoid? Who after all would suffer if it were an option simply to end your life in an instant, and plunge into that endless sleep? But in that sleep of death what dreams might come? Ah, as Hamlet observes, “There’s the rub!”

In the end it is the unknown — what comes after death in that “undiscovered country” from which “no traveler returns” — that keeps Hamlet alive: not a positive will to live and a commitment to act, but fear of the unknown and the consequences of action. As he concludes, “Conscience makes cowards of us all.” So Hamlet continues on the course of his tragedy, only able finally to act against his murderous uncle when he finds a way to be sure the uncle is guilty — but too late to save himself or his mother, or his prospective father-in-law or his fiancée, or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or anyone else, from a swift journey offstage to that undiscovered country, death.

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Saint Paul, on the other hand, is not a man of doubt and double-mindedness, but of faith. He weighs the options, true, but he comes to a very different conclusion, and that right quickly. And this is because unlike Hamlet he is fully confidant of knowing what awaits him beyond the veil of death. He has absolutely no fear of what dreams might come. He does not regard death as an undiscovered country from which no traveler returns, but a land to which one indeed has gone to prepare a place for him, a land in which there are in fact many dwelling-places prepared, and from which that same one has returned, when the bonds of death were not able to keep him down. You know who that is, of course: Jesus Christ, the one in whom Paul places all of his faith. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is at the heart of Paul’s faith, Paul’s gospel, and it informs everything about his life and his ministry. It is his trust, his faith, his knowledge that he is assured of passage into the new life with Christ. In fact, he longs for it — not as Hamlet did as a kind of oblivion and end to his troubles — but as a positive desire to be with Christ. But Paul also knows that he still has work to do among the faithful — and though it is hard work and will be a sea of troubles for him, though it will mean suffering and pain, he commits to stay with it. His conscience is at work, but not to make him a coward, but to make him a hero — one willing to suffer for and with others rather than to take the easy way out. He chooses this course, convinced that remaining in the flesh — that is to say, remaining alive — is for the benefit of the struggling Christians to whom he writes. Even though he longs to be with Christ, he chooses to remain in service to and with his spiritual children.

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In the Buddhist tradition there is a figure known as the Bodhisattva. This is a person who has gained the Buddhist equivalent of sainthood — they have risen to the level of spiritual consciousness where they no longer need to suffer “the slings and arrows” of life in an endless cycle of reincarnation, but have broken through to the pure land of nirvana, the land of bliss — and yet, instead of going off to that endless bliss, the Bodhisattva chooses to remain, to stay in the flesh to help guide and teach others in their spiritual journey.

This is the kind of choice that Saint Paul makes — no quite the same, but a similar choice: not to depart and be with Christ in bliss, but to stay in the struggle, a struggle he voluntarily shares with the Philippians, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel.

Paul chooses to be rather than not to be: to be in the flesh as long as the flesh is useful to himself and to others, and only to go Christ in glory when the time is right — when God has made full use of him and the cup of suffering endured in faith has been drunk down, and the vessel is empty and he has finished his course in faith. May we also serve so faithfully, working together as long as we have life, till by the grace of God this mortal life is ended and what is mortal is laid down to rest to wait for the day of resurrection, through Christ and in Christ, our redeemer and advocate, who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

We Will Be Satisfied

May 22, 2011 by Saint James Church Fordham

How much can our tastes change when we "taste and see that the Lord is good." -- A sermon for Easter 5a 2011

SJF • Easter 5a • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
To you then who believe he is precious; but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected...” and “a stone that makes them stumble.”

We are presented today with one of the great strangenesses of human experience: that a thing which can be delightful and wonderful to one person can be horrible or disgusting to another. Much in life seems to be a matter of taste: when it comes to food or music or art, or even religion — what one person finds delicious or pleasing or inspiring, another finds nasty, ugly or repulsive. This could be a matter of nature — something with you from birth — or of nurture — learning to enjoy something you found distasteful as a child, like broccoli — or to find displeasing something you really quite enjoyed as a child, like making mud pies.

Some of it clearly relates to the person him or herself: some people are by nature capable of hearing sounds or tasting tastes — either pleasant or irritating — that others cannot, and this has a real impact on their enjoyment of or distaste for certain kinds of music or food. In fact, there is a chemical — phenylthiocarbamide, in case you’re interested — that people with a particular genetic makeup taste as strongly bitter, while others cannot taste it at all. We all know that some people cannot abide broccoli or asparagus, and this is in part because they are genetically more sensitive to naturally occurring bitter chemicals in those vegetables. A taste which many tolerate or even enjoy due to the inability to taste it in its fullness, such people find intolerably unpleasant.

My point is that the vegetables, and the chemicals in them, are just what they are: the difference lies, as is said of beauty, “in the eye of the beholder” — or in this case, the tongue!

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In our reading from the First Letter of Peter, he describes Jesus as a chosen and precious and living stone. He is the cornerstone of the spiritual temple which will be the church of God — for those who believe. But for those who do not find him to their taste, to the builders who reject the cornerstone, he becomes a source of scandal and stumbling and fall. The one and the same stone can be — for those who accept and believe in him — a precious protection from shame; but for those who deny or reject him, he will bring subjection to that very shame and stumbling. The point is that the joy or anguish is not in the stone itself, or I should rather say, himself — for it is Jesus of whom we speak here — the joy or the anguish is in that proverbial “eye of the beholder.” Whether the stone will be your rock of ages, cleft for you to find refuge; or a stumbling-block that makes you trip and fall depends on you, and how you treat it: with respect and acceptance, or with rejection and hatred.

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We see the two sides of this reaction in our first reading, and can side by side set the personalities of Stephen and Saul. For Stephen the deacon, Christ is Savior and Lord, worth dying for — and he sees the heavens opened to receive him as he dies. For Saul, this crazy new teaching is heresy of the worst sort, and Christ, the founder of this pestilent sect, is a mischief-maker rightly rejected by the authorities. One and the same Christ can lead a man to lay down his life in witness to him, and drive another to the extreme of murder — though, of course, we also know that once Saul came to know Jesus better, on that road to Damascus, he too saw the light — literally, and it blinded him for a time — and he developed finally a taste for Jesus, and even beyond that a bold willingness, like Stephen, to suffer and die for him. As I said, not all things are determined by genetics, and we can be nurtured in directions we might never imagine. Who would have thought that Saul the vicious persecutor of the church would become one of its greatest champions? More than his name changed when he became Paul!

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And that is ultimately the good news in all of this: our tastes can change. We are not always newborns who can only tolerate milk. As we grow older we can learn that a little bitterness — offensive to a child’s tongue, a sensibility that only wants sweets or pleasant things — that little bitterness or sourness actually makes certain foods taste sweeter. We come to understand that a little piquance actually brings out the sweetness of certain foods, or that a dash of Scotch Bonnet pepper — which to a young child can be a truly nasty experience — brings for the adult who has learned to enjoy it, just the right savor and relish to a dish, without which it would be dull, stale, flat, boring and intolerable. We can learn to appreciate certain kinds of music or art by studying them, and realizing that our first impressions may have been based on our own ignorance, not on some quality inherent in the art or music itself.

And when it comes to God — and Christ Jesus his Son — well, God is God, after all; and he assures us that he is in fact the Way; as he said last week, “the gate”; and if we enter, as we are invited so to do, he will invite us to “Taste and see.” He invites us to his supper.

In the old legends of the Holy Grail — the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper — it was said that the Knights of the Grail, those who dwelt in the Grail Castle and served there, lived on nothing but the Holy Communion. But the legend also says that each and every one of them experienced the bread and wine they received as if it were his favorite dish, whatever food they liked best. Though always and only bread and wine, though of course also the Body and Blood of Christ, one of the knights would experience its taste as roast pheasant, another as beef, still another as the finest venison. To each one it brought complete satisfaction and joy, though it was only and always what it was, and their only food.

Jesus similarly promises that in the Father’s house there are many dwelling places — and no doubt each of those blessed to follow in his way, abide in his truth, and live with his life will find the dwelling place uniquely suited and furnished to each one’s taste and desire.

And what of those who take another way, or reject his truth, or devalue that life and the lives of those who accept and follow him? It is not for us to judge. Who knows? If such a murderous and hateful one as Saul can be brought round in the end, who are we to set limits on the grace and the power of God? And more than that, ought we not examine ourselves in the meantime and see if something in our own behavior as Christians might be keeping others away?

When I was growing up, we lived next door to a man who had a large garden, and he always gave my mother vegetables. Among the vegetables there would always be one or two eggplants, which we never ate because my mother didn’t like eggplant, and always said, “You wouldn’t like it,” when I asked why she didn’t prepare it. And so we never had it. It was only years later when I was grown up and living away from home that I gave eggplant a try — and it turned out I loved it! (I told my mother the next time I saw her after that, and she just grimaced — she couldn’t believe it, — clearly she was more sensitive to whatever it is in eggplant that gives it that bitter taste; she had never learned to enjoy it, that bitterness that is part of “the eggplant experience.”)

But I had learned. You can learn. You can change. Saul changed...

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But it is not for us to judge the tastes or fates of others. God the Father has prepared a house with many dwelling places in it — and some of those places may have been prepared for some of the most unlikely people! As the old joke says, they may be the ones surprised to see us there! These may be people who had never imagined themselves as Christians; they may be people who have taken offense at something they’ve seen an individual Christian or a Christian church do; they may even be among those who have at first rejected the very cornerstone of faith. It is not for us to judge, however; it is our task to celebrate as much as possible, to show our joy in the Lord in such varied and persuasive ways, that even those who may have been at first put off or reluctant to do so, might venture to taste and see that the Lord is good. They may find that, after all, the thing they rejected in the past is now just what they most desire, and come and join us at the feast where there is room for all, and all are welcome, and all — all — all who come to the banquet shall be satisfied.+

Seeking First

February 27, 2011 by Saint James Church Fordham

SJF • Epiphany 8a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

I’m not sure about you, but as far as I’m concerned that doesn’t have quite the ring of, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” But whatever the translation, old or new, authorized by King James or revised in the late 20th century, the sentiment is as clear as day, and what a sentiment it is! On this eighth Sunday after the Epiphany we come to the end of our readings in Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount. It really does end on an up-beat doesn’t it?

But let us not mistake the upbeat quality of this passage. It is not merely the cheery optimism of a Bobby McFaren sort of world where we can all just sing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” Let us not mistake it for the kind of blind optimism displayed in Voltaire’s book and Bernstein’s musical Candide — in which the principal characters keep on smiling through plague, kidnap, pirates, mayhem and murder because they believe themselves to inhabit the best of all possible worlds! It is not blind optimism we are called to, but a careful and perceptive seeking after what is of true worth, a careful and persistent seeking and striving for God — and God’s righteousness. It is in that holy quest that we will find all things added unto us.

There is much more to Jesus’ teaching in this passage from the Sermon on the Mount than looking on the sunny side of the street or letting a smile be your umbrella! No, my friends, this teaching is about a life based on what is important, focused on the right goal, and leading to the right end, under the grace of God: to strive, as we saw in last week’s gospel passage, after God’s perfection and holiness.

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So let’s follow that advice, and take a closer look, and start at the beginning. Jesus begins by warning us of the impossibility of serving God and wealth. Notice he says, “serve.” How many people who seek after wealth find themselves serving their wealth rather than enjoying it or benefitting from it. I have to say I feel a bit like that in relation to my computer: in principle it is supposed to work for me, to help me do my work, but there are times that I feel like I am serving it. I carefully protect it from viruses and spam, I patiently wait for it to install its never-ending stream of updates and patches letting it complete its work so that I can actually get to some of my work!

So when it comes to the things of this world, including money, the question, “Whom do you serve?” is a good one to ask — it is a good reminder that money exists to serve us as a medium of exchange, and we are to employ it, and not to be employed by it — or worse, be enslaved by it.

Jesus follows this up with a “therefore” — always an important word when looking to implications — since we are obviously called to serve God rather than wealth, therefore we are not to become worried — about our life or food or drink, or what we will wear. If we serve God, God will provide for his servants.

Think of what happens to people who spend their whole life thinking or talking about nothing but food or clothing — apart from the fact that it’s really boring! — are they any better off in the end than those who simply wear what is suitable and comfortable and eat what is set before them?

Jesus offers a startling pair of images: the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. The birds are not farmers, nor do they store up a supply of food. (It’s a good thing Jesus didn’t have squirrels on his mind, or Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ant!) Birds don’t store things up; they eat what they can find day by day, whether its an early bird catching the worm or a flock o pigeons pecking up birdseed on the sidewalk, or geese carefully trimming the grass on the Bronx River Parkway. Jesus reminds us that God provides for them — and don’t we mean more to God than birds do?

And look at the flowers in all their glory of their color and finery — I mean it: check out the Bronx Botanical Garden some time if you want to see some spectacular beauty — for none of which did the flowers do a lick of work. If God provides such beauty to clothe things that live for a few days or weeks, how much more will he clothe and adorn us — we of little faith!

And so, again, therefore: do not worry about what you are going to eat or what you are going to drink or what you are going to wear. These are the things the Gentiles spend all their time worrying about — and by “Gentiles” Jesus really means people who don’t know God. These are the people not just of little faith but of no faith at all because they worship idols and false gods that are no gods: the literal idols of stone or metal, or the more insidious idols of wealth and fame and glamour — the junk food of the soul. They are far from God and God’s righteousness because they do not seek God or God’s kingdom; they seek only to grab what they can and fill their bellies with what they can amass.

But you — that’s us — do not strive for, do not seek, these things, Jesus assures us. God knows well enough that we need food and clothing; and God will provide. Strive for and seek God and the righteousness of God and all the rest will be thrown in.

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C S Lewis, the author of the Narnia stories, once made a sound observation. He said that if you study world history, that study will show “that Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought the most about the next.... It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they become ineffective in this one. Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”

That last bit may be a little too strongly worded — Lewis wasn’t known to his friends as “Bluff Jack” for nothing! and he was known to be plain-spoken and direct — but this little saying does sit well with the teaching of Jesus concerning where we should focus our attention, and what we should strive for and seek. Remember that Jesus also said, What does it profit one to gain the whole world if he loses his soul? We are called to aim high — to aim for heaven, as Lewis said. Even in earthly things, doesn’t it make sense to aim high? To let your reach exceed your grasp? To aim beyond, and to seek the higher things?

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On this last Sunday in Black History Month I want to share a story that Jesse Jackson told some years ago. It was in an article in The New Yorker (2.10.92) as he reminisced about his first day in sixth grade. His teacher was Miss Shelton, and she began the class by turning to the blackboard and writing these long words on it, words the children in that class didn’t understand and had never even heard of before. The kids all looked around and started whispering to each other, “She got the wrong class. She thinks we the eighth grade class!” Soon enough somebody in the class got the courage to yell out, “Uh, Miss Shelton. Those are eighth-grade words. We only the sixth grade here.”

Miss Shelton stopped writing and turned around. She peered over the top of her eyeglasses and surveyed the room with a keen eye. “I know what grade you are,” she said. “I work here. And you will learn every one of these words, and a lot more like them, before this year is over. I will not teach down to you. One of you little brats just might be mayor or governor, or even president, one day, and I’m going to make sure you’ll be ready!” And she turned back to the blackboard and went right on writing those long scary words.

That moment, that wonderful moment, started something in Jesse Jackson’s heart. To think that one of the children in that classroom, one of his classmates, maybe even himself, might be mayor, or governor, or even president one day — when in that town at that time there wasn’t a single African-American even on the school board.

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God challenges us, he gives challenging words to us, through Christ. He will not teach down to us. All through the sermon on the mount he has taught and sought to bring us up to him, up to his standards and his vision and his call for each and every one of us. He will speak to us sometimes of words we do not understand, of things we do not know. But he knows us, beloved, he knows each and every one of us. He knows we are worth more than many sparrows, worth more than all the botanical gardens in the world. And he calls us, each and every one of us, to seek his kingdom and his righteousness, putting our trust in him. He knows that one of us little brats might be mayor, or governor, or even president one day. And more than that, he knows that one day we will be with him where he is and live with him for ever. Aim for that, my friends, aim for that.+

Life from Life

December 26, 2010 by Saint James Church Fordham

SJF • Christmas 1 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.+

Merry Christmas! I don’t know about you, but I usually find the reading from the beginning of John’s Gospel to come as a bit of a surprise on the First Sunday after Christmas; perhaps especially when it is the day after Christmas. Instead of hearing one of the Gospel accounts from Luke or Matthew actually describing the events of the Nativity, the church assigns today this theological reflection in the form of prose poem — the prologue to the Gospel according to John the Theologian (or Saint John the Divine, as we are more accustomed to refer to him because of our cathedral here in New York!)

But this theological reflection comes at a good time and is a good reminder of something crucially important to our lives as Christians. The Nativity Gospel passages with the infant in the manger, the animals standing by, the shepherds and the angels, are the stuff of greeting cards as well as of the Gospel. But the prologue to John’s Gospel is of a different sort entirely — not the kind of thing one is likely to find depicted on a Christmas card! Although I did reproduce on the back of our bulletins today and in larger form at the back of the church, an icon of the Nativity which might make it on to a Christmas Card. In addition to showing the shepherds and the child Jesus, and Mary and Joseph and all the rest, it also includes that crucial element that relates to John’s Gospel: that beam of light coming down out of heaven and resting on the Holy Child. This is exactly why we proclaim this Gospel on the Sunday after Christmas, whether the next day or six days later, to remind us in the midst of all the rest of the Christmas imagery — the shepherds, the angels, the animals in the stable, the manger, and Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus — this Gospel comes to remind us of who that infant Jesus is: the word of God, now in flesh appearing; the true light which was coming into the world: a light that would be rejected by some, but who, to all who would receive him, he would give the power to become themselves children of God. Like himself they would not be born to this inheritance of Godhood by blood or by the will of the flesh or the will of man, but by God and through God and for God. The life of God himself would become their life — our life.

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Scientists tell us that life is almost inevitable given the proper conditions — or as was recently discovered with a life-form based on arsenic, perhaps even improper conditions! They are probably right, but not for the reason they may think. While I am not a creationist — I have studied far too much science to imagine that the universe is only a few thousand years old, and I completely accept the fact that life on earth not only has evolved but is still evolving — as I say, while I am not a creationist, I do see the irreplaceable hand of God at work in the beginning of life, and the establishment of the conditions that could allow that life to evolve and develop and flourish. And that is true whether on the unlikely chance that this island Earth is the only place in the universe where life has sprung forth and developed; or whether there is life on countless other planets circling the billions of billions of stars in this vast universe, or any other possible universe that may exist in some other dimension. There are, we are reminded, many mansions in our Father’s house. And there is every possibility of intelligent life on other worlds — and I say “other” advisedly, since the evidence of intelligent life on this planet is not always so obvious.

I take my cue for this view that life springs from the source of all life — and had and has its beginnings in that divine origin — from that short verse in the prophecy of Isaiah that we heard this morning: “for as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up.” Life does not come from what is dead, but from the source of all life. And this is true of the life that springs forth at the beginning of this world and every world where such life came to be or comes to be, as the hand of God apportions to each and every atom its particular characteristics and valences that cause them to unite to form things capable of living — and behold, they live.

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And the same is true of us. Without the hand of God reaching out to us, we would never have come to life. Without the grace of God our life would not be worth living. We live because, as the old hymn says, “because He lives”: not only to face tomorrow, but to face today! Jesus who comes to us today, the day after Christmas, is the same Jesus who came to earth 2,000 years ago — but he is also that same Word of God who at the very beginning of the universe some 14 billion years ago set it all in motion. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” Jesus Christ, the son of God, who came to earth at Bethlehem on that cold winter’s night, that silent night, that night the angels sang, is the same Jesus Christ who is with us today — in our fellowship and our holy Communion, and in our hearts. And because we have received him into our hearts and have believed in his name, we have, through him, become children of God, not born of the flesh but of the spirit — the spirit of God. He brought our flesh to life through the amazing complexity of universal and evolutionary growth, from the time the universe was first created and made capable of sustaining life at all; and he has brought us to spiritual life through his Son. We are only able to be born a second time, just as we were only to be able to be born the first time, because of God. And for this second birth, God has sent the Spirit of his son into our hearts to cry out, “Abba, Father.”

Without God’s touch, without God’s command, the universe would not have come to be; and when it came to be it would not — could not — have brought forth life but for God’s prevenient grace so to have ordered it as to be capable of forming the complexity and richness that life requires. And so too, we who live because he lives, would have remained an inert collection of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and a few other assorted elements — were it not for his life and his light coming to be within us and shining upon us when each of us was first born, as he was, a human child. And were it not for his having come among us as a child, we would not be capable of that second birth, that second life in him and through him, that makes us heirs of everlasting life.

He has brought us to life, for he is the life of the world. He has brought us out of darkness into light, for he is the light of the world.

And so, as we continue to celebrate this feast of Christmas — remembering that Christmas season does not begin on Thanksgiving Day, but on Christmas Day, and ends on January Sixth! — let us take these next days, take the time — which is God’s gift to us as well — to ponder the great mystery of creation and of life itself: that in this vast and almost timeless universe, we children of God are gathered here because God lives and shares his life with us — and came to us as one of us that we might live again, and become children of God, and have his life in us for ever.+

Common Life

October 05, 2009 by Saint James Church Fordham

A sermon from Saint James Church Fordham

Proper 22b 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
For the man there was not found a helper as his partner.+

The second chapter of the Book of Genesis presents us with a marvelous example of God’s generosity and care, and the extent to which God’s children have the responsibility to make decisions, and how God abides by those decisions once they are made.

You no doubt remember the events that lead up to the events described in our reading from Genesis today. God created Adam from the clay of the riverbank, breathing into him the divine life and spirit. And God planted the beautiful garden of Eden, and placed Adam in it, to tend it and care for it as God’s gardener. And God looked down upon this peaceful creation and instead of smiling at its goodness, frowned slightly and shook his head a little. And for the first time in the whole narrative up to that point God said that something was not good.

And what was that? Was it something God had made? No; it was something yet unfinished, something yet to be made. “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” And taking more clay, the same stuff he’d made Adam from, God set to work.

Now, this next part of the story is something many people forget, so I’m glad it was included in this morning’s reading. For what was it that God made out of that additional clay? Not another human being, but rather all of the animals of the field and the birds of the air. And God brought all of these creatures to Adam, for Adam to name, approve and accept. But Adam did not find among them a helper meet or suitable to be his partner.

Only then did God put Adam to sleep and take, not more clay this time, but some of Adam’s very own body, to make for him a helper suitable to be his partner, one like himself. And Adam recognized this kinship immediately, and rejoiced that at last here was one like him, another human being, one who could truly be called his mirror image, bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh.

The wonderful thing about this narrative is that God gave Adam such respect, and abided by Adam’s judgment as to who in all creation was to be his helper and partner, one truly like himself. God did not force Adam to be content to live alone as a solitary hermit in a garden. God did not force Adam to be happy with just the animals to keep him company. God did not take offense when Adam shook his head at all of these other creatures, and found none to be a suitable partner for him. God did not force Adam to accept them, and didn’t get offended and say, “Who do you think you are to turn down what God has provided.”

Rather God allowed Adam the freedom to choose the one who was like himself, his own flesh and blood, as a partner and a helper. God used no force in this: but allowed freedom, revealing, as our Gospel hymn said, that “force is not of God.”

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Well, you know the rest of the story. Adam and Eve lived in the garden only for a short time. One of those animals Adam had rejected as an unsuitable helper and partner perhaps didn’t take too kindly to the rejection. It was the creature God made with some of the leftover clay, the kind of animal any child knows is the easiest thing to make with a lump of clay — just as the Gary Larson cartoon shows God at his work table rolling out the snake and saying, “Gee, these things are a cinch!” Cinch it might be, but it opened up a whole can of worms! The serpent wriggled in and did his dirty work, sowing the seeds of discontent and pride, taunting with the fear of death, tempting with the promise of divinity, leading Adam and Eve to disobedience. The serpent dangled temptation before them, and they bit.

And so the caretakers got evicted from the garden. And for thousands of years human beings continued to stumble about in their ignorance and pride. Humanity lived under the fear of death, yet unable to escape it, no matter what they did, alternately sinned against and sinning, unable to find righteousness even though God tried time and time again to show them how, by giving them the Law and inspiring the preaching of the Prophets.

God would not, you see, simply force people to be good, any more than God forced Adam to accept Eve. God wanted people to be good from the inside, good from the heart, not just coated over with a whitewash of proper behavior, but deeply loving, deeply just, deeply free — and deeply responsible for the choices they made in that love, justice and freedom.

Just as God had a few false starts in creation, so too there were false starts in this re-creation. God first gave the people a law written in stone, and the people disobeyed it and rejected it. God sent the people prophets, but they ignored them or mistreated them. God gave the people kings and most of the kings turned out to be worse than the people!

But finally, in the fullness of time, God decided to do something similar to what he had done way back in Eden. God would not this time send the Law. God would not send a prophet. God would not send a king, at least not the kind of king people were used to. God would not even send an angel.

God would instead give to humankind one who was human, a human being like Adam himself, but one who was also divine, one who was God incarnate. God would choose incarnation — being made flesh — our flesh.

So as of old when God took the raw material from a human being, from Adam, this time God took from the flesh of a young woman named Mary all that was needed to make the one who was for a little while to be made a lower than the angels, one not ashamed to call men and women his sisters and brothers, for he shared the same human flesh as they — as we. “He sent him down as sending God; in flesh to us he came; as one with us he dwelt with us, and bore a human name.”

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The human name he bore is Jesus, which means Savior. The divine name he bore is Emmanuel, which means God is with us. He was and is our Saving God who is with us, who shared with us in mortality and pain, shared the weakness of human flesh, so that he might redeem and save that human flesh. He suffered death so that he might destroy death for ever, and destroy the one who, as the Letter to Hebrews says, had the power of death, the same devil who ages before had snaked his way in, to ensnare and enslave humanity by their fear of death.

Jesus, our Savior and our God, is also our brother, for he taught us to call his Father our Father. We who share in the flesh of Adam also share — through Jesus — in the Spirit of God. The old serpent can do nothing to us any longer if we do not let him. He’s done his best to do his worst, and he failed utterly when Jesus broke the power of death and was raised to life again. And we who are united with Jesus in his death, are also given the power to rise with him in his life.

We can still refuse God’s offer. God respects our freedom too much to force us to follow the path he so desires for us. And there are those who would rather listen to a serpent’s lies than to God’s own truth. There are still some so possessed by their fear of death that they have forgotten how to live. We look at a world in which we see that all things are not under human control — disease, crime, famine, and injustice still seem to rule. Some seek long life or wealth, or pleasure or fame, but rarely find lasting happiness. But we also see Jesus, the human one who suffered, the human one who died, who gave up everything and yet who through the power of God triumphed over everything, and now is exalted over all things.

We too can confront all the shallow promises of the world, promises offered in the devil’s accent, to find that none of these things will answer our deepest need. In none of these things can we find our true and final happiness whatever the snake may say to the contrary. It is only in Jesus — God from God, light from light, true God from true God, that we recognize our own truest human self — the perfect image of humanity made after God’s own image and likeness. God offers us the option, and will not force us to choose life rather than death. God invites us to find our truest life in him, and has shown us the way, but he will not force us on that path.

In this is our hope, our freedom, and our challenge. As we make our choices, let us always remember the promise of our Gospel hymn, and choose rightly:“Not to oppress, but summon all their truest life to find, in love God sent his Son to save, not to condemn mankind.”+

What have we got to show for it?

June 14, 2009 by Saint James Church Fordham

SJF • Proper 6b 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
All of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.+

It is said that once in ancient times there was a great king who posed a challenge to the wisest people of his court. He challenged them to create a ring that he might wear on his hand, with an inscription on it. This inscription was to have an almost magical property: if you looked at it when you were happy, it would make you sad; and if you looked at it when you were sad, it would make you happy. The king promised a great reward and the wise ones headed out to see what they could find.

Six months later one of them returned and presented the king with a golden ring with an inscription. At the moment the king was quite amused, and in good spirits because he expected this ring would not pass the test, and he would not have to give the promised reward. But as he looked at the ring, the smile faded from his face. For on it was inscribed the short phrase, “This too shall pass.”

Some believe that the king in this story was Solomon — and that would certainly explain why the richest man in the world in his day, who delighted in wine, women and song, who built the kingdom of Israel to the furthest expanse it would ever encompass, would towards the end of his life write the bitter and regretful reflection of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” And, indeed, Solomon’s great kingdom did fall apart shortly after his death, and never regained its position on the world stage.

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This too shall pass — this is a reminder that everything changes, that nothing lasts forever; and that can be bad news when you are enjoying yourself, or good news when you are suffering. Some five hundred years after Solomon, a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, also known as a bit of a gloomy Gus, put it this way: “Everything flows.” Whether you want to go with the flow or resist it, the flow will win out in the end. However big and powerful you may think you are now, one day you will be a memory — and perhaps not even that, as time “like an ever-flowing stream, bears all its sons away.”

At about the same time as this gloomy Greek philosopher was meditating on the transient nature of all things, a similar idea came to the mind of the prophet Ezekiel. We heard him in today’s reading with his advice and warning to Egypt based on the example of Assyria, which the prophet compares to a cedar of Lebanon — a great tree with its branches reaching up into the clouds, which nonetheless ends up being chopped down. Empires, be they never so mighty, come to an end. The line of dominoes tumbles along: Assyria was felled by Babylon, Babylon by Persia, Persia by the Greeks (who also took down Egypt while they were at it.) But then the Greek empire built by Alexander the Great was divided at his death, and eventually fell to the power of Rome. Rome too divided, and was battled by barbarians at one end, and after it became Christianized, by the rise of Islam at the other end. And Christianity itself? Well, that brings us up to the present day — and more importantly — us!

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Because ultimately the question isn’t, “Will the church survive?” but rather, “In what form will it survive?” I think it will survive — we have God’s promise on that; but I don’t think it will do so by being a great empire. Great empires don’t seem to be too successful in maintaining themselves, perhaps due to the sin of pride that causes them to lose sight of the words on that ring: “This too shall pass.” It seems the more empires try to resist change, the sooner they fall — intolerance and clamping down on people brings about even greater resistance, division, and internal weakness. Empires may be big, but they are brittle. The great tyrannies of the last century, and those that have survived into this one, do not seem long for this world: the higher they seek to rise, the bigger they strive to get, the more viciously they suppress those who dissent, the sooner their fall seems secure.

Just as the little mammals were somehow able to survive while the giant dinosaurs were collapsing all around them, so too the church managed to survive, the church managed to make it through the collapses of Greek and Roman and European civilizations, not by being big and powerful, but by slipping through the cracks of history — squirreled away in the catacombs underground, or out in the monasteries or out in the deserts. And when the medieval church tried to seize secular power, and insist on central control of all of Christendom, it only served to hasten the Reformation. So it seems to me likely that the church will survive in this our time, and as time passes, not because it is big and powerful, or centrally controlled, but because it remains true to its faith in Christ; by placing its hope not in an everlasting earthly empire, but an eternal heavenly dwelling. It will, in the meantime, do its best work here and now in its own small way, not as a giant agribusiness, but more as a cooperative of small family farms — as the church in each place is a family.

For it isn’t about how big the tree is, or how expansive the fields — but about the fruit and the grain that comes at gathering and harvest-time. When the bough breaks and the tree falls, when the crop is harvested with a sickle, what do we have to show for it?

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It is to this distinction that the Apostle Paul turns. In his case, it’s not about trees or empires, but about bodies — physical and spiritual — though Paul speaks metaphorically in terms of earthly tents and heavenly houses. The earthly tent — this earthly tend — is going to be taken down and folded up — and Paul uses the rather uncomfortable analogy of someone being caught naked when their tent is removed! “This too shall pass” — our mortal flesh as fragile as grass, as passing as the flower of the field, will cease to be: ashes to ashes, dust to dust; as we are reminded every Ash Wednesday: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The promise is that a more durable dwelling is prepared for us, an eternal dwelling in the heavens. It is something for which we long and hope, groaning for that fulfillment, even while we are reluctant to let go of the tent which is our temporary shelter. We would rather, as Paul suggests, bring our tent with us and set it up within the new house prepared for us. But Paul assures us that we cannot properly be at home with the Lord while we are fully at home in the body — yet whether at home or away, the important thing is not the transient and passing, but the relationship we have with God, in our constant aim to please God, whatever our condition.

This too shall pass — our youth, our successes, our possessions. But this too shall pass — our weaknesses, our failures, and our fears. All that is mortal and transient will be swallowed up by life: and we will stand before our Lord and God, before the judgment seat of Christ, with all that is past laid out before us and before God.

And that is when we will face the final question, “What have we got to show for it.” Has our life been filled with an effort to accumulate those transient goods of wealth and fame and fortune; or have we stocked our tent with a supply of faith and hope and love? It is not how tall the tree grows or how lush the greenery of the fields appears — but how much fruit and how much grain they bring forth.

Let us strive always, my sisters and brothers in Christ, amidst the changes and chances of this temporal life, to hold on to what is eternal and lasting, and come before our Lord bearing a rich harvest of a life lived in hope of God’s guidance, by faith in God’s mercy, and for love of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.+

Already Rolled Away

April 13, 2009 by Saint James Church Fordham

SJF • Easter B 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome ... had been saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back.+

One spring morning nearly two thousand years ago, three women headed to the tomb of a beloved friend to pay their last respects. He was one who had been judged a criminal by the state courts, rejected by the religious authorities, executed, and then buried in haste and without ceremony. So three women who had followed him in life came to the tomb to do the proper thing, to anoint his body and see to it that their dear friend might have at least and at last that final dignity.

But on the way to the tomb, something they’d forgotten came suddenly to mind. Perhaps in their urgency, perhaps in their sadness and grief, they had forgotten that a large stone had been rolled in place to seal the tomb. Now, on the way to the tomb to carry out their merciful task, they suddenly remembered, and said to one another, Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?

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That question echoes down the corridors of time. Who will roll away the stone? That stone was and is the symbol of death and finality, the seals and shuts away the dead, out of sight if not out of mind. The burial place is the end of the line, the terminal point towards which all life tends.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s no coincidence that if you take the subway that runs northward just outside the doors of our church, you end up at Woodlawn! End of the line; last stop; everybody out. I was not entirely surprised some years ago to see a law firm’s office in one of those small buildings huddled under the elevated station at the last station stop on the Jerome Avenue line, up there at Woodlawn. The name of the law firm is Lazarus and Lazarus — I can only say they’ve chosen an excellent location.

We are, all of us, on a train the ends at one Woodlawn or another. With April 15 looming, it might be wise to remember the old saying, “The only things certain in life are death and taxes!” You may get a tax cut or an economic stimulus once in a while — but death awaits us all. It is one journey we all must make, some day, that journey to the grave.

You may remember the film in which a man has a terrifying recurring dream: a hearse drives up to him, and the driver leans out and says, in a cheerful voice, “Room for one more, sir!” And then one day, he’s about to get on a crowded bus, the bus driver looks at him and says, “Room for one more, sir!” — and it’s the man from his dream! He is so startled he steps back and doesn’t get on the bus, and then watches in horror as the bus pulls away and crashes in a terrible accident.

Well, the fact is, as far as each of us goes, there is always room for one more, room for each of us in death’s carriage. How does the Scripture put it? All flesh is grass, its beauty like the flower of the field; the grass withers, the flower fades. And who will roll away the stone?

And it isn’t only literal death, you know. There are those little deaths that come before the final death; those little deaths that wither and fade the dignity of God’s children, seemingly without help or deliverance. Despair, prejudice, racism, hatred and fanaticism roll stones of obstruction into the lives of men and women and children every day. And some are impeded, and others are crushed.

Who will roll away the stone of anger and diminishment that leads people to despair — such despair, despair so bleak they feel that they have nothing to do but buy a couple of guns and kill as many people as they can before they end their own despairing lives in death. What can you do when anyone you see may be ready to lash out? Who will roll away the stone?

Who will roll away the stone of fanaticism, when people are so sure that they alone have the truth that they actually imagine it to be an honor to blow themselves up if only they can take with them as many of unbelievers as they can? Who will roll away the stone?

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Who will roll away the stone? The women asked themselves that as they came to the tomb that Easter morning. It is the question we each ask many times in our lives, not only in response to death, but as we see or experience despair, injustice, prejudice and hatred. Who will roll away the stone?

But beloved sisters and brothers, note this: Saint Mark tells us that when the women reached the tomb the stone was already rolled away! The one who was buried in the tomb wasn’t there any more. Christ was already risen from the dead!

That was good news, brothers and sisters. And that is good news. Not only was Christ risen, but Christ is risen! Who will roll away the stone? What do you mean? The stone is already rolled away!

Who will roll away the stone of injustice? The stone is already rolled away by the one unjustly executed. The one who suffered injustice has triumphed over injustice; he has given us hands and hearts to roll away any stone of injustice we may encounter. Injustice may flourish for a time, but it will not triumph in the end. The stone has been rolled away. The one imprisoned through injustice is imprisoned no more. He is not there.

Who will roll away the stone of prejudice and hatred and ideology and fanaticism? The stone is already rolled away by the one mocked and spat upon and nailed to a cross by the power of hate and envy and fanaticism, but raised from the grave by the power of God. He is not there!

And we who are in Christ, are with him where he is — not where he isn’t — not in the tomb, not in the grave, not sealed shut: but alive and active and able and equipped and empowered to do his will.

In our baptismal covenant — which we will reaffirm as we welcome some new members into the body of Christ — we will promise to honor the dignity of every human being. In fulfilling that promise, we the people of God can do all in our strength to roll away the stones of hatred and prejudice that still block the light, that still imprison, that still cause the little ones to stumble and the weak to despair. Prejudice and hatred still wield some failing power to captivate and crush in this world; and yet they cannot and will not triumph in the end. The stone has been rolled away. The tomb is empty — he is not there.

Who then will roll away the stone of death? That stone has already been rolled away by one who died and was raised from death. We who have not yet died, yet are day by day approaching it, recall, as Saint Paul said, “dying, but behold, we live.” We know that the journey does not end at the tomb at Woodlawn or anywhere else — the tomb is only a stop-over on our true journey.

Emily Dickinson once wrote:

Because I could not stop for death,
he kindly stopped for me,
the carriage held but him and me
— and Immortality.

That third passenger, Immortality, is made real and complete in Jesus Christ, and that makes all the difference. Death may drop us off at Woodlawn, but Christ will raise us from the dead. After all, he’s the one who can truly say, “Been there; done that!” The stone was rolled away and the tomb was emptied, emptied once and for all — once, for him; and in him for all of us. We who have died with Christ in baptism, we who have been raised with him, who seek the things that are above where he sits at God’s right hand, know of a certainty that we will one day rejoice with him at the heavenly banquet. The stone has been rolled away. The tomb is empty. And Christ is alive. Though Woodlawn looks like the end of the line, though death invite us into his carriage, we have a better hope, and a better promise, for Christ is with us on that journey, which does not end at the grave, but goes on into the risen life of our Risen Lord.

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Some years ago a Sunday School teacher gave the children in her class an assignment for Easter. Each was given a plastic egg — you know the ones, from L’eggs panty hose, collected by the women of the church over the preceding months. The children were given the assignment to find something that represented Easter, put it in the egg and bring to class on Easter Day. The day came, and the teacher gathered all the eggs and then opened them one by one. “Oh, what a lovely flower! Who brought the flower?” And a little girl stood to take credit, saying how the flower reminded her of the new life that comes in the spring. The teacher opened another egg, and found a pebble. Another child rose to say it was like the stone that was rolled away from the tomb. The teacher opened a third egg, but there was nothing inside. “Oh,” she apologized, “I must have mixed this in from the ones I hadn’t given out,” and reached for another egg.

But one of the younger children shouted out — in that unselfconscious way that children can — “That’s my egg!” The teacher thought the child hadn’t understood — he was very young, the youngest in the class — and said, “But dear, it’s empty.” And the child nodded vigorously and answered, “Yes, just like the tomb. Jesus isn’t dead any more.”

What’s the old saying, Out of the mouths of babes?

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Three women went to a solitary tomb two thousand years ago, and then recalled it was sealed with a stone. When they got there, they saw the stone had been rolled away. The one they sought was not there — the tomb was empty, except for the angelic messenger — for Jesus had been raised from the dead. What was true then is true now: The stone is already rolled away, and Jesus isn’t dead any more.

Being raised from the dead continues to happen in a million ways, big and small. Even in the midst of suffering and injustice and prejudice and hatred, we can find the stone is already rolled away and new life has begun, that we too aren’t dead any more.

And even in the midst of death, even in the midst of the fear that the stone has rolled over us and is ready to crush us, and even when we finally do — as do we must — face that final journey, we will soon after discover that the stone has been rolled away, that Christ is alive, and that we are alive in him, victorious over death, our tombs as empty as his. Which is why, brothers and sisters, even at the edge of the grave, we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.+