The Humility of God

There is no place God will not go to seek out the lost

SJF • 1 Epiphany A • Tobias S Haller BSG
John would have prevented Jesus, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? But Jesus answered, Let it be so for now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.

Some years ago I remember a bishop who was the guest preacher in a parish — not this one — say something that really bothered me. He said, “There are some people with whom God will not associate, and some places God will not go.” Perhaps you can see why I was bothered! I didn’t say anything, until a friend of mine who had been at the same service came up to me at coffee hour and said, “I am so tired of bishops coming to my church to preach their favorite heresy!” I wouldn’t go perhaps that far, but surely I believe the bishop who preached those words was wrong. For if the Gospel teaches us anything it is that there is no one and nowhere that is beyond the reach of God; that God will seek out the lost and find them no matter how far they have strayed. This is “the humility of God” and it is nowhere so clearly laid out as in the incident recorded in our Gospel this morning, Matthew’s account of the Baptism of Jesus.

In this Gospel Jesus does something so startling it even surprises his cousin John the Baptist. John has been baptizing for some time, proclaiming baptism as repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now, this was something new, not the same as the ordinary Jewish baptism, or ritual bath that people undertook whenever they became ceremonially unclean; that is, whenever they violated any of the purity laws of the Torah. The ordinary ritual baptism of Jewish law had nothing to do with sin in our sense of the word; it wasn’t a question of morality, but of impurity. Sin could only be wiped away by a sacrifice; sin could only be wiped away by blood. But impurity could be wiped away with water. And these were matters of ritual impurity: did you accidentally touch a dead body? are you finished having your period? have you been healed of a skin condition? did you just give birth, and have you waited the required number of days? These are all ritual matters going back to the years of desert wandering, and they had more to do with public health than the moral state of one’s soul.

So John the Baptist introduces something new, a new twist on this. He comes to see sin itself as something that needs to be washed away. He calls on people to be baptized not to wash away the outward impurities caused by touching something ritually unclean, or by coming into contact with bodily fluids; John calls on the people to be baptized in token of their inner transformation and cleansing release from sin.

So when the one person who can have no use for such a baptism approaches John one day, John understandably says, “What are you doing here? You should be baptizing me!” Like that Bishop with the odd opinions about where God would go and not go and who God would associate with or not, John the Baptist doesn’t see why Jesus, whom he recognizes as the sinless one, is lined up ready to be baptized as a token of the remission of sins. He doesn’t have any sins; he doesn’t need to be there. But Jesus will not hear John’s protest, and says, “Let it be for now; this will fulfill all righteousness.”

The question, of course, is, What does Jesus mean by that? What does righteousness mean in this regard. To answer the question I’d like to tell you a story I first heard told by a priest friend of ming, Fr. Gray Temple, Jr., whose father was a bishop who I believe always stayed on the right side of doctrine. And Gray told this story, a nice summer story for a cold, damp winter day. This story will take us back in our imaginations, to a warm summer day, about eighty years ago in Arkansas.

Imagine we’re in a small country town on a warm mid-afternoon. The name of the town isn’t important; thousands of little towns like this one dotted the Midwest in the 30s; maybe they had a few paved streets in the center of town, but the rest packed dirt. Picture that town square with its courthouse, the church, and the schoolhouse surrounding the little patch of green that could stand up to the summer’s heat; maybe there’s a bandstand in the center, like one of those little towns from an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” This is a town where people have worked hard, but they have suffered a lot. The effects of the Great Depression are visible, and many of the poorer folk from what the better-off call “the wrong side of the tracks” are just scraping by by the skin of their teeth. Well, to make matters worse, and to burden these poor folk even more, an outbreak of lice has struck their part of town, out on the wrong side of the tracks. The county health officials sweep in and go from house to house with a fumigator.

To add insult to injury, all of the people from the affected area have to come to the town square, to line up outside a big white tent they put up just for this purpose, right outside the courthouse, right across from the church and the school. There all the poor folk have to go through an inspection and delousing one by one, there for all to see. You can imagine the humiliation, especially for the children. To be seen in the louse-line means you are one of “them.” These are proud people, poor but proud, and to have to stand in line in the hot sun waiting for the medical examiner to pronounce you “clean” or worse, “infested,” is a terrible embarrassment and humiliation. Well, the local minister, opposite the tent in his white-shingled church on the side of the square, notes all this, as he sits fanning himself with a palm fan, trying to concentrate on next Sunday’s sermon. He sees the people lining up, feeling literally and figuratively lousy, and his heart goes out to them. He looks at the children hanging their heads in shame, as their parents try desperately to hold their heads high with a kind of “It doesn’t matter” sort of attitude — the closest thing this small town will ever see to a New York, “What are you looking at?”

The minister looks out and sees that miserable little line of people, and then he sets down his palm fan, gets up from his desk, puts on his coat and hat, walks out into the square, and joins the end of the line. A little boy, the last in the line up till then, looks sheepishly up at him, and his eyes grow large as he sees this dignified man in his neat suit, standing in a line in which everyone else is dressed in overalls or gingham. A couple of the local matrons out in front of the post office eyes grow as big as saucers, the ribbons of their hats quivering in astonishment, and through their good efforts, within twenty minutes the whole town has heard the news that the minister is in the louse line. Within another twenty minutes the line has grown by a few more people, among them the judge and the schoolmaster and the town doctor; and within the next hour the line extends all the way around the square, and even includes the matrons in their ribboned hats, looking a little uncomfortable, trying to make smiles in faces that look like they are going to shatter, but smiling and there, nonetheless.

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Jesus did not come to John to be baptized because he needed baptism, any more than the minister joined the louse-line because he had lice. Jesus joined the line of sinners waiting to be baptized by John in order to fulfill all righteousness — for only righteousness that has submitted itself to judgment can be called truly righteous. Righteousness that stands apart, alone and by itself, is only self-righteousness; and Jesus, the man who above all lived for others, would not establish his righteousness apart from making all others righteous, too, by being with them.

Believe me, that Bishop was wrong. There is no place that God will not go, there are no people so fallen that God will refuse to be among them; such is the humility of God. Jesus, himself sinless, joins the line of sinners waiting to be baptized by John because joining himself to sinful humanity is exactly what he came to do. Jesus did not come — the first time — to judge the world; that he will do when he comes again in glory! But at the first, Jesus came not to judge the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved. And he saved it by becoming part of it, by joining himself to the suffering, the sinning, the weak, the helpless, the outcast; getting into the louse-line of our fallen human nature.

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Epiphany means “showing forth.” Over these next few weeks, as we travel through the season after Epiphany up towards Lent, our Scriptures will “show forth” different aspects of Christ and his relation to us. It is fitting that this first Sunday after Epiphany begin with Christ’s baptism, where, faced by an astonished John the Baptist, Jesus shows forth perhaps the most important thing about himself that he can show: his humility. He is one of us; he is Emmanuel, God-with-us; and he cares enough for us to leave his heavenly throne and join our assembly, thereby raising our hearts and our spirits to that place where he sits at the right hand of the Father Almighty, now and forever.+

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Tipping the Scales

However low you go, or however you go low, God will raise you up.

Proper 25c 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
O Lord, have you completely rejected Judah? Does your heart loathe Zion? Why have you struck us down so that there is no healing for us?

Today we conclude our series of readings from the letters of Paul to Timothy. As we’ve seen over the last few weeks, Paul has been encouraging Timothy in the struggles that he faces with and among the congregation over whom he has charge. People have been caught up in controversies about the interpretation of Scripture, indulging in false teaching, and wandering away into myths. People have been casting doubt on Timothy’s authority, in part due to his relative youth, but also in rebellion against the very gospel message that he delivers. And at every stage at which people have sought to cut Timothy down, Paul has encouraged him to remain strong and to fight the good fight with all his might, to proclaim the gospel fearlessly, and in the knowledge that God’s power is with him.

Now Paul himself, it seems from the passage we read today, is about ready to retire from the combat. As he says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Using once more the analogy of a footrace, he portrays Jesus as the scorekeeper and judge who will give him his crown at the end of the race — the race he has run so faithfully.

But not before Paul will have what the English call a bit of a good moan first — you know what that’s about! Sometimes you just feel better when you let it all out and complain for a bit — not to make a habit of it, but just to let off a little steam of frustration. Contrasting the heavenly grace he expects with the earthly problems he has encountered, all the things he has been running through, Paul complains that everyone has deserted him and no one has supported him — except the Lord himself. In fact, Paul is using how low he has been to show just how powerful God is — who can lift up one who has been abandoned and betrayed. The message Paul shares here with Timothy, based on his own experience, is, No matter how low you have fallen in your own confidence, no matter how much you have been cut down by adversaries or problems, God will raise you up.

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Today’s gospel presents us with a different kind of up and down — but ends with a similar message. Jesus portrays two people: a proud and self-righteous Pharisee and a humble and penitent tax collector. I almost picture them standing on a seesaw or teeter-totter: the Pharisee high and lifted up, and the tax collector down in the dumps. For it seems that the very reason for the Pharisee to be so high is because he is so pumped up and proud of himself, because he sees himself in relation to others, whom he regards as sinners worse than he. It is the weight of the sin of those on the other side of the scale that gives that Pharisee his boost, his exaltation, his pride. He has no consciousness of sin in himself, and he plays that off against those whom he regards as “obvious” sinners — thieves and adulterers — or even like this tax collector here.

But enough about him — as I can imagine he learned better when he finally did face the Almighty judge at the end. (And let’s hope he was ashamed of himself and at the last accepted God’s forgiveness!) I would rather focus on that tax collector down there.

Jesus portrays him as being low in comparison to the Pharisee being high. If you picture that seesaw I mentioned there is no doubt that the tax collector is on the heavy end of the scale. We do not know what his sins are — unlike the Pharisee who declares what his sins aren’t and catalogs a few of the things that he imagines make him virtuous, the tax collector does not enumerate his sins — he merely repents. He beats his breast in that ancient act that forces home to me that it is I who am at fault: (for when I beat my breast I am forcibly reminded of my own physical reality and presence! And maybe we all need a little of that spiritual CPR, now and again, to remind us of where we are, and help us rediscover the true meaning of our lives.)

Jesus promises that this man, this man on the low side of the scale, who has humbled himself will return home exalted and justified. And so the message here is that it is by lowering yourself that God will raise you up. As a proverb (3:34) quoted by both James (4:6) and Peter (1P 5:5) puts it, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Or, as someone with even greater authority, Mary the mother of Jesus, put it: “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the humble and meek.”

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So the clear message appears to be consistent through all these readings: whether you have been brought low by others, have fallen low in your own estimation and disappointment, or humbled yourself in the knowledge of your sins — however you came to be low, or however low you came to be, God will raise you up. Let the teeter totter as it may, and swing us down even so low that we can feel the warmth of hell-fire toasting our feet — even then God can and will bring us up again, so long as we turn towards the one from whom our help and rescue comes. Even if we don’t look God’s way with our eyes — for recall that the penitent tax collector was so cast down he dare not even raise his eyes to heaven — even if we don’t look God’s way with our eyes, if that is towards God that our hearts are turned, God, who after all looks into our hearts and knows us better than we know ourselves, will also know that we have turned our hearts towards him, and God will raise us up from where we have been cast down, or fallen, or lowered ourselves.

God is not like that famous statue of Justice — the one who holds the scales but wears a blindfold, blind to the relative weight of sin or innocence, and simply allowing the scale to tip as it may. God is also not like the Egyptian god Thoth, who weighs the heart of the dead against the feather of innocence, and condemns all of those whose hearts tip the scale towards guilt.

No, my friends — and it is a good thing for us — God is neither blind like Justice nor a mere secretary like Thoth recording the result shown by the scale. No, my friends, the good news for us is that God tips the scales in our behalf, for the mercy of God is greater than the justice of God, and although God is just, the heart of God is love and mercy and forgiveness.

When God sees we are cast down by the assaults of others, God will raise us up. When God sees that we have abased ourselves in our own eyes, discouraged or despondent, God puts a powerful arm around us and raises us up. And when we are sunk low in the depths of the knowledge of our own faults and failings, God pushes that lightweight Pharisee from the other end of the seesaw and presses it down with a strong arm and a mighty hand — and O my friends, are we in for a ride!+

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Better Than A Babel-Fish

We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven.

Pentecost C • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

Some years ago the late Douglas Adams wrote a satirical novel called, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It went through many different incarnations as a radio show, as a British TV series, and even as a live-action Walt Disney movie starring Martin Freeman as the main character, Arthur Dent. He would later go on to another kind of adventure, as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The Hitchhikers Guide is in the guise of science fiction, but it is actually a satire, in which the author gets to poke fun at all sorts of institutions, sacred and secular.

Right from the start, the author satirizes political bureaucracy: the planet Earth is about to be destroyed by a galactic construction authority in order to create a hyperspace bypass, at the same time that Arthur Dent’s house is about to be bulldozed by a highway construction authority to put in a traffic bypass — and in both cases the officious officials announce, when protest is made, that planning permission, with public notice, has been on file in the galactic headquarters and town planning office respectively, so no one has any reason to complain.

Well the novel would be very short indeed if Arthur Dent did not escape the destruction of his house and the planet Earth. He manages this with the help of an alien who has been living on Earth for some time, and who has chosen, while on Earth, to go by the name Ford Prefect. (The joke is likely lost on Americans for whom it might have been better to name him Ford Fairlane!) Ford, in any case, helps Arthur to hitch a ride on the spaceship belonging to the planet-destroying construction company. And the first thing he tells Arthur he must do, if they are continue their travels, is insert a small fish in his ear. When Arthur protests, Ford explains that it is a strange species called the Babel-Fish, an alien species that lives on your brain waves and which, when inserted into your ear, takes up residence in your head and allows you to understand any language you hear, and the everyone in the universe wears them — because that’s how they can communicate with each other. And so Arthur is off on a series of highly improbable adventures, but able to communicate freely with any and all of the strange creatures he meets.

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In this morning’s reading from Genesis we heard the tale of the original Babel, which is not about gaining the ability to understand languages, but losing the ability. Like a number of the other accounts in the book of Genesis, this passage serves to answer a question about why things are the way they are, much like Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. I don’t know if any of you remember them, but when I was growing up that was a favorite children’s book; the one story that sticks in my mind is, “How the Leopard Got Its Spots.” Genesis offers us, in a more serious mode, ancient answers to timeless questions such as, “Why do people get sick and die?” “Why do people get married?” “Who invented music?” and “Why don’t snakes have legs?” In this case, the question is, “How did all of the many languages on the earth come to be?”

And the answer to this last question is that this is God’s response to the presumption of mortals who set out to make a name for themselves and build a tower with its top in the heavens. To show just how presumptuous they are, they name their city Babel — which in Hebrew means “the gate of God,” but which after the confusion of their languages comes down to us with its other meaning ever since recognizable as “babble.”

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Why, you might well ask yourself, should we be concerned either with Babel or Babel-Fish, on this day of Pentecost, the last day of the Easter season, the day that celebrates the birthday of the church, and on which we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit in flames as of fire lighting upon the heads of the apostles? And of course it is because of what the Holy Spirit enables those apostles to do: suddenly to begin to proclaim the saving word of God in many languages — so that people who have come to Jerusalem from all over the known world can hear them proclaiming salvation through Christ in their own languages.

Pentecost undoes Babel — you might well say that it rewinds the tape (but who rewinds tape any more! So let’s say, it clicks the “back” button or the “undo” button). God looked at what the people were up to in those ancient days — in their pride and their desire, not to honor God’s name, but to make a name for themselves. God rightly and simply frustrated their plans by disrupting their ability to communicate with each other. Fast-forward some several thousand years to Jerusalem, where the apostles are gathered not as a prideful or self-asserting bunch, but in humble obedience to that final command that their Lord and Master Jesus has given them: to go to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. There they gather, and there the Spirit comes, giving them the ability not only to speak with eloquence, but in languages that none of them has ever learned, so that all of those outside in the city, from where-ever they come in the know world, can hear that powerful message of salvation — in their own languages, spoken right to their hearts.

And as I said a few weeks ago, God doesn’t just undo — God does something new. God doesn’t just press the undo button, he doesn’t just press the back button, he opens a new document, and starts a whole new story of salvation: ours.

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Thus the scattering of humanity because of pride is reversed and undone by this obedience — and the possibility to unite humanity in humility is made manifest, and the new story begins. The people of Babel had gotten too big for their britches, thinking that it was up to them to make a name for themselves, and even giving the work of their own hands the blasphemous name, “the gate of God,” because they wrongly thought their tower reached to the heavens (though in reality it was probably not much taller than the municipal parking garage across the street! When you live in a world where most buildings are one or two storeys tall, something six storeys tall may seem miraculous to you — but it wasn’t; wasn’t a gate of God — just human pride.) Such is not the Spirit of God, but the spirit of human ambition, human pride.

But the Spirit of God works differently, and comes to those who know that they are children of God. In fact, by coming to them, it makes them children of God, children by adoption. Because God has adopted us, because Jesus our brother has interceded for us, the Spirit empowers us to call God our Abba, our Father, as he taught us to pray. This is how the new story begins — our story — with that one word, Abba, Father.

Only that one word, Abba, Father, is necessary. We need not build a tower to the skies. We need not speak in many languages, either by miracle or by careful study; we need not speak in tongues as some wrongly think is needful for any who are touched by the Spirit of God. We need not make a name for ourselves, because God has given us a name as his children. We need not understand all other languages, or have the ability to interpret them. One word only is necessary, Abba, Father.

With this word we proclaim both our humility and our relationship to God and with God. We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven. It is God’s name, not ours, that is important.

This is the start of the new story, the church’s story, that tells us how we became children of God. This one word, Abba, Father, overthrows the towers of pride, and establishes our trust in our relationship with God our Father in heaven. May we who have received this spirit of adoption, persevere in it all our days, to the glory of God our Father, and Christ our Brother, through the Holy Spirit, our advocate and guide.

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The Mind of Christ

Luke’s Passion gives us three windows into the mind of Christ

Palm Sunday C • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave... Who humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.

We return today, as we do every three years to Saint Luke’s account of the passion and death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The readings from Isaiah and Philippians are the same each year, and each of them highlight the suffering and humiliation that our Lord underwent on his way to the cross and Calvary. But Luke’s account in particular brings out some elements that highlight the nature of the mind of Christ that Saint Paul describes in that Letter to the Philippians. Paul describes the mind that Jesus had to empty himself out in humility and to suffer humiliation. Saint Paul calls upon those who hear these words to have that same mind in themselves, a mind not of pride and self-exaltation, but of humility.

As I said, Saint Luke’s account gives us some of what this means, in part by portraying those who seem not to have the mind of Christ in them — those who instead of emptying themselves and choosing the lowest place, exalt themselves to grab the best seats — like children playing musical chairs, instead of acting as they should as apostles of Jesus Christ.

Yes, it’s the apostles themselves who are shown acting in this way. It is certainly true that all of the evangelists portray the apostles as not fully understanding their Lord and master; but Luke highlights this very strongly by placing some of the boldest examples of this bad behavior right in the midst of the Lord’s Supper. And so it is that right after Jesus has said to the apostles that one of them will betray him, and they all wonder who it could be, the very next thing out of their mouths is a dispute about which one of them will be considered the greatest.

Jesus very quickly reminds them that this kind of political talk is out of place amongst them. It is not that there won’t be leaders and followers, for it is only natural that some will have certain gifts that others lack. But the leader should act, as Jesus himself does, as the servant to the rest. He demonstrates his mind by noting that he is among them as one who serves — and if he, the master, is content to be a servant, so too ought they be willing to serve — even to serve the youngest among them.

Towards the end of Luke’s account of the passion the evangelist provides two other details that are not present in the other Gospels. On his way to the cross, Jesus encounters that group of unnamed women of Jerusalem who are weeping and wailing. And what is striking is that Jesus has some hard words rather than comforting words for them — “Do not weep for me but for yourselves and for your children.” And he echoes the prophets and says that the days are coming when people will be so terrified that they will ask to be buried alive rather than to face the horrors that are coming. He ends with that striking question, “If they do this when the wood is green, what will they do it is dry?”

Now, that is a somewhat odd saying to us. Most of us don’t have fireplaces to burn wood, green or otherwise. It would make more sense if we place ourselves back in those days, and in the context in which Jesus says it. Jesus is warning those weeping women — those who weep for him instead of considering their own perilous plight — by noting, “If this” — meaning crucifixion — “is what happens to an innocent man, just what do you think is going to happen to you who are guilty? Weep for yourselves!” Jesus is offering them no easy word of comfort, but a prophetic warning, to repent and above all to have his mind in them, to have that mind not set on pride and ambition or whatever it was wrong about them and their lives — but on service and humility. Is he hard on these poor women? Perhaps so — but not as hard as it will be for them if they do not take his warning; if they do not get their lives in order.

Finally, and in much the same vein, Luke offers us one more example of the difference between pride and humility. He presents us, as the other evangelists do, with the two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus. But Luke, unlike the other evangelists, presents them to us with contrasting personalities and actions.

Both of them know that they are guilty, condemned for their crimes and getting their just deserts. But one of them seems interested only in being let off the hook — if he really even means what he says at all; for he may simply be joining in with the jeering at Jesus as the rest of the crowd is doing. But the other thief rebukes him, reminding him of their guilt, but then, instead of asking to be delivered from this just penalty, he admits his guilt and asks Jesus for only one thing — to be remembered by him in the life of the world to come. You might say that this man, rather than the other, has truly taken up his own cross and followed Jesus.

He may be the only character in the drama who has even an inkling of the mind of Christ — and the knowledge, and above all the hope, that it is in dying with him, trusting in him, that he has any chance of participating in his kingdom. No one else in the passion other than Jesus and this thief “humbles himself and becomes obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.” And only this man is given the promise that he will be with Jesus in Paradise.

This is Luke’s lesson for us in his account of the passion: not to grab at fame and power, but to submit and serve. Not to weep for others without looking at our own condition first, and seeing where our own lives are out of order, and need to be put back in God’s order. Luke calls us, in the voice of Jesus to the women, to repent and be prepared, to admit our faults and to throw ourselves upon the mercy of the one who suffered for us, who emptied himself and took the form of a slave, who became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. None of us is likely to suffer anything like this — God protect us if we do. But each of us can humble ourselves, and take the position of service to others that will show by our deeds that we have the mind of Christ. May that same mind be in us as was in him.+

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Be What You Are

SJF • Epiphany 5a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.

Today our Gospel reading continues with a section of the Sermon on the Mount, and the theme with which this portion picks up relates to the theme from last week. As you recall, I spoke about the meaning of meekness as knowing how and where one stands both with God and with other people, neither blown up with pride nor groveling in false humility.

Today we continue with this idea of “being what you are.” Jesus gives two telling examples to make this point. He speaks of salt that has lost its saltiness, and a lamp hidden under a bushel basket. Neither the salt or the lamp is good for very much in these situations, for it is the saltiness of salt that gives it its purpose, and the light of a lamp that gives it its usefulness.

Here is a more modern example. This little pocket flashlight was a promotional giveaway that I picked up at some conference or other a few years ago. It no longer works, the battery is dead. But it doesn’t open — it is self-sealed in plastic — so there is no way to replace or to charge the battery. It is, as Jesus would say, good for nothing but to be thrown out — and now that I’ve dug it out of the bottom of the desk drawer to which it had found its way, that is exactly what I plan to do! I suppose I should in all charity towards the flashlight acknowledge that it has served one final purpose — as a sermon illustration! But I fear that is a bit like saying that a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

The real point is that a thing that can no longer fulfill the function for which it was designed — while it just might have some other use — is more likely taking up space and serving no purpose — it is good for nothing. This is why the image with which Jesus begins is so telling: salt that isn’t salty really isn’t good for anything — and a lamp — or a flashlight — that doesn’t shine a light is a waste of space.

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Now, of course, Jesus is using these images to provoke the people to whom he speaks — and that includes us! It is we who are the salt of the earth, and the light of the world: and if we lose our saltiness or hide our light, we are not being what we are meant to be, and equipped to be, designed to be, by God.

It is a funny thing about people — as I observed last week talking about meekness — that people often want to make themselves out to be more than they are, and they often treat others or themselves as less than they are. The hardest thing, it seems, is for us to simply be what we are!

If I can quote one of my favorite preachers, an old friend who died a few years ago, Canon Richard Norris: He observed that people will often say to themselves or others such things as, “Act your age!” or “Be a man!” He said, “No one would think of saying to a penguin, ‘Be a penguin,’ or to a cat, ‘Be a cat.’” The penguin would likely give you a strange look and just go on being a penguin; and the cat... well no one can really tell a cat anything. “And yet,” Norris continued, “Wewill say to a man, “‘Be a man!’” It appears we recognize that we human beings, unlike penguins or cats, often act as if we were not what we are.

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And of course, that comes about because we so often act as if we were less than we are. We deny our gifts, fail to share what we have, perhaps because we fear it will not be enough, or that people will think less of us if they see us as we do ourselves — not as we are, but low in our own estimation in spite of God’s powerful promise and charge. “You are the salt of the earth! You are the light of the world!” Jesus assures us of both. Perhaps salt is not such a telling image in our time, when salt is easily available and our diets actually contain too much of it! But in the ancient world, salt was a valuable commodity with many uses, in some places worth its weight in gold. And it is good to remember that the amount rationed out to every Roman soldier gave rise to a modern word with which we are all familiar: salary.

So imagine Jesus is saying, “You are worth your weight in gold!” and perhaps you will get some sense of how valuable each of us is in his service. The point is that, like the gold talent buried in the ground instead of being invested in trade, we dare not hide our gifts or let them rest idle, but put them to use: to be what we are. You know the slogan, no doubt, “Be all that you can be!” That starts with being what you already are, accepting your gifts and putting them to work through practice. Practice: That is, as the old joke has it, how to get to Carnegie Hall!

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You all know that the verse, “Let your light so shine before others,” has long standing as anoffertory sentence, used just before the collection of the people’s offerings. That is taking the relation of salt with salary literally! And far be it from me to limit the reality that our offerings play in keeping the church functioning,
from the prosaic matters of heat and light on up to all the work of prayer and praise. We all know too well that these lights won’t shine if we don’t pay Con Ed!

But being a shining light or the salt of the earth means so much more. We are, as Jesus assures us, gifted with many capacities to be salt and light — to be what we are and rejoice in all that we can be. We each of us have many gifts that we may not be using for the service of God, the praise of God, to the glory of God. Let us not adopt a false modesty that says, “Who am I?” God knows who you are, who each of us is, and knows we are worth our weight in gold, salt of the earth and the light of the world. Let us not, as the Lord challenged us through Isaiah, engage in the wrong kind of fast, a groveling in sackcloth and ashes, and bowing our heads like a bulrush, acting as if we were less than we are. Let us rather rise up to break the yoke of injustice, to feed the hungry and set free the captive, using all we have to those ends. What a shame it would be if we did not make use of who we are to help make this world a better place, a more loving place, a more just and peaceful place.

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A wise old man, Rabbi Zusya, used to say, “When I come before the throne of the Holy One, Blessed be He, He will not say to me, ‘Why were you not Moses?’ or ‘Why were you not Elijah?’ He will say to me, ‘Why were you not Zusya?’” We are the salt of the earth, the seasoning that preserves it and gives it flavor. We are the light of the world, called to be lights to each other and to those who live in the darkness of fear and ignorance. Let us be who we are, sisters and brothers, and put our gifts to work for God and God’s kingdom, making the most of all the skills and talents with which we are equipped by the grace of God, through the Spirit of God and to the glory of God. In whose name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we commit ourselves in service.+

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Meek, Not Weak

SJF • Epiphany 4a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Because Easter comes late this year, we will have a full set of nine Sundays after the Epiphany — which means we will be hearing, starting today and for the next four Sundays, selected passages from the Sermon on the Mount. I want to take advantage of this opportunity to reflect with you on some of the key elements in the teaching that Jesus gave the people.

Today, we start with the Beatitudes — a well-loved text of promised blessings. But who are the blessings for? Not the powerful, but the meek. And in keeping with Micah’s prophecy and Jesus’ words, I want to explore today the meaning of meekness — which is not weakness, but humble strength that trusts in God.

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To get some idea of what it means to be meek, let me tell you a story. Some years ago, a governor was running for re-election, and one day he arrived late at a church barbecue, having skipped breakfast and lunch on the campaign trail. As he moved down the serving line, he held out his plate, and the elderly woman on the other side of the chafing dish smiled graciously as she placed one barbecued chicken breast on it. The governor looked down at the lonely piece of chicken, and then smiled and bowed a little, and said to the woman behind the chafing dish, “Excuse me, could I get another piece of chicken.” The woman replied, “I’m sorry, sir, but to have enough to go ‘round it’s one piece to each person.” He appealed, “But I’m starved,” and again, shaking her head gently and smiling, said, “One to a customer.” Finally, he decided to use the weight of his office and said, “Madam, do you know who I am? I am the governor of this state.” She answered, “Governor, do you know who I am? I am the lady in charge of the chicken!”

That is meekness — a humble power that will stand up for what is right and fair regardless of who is issuing challenges, who is using position or power to take advantage. Meekness is not lying down as a doormat to be walked over, but the strength to be true to oneself and, as the Quaker tradition puts it, to “speak truth to power.” It is the pin-prick that takes the air out of all fo those who are too full of themselves; it is the strength of a Rosa Parks to stay in her seat when told to move; of an unarmed man standing there to face a tank in Tiananmen Square; dare I say we’re seeing some of this at work in Tunisia and Egypt even now — people who have had enough standing up. It is the voice of the child that is honest enough to say that the emperor has no clothes. It is not weakness, no not at all, but a kind of confidence and trust in what is right and true and just and fair, regardless of the powers arrayed against you. It is reliance on that promise given by God, who chooses what is weak to shame the strong, the foolish to shame what is wise. It is the answer of truth to the lies of power.

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This is all the more important when people pretend to impress the one who has the real power — God himself. All of us stand in that situation in the face of God. And today’s reading from the prophet Micah shows us the absurdity of trying to impress God. As I’ve said from this pulpit before, God knows us, through and through. God not only knows who and what we are, but knows every possible who and what we might become, for God is not only the Lord of what is, but of all that might be. So it’s no good trying to fool God, or trying to impress God.

Not that people don’t try. I suppose sometimes we get so used to impressing each other that we figure we can impress God, too. And rather than trying to frame our lives along the best possible course that God has laid before us — and since God can see all our journeys and our resting places God knows which is best for us — instead of trying to do what God wants for us, we, like the ancient Israelites, worry more about how good we look in God’s eyes, or think how good we look.

Micah, like most of the prophets, shows us that God has a bone to pick with his people. They’ve gotten the idea that God’s primary interest is in how many sacrifices they can carry out. We all know it is a sign of wealth to show how much you can give up — when people buy hundred thousand dollar cars when they could do perfectly well for a quarter of that to get where they’re going, but want to spend more to show off — like the rich man who lights his ten-dollar cigars with twenty-dollar bills. So the people of Israel wonder how high they have to pile their sacrifices: these burnt offerings and calves, thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil. They are even willing to sacrifice their own sons and daughters — imagine — that is how far they have strayed in their foolishness and wickedness.

But God is not impressed by all this show. Remember, God knows his people intimately, and will not be fooled by their showy display of sacrificial zeal, showing how much they can give up in their religious exercises. As Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once said, “It is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly interested in religion”! God isn’t interested in religion, God is interested in people, in the standing of their hearts, not in the number of their sacrifices. God cannot and will not be bought off. You can’t fool God, and you can’t impress God.

So Micah tells the people what God really wants, or rather reminds them of what God has always wanted: for them to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with their God. It is meekness that God desires in his people: a commitment to fairness, justice, integrity and humility.

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Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, and Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, reaffirm this timeless teaching. Those who are blessed are not those who succeed in making themselves look good — the rich, the powerful, the wise. No, on the contrary, the blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the seekers after justice, the workers of mercy, the peacemakers and the pure in heart. Within and behind all of this blessedness, all of these beatitudes, is a simple attribute, a simple virtue: meekness, the attitude of humble witness to the truth.

Although it is the opposite of pride, which is pretending to be more than you are, meekness doesn’t mean pretending to be less than you are. Meekness isn’t about pretense at all, it is about knowing exactly what and who you are, and speaking the truth you know. Such an attitude is merely reasonable here in our present life: who looks more foolish than one knocked from a high horse! But it is all the more reasonable as we stand before the one who can’t be fooled, the one who knows us through and through, from beginning to end. Meekness is integrity and authenticity and honesty — for if honesty is the best policy when dealing with each other, it is all the more so when we are standing before the one who already knows the truth: God, who is, as we well know, the only foolproof lie detector.

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But though ultimately it ends with God, it starts with us: learning and understanding that meekness is important in our interactions among ourselves: knowing exactly who we are and who it is we’re talking too, when we speak to each other. Though I may be the governor, that doesn’t entitle me to extra chicken; and though I’m the one serving, I don’t have the right to deny that one piece or to dole out extra helpings. Meekness is about understanding exactly how and where one stands, and not being afraid to stand there.

It is both in treating each other with proper respect, and acting with proper dignity — both sides of what it means to be a child of God — that we can come to learn how to walk in true humility and meekness with the one who is above all. This life, sisters and brothers, this life is the school of charity, and we spend our semesters learning to love our neighbors so we can learn to love God. Why is it that Jesus so often used stories about household servants and their interactions among themselves as they awaited their master’s return? (I’ve been watching “Downton Abbey” on PBS, so this is on my mind!) How impressed is the master when he sees his servants treating each other badly? Rather than that kind of power-playing, the proper operation of God’s household depends on each doing the task given to us, the gives given to us, working with the skills God has given. When we learn to honor and celebrate the gifts that others have, not denying our own, but offering them so that all can share, we will by walking in meekness, doing justice and loving kindness with each other, and that is how we will learn how to walk humbly with our God.

Meekness, as I said, isn’t about pretense; it is the ultimate reality check; And as with each other, it doesn’t need to take the form of telling God, “Look how small I am” — God knows that already! — but confessing “Lord, how great thou art!” As we stand before him on our last day, God will recognize and welcome us there because we have not feared to stand before him and walk with him here, in our earthly pilgrimage, following him in the way of justice and humility practiced towards each other.

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Let us not boast of anything, except the cross of Christ. What does God ask of us? Not countless sacrificial offerings; not the cleverness of human wisdom, nor the pomp of earthly majesty, not reliance on noble birth, nor the wealth of things that are valued in this world; not physical strength, not power nor boasting. God wants each of us just as we are, without one plea, boasting only in the cross of Christ, boasting only in the Lord, and doing justice to each other, showing loving-kindness to each other, and walking with him in meekness, knowing who we are and who he is.+

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Risky Business

SJF • Proper 26c• Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Jesus said, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”

While the Gospel is full of people whose lives were changed by contact with the saving power of Christ, I’ve always been attracted to the story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector from Jericho. And that’s not just because Zacchaeus is the biblical hero of short people! Rather it is because of the wonderful risk that Zacchaeus took, and the answering risk that Jesus took in response to it.

This biblical event is like one of those old medieval paintings with two panels facing each other, each of which tells half of the story, but which also reflect each other in meaning or theme.

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The first panel shows us the little tax-collector climbing a tree, getting up above the crowds so that he can see Jesus. Now, it is important to think for a moment about what prompted this little man to do this; tax collectors normally don’t climb trees! We can be sure that Zacchaeus has heard something about Jesus, maybe only the noise of the crowd, but wants to know more. The text does not tell us what exactly he has heard; perhaps he’s heard about the healing miracles, or the wise teaching Jesus has given as he has moved from town to town. Perhaps he’s heard that this Jesus has gotten on the wrong side of the Pharisees — which is the neighborhood he himself lives in and knows quite well! Or perhaps he’s heard of the experience of his colleague, the other tax-collector Levi, who invited Jesus to his home for dinner and ended up with the name Matthew. Perhaps Zacchaeus has heard about some of the stern stories Jesus has been telling about rich people and their fate — the same stories we’ve been hearing in the gospel over the last few weeks — and being a rich man himself, is perhaps becoming a bit worried about what might lay in store for him! Or perhaps all he hears is the noise of the crowd and naturally wonders what is going on to cause such a commotion.

Whatever the impulse, it is enough to inspire this little man to action. Being a short person myself, I can understand the frustration he must feel when the crowds block his view. When I was in England last week, in London, I missed most of the changing of the Guard. Not the big show at Buckingham Palace but at the Horse Guards nearby; and not on the parade ground where they troop the colors but in the inner courtyard, where are there are just two horses and 14 guards — but still only saw the two on horseback, because I was at the back of the pack! I got a better view, to be honest, of the backs of peoples hands as they took pictures with their cell phones.

So I understand what it is like. But more importantly, I can also understand the power of the call of Christ that must be at work in him to allow him to set aside any sensitivity over his height, and take a risk. This little man — rich though he is — you must understand, is not a popular man in Jericho; he is an outcast in his own town no matter how rich he is; as I noted already, he is a man considered a hopeless a sinner by the religious leaders. And no tax collector, good or bad, is ever particularly popular with those from whom the taxes are collected. It wouldn’t be too far off, if we were to do a modern version of this story, to picture Danny DeVito in the role of a local loan-shark or swindler. That is how the people of his time regard tax-collectors, who make their living not so much by the legitimate collection of taxes, but by bribes and extortion, and the hand that goes this way — you know what I mean: behind the back, under the table! Out of sight. Such people — people who make their treasure that way — treasure as well what little respect they get — remember how important respect was in the world of the Godfather! — and to risk the ridicule of climbing a tree, risking the contempt they already know from their neighbors.

What must be the power of the grace of God at work in this tax-collector that he risks making a fool of himself by climbing a tree so he can see Jesus. He knows he will look ridiculous, but he doesn’t care. He wants to see Jesus, and so he nails his pride to that tree. Perhaps he knows, somewhere in his heart, that this is the most important thing he ever does in his life; the most important thing: to see Jesus Christ.

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That’s the first panel of this picture. The second panel shows us Jesus doing something equally surprising and equally risky. He calls Zacchaeus and tells him to come down, and invites himself to the tax-collector’s house to be his guest.

Jesus flies in the face of convention in doing this, as outrageous in Jericho as he’s been elsewhere in his ministry, mingling with folks the Pharisees and scribes think are beyond the pale, the riff-raff, the low-down. But Jesus is, after all, only doing what he was sent there to do: bringing salvation to a son of Abraham dispossessed by his self-righteous brothers. Jesus flies in the face of custom and tradition, and evokes a change in a man who was thought past hope. The change in Zacchaeus, the thankful response to salvation crossing his threshold, as he turns his life around, literally turning his riches around and returning half — half — to the poor, and four times over to anyone he has wronged. He experiences true wealth, the sure and certain knowledge of God’s love and forgiveness, the Good News in all of its fullness, compared to which all the treasure he has accumulated over the years is, as Saint Paul called his learning and pedigree, so much rubbish.

But that is still to come. For now, the panel shows us Jesus calling Zacchaeus, and the tongues start to wag at once: “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” You’d think by now the religious leaders would have gotten the message, but clearly they still haven’t got a clue. They don’t understand who Jesus is, why he is there, what he is doing, what risks he is willing to take. All they see is their own outrage: that nasty little sinner Zacchaeus, and Jesus going with him as his guest. In the panel painting you can see them heading off to dinner, while the crowd stands in a huddled group off to the side, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues.

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That’s the second panel. Now I have a surprise for you. Maybe not such a surprise if you’ve seen those medieval panel paintings. Because just as in a medieval altar piece, these panels fold open, to reveal something else. When we fold open those two panels, a third panel is revealed, that draws the themes of the first two into one. It shows us someone else taking the greatest risk of all; someone else lifted up high, someone else regarded by the crowds as a sinner, ridiculed, jeered at, mocked at. It shows us the crucified Christ. For the same Jesus Christ, accused for dining with a sinner would himself one day be lifted high upon a tree, not so that he could see us, but that he could be seen. Hanging there in the shame of the cross, he would once again be called a sinner by the leaders of the people, but be justified by God’s love for his only begotten Son when he raised him from the dead. He would reveal himself thus to the whole world for the sake of the whole world. He would open the treasury of true riches that cannot be stolen by thieves, corrupted by rust or moth, or stored up but never used for the good they could have done, if only we would use them. Jesus reveals his love in his death, not just for the sons of Abraham, but for every son and daughter of the living God, his Father in heaven, and our Father in heaven. Jesus reveals himself as the friend of sinners who seeks out the lost and will not rest until all are gathered at his feet to fall in worship and adoration, to marvel at this one man whose death brought life and immortality to many. And so the central panel shows Christ in glory upon the cross, the tree he climbed for us, not so that he could see us, but that we might see him, and be drawn to him, and be saved by him.

But for now let us close the panels — in our gospel readings, Jesus is still on the road, and Calvary lies up ahead, where we will revisit it in a few weeks, when on the last Sunday before Advent we will once again look upon the king in his glory upon the cross. Let us return to that scene in Jericho, the one on the outside of the panels, with Zacchaeus going off to dinner with Jesus, as the crowds mutter in the background.

The Gospel does not record if or how Jericho changed because of Christ’s visit to Zacchaeus’ house. Jericho may not have changed, but one of its citizens did, and we have seen the beginning of that change in the gospel. But going forward from that do you not think that from then on guests at Zacchaeus’s table were treated differently, as they treated him differently, now that he had changed from being a corrupt tax collector to one who went out of his way to pay back four-fold anyone he’d ever wronged. Regardless of how high or low, we can be sure that they were greeted with joy, and respect, treated with humility, and served with open hands. We can also be sure that Zacchaeus retold that story time and again, the story of the day he risked making a fool of himself for Christ’s sake, climbed a tree to see the king of glory as he passed, and shared his table with the one who would one day take the greatest risk of all, and share himself with the whole world upon the cross. May we too risk the embarrassment of seeking Christ and being Christians in a world that seeks its own way instead of the way of God, today and every day of our lives, risking being Christians even if people think we are foolish to be so, climbing a tree if need be, and striving to see Jesus, and welcoming him into our hearts, to the glory of God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. +

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Humble Pie

SJF • Proper 17c 2010 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host...+

In his comic novel, Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope paints a portrait of Victorian manners and morals. Everything in the various plot-lines comes to a head at a great indoor-outdoor garden party thrown by Miss Thorne — the elderly maiden sister of the master of the manor on the outskirts of Barchester. She has invited all sorts and conditions of people to this great event — the tenant farmers who work on her brother’s estate, the Bishop of Barchester (and his indomitable wife!) most of the clergy from the cathedral, and of course the new parish priest. She has also not spared to invite the local nobility, including, as Trollope notes, the assorted regional baronets and their baronettes.

Now of course this creates some difficulties, as Miss Thorne is well aware. She can’t possibly have all of these guests — gentry, nobility, and commoners — dining together at the same table, or even in the same space. This is the Victorian Age! And so she sets up two large tents — one for the gentry on the spacious lawn just facing the manor-house; and one for the farmers, on the paddock on the other side of a ditch normally intended to keep cattle from straying — which she hopes will keep the farmers and their families from straying too! And finally in her own drawing-room she plans to host the cream of the crop: the Bishop and senior clergy, and the local lord and lady.

She has not, however, properly reckoned with the ambitions of one of the farmers’ wives, Mrs. Lookaloft. She is one who has always presumed to be higher than her station — and in spite of the halfhearted efforts of Miss Thorne’s servants to prevent it, not only does she stray from the paddock to the lawn, but forces her way into the inner sanctum of the drawing-room with her two daughters — her husband, knowing his wife, wisely having chosen to be indisposed and unable to attend the whole event!

Now, unlike the passage in our Gospel today — no goes to her and tells her and her daughters that they are in the wrong room. That’s another aspect of the Victorian Age: there are very strict rules, and you are expected to know them: people are supposed to know these things, and if they have to be told, well, as Dame Edith Evans once said, “That just won’t do.” And so Mrs. Lookaloft blithely ignores all of the cold shoulders and gets to hobnob and rub elbows with “the quality” — happy for the elbows and oblivious to the chilly shoulders!

Meanwhile another tenant farmer’s wife, Mrs. Greenacre, is simply furious. She is out on the paddock where she belongs, but is furious that Mrs. Lookaloft is not there too. She is not so much angry that Mrs. Lookaloft has risen, but rather that she herself has remained low. And her envy seethes and boils. She is somewhat consoled when she hears, via a servant, that the Lookalofts pushed their way in and were not in fact invited, but she wants more. As Trollope says, referring to today’s Gospel passage, “Mrs. Greenacre felt that justice to herself demanded that Mrs. Lookaloft should not only not be encouraged, but that she should also be absolutely punished. What after all had been done at that scriptural banquet? ... Why had not Miss Thorne boldly gone to the intruder and said, ‘Friend, thou hast come up hither to high places not fitted to thee. Go down lower, and thou wilt find thy mates.’”

In short, Mrs. Greenacre wants to see the Lookalofts cut down, literally to be put in their place, and made to eat humble pie.

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Why is it that it is so much easier to see when other people are acting pridefully? In fact, why is it that one of the surest marks of one’s own pride lies in thinking that others are too proud. As with most faults, why is it easier to see other people’s failings rather than our own — to be oblivious to the fact that it is we who have tried to rise up too high, and that our disdain for others who are also rising comes from the fact that they may have risen higher or faster than we? Pride is an insidious sin, and however foolish we may think it makes others appear, we are often blind to our own foolishness, our own failings, on that score.

So what do we do about it? Jesus, of course, gives us the best advice — however high you think you may be, take the lowest place. Then, if in fact you rate as high as you think you should, the host will come and place you higher — and if not, perhaps you will learn something about yourself — that you overestimated, and are where you belong; that you’ve acted rightly and you are not so important after all. As I’ve said before, there is all the difference in the world between humility and humiliation: humility is something we can choose for ourselves, but humiliation is something that will happen to us if we choose to exalt ourselves higher than we deserve. It is better to eat a humble meal than have to eat humble pie!

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Let me close with another tale, an older one than Trollope’s account of the doings in Barchester. There was once, you see, a great monastery on the lands of a certain Prince. He had heard that the Abbot of that monastery was a good and wise and holy man, and decided to pay a visit. While he was there, a servant from the town who worked in the abbey, and who secretly despised the monks and the Abbot, whispered to the Prince that while the monks ate simple meals at their common table, in small portions, the Abbot secretly feasted every night in his own cell. And the Prince was troubled at this information and decided to find out for himself. Instead of retiring after the evening prayer he stationed himself near the Abbot’s cell. And sure enough, later that night, a light was struck in the Abbot’s cell and he could be seen through the window wolfing down food from a huge wooden bowl.

This was more than the Prince could bear, and opening the Abbot’s door he was about to pronounce a heavy accusation, when the Abbot shook his head and said, “Oh, m’lord, I am so embarrassed that you should see this.” The Prince nodded vigorously, and was about to pronounce a heavy judgment, when the Abbot continued, “It’s my monks, you see. They are so wasteful of the food set before them. Here, let me show you.” And he stepped the few paces to the wall of his cell, and slid a small panel aside, and said, “You see, I’ve had the drain from the monastery kitchen routed through here, and I’ve put in a filter here — you see — to recapture all that would otherwise be wasted down the drain. Just look,” pointing at the bowl, “at that perfectly good food going to waste.” And as he gestured at the bowl, the Prince could now see it was filled with fragments of gristle and corn and rice and half chewed bits of vegetables; and the Abbot said, “Would you like some?” Whereupon the Prince fell to his knees, and said, “No, Father, I simply wish to receive a blessing from a truly holy, humble man.”

To be humble and holy — that is what God calls us to. Let us not judge the success of others, or their rising to heights beyond which we think they ought to scale; above all let us not judge others — as the Prince was ready to judge the Abbot — but rather let us always seek for ourselves the place of the humble, the place that our Lord himself took when he came among us, choosing, as our opening hymn said, “an humble birth.” He will indeed call us up higher some day, higher than we can either deserve or imagine.+

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One Room Hearts

SJF • Advent 4c 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
You, O Bethlehem, are but one of the little clans of Judah... but from you shall come forth one who is to rule in Israel. (Micah 5:2)

THERE’S SOMETHING IN US ALL that loves to see the underdog finally get ahead; to see the little guy bring down the big bully; to share the joy of the little shopkeeper who wins the lottery, of the hard-working housekeeper who inherits a fortune. This is the stuff of fairy tales: of Cinderella, raised from the dust and ashes of the hearth to become a princess; of the Ugly Duckling turning out to be a swan; of the Little Engine Who Could, finally making it over that steep hill; or, in keeping with the season, of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, shunned at first because of his odd and shiny nose, later turning out to be just the one Santa needs to accomplish his Christmas Eve mission.

Yes, this is the stuff of fairy tales, but it is also the stuff of salvation. For once, long ago, just about exactly three thousand years ago, — yes, I’m counting correctly! — in a little suburb of Jerusalem, a little town belonging to the smallest clan in Judah, a little town called Bethlehem, an unlikely young man came to the forefront of everyone’s attention: and his name was David, son of Jesse — the shepherd-boy who would go on to knock down that towering Philistine giant Goliath with his slingshot, and later would go on to become the king of all Israel.

The prophet Micah, remembering this savior from his nation’s past — much the way we might remember Abraham Lincoln or George Washington — spoke to his people in their present turmoil to comfort them with the promise of another king who would arise from this little town of Bethlehem. From this little suburban village, one would come forth who would be great to the ends of the earth. He would “feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.”

Such stories, such promises, give hope. It is wonderful when the tables are overturned and the haughty mighty ones are toppled, especially when that toppling is done by poor, simple souls lifted up from where they’ve been downtrodden for so long. It is so wonderful that it’s worth singing about. That’s what Micah did, and that’s what Mary of Nazareth did, too.

In today’s Gospel, little Mary, the carpenter’s wife, you know, the housewife — she lived just down the street — the working-class mother-to-be; she was spending some time away from her home up in the hill country, visiting her cousin Elizabeth, also soon to become a mother. And as soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, she felt the child leap in her womb, the yet unborn John the Baptist already sensing somehow and announcing with a kick the arrival of his Lord hidden in his mother’s womb. And Elizabeth too was urged to prophetic utterance, addressing Mary as blessèd, as the mother of the Lord, a Lord only just recently and miraculously conceived, and yet already announced by his unborn cousin.

And that’s when Mary sang. The song she sang has been repeated since in every language on earth, sung to many melodies, throughout the world sung every day as part of the evening worship of the church, a reminder before bedtime that our God is a mighty One who does great things, who lifts up the lowly, who afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted, who fills the hungry with good things, but sends the rich away empty; and who, above all, is faithful to his promises.

Mary’s song is the song of all the little people, of all the underdogs, of all the people who never got a fair shake finally winning their reward. In Mary’s Song is summed up all the history of God’s chosen people, loved by their faithful God even when they were unfaithful, chosen not because they were numerous or powerful, or great, but just because they were little and insignificant — as if God were saying, “I can work with anything. I’m going to take this lousy little tribe of people wandering around in the desert and from them will come the ruler of the universe...” whose coming we celebrate this week.

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There’s an advantage, you see, to being little! (I guess I should talk, right?) Little people can fit into places big people can’t. And I don’t just mean on the “D” train! Little people notice things that the big people are too busy to see, or too caught up in their own importance to notice; they keep their heads up. Little people know they need to keep their eyes open and look around. One Saint took this very seriously, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who was known as the “Little Flower.” She was a little lady, but because of that she knew she wasn’t cut out to be a great heroine of the faith, a martyr who would face death and torture rather than deny Christ, or a missionary called to go to far off lands. So she resolved to follow what she called “The Little Way”: to do every little daily task as if it were the most important thing in the world; to do the dishes as if they were the sacred vessels of the altar; to scrub the floors of the convent where she lived as if they were the paving stones of heaven; and to face all challenges and difficulties with the same sweet innocent smile, as she said, “We are too little to be able to rise above great difficulties; so then let us quite simply pass beneath them!”

Herein lies the great advantage that the humble and meek have over the rich and powerful: They pay attention to the little things, they listen, they keep their eyes open — they have to! They’ve learned to know how to avoid being stepped on; and it is no accident that when whatever it was that wiped out the dinosaurs wiped out the dinosaurs, the little mammals survived because they could slip through the cracks of disaster! The rich, the powerful who imagine themselves to be self-sufficient, fail to remember how dependent they are on others and on God, and so they lose their grip on what they have, and when the tables are turned, they slide from their thrones. It was precisely when Israel got fat and rich and comfortable and big that the people lost sight of God, and slid into exile or captivity. Only when reduced to the point that they could acknowledge their failings would they turn to God, their deliverer, in meekness and repentance.

The meek, unlike the proud, are receptive, open to God’s arrival. The great Episcopal preacher and bishop Phillips Brooks — who once stood in this very pulpit as he preached at the wedding of the third rector, Charles Tiffany — Phillips Brooks had that in mind when he wrote the words of that wonderful hymn we sang today, “where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.”

And what is it that Christ enters into? We find the answer in the collect for today: “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.” Or, as Brooks put it in the same hymn: “O Holy child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray; cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.” When we become little, when we become meek, God dwells among us, with us, and ultimately in us: truly Emmanuel: God-with-us.

God chose Mary to bear his Son as he chose Israel to be his people. It wasn’t because Mary was great, but because Mary was humble, meek and lowly, that God chose her. It was God who made her great, who did great things for her. It was God who lifted up his lowly handmaiden, and made her the mother of his Son.

That same meekness, that same humility is available to us. We can be like Mary — we can open our hearts to God and to each other, to welcome Christ, who is always willing to enter into a humble heart. If God — think about that — even God, could become so little, an infant lying in a manger, can not we too shrink ourselves? Can we not pare down our egos and our angers, engage in a fast of righteousness and shed the pounds of pride and resentment, freeing ourselves to run like happy naked children through the sprinklers of God’s abundant grace?

It is a challenge. It’s hard to become little when you’ve gotten used to living large — dieting and losing weight is hard! Israel learned that lesson, over and over again. And we stumble and fall, too. We’re so often told to act like grown-ups; that big is better; that maturity is judged by power instead of wisdom. But in God’s world, it is better, far better, to be like a child — didn’t he tell us that? It is far, far better to be like one of the blessed little ones who behold God’s face in everything they see.

So, brothers and sisters, let’s be little together. Let’s lose the weight of sin and selfishness. Remember, as the doctor said to the overweight businessman: “It’s either lose forty pounds now or lose two-hundred forty soon!” So let’s go on the diet of righteousness starting now! Let us sing Mary’s song, now, and on Christmas Day, and the day after that, and forever after. When we feel ourselves getting too big for our britches, let’s remember little Mary’s song. Let us join in the chorus of praise, the chorus of souls who magnify the Lord by acknowledging their own littleness, their voices echoing down the corridors of time and space. Let us watch with charity; and with faith hold open the door of grace. Let our hands help lift up the lowly, as we are lifted up ourselves; let our hands feed the hungry, as we are fed at the hands of God. Let us open our hearts, our simple, little, one-room hearts, which, by the grace of God, will become mansions prepared for his Son at his coming. “O come to us, abide with us, our Lord, Emmanuel!”

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(Note: unfortunately the audio recorder cut off 2/3 through the sermon...)

Varieties of Service

Proper 26a & All Saints’ Sunday • Tobias Haller BSG
Jesus said, the greatest among you will be your servant.

All our readings today address the theme of service, and it is fitting to reflect on that theme, in light of our annual celebration of the lives of the Saints — both the great historic saints of the church, and our own more personal saints, whose lives had such a great impact on our own. This impact, historical or personal, resonates down the years — from lives of those who touched so many other lives. And this resonance, this impact, is due to how these saints served.

What does it mean to be a servant? For it is in being a servant, in serving, that people leave a mark for the good on all whom they encounter, and all whom they serve. How people of the church’s past, or of its present — around the world or in this parish — serve their neighbors and their Lord, will determine the future of our world, and the future of this parish, both their immediate future, and how they will stand fifty or a hundred or a thousand years from now.

The problem with the word servant is that for most of us these days it is just that, a word. There was a time when almost every household among the well-to-do had live-in servants. And even among the middle class it wasn’t unusual to have what they used to call “help” or “someone to do” once or twice a week. But nowadays about the only place you see servants, even on TV, is on Masterpiece Theater. The world of maids in starched aprons and butlers in tail-coats is far from us.

However, there is one kind of servant with which we are familiar, and it goes back long before butlers and chambermaids. These servants stood at their masters’ tables, served them their meals, filled their empty goblets, and cleared away the dishes after each course. This most ancient kind of servant is still with us, though today we call them waiters. And since we’ve all experienced good and bad waiters, it seems appropriate to look at the servants in today’s readings in that light.

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The prophet Micah starts us off with the portrait of the kind of waiter who is only interested in the tip. If you’ve ever had a terrible waiter and left a small tip on that account, you’ve probably encountered the sort of waiter who as Micah says, “declares war against those who put nothing in their mouths.” These servants only work for their pay — they have no devotion, no vision, no vocation or calling. It’s just a job as far as they’re concerned. And if they can get away with substandard work, they will. Probably the less said about waiters like this the better; and so let’s move on to the next sort.

The gospel takes us from the ungrateful waiter to the haughty maitre d’. Don’t the Pharisees and scribes of today’s gospel sound an awful lot like a snooty waiter? They are unwilling to lift a finger, they do everything for show, and are all dressed up and placed in the position of honor, to be greeted respectfully.

It may seem odd that a servant would be in a position to look down on a patron, but that is the odd circumstance one finds in certain posh dining establishments, like the one I described a few weeks ago where “proper attire” is required and the maitre d’ is the guardian of gentility. He is the one who has the power to admit only those deemed worthy to dine, looking down his nose at anyone who doesn’t show him proper respect, but groveling before the rich and famous. Unlike the first sort of bad waiters, who couldn’t care less about the job as long as they get a good tip, this kind seem to care more about the appearance of the job, the perks and titles, and honors and esteem, the fancy suit and the stylish boutonniere, than they do about actually seating the guests and seeing that their meals are served. Their focus isn’t upon those whom they serve; it’s on the whole role-play of importance and appearances, what Shakespeare called “the game of who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down.”

Finally, though, we turn to Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. And here we find at last a servant whose attention is properly directed. All Paul cares about is those whom he serves. It is their happiness and their joy that is important. This sort of waiter is always there when needed, not someone whose attention is impossible to attract. You will find this kind of waiter filling your glass before you even notice it is empty; offering suggestions on what is a particularly good dish; ready to serve and eager to make you comfortable. And not because there’s a big tip to be looked forward to, but because the waiter simply enjoys seeing you enjoy yourself.

This is the kind of service one rarely encounters. It’s the kind of service loving parents provide for their children. And Saint Paul uses such imagery, family imagery, in describing his work among the people of Thessalonica, his brothers and sisters for whom he toiled so hard, and who, when he was separated from them, he missed as an orphan misses his parents.

This is the kind of service to which our Lord calls us all: service not for profit or gain, except the profit and gain of our brothers and sisters as they reap the fruits of the Spirit. It is not service for show, for honors and titles, but service that lifts up others without thinking about itself.

This is the service of the saints — the big important famous ones from church history, as well as those personal saints who touched our own lives with their immediate presence. Such saintly service finds its end in the happiness and joy and well-being of those who are served; such a servant finds glory and joy in the act of service, and in knowing that the service was rendered to a good end, that it has done some good.

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I want to close with a remembrance of such a servant — not a saint of the church, but of the world. He has touched all of our lives though we may not think about it. But if you ever drink a glass of milk, you should give thanks to the man who gave his name to the process that made it safe to drink: Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur was one of the greatest scientists of all time. He was numbered among the top 100 most influential persons of the last millennium. He was among the first who championed the notion that germs cause disease, and developed treatments for scourges such as anthrax. As I alluded to, he invented the process we now know by his name, pasteurization, by which beverages are kept safe and healthful for our tables — and though we think first of milk, the process was originally applied to beer and wine, which the French considered far more important!

Pasteur also discovered the first successful treatment for rabies, which in his day was a deadly affliction that killed thousands every year. He had worked on the vaccine for some time, and was about to try an experiment on himself, when a young boy of nine, Joseph Meister, was savagely bitten by a rabid dog. Joseph’s mother begged Pasteur to try the new and untested vaccine on her son, who would surely die in agony otherwise. Pasteur, a patient servant, administered the vaccine for the next ten days, in progressively stronger doses. His experiment worked, and young Joseph Meister lived. Not only did he live, but he continued in a form of service himself — working first as a janitor and later for decades as a tour guide in the Pasteur Institute, completed just a few years before Pasteur died.

For Pasteur was already old when he saved Joseph Meister’s life. After years of people saying he was crazy, he had finally become a national hero, with the great Pasteur Institute just completed, funded by contributions from all over the world. As a new national hero in old age, public plans were being made for his tomb. (You know the French love to build fabulous tombs for people whom they dissed for most of their lives!) Pasteur was asked what he would like to have as an epitaph: some acknowledgment of pasteurization, that saved the French brewing industry? A few words to serve notice that this was the tomb of the man who proved that germs do after all cause disease, and who found a way to combat some of the most deadly? What would be a fitting epitaph for this great man?

Pasteur said that if it were up to him, there would just be three words engraved on his tomb, three words that would sum up what his mission had been about, three words that summarized the service he had rendered: “Joseph Meister lived.”

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For a servant can focus only on his wages; a servant can focus only on his prestige and office; or a servant can focus on those whom he serves. I know what kind of servant I hope to be; I know the kind of servants whom we remember as saints in the church and saints in our own hearts and homes. May God give each of us the strength to serve in humility and humbleness ofheart, that we may one day be remembered not for who we were, but for who and how we served; through Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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A Weeding Lesson

Saint James Fordham • Proper 11a • Tobias Haller BSG
The householder said, “In gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest...”

Today’s Gospel is the second in a series of three parables about seeds. Last week, we heard about the seeds that were broadcast on all sorts and conditions of soil, and how they fared — growing or withering. And next week we’ll hear about that famous mustard seed of faith.

Today, we have what appears to be a story of early agricultural terrorism — an enemy’s plot to infect a wholesome field of wheat with weed-seed; and we also hear about the wise farmer’s response. As with all parables, this story has a symbolic message, and in today’s Gospel Jesus explains the symbol and the message it bears. And the message, for us today as for his original hearers, is “Be Patient,” or more specifically, “Don’t rush to judgment!”

Now all of us here know about impatience. We live in New York City, after all, renowned for its hectic pace, its hurrying and scurrying life style. From time to time we all experience the urge to rush things along, to hasten and hustle and bustle when we should perhaps step back and take a look before we leap.

But impatience is not a quality restricted to modern times and modern places. There is plenty of evidence of impatience in our Scriptures. Look at those hasty household servants, ready to rush in and pull up the weeds with a vengeance, only to destroy the good wheat as well. Thank goodness for the wise householder!

On the other hand, Saint Paul, who would not normally be held up as an example of patience, today picks up that same theme, the eager but long wait of the whole creation, hoping and waiting in patience for its liberation.

We might well note, however, that patience is not characteristic of Saint Paul! Always so sure he is on the right track even when he is terribly wrong — as when he persecutes Christians and thinks he is doing God a favor. And even after his conversion from time to time he displays that same old impatience. Even in today’s reading, where he talks about waiting with patience, it is a very impatient kind of patience, in which he portrays creation waiting in eager longing, groaning and crying out like a woman in labor, longing for delivery. I pity the poor husband who tells his wife, while she’s experiencing a contraction, “Just be patient, dear...” A woman in labor doesn’t want to be patient — she wants it to be over! So perhaps Saint Paul did not understand patience all that well.

The farmworkers in our parable today echo this anxious impatience. “Let’s get those weeds!” is their motto. But the voice of the Master, the voice of Jesus, says, “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” At harvest time, the Master assures us, the sorting out will take place, and the weeds will burn while the grain is gathered in.

Now, as I said, this parable isn’t about agriculture: it was a a warning to the early church, and it is the same warning to our church today. It would have been a warning to Saint Paul, had he been around to hear it. Before his conversion, while he was still known as Saul, he thought it was his job, he even thought he had a divine commission, to go about sorting the weeds from the wheat — to separate the blasphemous new sect, the followers of that renegade rabble-rouser Jesus, from the true pious Jews. He rushed to judgment, and sent many to prison and to death because they believed in Christ. The Scripture vividly describes him standing by as the people murdered Saint Stephen, helping the crowd in their sweaty work by holding their overcoats, like a towel-boy at a sports event, straining on tiptoe to see the action, as that Christian rabble-rouser was battered to death with stones. Saul wasn’t content to wait and see, and leave the matter in God’s hands. Saul thought he knew best, and persecuted the church to within an inch of its life.

Then one fateful day on the road to Damascus, Jesus himself confronted Saul and told him just how wrong he was, and the persecutor became a champion of what he once had cursed.

But did the church learn from this? Did it learn from Jesus’ parable? If it did, it soon forgot its lesson. Throughout Christian history there arose those who thought they could do God’s harvest work for him. Impatient for the judgment of God to show itself, they pushed God aside, and started ripping up what they thought were weeds. And how they damaged the wheat in the process! And how many young stalks of wheat were ripped up with the weeds! And how often has wheat been mistaken for weeds down through the years!

It is a sad history. The followers of Saint John the Beloved Disciple thought of themselves as the children of light, and cursed and condemned everyone else as the children of darkness. The church of the east and the church of the west excommunicated each other. The inquisition saw to the torture and murder of thousands it considered heretics. The Protestant reformers beheaded Roman Catholics, and the Roman Catholics burned Protestants at the stake.

So many weeds amidst so little wheat! And everyone thinking they knew best how to do God’s will, rushing to judgment when what God said was, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

It is a sad history, and it isn’t over. Even today, in spite of our Lord’s command in the Gospel, there are countless busy workers attempting to purify the church, ripping up what they think are weeds, and weakening the church instead of strengthening it. They may have appointed themselves the guardians of the “Global Anglican Future” but they are repeating the mistakes of a sorry past!

But thanks be to God that this is not our task here at Saint James Church, or in the real live Anglican Communion — you know, the one meets with the Archbishop of Canterbury instead of gathering separately against him! Our task is to remain faithful to our Lord in the knowledge that judgment rests with God, not us. Our task is to welcome all, not to determine who’s a weed and who’s a stalk of wheat. Our task is to grow and flourish, not concerned about whether our neighbor is of the wheat or weed persuasion — for who knows what they might think of us! It is our task to grow, and to bear fruit, and to leave the sorting at harvest time to God.

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There is an old story in Jewish tradition about the patriarch Abraham. He was, as you know, renowned for his hospitality. One evening as he was sitting by his tent, a very old man came walking down the road. Abraham immediately jumped up and invited him into his tent. He washed his feet and gave him wine and bread and meat. Abraham noticed that rather than saying the traditional blessing before eating, the old man started in right away, chewing the bread with his few good teeth and glugging the wine right down. Abraham was astonished, and asked him, “Don’t you give thanks to God before you eat?”

The old man answered, “Oh, I don’t believe in God. I’m a fire-worshiper.” This was too much for the pious patriarch Abraham, and he grabbed the old pagan fire-worshiper by both shoulders, hustled him out of his tent and pushed him off down the road. The old fire-worshiper shrugged and went on his way, still chewing the last mouthful of bread, as Abraham looked after him shaking his head and his fist, and clucking his tongue in disgust.

Later that evening God appeared to Abraham in a dream, and said to him, “Abraham.” Abraham answered, as always, “Here am I, Lord.” And God asked him, (knowing the answer of course), “Where is the old man who came to your tent this evening?” And Abraham said, “I sent him on his way because he does not worship you, O Holy One.” And God said softly, “I have put up with him for over eighty years. Could you not put up with him for one night?”

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God, we can be assured, knows weeds from wheat, and at harvest time will deal with both as he sees fit. Until then, let us be content to grow and flourish under his watchful eye, giving thanks for the opportunity he gives us to grow.+

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HIgh and Low

SJF • Proper 8a • Tobias Haller BSG
The Lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up and high.

In today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah we hear a warning theme that runs through Scripture from beginning to end — watch out for pride. This is summed up in the well known proverb that sometimes gets condensed into even shorter form: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” It is a warning to know who you are and where you stand in the scheme of things, and not to act bigger or place yourself higher than you ought.

When it comes to height, it seems, from Isaiah’s point of view, that the Lord doesn’t like big things. I have to say, this is a passage dear to the heart of a short person! The Lord, Isaiah tells us, is against all those big, tall and high things: big trees, whether oaks or cedars; high mountains and lofty hills; towers and fortified walls; even the tall ships; and finally, and this is perhaps the point, against the haughtiness of people and the pride of everyone — for the Lord alone is to be exalted.

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Ultimately, when it comes right down to it, the problem with pride is that it gets things out of proportion, and out of touch with reality. It is bad enough when the small imagine themselves to be big. But as Isaiah reminds us, it is just as bad when the big imagine themselves to be bigger than they are. Sure, mountains are big and trees are tall — but the Lord, who formed the mountains with his hands, and whose breath can strike down the trees of the forest, is higher and mightier than them all. When we forget that — all of us, tall or short — when we “get too big for our britches,” we are falling prey to the sin of pride. And God’s answer will be to trim us down to size. How much better to know where we stand in the order of things, rather than risking being brought low by raising ourselves up too high. How much better is humility than pride!

As you probably heard, Tim Russert, host of NBC’s Meet the Press, and a fixture recently on CNN’s panel of the “best political minds on television, was felled by a heart attack just a couple of weeks ago. I always liked watching Tim Russert even when I disagreed with him; not only did he have a sense of humor, but he also wouldn’t let politicians off the hook — Republican or Democrat — if he caught one of his guests being less than completely forthright he would press them and pin them down, and not leave them any wiggle room at all. He seems to have been a very honest man himself, and expected that honesty — that deep engagement with reality — from others.

This is a likable trait — knowing who you are and not puffing yourself up — and it was likable in Russert: he knew who he was, and what his role was — in many ways he acted much as a prophet did in biblical times: not calling attention to himself as a personality, but doing his job at trying to get the real leaders of the world to be truthful — not an easy task and one of the reasons that prophets often go unrewarded or punished.

Russert once told a story about himself that revealed his ability to keep a proper perspective. He was a Roman Catholic and had served his parish as an altar boy, and as a newsman he wanted very much to convince Pope John Paul II to appear on the Today Show. He was granted a private audience — just him and the pope — and he hoped this was his chance. Of course, as he was ushered into the presence of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, the spiritual leader of close to a fifth of the world’s population and over half of all the world’s Christians, he found himself almost speechless — quite a change for this normally self-confident man — and as he found himself tongue-tied, he simply blurted out, “Bless me, Father.” The pope smiled and put his arm around Russert’s shoulder, and asked, “You’re the man called Timothy, from NBC?” Russert answered, “Yes, Your Holiness.” The pope nodded, and observed, “They tell me you are a very important person.” Somewhat surprised, Russert stammered out, “Your Holiness, you and I both know there is only one very important person in this room.” The pope smiled, nodded, and said, “Right.”

If this is how a relatively important person (whose death was noted by many fellow reporters and commentators), if this is how an important person reacts to being in the presence of an undoubtedly more important person (the leader of a church whose death was noted even more widely)— how much more ought any human being think twice about how he or she stands before the presence of the Lord?

In fact, dare we even stand? For as the prophet Malachi said in a passage made memorable through the music of Handel: “Who can stand when he appeareth?” If even mountains fall at his feet, if even the mighty oaks and cedars topple before him, if the ships of the sea are tossed to and fro — how can we poor mortals dare stand in his sight?

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And yet, we have another assurance — an assurance promised to us children of Adam, through the Son of God himself. It is not something we rely upon because of who we are, any office we hold or any family we may be part of. It isn’t because of who our parents are; it is not because of any skills we may have, or any wealth or property we may have acquired. It is not even because of any righteousness of our own.

It is only because of him — his death, his burial, and his resurrection. It is only because he stooped down from the heights to the depths of the grave itself, to save us, that we have any right at all to stand before him. For “if we have been united with him in a death like his” — not our physical death but our baptism into his body, the Church, the assembly of the faithful — “so too we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Our old prideful self has been crucified, died and is buried — we have lost our old lives by taking up the cross day by day to follow him into whom we have been baptized — and the newly redeemed self will rise with him. We will stand at the last, with him, only because the cross is holding us up.

So the cross is our reliance — the one tall thing that God allows, the only one that stands: the saving cross that towers over the wrecks of time. Before that cross, the sign of humility, all the proud mountains and hills are brought low, all the mighty oaks and cedars tremble, every haughty tower and fortified wall crumbles to dust, and every tall ship founders and fails — and all our human pride, when we allow it to be crucified by taking up that cross to follow the one who died upon it, is taken up by grace, transformed and redeemed by his righteousness. For those who have chosen the humble path and died with him in baptism, and so are dead to sin, will by the blood of the everlasting covenant live with him, and that for ever, through him who offered himself for us in great humility, even Jesus Christ our Lord.+

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The King and His Cross

Saint James Fordham • Proper 29c • Tobias Haller BSG
The soldier mocked him... saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.”

What does a king look like? We all carry pictures in our heads evoked by words, images that pop up when we hear a word like king. Many people, I’m sure, probably picture a figure like Henry VIII. Though if you’ve seen any of the TV dramas about Henry recently, you might have a very different image in mind. In an effort to promote a younger viewership, they’ve got actors playing Henry who look more like Brad Pitt than Charles Laughton — Henry as a hunk instead of a slab! But perhaps you are familiar with the famous portrait of Henry as a stately monarch standing defiantly arms akimbo vested in splendid and colorful robes.

On the other hand, kings are often more comical figures, subject to ridicule and caricature especially in our democracy. So perhaps instead you might picture one of those comical cartoon kings, the little chubby guys with goatees and tiny crowns perched on their heads, your average Dr. Seuss kind of king. Whatever image first leaps to mind when you hear the word king, I think I can guarantee that it will almost never be the image of a condemned criminal about to be executed.

We expect kings to be seated on thrones, not electric chairs. We expect kings to exercise their power in the freedom of their monarchy, not to be fastened down in the incapacity of bondage and death.

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Yet this is the central paradox of Christianity, the embarrassing scandal that made it and makes it so hard for some people to understand: that our king — and more than a king, the Son of God incarnate, Jesus Christ — that our king died on a cross, executed for insurrection against the Emperor, nailed up and hung out to die in naked agony on a rocky little hill outside the walls of a provincial city in an outpost of the Empire.

This was and is hard to understand. For some it was and is impossible. It was, as Saint Paul told the Corinthians, a scandal to Jews and a folly to Greeks — in short, to the whole world a notion that was absurd and tragic — the very idea that the one through whom all things were created should be so powerless! And that is because in most minds — then as now — kingship was and is associated with showing your power, especially power over others. To be a king is not just to be powerful, but to display that power through control, to have in your hand the power of life and death over others and to use it, to be able to shout out, “Off with his head,” or “I dub thee, Sir Wilfrid.”

At the very least, to be a king means to have complete power of self-determination: no one can judge or forbid the king anything. The King is the boss! As I said before, many people picture someone like Henry the VIII when they hear the word “king” — and Henry certainly was powerful and willful. He enjoyed exercising his power and his will, and nobody, pope, queen, chancellor or archbishop, better get in his way! Henry once wrote a little song about himself, and so we have his own testimony on this matter: “Grudge who will, but none deny; so God be pleased, thus live will I!” Or, to put it in more contemporary language, “Nobody crosses the king.”

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That is why it is so very hard for so many to see the kingship of Christ. Here is a king who is crossed. It is the cross that confounds our notions of kingship. Here on the cross is a man seemingly completely bereft of self-determination, literally nailed down so that he cannot move, stifled and in pain so he can hardly breathe. For those who see control and self-determination as the sign of kingship, it is the powerlessness and immobility of the crucified Christ that render him incomprehensible.

Many don’t understand him now, as they didn’t understand him then. And this is why the voices rang out through our Gospel today, echoing three times. “Save yourself!” cried the religious leaders, the soldiers, and even the criminal at Jesus’ side, three points of view representing the whole world, civilized and uncivilized.

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The religious leaders, even while they acknowledged Jesus’ power to heal and save others, called upon him to prove himself Messiah by saving himself. They echoed the doubting words from the very start of his ministry, when the leaders of his hometown challenged him to do for them the same sort of miracles he’d done elsewhere. How ironic that religious leaders should show such a lack of faith!

Those who say, “Prove it and then we will believe!” fail to grasp that the kingdom of God is built upon faith, not evidence. The kingdom of God is based on love, not proof; freedom, not compulsion. The kingdom of God is not about force, but invitation — it is not make believe: no one is made to believe. But all are given the gracious opportunity to come to the banquet; to taste and see, and seeing, then believe. And so those who looked for proofs could not recognize the king when he came to them full of faith in his Father, full of love for them, came not to lord it over them but to set them free. Instead of being lifted up by its astounding and shocking glory, the religious leaders stumbled over the scandal of the cross.

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The soldiers mocked Jesus, and said to him, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” These are the worldly wise. They don’t know from religion, but they do know from authority. They know Caesar; they know what kings look like and what kings can do. The soldiers who mocked Jesus as he hung on the cross knew what it meant to have power, to be able to issue orders, and take command. And they knew that this poor, naked, pitiful figure was no more like a king than either of the helpless criminals crucified to his left and his right. And so to these Gentiles the cross was simply foolishness, an absurdity to be laughed at, a sick joke at the expense of a madman who thought he was a king.

And so the civilized world, Jewish and Gentile, rejected the cross and the one who hung upon it, rejected its scandal and its folly.

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And what of the uncivilized world? They have a voice in this drama as well, in the person of the thieves, men who have rejected civilized behavior in return for satisfying their own needs and desires over and against those of society, who have chosen themselves ahead of others, breaking the golden rule of the social fabric.

So it is that finally, one of the criminals, himself condemned to death and hanging on a cross, challenged Jesus to save himself — and him — if he was the Messiah. The irony is that this criminal had it partly right. Jesus was there to save him, to save him and all who had erred and strayed, to save even those who nailed him to the cross, to save the entire world, for that is just how much his Father loved that fallen world, loved it so much that he gave his only Son — not to condemn the world, but that all might be saved. Jesus was there to save them all, but he could only do so by not saving himself.

+++

It was in this act, in his not saving himself that his true kingship was revealed. It was his self-determined self-sacrifice that crowned his divine kingship. The only perfect individual ever born, the Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, for whom and in whom all things were created, made the one possible perfect act of self-determined self-sacrifice — not in showing his power over others, but in revealing his power, his power to choose for others. Only the offering of his perfect self in perfect sacrifice upon the cross could restore the royalty that once belonged to all humankind, made after the likeness of God’s Son, the express image of the invisible God. Only the act of a true king acting in true humility could bring peace to a world gone out of all control, through the misuse of the power to choose, God’s gift to his human children, spent in seeking to control others rather than in loving them.

Humankind had abused the royal power to choose, and robbed itself of its own majesty by choosing selfishly instead of for the sake of others. But one man, one perfect man, showed us there was another way. This, my brothers and sisters, is the royalty of Jesus: that he chose not himself but others, chose completely and utterly to give himself — for all of us. In Christ, and him crucified, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Even if he was unrecognized by those who stood mocking in his presence, taunting him to save himself while he was busy saving them, his kingship is nonetheless real.

It is not the kingship of power, but the kingship of sacrifice, the kingship of the hero who saves someone else at the cost of his own life. Such heroism will be embarrassing or scandalous to those who wouldn’t think of dirtying their hands to help another; such heroism will be foolish to those who see power and control as the only marks of a person’s worth; such heroism will be outrageous to anyone who thinks only of himself at the expense of others.

But such is the heroic kingship of Jesus Christ, the heroism that chooses freely to give up its freedom so that others might be free. This is the kingship of Christ our King, through whom — in this one great act of self-determined self-sacrifice, laying down his life for all of us — God was pleased, as Saint Paul said, to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Do you want to know what a real king looks like? You need look no further to see all might, majesty, power and dominion, than to that cross, that Christ, that King.+

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Minding Our Business

Saint James Fordham • Proper 28c • Tobias Haller BSG
For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work…+

How often have you been asked questions like this: What sort of business are you in? What kind of work do you do? This is often one of the first things to come up when you meet a new person. In fact, in some times and cultures, what you do for a living was and is so connected with your identity that it becomes your name. Any us who bear names like Baker, Smith, Collier, Sawyer, Cooper, Taylor, Joiner, Miller, Porter and so on, can tell what one of our ancestors did for a living. My own ancestors, on my mother’s side, bore the name of Clark — so I know that somebody in my ancestry was a minister! Even today, though we don’t have names like Sidney Salesman, Sondra Surgeon or Clarence Computer Technician, work is — for many of us — such a part of our day-to-day experience that it can almost become our identity. We can lose ourselves in our work; we can “get married to our jobs,” and end up neglecting our real family. We can become so attached to our jobs that when retirement comes we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

Work, work, work… Hasn’t it always been that way? Looks like it! Those who study human prehistory see work as so much a part of human identity that they consider the discovery of tools — rocks shaped into hammers or knives or spearheads — as the marker that separates the subhuman from the human. As far as they are concerned, the earliest humans aren’t those who may have thought great thoughts, told wonderful stories, or sung songs deep into the night, but the ones who picked up stones to grind seeds or club animals.

You probably remember the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. When the ape-man uses a bone to club a pig to death, he steps across the anthropological line in the sand and becomes a human being. Work, then, is deeply connected with human life, with the basic biological fact that food must be gathered and prepared, the young cared for, the old and sick helped: human society depends on work.

Yet who doesn’t have a love/hate relationship with work. I doubt if there is anyone here so fortunate always to love every moment of their work. Many of us, even those who enjoy their jobs most of the time, will find there are moments — or hours — of tedium, distress, or fatigue. And most people in this busy world of ours work in drudgery and hardship from the beginning of each day to its dreary, bone-tired end.

Most simply put, work is not play. As Sir James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, once said, “Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” Peter Pan, you may recall, was the boy who refused to grow up. He wanted to remain in the world of childhood where all the work is done for you; and the biological necessities of food, clothing and shelter are all provided by someone else.

There is more than a bit of this attitude running through our religious history. Most of our biblical texts come from a time when almost all work was drudgery. The story of Adam and Eve paints a picture of humankind in paradise created at first to do at most a little gardening, living off the abundant fruit of the trees. When they fell from grace, they took up work, the sweaty-browed tilling of the soil to earn their bread, and work was a part of the curse occasioned by their sin. So our work has long been seen as a part of that inherited guilt. Many in the Jewish and Christian traditions have understood freedom from work as a sign of God’s grace restored — and looked forward to that “Land of Rest.” +++ This is just what happened in the community to whom Paul wrote the letter we heard today. The Thessalonians, quick to grab the good news that the Lord was about to come, got carried away by it, and some of them began to act as if the world was literally about to end, giving up working for a living, and sponging off the church as they waited for the coming of the Lord.

A few went even further, claiming that the day of the Lord had already come! In their overenthusiastic conversion to Christianity, they’d gotten the wrong end of the stick. +++ Not that the stick wasn’t there to be grabbed! Paul himself, in his First Letter to the Thessalonians, sowed the seeds of this misunderstanding by emphasizing “that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” and warning them all to “keep awake.” And unfortunately the urgency of his tone had the effect of convincing some of them that it meant they should close up shop and wait for the rapture!

So when Paul wrote his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, (in part to deal with the problems created by his First Letter) he used language much more like what we heard in today’s Gospel. Hold on! The end is not yet, and a whole lot of stuff is going to happen before the end comes; so back to work, people! +++ The same message holds today. We are a bit less frantic about the end of the world now than folks were just before the year 2000. I’m not the only one here, I trust, who stocked up on bottled water and extra batteries! Well, I think I’ve still got some of that vintage water in the kitchen cupboard — Chateau Hudson 1999!

But some people went whole hog — they really believed that not only might there be a few problems with utilities caused by the Y2K bug, but that the actual end of the world was nigh. They sold homes, gave up jobs, and traveled out into the middle of nowhere to wait for the Lord to appear in the clouds to come and fetch them. They were, to say the least, disappointed.

People have been led astray for centuries by some mistaken prophet or other, announcing that the Day of the Lord is near. Some still are led astray, even after all the failed promises. But we have received different instructions, instructions from our Lord, and Saint Paul. Jesus tells us to be like servants doing their jobs when the master comes home. Listen to today’s gospel with that in mind. “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!,’ and ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be terrified, for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.”... “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.”

You see, when you read the text this way, Jesus is not saying these are signs of the end, but signs of the present! The world is a dangerous place and full of many terrible things, but the coming of the Lord will be unmistakable and swift and most importantly, without a sign and without a warning! What Jesus said is the Gospel truth: the world has seen countless false prophets arise; we have seen many nations rise against many others, seen terrible famines and plagues. We’ve even seen a comet fly through the heavens and smash into the planet Jupiter,
leaving a hole in it five times as big as the whole earth! And yet the end is not yet.

No, the Son of God will return without warning. Now, when someone says something is going to happen without warning, what should you do? What do the Scouts say? Be prepared! So Jesus tells us to be always ready, to be about God the Father’s business, as he was himself from his childhood on: doing the work God gives us to do and witnessing to God’s love and patience. As Saint Paul says, we are to work, and not to be weary in doing what is right. And “right” does not just mean morally right, but right in the sense of appropriate. When we find the right work, or when we work with a right attitude, an element of joy can enter it — true, there may be a good bit of drudgery, but if we can find the core happiness in being occupied, devoting even our secular work to God as we realize that our work is for the good of society — then our work can bring us joy, and be a gift to God’s glory. This lies at the heart of the stewardship of our talents: the work we dedicate and then do to God’s glory.

The great English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was also a Jesuit — you know, the folks who run that little University down Fordham Road! The Jesuit motto is: To the Greater Glory of God. Everything — everything — is done with that in mind. Hopkins put it this way: “It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smiting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God glory... He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should.”

Let us, then, sisters and brothers, so pitch our work to God’s glory — minding our business with the mind of Christ. Let us each of us do the work that we have been given to do, whatever it is, to the glory of God, finding in each act, however humble, some way to serve. Let us open our eyes and hearts and minds to see that work is a means to a greater good, and be found at work when the master comes. Let us mind our business by setting our minds and hearts upon it. Let us work each day as if God were our only boss, never wearying in doing what is right, serving each other to his honor and glory.+

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Below the Salt

Saint James Fordham • Proper 17c • Tobias Haller BSG
When you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, Friend, move up higher.

When I was a child, I was intrigued by the title of a book on my grandmothers bookshelf. It was Thomas Costain’s Below the Salt. To my childish mind it conjured up images that I would later learn had nothing to do with the meaning of that phrase.

My grandmother explained that in the Middle Ages — the time period in which the novel took place — salt was a expensive luxury in England, where it was hard to make salt from seawater, and it had to be mined. At dinners in the Lord’s manor, salt was reserved to the high table, where the Lord and Lady and other honored guests could reach it. The less favored guests sat at the lower tables — below the salt. So this odd turn of phrase came to describe people of a more humble class than the higher nobility.

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Just about every human society has some way of marking the high and the low — and everything in between. Even in a democracy such as ours many hotels will have a presidential suite; and at the Kennedy Center Opera House, there is still a presidential box — one of the best seats in the house. Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden have their special seats as well that separate the Who’s Who crowd from the rest of us who belong in the “who cares” crowd.

And even at weddings — such as the one we celebrated so joyously here yesterday — there are special seats assigned to certain participants and honored guests, and “general admission” for other guests.

And there are few things more embarrassing than discovering that you’ve sat in the wrong seat! This has been true from long before the time when Jesus used it as an example for having a proper sense of who you are — how important or unimportant in the scheme of things; and how it is better to take a lower place and be asked to come up higher, than pridefully to assume a higher place, and then be embarrassed by having to move down — perhaps below the salt!

Sometimes, as Joshua ben Sira, the author of Ecclesiasticus, notes, the put-down can from other people or even from the hand of God — and it can be dramatic and tragic, not just humbling. However much they try to avoid it, powerful tyrants eventually come to a lowly end, toppled from their thrones, plucked up and cast aside, destroyed to the foundations of the earth, even the memory of them erased. It’s a bit like the old cartoons of a little fish being eaten by a bigger fish, and that one by a bigger one, and on and on — and in one version I recall the biggest fish is followed by a whole school of little fish with hungry open mouths!

No doubt when he wrote Ecclesiasticus Joshua Ben Sira wasn’t thinking about fish, but about the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon. The Babylonian king raised himself too high, then lost his mind and lost his throne, and wandered like a beast of the fields, watered with the dew of heaven.

We have a more recent example in a former ruler of modern Babylon — which today goes by the name Iraq — who was rousted from his palace with the gold-plated bathtubs to end up hiding like a frightened animal in a spider-hole and finally dangle ignominiously on the gallows.

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The truth behind all of this is in our Gospel: those who exalt themselves will be humiliated, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Jesus makes this teaching clear in his description of a dinner party: how embarrassing to have to be taken down a peg when you’ve sat too high up. And what an honor to be invited to take a better seat when you’ve taken a humble one.

There is, after all, a world of difference between humiliation and humility. Humiliation is a punishment that happens to you; humility is a virtue that comes from within you. There is a world of difference between the two, and it is a difference that Jesus lived to the fullest, for he knew both.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is speaking to a rich man, a Pharisee, one accustomed to sitting on the platform at dinner parties, the front row in the synagogue, the best seat at the town meeting. But Jesus was not such a one as this: he came to us as a humble servant, came to serve and not to be served, came to give his life as a ransom for many. He took the lowest seat, below the salt, the seat of humility.

But that humility was just what angered the proud whom he confronted. His humility wasn’t enough for those who took offense at him. Sometimes no matter how humble you are you will not be able to satisfy the proud. The humble place that Jesus took, assuming the likeness of a slave, was not low enough to satisfy the hearts of cruel and jealous men, and they connived to push him down lower, even into the grave, down below the level of the humble, to the depths of the humiliated.

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No, sometimes you just can’t be humble enough to please the proud. Sometimes, even though you take a lowly seat, someone will come by and try to make you move down even lower. I know that the name of the late Rosa Parks is one with which everyone here is familiar, but her story is well worth repeating in the context of today’s Gospel. Her refusal to give up her seat led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a major step in the slow battle towards civil rights in these United States of America — a battle I regret to say is far from over.

The reason her story resonates with today’s Gospel is the fact that she had not exalted herself. She was not sitting defiantly in the “whites only” portion of that segregated bus. She was humbly sitting in the first row of seats in the back of the bus reserved for people like her, in what they called “the colored section” — going home after long day of work as a seamstress. As she herself would later write, “When I sat down on the bus that day, I had no idea history was being made — I was only thinking of getting home.”

But as the whites-only section of the bus filled up, another white man boarded. So the driver told Mrs. Parks to move, to give up her already humble seat and move further back in the bus, which was already full. Well, she didn’t. The sheer unfairness of it all, the wrongness of it, filled her up to overflowing with the anger of righteous indignation — not pride, but true righteous humility that shines most brightly when it faces unrighteous pride. She was filled with the spirit of justice and courage, and remained humbly sitting where she was, not over-reaching, not proudly standing in defiance but humbly seated where she had every right to be. As she would later say with some humor, “Somebody had to take a stand — or, in my case — take a seat!” Now, you know her decision got her in trouble, and in the short run the proud unrighteous segregationists appeared to have won. But as all the little people, all the truly humble “below the salt” people, all the seamstresses and housekeepers and porters and janitors and taxi drivers and clerks and waitresses began to boycott the busses, to forgo even those humble seats in the back, and to walk or car pool or to offer free taxi rides so people could get to work, all those little fish finally swam on along and gobbled up that big fish after all, and working together the righteous humble brought down the proud mighty from their seat, and the laws were changed, and the busses desegregated.

As the truly wise man Joshua Ben Sira said so well, “Sovereignty passes from nation to nation on account of injustice and insolence.” In Montgomery Alabama, the nation of the humble triumphed over the nation of the unjust and the insolent and the proud.

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But not without trouble and pain first. Jesus’ refusal to do what the leaders told him got him in trouble, too. He too was accused of being too proud — when all the while he was simply being a dutiful Son of his heavenly Father, doing only what God had sent him to do for the good of the people. But the proud ones — the ones “watching him” to catch him up in today’s gospel — would not have it, and they sought his death, conspiring to bring him down even though he hadn’t climbed up high. And the Son of God was arrested, tried, and convicted, treated as a criminal, and crucified, died, and was buried. The same Son of God who came down from the highest seat of all, from his Father’s throne, through the humility of his humble birth and his humble life, went down into the lowest place of all, the humiliation of the grave, below the salt, below the earth, to the pit of death from which none return.

Or so it seemed to those who crucified him. This was to be the end of the problem for them. But we know it was just the beginning. For it was from the grave, from as far below the salt as you can go, from that lowest of all possible points, from the humiliation of death itself, that God exalted Christ and raised him up, and gave him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should humbly bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth^{[Phi 2:10]} — the whole range of seats in the great stadium of creation, from the highest to the lowest, from the bleachers to the skyboxes, above, upon, and beneath the earth, suddenly all rising to their feet and then falling to their knees! And that, my friends, is the greatest stadium “wave” of all!

This is the victory of humility, the victory of justice and of truth, the victory of the one who took the lowest seat of all.

There is all the difference in the world between humility and humiliation. Our Lord suffered humiliation for our sakes, and we can exercise humility for his, falling at his feet and bending the knee, living our lives in humble service to those he came to serve. So that when he comes in power and great glory to judge and rule the earth, he may find us sitting in the humblest seats, kneeling to wash the feet of the ones we serve, and say to us each and every one, “Friend, come up higher.”+

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