"And a second is like it."

Homily for Sunday, October 29, 2017.    Good Shepherd and Graves Chapel

The lessons:

Leviticus 19: 1-2, 15-18

Psalm 1

1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8

Matthew 22: 34-46

            Laws, rules, commandments…if we try to be law-abiding citizens and faithful Christians, we may begin with the underlying sense that we just have to follow the rules, and then all shall be well. After all, there are only Ten Commandments, and they appear to cover every way humans tend to break the law. Sometimes it seems simple to tell ourselves we are good people because we do not steal or lie or covet our neighbor’s donkey. In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus tells us there is more to it than following the rules if we wish to be faithful Christians.

            In this episode, a Pharisee, a lawyer, asks Jesus this question, “to test him” we are told. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus’s answer includes the two connected commandments that he says cover all other laws and rules. When we follow these two, we need not worry about breaking any other rule or commandment given us by God: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

            In teaching us that we should love the Lord our God, Jesus directly asks us to love him, the incarnate God. Only by being fully present to God—in heart, soul, and mind, as the commandment says--can we truly demonstrate our love for the Lord. The prophet Isaiah explains how we may be able to meet this challenge: “Thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, ‘I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite.’”

            Jesus tells us that in his person the kingdom of heaven has come near; in other words, the human notion of heaven as the faraway place where God dwells was upended when God appeared on earth and lived among humans. Jesus also repeatedly told his disciples, including those of us who wish to follow him in the 21^st Century, that He is in us, as He is in God, and we are invited to dwell with him there. Is that not what the prophet Isaiah meant when he quoted God as saying, “I dwell in the high and holy place and also with the one who has a contrite and humble spirit”?

            As God promised, when our heart is in the right place, we make room for the Lord to dwell within us. Contrition and humility have to come from our hearts, and those things that rise from our hearts cannot be feigned. Our friends and acquaintances know when we are insincere with either apologies or modesty, so we should assume God will not be fooled. Maybe this is why Jesus’s expression of the Great Commandment includes the instruction to love God with, “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The heart, the home of love and the place within us where we are most honest with ourselves, comes first in this hierarchy of importance. Thus, we join the Lord in God’s kingdom whenever our heart is in the right place.

            And when our heart is in the right place, when we love our Lord with all the humility we can muster, then following the second great commandment should be less difficult: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The other lessons for today offer beautiful illustrations of what it requires of us to love our neighbors. In Leviticus, the first of the Old Testament books of law that God, through Moses, established for his people, we are told,

 “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.”

Loving our neighbors as ourselves will inspire us to seek justice and fairness for all; we certainly know from the parable of the Good Samaritan that we cannot choose to love only those who believe like us or behave like us. Our neighbors in need of our love are all of our fellow humans, especially those who are poor or sick or unjustly treated.

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul describes neighborly love in this way: “We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.”  In the aftermath of the recent hurricanes, we saw evidence of many neighbors reaching out in self-sacrificing ways to assist other victims of the storms, even those who were strangers to them, like nurses tenderly caring for their own children. We humans indeed have been blessed with a great capacity to love one another. God plants within each of us the “contrite and humble spirit” required so that we can know God dwells within us and empowers us to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we accept and share the gift of God’s merciful love, our heart is in the right place.

In Matthew 25, Jesus very clearly illustrates in a parable some of the things we must do to fulfill the second great commandment: “…for I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” In this story, when the righteous ones ask the Lord how and when they did these generous and loving things for him, he answers, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.”

           

            So, we return our meditation on love to the first of the great commandments. Jesus answered the Pharisee’s question by stating the two great commandments, the first one being “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  As God incarnate, Jesus simply asked us to love him. With dedication, humility, and contrition, we can tune our hearts fully to the Lord who dwells within us and loves us in return. 

            “And a second is like unto it.”  Jesus leaves it to the Pharisee and to us to discover the connection between that first great commandment and the second one: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” With a contrite and humble heart, we are assured that God is present within us. When we fully believe that our love for God, our connection with God, empowers us to carry God’s love to those who need it, we will fulfill the second great commandment. The two great commandments do not involve either/or thinking. Instead, they call for both at once! In caring unselfishly for “the least of these,” we have recognized God’s presence in “the other,” and have shown our love for God by loving our neighbor.  We love God best when we love our neighbor.

Today’s collect reminds us of the beautiful words St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the church at Corinth, describing the proper nature of our love for God and our neighbor: “Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…And now faith hope and love abide, these three: and the greatest of these is love.”

We love God best when we love each other well.

AMEN.

            

Trusting in God's Abundant Mercy

Homily for Sunday, September 24, 2017     Good Shepherd and Graves Chapel

Jonah is a lovable biblical character, isn’t he? He reminds me of familiar TV characters, Fred Flintstone or Barney Fife or maybe Archie Bunker.  How comforting it is that in Jonah we can recognize many of our own human flaws and find, through Jonah’s interactions with God, that God’s mercy will absolve us of all of them.

In fact, it is the abundantly generous mercy of God that causes Jonah to sit down and pout in today’s lesson. By the time this part of the story takes place, Jonah has already resisted God’s call and found himself in the belly of the whale. After being vomited up, he then dutifully carries God’s message of total destruction to the disobedient and sinful people of Ninevah. But when the people call out for God’s mercy and God relents, granting them the forgiveness they request, Jonah becomes indignant. How dare God make him, Jonah, look bad by not following through on the apocalypse Jonah had predicted for Ninevah? His pride is so wounded that Jonah says to God, “Please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Can’t you hear the whining tone in Jonah’s voice and see the pout that forms around his mouth? In his little fit, he plops down on the ground.

Then, God makes use of a weed and a worm to teach Jonah a lesson. So that Jonah will be shaded from the heat of the sun, God causes a bush to grow near Jonah. We are told, “Jonah was very happy about the bush.”  Ah, therein lies the rub, as Hamlet said. As Jonah plops down in his pouty anger, he wants God to believe he is ready to die for the sake of his wounded pride. If so, why would the shade of a bush matter to him? He is ready to die, right? After God sends a worm to cause the bush to wither, even though he is fainting from the heat, Jonah still persists in saying, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

So, is it prideful self-righteousness or envy that can keep us, like Jonah, from fully rejoicing in the good fortune of others? Or is it some combination of those two character flaws?  Remember, Jonah begins his pout by saying to God, “Oh, Lord, is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? For I knew you that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”  Think about how self-centered Jonah’s words are; imagine speaking to any authority figure in such a way, much less God, and not being punished. Jonah clearly expects God’s mercy for himself even when he wishes to deny it to others. In today’s lesson from Matthew, Jesus offers a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven as a place where God’s abundant mercy is always the prevailing law. In this parable, the human tendencies toward self-righteousness and prideful indignation are fully on display.

At the end of the day, when the landowner prepares to pay each of the workers he has employed over the course of the day, those who have worked all day are in for a big surprise. Although they are paid the agreed-upon amount, a fair wage for a day’s work, they are quite indignant to discover the landowner paying all the workers, even those who worked only a part of the day, the same amount. It isn’t fair, they say. The landowner is perplexed; he has done the day-long workers no harm and has paid them the contracted amount. Jesus, through the landowner, asks this question: “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

“Are you envious because I am generous?”  When we consider ourselves to be “good people,” church-goers, well-behaved for the most part and forgiven of our sins, we are filled with gratitude for God’s mercy. Right? Out of that gratitude, we share from our abundance with others. Don’t we expect the Lord to continue to forgive us, to be merciful to us throughout our lives? It isn’t as if we are never going to sin again. Sins of one kind or another are easy to come by on a daily basis—petty anger or foolish pride or simple unkindness seem to be some of the run of the mill everyday. Even so, I expect that God will always show me mercy—just as the workers expected the landowner to pay them the amount they had contracted for. Why is it that we resent it when others who are also in need of God’s mercy are, in fact, shown that mercy? Why are we envious because God is generous, Jesus asks us.

For those of us here who are very blessed and live lives of comfort that would astound the very poor, this is indeed a tough question. Are we always as generous as we could be? I don’t know about you, but I have certainly heard well-off Americans complaining about the  money and support given to poor people through programs such as welfare or Medicaid. Even though suspected fraud is very rare and the dire poverty of people around us can be quite obvious, if we would but see, we fall into resentment over what the poor receive. How many Americans have storage sheds (or attics or garages) full of things we don’t need or use, but we still persist in buying and keeping such things? (I confess: I am guilty of hoarding.) The very fact that the storage industry has become such a major feature of the American landscape is truly astonishing—and revealing of American values. In his daily meditation for this past Tuesday, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr wrote, “I have yet to hear a sermon or confession concerning the 10^th Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’ It’s almost impossible for Americans to see capitalism or consumerism as problematic. Our culture is built upon the idea that there’s not enough, that we must always seek more—at others’ expense.” Why are we envious because God is generous, Jesus asks us. Is it because we covet what others’ have, even when we already have more than enough?

Or, have we simply forgotten God’s infinite, generous mercy—and our calling, as Christians, to reflect that mercy and generosity in all that we do? When Jonah sits and pouts, angry over the loss of the bush and its shade, God says to him, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons?” God asks Jonah, to paraphrase, “So, your pride and your personal creature comforts are worth more to you than the well-being of thousands of your fellow human beings?”  God asks that question of us as well.

 All of God’s creation and all of God’s creatures are subject to the generous mercy of God. For that, we should simply be grateful. Thank you, our gracious God, for we know that you are merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  AMEN.

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Beyond Charlottesville

Homily for Sunday, August 27, 2017

Lessons:

Psalm 124

Romans 12: 1-8

Matthew 16: 13-20

            “If the Lord had not been on our side…, if the Lord had not been on our side when enemies rose up against us, then would they have swallowed us up alive in their fierce anger toward us?  Blessed be the Lord; he has not given us over as prey for their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of a fowler; the snare is broken, and we have escaped. Our help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” These beautiful words from Psalm 124 once more have special significance, it seems. Our world, our country, our communities face unexpected threats.

            Charlottesville. Charlottesville, Virginia, the place I have called home for the last 36 years, has now by its name alone entered a unique worldwide lexicon, part of a group of once-ordinary place names that stand for seminal events in history. One needs but say such a name, and most hearers will know its significance: Gettysburg. Auschwitz. Selma. Tiananmen Square. Shanksville. Ferguson. Charlottesville. Oh, how I wish Charlottesville were still known only as a small, beautiful city, home of Thomas Jefferson and the outstanding public university he founded! Enemies rose up against Charlottesville, and it remains to be seen whether the city will completely escape the snare of this particularly vicious fowler.

            During such a time of division and turmoil, believe me, the last thing a preacher wants to discuss is the division itself. Unfortunately, there are times—and what happened in Charlottesville is clearly one such time—when a demarcation between good and evil begs to be underscored. Sometimes an outline of what Christianity should represent in the world simply must be stated once again.

            Avoiding the topic of politics altogether is certainly not what our Savior was able to do. Although he came to bring the keys to a kingdom for all people, he faced fierce opposition from those in power.  In fact, it was because he stood up to the ruling members of the Temple elite—overturning the tables of the money changers, condemning the outright hypocrisy of the Pharisees—that Jesus was crucified. Those Pharisees exercised their political influence over the Roman governor, and Pilate had Jesus executed. In terms of our Christian faith, the political machinations of the Pharisees have placed them on the wrong side of history.

            The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, more commonly known as the Nazi Party, was, as we know, a political party headed by Adolf Hitler that held power over a period of 25 years. The Nazi party is also now, we thought, firmly on the wrong side of history as it was responsible for horrendous crimes against humanity. Thanks to the courage and sacrifice of the Allied forces, and largely American service men and women, Naziism was staunchly defeated in 1945. How on earth is it possible that Americans carrying Nazi flags came to Charlottesville on August 12, 2017? How is it possible that other white supremacist organizations, including the KKK, could join the Nazis and spread terror, confident that some Americans would applaud their efforts?

            They came from all over America, carrying torches and weapons, some wearing the garb of the KKK. Some of them also wore white polo shirts and khakis, including James Fields, making them look like college students. They spoke of their hatred of Jews, immigrants, and people of color in terms that can only be described as “white nationalism.”  What they espoused not only flies in the face of our nation’s most cherished values, it also is a complete affront to the teachings of Jesus and the most basic tenets of Christianity. Since I am sure all of you agree with me about these things, you may wonder why I even bother to say that white nationalism in its many forms is simply evil. This is why.

            As I tuned in from time to time (from the safety of my home, I admit), I saw a woman among the white nationalists being interviewed. She specifically identified herself as Christian, and then she said she and the others had come as Christians to defend their God-given rights. I am sorry, deeply sorry to hear someone who calls herself a Christian standing on the side of oppression, racism, anti-semitism, and violence. Where have we gone wrong, and what can we do to show the world that many Americans do believe and espouse what Christianity is really all about?

            What happened that weekend in Charlottesville is still being sorted out, and it may take quite a while for that to happen, both collectively and individually. Now I offer a context and timeline for the way I’ve experienced the events and tried to make sense of them. I know I can only speak for myself, but please bear with me.

On that Friday evening, I began getting wind of how badly things might unfold when a church friend of mine posted on Facebook. She and her husband had been to the meeting that evening at St. Paul’s Memorial Church, the Episcopal church across from the Rotunda. While they were there listening to some religious leaders speak and pray for peace, they witnessed the group of torch-bearing white supremacists who marched across the Lawn and through the Rotunda. My friend said it was a terrifying scene.

            As most of you know, I have worked for the last nine years at the University of Virginia, mostly as an undergraduate academic advisor. I hold two graduate degrees from UVA, and last year, in both fall and spring semesters, I taught an undergrad humanities class in the School of Engineering. Needless to say, I care deeply about UVA and its students. At first the image of that very large number of torch-bearers surrounding the statue of Thomas Jefferson in front of the Rotunda was frightening enough. What I didn’t realize or see at the time was the group of about twenty students being encircled by the people with torches. When I learned students were there, I was horrified. The students were armed only with posters and courage, and they were attacked by jabbing torches and sprayed with chemicals. How could such a thing happen on any American college campus?

            As the psalmist says, If the Lord had not been on our side when enemies rose up against us, they would have swallowed us up alive in their fierce anger.

            The next day, bishops from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia joined a large group of clergy from Charlottesville and around the country as they formed a peaceful march and endeavored to stave off the violence. As some of those clergy stood with arms locked together and voices raised in prayer and song, acting as a dividing line between the white supremacists and the counter-protestors, the Charlottesville police stood off to one side. One of my clergy friends who was there told me this next bit of information. When the Nazis and their compatriots began to shove and strike the clergy, and the police continued to stand by, some of the counter-protestors came to the defense of the clergy. As it turns out, many of the scenes of violent fighting that showed up in the news of the day were just that: counter-protestors fighting to protect the clergy.

            As the psalmist says, Blessed be the Lord! He has not given us over to be a prey for their teeth.

            When the police finally intervened, declaring the activity an unlawful assembly and telling the protestors to disperse, the white supremacists spread out all over town to wreak havoc on a wider scale. They surrounded the nearby synagogue, shouting Nazi epithets and threatening to burn it down. No police were there to protect it, although Sabbath worshippers were inside the building. (I should say, to be fair to the police, they were far outnumbered by the white supremacists and things got out of control very quickly.) A group of the supremacists surrounded a young black man on the first level of the Market Street parking garage, beating him over the head with metal bats and severely wounding him. A photographer who happened by recorded the scene and finally started striking the attackers with his camera equipment to get them to stop. Then the police arrived.

            But, as most people now know, the tragedy of the day played out at the intersection of 4^th and Water Streets, at the bottom of a hill and blocks away from the park where the protest was supposed to take place. A large group of counter-protestors gathered there, walking along and talking. Then, James Alex Fields, Jr., of Ohio, age twenty, drove his Dodge Charger down 4^th Street, crossing the pedestrian mall at a high rate of speed and plowing into the crowd of people gathered near Water Street. We now know that 30 people were injured—the 11 taken to Martha Jefferson Hospital that day were not included in the original number—and one person was killed.

            Heather Heyer, by all accounts, was a very caring person, someone who always helped others in need and was especially attuned to victims of injustice. She worked as a paralegal and was much loved by her friends and family and those she served. It is no surprise that she felt called to be part of the resistance that day. And she was one of our own, a local hero as the folks in Charlottesville like to say.

            Now the names Heather Heyer and James Alex Fields will always be inextricably linked. They have become part of our country’s history. In my eyes, they are both tragic figures. Heather was a martyr to the cause of justice and peace. St. Paul might very well have been speaking of Heather Heyer when he wrote the words we hear today in his letter to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God-- what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Surely Heather Heyer did not know she would be giving up her body as a living sacrifice to the cause of justice and love when she came to Charlottesville on August 12th. But that is exactly what she did. To me, she did what was good and acceptable and perfect in the sight of the Lord.

            And James Alex Fields? He was a twenty-year old with mental health issues, a troubled childhood, and a fascination with white supremacy. He was a lost child seduced by the purveyors of hatred and a need to belong to something, anything. How many other James Fields are out there?  As Christians we are called to serve and to save lost souls like his. He deserves our pity as much as he deserves justice.

            On a final note, I learned several days later that a good friend of my son had suffered a stroke as a result of the weekend events. You see Tyler, who is a UVA alum and now an employee of the UVA library, was on Grounds on Friday night. He saw the huge group of torch-bearing white supremacists surrounding the twenty or so students, and he decided to join the students. He is a parent of young children and a protective kind of guy. As it turned out, he was struck on the neck by one of the torch bearers, but Tyler did not realize his carotid artery had been cut. Luckily, a clot stopped the bleeding. The following Monday, when Tyler started feeling unwell, he went to the hospital, and actually (luckily) had a stroke while he was there. He was in the hospital for several days, and when my son Rob went to see him, he discovered that Tyler’s hospital room had round-the-clock security guards. Tyler had received death threats, as did the parents of Heather Heyer.

            The good news is that Tyler was released from the hospital after several days and seems to be fine. The difficult news? That young man who was so badly beaten in the parking garage incident on August 12^th was an elementary school teacher. In fact, he was Tyler’s daughter’s favorite after-school teacher.

            Someone, please tell me how Tyler explains to his young children what happened to him and what happened to a favorite teacher?

            The city of Charlottesville and the University are undergoing the hard work of healing, but it will take time.  I hope you saw on the news the beautiful image of the UVA Lawn covered in a sea of candlelight on

the following Wednesday evening as the entire community gathered to reclaim in peace and unity so much that had seemed to be lost.

            We are called by God, as today’s collect implores, to be unified as Christians, to live our lives as Christ would have us live them, in loving brotherhood and sisterhood. Paul says, “We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually, we are members of one another.” So, we are called to use our gifts for the betterment of the whole world, for peace and justice. Doing so will require us to engage thoughtfully with each other, even with those who seem to be our enemies. Our faith requires us to do the hard work of love, even when love seems impossible. Maybe we can keep that image of the praying clergy in mind as we strive, as they did, to overcome hatred with Christian love. After all, Jesus has assured us that the kingdom of heaven—his kingdom of love—is within us, and he has asked us to invite others to join him there.

May the name of Charlottesville become a rallying cry for all that stands in opposition to hatred and bigotry. We owe that to both Heather Heyer and James Fields. We owe that to Tyler’s children and to our own children and grandchildren. So far, by God’s grace, we have escaped the snare of the fowler. What happens next is largely up to us, with Christ’s help. AMEN.

           

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