Monday, October 12, 2015
Sermon for Pentecost 20
Proper 23 B ~ October 11, 2015
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
…go, sell what you own, and give the money to
the poor,
you will have treasure in heaven; then come,
follow me.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity,
We pray in today’s Collect that God’s grace may always
precede and follows us. Can we doubt that it does, whether we recognize it or
not? As is so often true, the words of our prayer are intended not to get God
to do something, but to alert us to
what God is already doing. Grace preceded and followed the Rich Young Man. In
today’s Gospel. Jesus recognized him as a genuine spiritual seeker, loved him,
and told him what to do if he wished to complete the journey. Can we doubt that
the advice came with grace sufficient to follow it? Well yes! Or rather, yes
and no.
Grace is always on offer,
surrounding us before and after, but grace does not force itself on us. Grace
is not tyrannical. We still have a say in the matter. We cannot doubt that
sufficient grace was offered to the Rich Young Man, but whether or not he
accepted it was still up to him. We are free. Even when it comes to grace, I think.
Grace offers new possibility that we could never enjoy on our own, but God will
not force us to enjoy it.
We don’t know what the Rich Young
Man actually did, except that he went away sorrowful. Conventionally, we interpret
this to mean that he didn’t follow
Jesus. But the Gospel doesn’t say that, does it? In fact it says that IC advised him to go away “Go, and sell
all you have &c.” The first step in obedience was to go away, which he did. We are also told that he went in sorrow “because
he had much.” Again, we conventionally interpret this to mean that he was so
attached to all that stuff that he just couldn’t bear to part with it, and he was
sorry that he couldn’t follow IC. But the Gospel doesn’t say that either. It could
just as well be that he was sorry because all that stuff he had was going to
take a long time to liquidate. Maybe weeks or even months. He couldn’t follow
IC right away – not for some time, pro-bably, even if he were determined to do as
IC said. All the Gospel records is that he followed Jesus’ advice. At least the
first part of it.
So, we just don’t know. For all we
know, the Rich Young Man went and sold everything, and then came back to become
a disciple, an early Jewish Christian and even a martyr! It’s an open question,
left that way intentionally, I believe. Maybe he was a camel who did pass through the eye of the needle.
And so now it is time to rehearse,
once again, certain linguistic facts
that may (or may not) shed some light on this bizarre image of camels and
needles. In Greek, the word kamel is imported
from Syriac, in which it is one vowel different from rope. And like Hebrew and Arabic, Syriac vowels were not written –
the reader had to supply them. This fact was noticed of old and produced a controversy
about the translation. None less than Cyril of Alexandria thought that kamel was a misspelling and that ROPE was intended. Literarily, that does
make more sense. After all, a rope CAN go through the eye of a needle if it is completely
unwound and disentwined. That could be a metaphor for what rich people have to
do to enter the Kingdom of God: get stripped down to the bare essentials, rely
on God’s grace alone and not their own accumulation.
On the other hand, it would require
a miracle for an actual camel to go through the eye of a needle, which would
explain the disciples’ astonishment, and the Lord’s observation that anything’s
possible with God. But a problem remains with this standard translation, too.
Jesus’ observation refers only to the rich, but the disciples seem to think it
refers to everyone: “who, then, can be saved?” IC’ answer implies anybody: "For mortals it is
impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible." Grace,
again.
Let’s notice that the camel/needle dialogue
takes place in private, between Jesus and the disciples. I have a little theory
that these private conversations, which so often follow a public pronouncement or
incident in the Gospel, may be later commentary: the early Church pondering the
events and trying to figure them out. In this one, there is teaching about salvation:
detachment from literal wealth is necessary, but maybe that’s not all that is
meant. The disciples’ astonishment may be due to their understanding that riches means ANYTHING we are attached to in this world and are unwilling to
give up. Our mystical tradition would say so. It is possible to idolize
anything, including the most sacred of human relationships. “Who, then, can be
saved?”
Another fact we sometimes forget is
that our Lord didn’t give the same advice to everyone. The Gospel tells of those
who wanted to follow Him, whom He told to stay home with their families. Maybe
that was the way of perfection for them. Why should we assume that IC’ advice to
the Rich Young Man, understood as literal poverty, was the universal standard
for everybody? Maybe it was just for the one to whom it was given.
In Matthew, the story says “if you
would be perfect, go and sell &c.” In Mark and Luke the perfection or
completeness is stated negatively: “you still lack one thing.” Jesus’ advice to
this particular man was what we call
a counsel of perfection. Maybe it is a universal, spiritual truth: one
who is called to perfection must let go of everything. But maybe the literal meaning is not intended
for every last person in this life.
On the other hand, worldly wealth is extremely seductive. The
conventional interpretation of this incident teaches that the illusion of
possession gets in the way of spiritual advancement – for everyone. Anyway, the advice to give up possession is a
counsel that sooner or later we shall all obey, isn’t it? Whether we want to or
not. The way of the perfect is to do so willingly, before death: at least to
move in that direction, becoming less and less attached to illusory
temporalities and more and more absorbed in the only Reality worthily so
called, the Kingdom of God.
Like the Rich Young Man, God’s
grace surrounds us – precedes and follows us – so that we may be given to this
good work, if we consent. Maybe the Rich
Young Man is every one of us. As in the Gospel, his story is incomplete: will
he or won’t he? So is ours: will we or won’t we?
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME, LORD JESUS!
Sermon for Pentecost 19
Proper 22 B ~ October 4, 2015
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this
commandment for you.
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity,
As the Russian armies drove westward to meet the Americans
and British at the Elbe, a Soviet patrol picked up a Mrs. Bergmeier foraging
food for her three children. Unable even to get word to the children, she was
taken off to a POW camp in the Ukraine. Her husband had been captured in the
Battle of the Bulge and taken to a POW camp in Wales. When he was returned to
Berlin, he spent months rounding up his children, although they couldn't find
their mother. She more than anything else was needed to reconnect them as a
family in that dire situation of hunger, chaos and fear. Meanwhile, in the
Ukraine, Mrs. Bergmeier learned through a sympathetic commandant that her
husband and family were trying to keep together and find her. But the rules
allowed them to release her to Germany only if she was pregnant, in which case
she would be returned as a liability. She turned things over in her mind and
finally asked a friendly Volga German camp guard to impregnate her, which he
did. Her condition being medically verified, she was sent back to Berlin and to
her family. They welcomed her with open arms, even when she told them how she
had managed it. And when the child was born, they all loved him because of what
he had done for them. After the christening, they met up with their local
pastor and discussed the morality of the situation.
This true story comes from an
influential book called Situation Ethics,
by the Episcopal theologian, the Rev. Joseph Fletcher. Right-wingers sneer at the term, but today's
gospel makes it clear that our Lord was, Himself, a situational Ethicist. The
plain fact is that actions do not occur in a void, but in a context.
Concerning today’s passage, I have
previously observed that the law of the time permitted a husband just to sign a
piece of paper and throw his wife out.
He was then free to marry someone else.
But Jesus said that although the law permitted this, it was not God's
will, and it was in fact adultery. A woman so divorced, though, had very few
options. Unless someone else were
willing to marry her, or unless she had sympathetic male relatives to take her
in, pretty much her only alternative was prostitution. Although her former husband was within his
rights, according to the law, his action amounted to adultery. In other words,
the lawfulness of an act could not be assessed apart from its context – the situation in which it was done.
Love alone is good in itself. Love (selfless agape, caritas) is the only thing that is always right, regardless
of context. When asked, Jesus said that we are to love God and to love our
neighbor, adding that on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
In other words, love is first, and whether any action conforms to God's
will depends on whether it is loving, not whether it conforms to a written rule
or commandment. That is what we mean by
the spirit of the law as opposed to
the letter. Mrs. Bergmeier certainly broke the letter of the
Seventh Commandment, but equally certainly, she fulfilled its spirit by
restoring the wholeness and integrity of her family.
It is supremely ironic that our
Lord’s insistence upon the primacy of love in the specific context of our
actions has been turned into another law, superior to love, which must be
obeyed literally in all situations.
Jesus’s words forbidding divorce in His own historical context have been
made into a universal commandment. But our Lord’s teaching is clear to any
willing to notice the context of His remarks, and here I refer to the literal context of in the Gospel narrative. Right after His answer to the Pharisees, He
makes children exemplars of the Kingdom. That context is not accidental. Both women and children were considered
socially inferior – persons of no account. Or rather, not persons at all, according to the Law. To affirm children as models
of the Kingdom right after affirming women as equal in importance to men is
revolutionary. Jesus turns the world upside down.
That is the essence of the Good
News: It is unheard of and unexpected.
The Kingdom, God’s Reign, the Spirit fulfilling the letter of the Law softening
our hard hearts. Paul will elaborate this revolutionary teaching in his
comments about spirit and letter, and the new freedom in Christ.
It is not to be confused with antinomianism – the notion that I can do
anything I want – because if anything, the primacy of love requires more
profound obedience. Real antinomianism would be to think that I can do anything
I want as long as I obey the law. If the law doesn’t forbid it, then I can do
as I please. NO! If the law doesn’t cover something, I must still act according to love. If I
really do put love first, I will love God. If I really love God, I will, as
Jesus said, obey His commandments, which are all fulfilled by loving others as
myself – in every situation. Then I can’t go wrong.
In St. Augustine’s startling turn
of phrase, “Love God and do as you please.”
AMEN
MARANATHA
COME, LORD JESUS!
