Scripture, God's Weight Room

Scripture, God’s Weight Room

Sermon preached by Loren Crow, Ph.D., at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Eugene, Oregon, on 19 November 2017, Year A Proper 28

Old Testament: Zeph 1:7, 12–18
Psalm 90:1–12
New Testament 1 Thes 5:1–11
Gospel Matt 25:14–30

We Episcopalians have a different view of Scripture than some of our neighbors do. Some of our neighbors want to use Scripture as a sourcebook for scientific truth. Some want to predict the future with it. Others dismiss Scripture flippantly as little more than an artifact from a barbaric culture. Neither of these will do for us Episcopalians. We receive Scripture as one of the means by which God changes us from earth-bound, deathly creatures into beings capable of being brought into God’s nearer presence. As this morning’s Collect says, God caused all Holy Scripture to be written “for our learning,” and the goal of this learning is “that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life....” For us, reading Scripture is about God bringing us into maturity; it’s like, if you’ll permit me a bit of latitude with the simile, a gymnasium and a weight room for the soul. God has provided this means by which our souls can grow stronger, but it is we who have to work at it: we have to “hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them” which gives us the strength to “embrace and hold fast the blessed hope.”

If you look closely at this morning’s readings, you find that each of them, although it appears to be about judgment and doom for evildoers, is really about something else — ready? here it comes! — they’re about trusting in God’s goodness in the midst of judgment. If we can trust that God will do what’s right no matter what, then that trust is the first step in finding ourselves transformed. In the Bible we find that the God who is portrayed there — though he is wild, untamable, unpredictable, unstoppable — is also unutterably good. And so we slowly find ourselves able to trust that same God in our turbulent lives. We don’t ever know the future, and we won’t know it any better by reading Scripture than we will any other way, but we know the One Who holds the future. And by exercising our spiritual muscles in God’s weight room, we become strong enough to “embrace” and “hold fast” the hope that the future God is bring about is far better than we can desire or pray for.

Let’s start with the Gospel. It’s a familiar story. Most of the time we focus on the faithful slaves who, trusting their master’s goodness, invest and double his principal investment. The commendation from his lips rings out, “Well done, good and trustworthy slave.” And we all hope to hear such words from God someday, so that’s natural enough. God has given each of us “talents” that we’re expected to use in the service of the Kingdom, and so this is a natural lesson to draw. But the story is actually much darker than that, contrasting the actions of those good slaves with those of a worthless slave, and I’d like you to notice what the worthless slave says:

I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.

His opinion of his master’s character determines his course of action. The master, he thinks, has unfair expectations. Who knows what this guy would do if a bad investment were made and the money lost; so the slave tries to protect himself by removing the element of chance, hiding the money rather than using it to accomplish things. It’s a failing to which I and most of the people I know are prone: we may tell ourselves, “In God We Trust,” but we hedge our bets in a hundred ways, everything from our armed forces to our insurance policies.

The prophet Zephaniah alleges that this self-protective attitude is idolatrous, trusting in a god who is unmoved by morality. The LORD, they say, “Will not do good, nor will He do harm.” The thing is, I bet if we’re honest most of us will admit that these ancient people of Jerusalem articulate a principle that governs our daily life almost all of the time. If God can be expected to remain aloof, neither helping the good nor hindering the wicked, then we’re going to have to look out for ourselves. We don’t really believe that God helps people, so we live by the principle that God helps those who help themselves. We don’t really believe in God’s judgment, so we have a hell of a time leaving judgment in God’s hands. And in particular, we keep living our lives as if nothing were going to change. We build houses and store up wealth; we plant our vineyards. We stock up on weapons and ammo, we hire police and military and private security contractors. We set apart “rainy day funds.” We buy “life insurance” and “health insurance” and pretend that they will keep us alive and healthy. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we try to store up the manna that we receive daily, but only find that it doesn’t keep.

How would that all change if we really believed in God’s unchanging goodness? How would you change? How would I? How would we, as a church, change our behavior if we really expected God to act, powerfully and inexorably, on the side of good?

Well one possible response might be to just check out, just sit around and wait for God to do something. This is apparently what some in the church at Thessaloniki thought: Since Jesus does all the work of salvation, they figured, and since He was coming back soon to complete His work, they could afford just to bide their time. Like the foolish virgins that we heard about last week, who waited for Jesus’ imminent return but didn’t carry enough oil to provide for even a slight delay. In his letter this week, St. Paul advises Christians to keep themselves watchful even though there’s no way to predict when Jesus will return. They were to keep doing the works of the Kingdom, staying sober and watchful so as not to be caught unawares.

After nearly two thousand years, maintaining this kind of watchful expectation for God is even more difficult than it was in St. Paul’s day. Even maintaining a hopeful attitude about the future is hard when we’re bombarded by news from near and far that makes it feel like the world is unraveling. This is why we need to hear, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Scriptures: to keep alive our hope that, despite all our failings and despite the sorry state of the world, we are being brought by God, sometimes kicking and screaming but inevitably, into the Kingdom where life and not death is the operative principle.

How does reading Scripture do that? Most importantly, it makes our story part of the story of God saving the created world, lets us know that what seems to be a setback in our life is actually a necessary part of the work God is doing, transforming our failure into God’s victory. There is no greater success than to fail and experience how God redeems that failure and turns it into something to be thankful for. But for that to happen, we can’t be like that guy who buries his sack of money in the ground. We have to step out bravely, looking expectantly for what God is doing, and the strength to do that comes from hearing all those stories in Scripture where death is swallowed up in victory. If we read the Bible expecting to encounter there that good God who, even with judgment, comes with healing in His wings, then we will surely meet this God, embrace and hold fast the blessed hope of our salvation.

The Yoga of Christ: Sermon for Proper 9, July 9th 2017

Sermon preached on Sunday, 9 July 2017, at Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Eugene, Oregon

Scripture Readings for Proper 9: Zechariah 9:9-12; Psalm 145:8-14; Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Every religion tells followers to accept a yoke, a discipline that is thought to help transform the adherent into a better self. If you were Hindu, you might engage in regular fasting, or practice body postures, or memorize and recite Hindu Scriptures, or study philosophy, or one a a handful of other disciplines each of which is known as a yoga. The Sanskrit word yoga is actually etymologically related to the English word yoke. A yoke is a piece of wood that harnesses a pair of oxen so that they can work together to pull a wagon or a plow. Both the Sanskrit word yoga and the English word yoke have that literal meaning, but they also have two metaphorical meanings: (1) a discipline to which one submits willingly, and (2) enslavement to a discipline imposed by others. The first of these metaphorical meanings articulates powerfully what a religion means and how it accomplishes the good toward which it aims. When Jesus invites His followers to take on His yoke, he’s asking them voluntarily to adopt the way of life that he embodies: humility and gentleness, and trust in God’s goodness.

Like Hindus, we Christians have several different yogas, different yokes or disciplines, that we think will bring us closer to God. For some of us, prayer and reading of Scripture are spiritual yokes that we do our best to shoulder. Others of us focus on giving alms, or serving the poor and downtrodden, or regular attendance at Mass. Monastics take on the yoke of submission to the chain of authority in their order. If we were Jewish, we might take on the yoke of keeping a kosher home, or studying the Torah and the Rabbis.

But the second metaphorical meaning of a yoke, oppressive enslavement by others to their agenda, is something we all have to deal with. Our culture is obsessed with striving. We’re offered countless programs for self-improvement, everything from weight loss and smoking cessation to improving memory and emotional stability. We’re bombarded with messages about our culture’s ideals and how we fall short of them. We’re taught that constant attention to self-improvement is noble and we’re warned against the dangers of stagnation and acceptance of the status quo. We’re saddened when we notice someone who fails to live up to their potential, by which we mean that they don’t meet our culture’s standards of effort and accomplishment; we think they’re wasting their life and talent.

Our yokes can make us arrogant and intolerant if we’re not careful. If I take on the discipline of sobriety, it’s easy to be judgmental about anyone else who doesn’t. If I express my faith mainly by working for social justice, then I may be tempted to regard as inferior those who seek God in lives of solitude. Christians who are peace activists may be tempted to think the Christianity of the crusaders is in debatable. It’s so easy to praise ourselves by dismissing others’ efforts. But if I’m honest with myself I realize that the challenge of living a Christian life, even by my own standard, is one that I repeatedly fail to meet. There’s just too much that has to be done, and I’m just one person. I get overwhelmed by the vast gulf between the world’s need and my ability to meet that need. Even just for myself, there’s too much work that needs to be done, too much to strive for. If meeting a supposed Christian ideal of life and character is what it means to be a Christian, I’m afraid I’ll never make it.

Of course there are some people who maddeningly manage much of the time to do what they set out to do. Yet I suspect that even they may not feel as successful as they seem to others. Maybe the worst thing about the self-improvement obsessed culture we live in is the fact that it robs from us our ability to relax. There’s always some project on which we should be working — learning a foreign language, training for a marathon, working off those pounds, working on being a better spouse and parent — and if you’re like me you sometimes feel buried under the seemingly inexhaustible supply of things that need to be improved, each one worthwhile and some even essential. There are so many important yokes to bear.

And Christianity teaches us that the main yoke we must bear is a cross. When Jesus invites us to follow Him in bearing our crosses to Calvary, he is bidding us suffer and die with Him, and and promising resurrection. He’s inviting us to yoke ourselves together with Him in His project to save the world. The cross is a yoke that can only be taken in gentleness and humility, because even the slightest impulse of pride causes us to throw that yoke off. It goes something like this: “I shouldn’t have to suffer in that way. I deserve to be treated better than that. It’s beneath my dignity. I’m not going to stand for this kind of treatment.” But to bear the cross-shaped yoke is willingly to submit ourselves to humiliation and pain, again and again, not defending ourselves, not resisting evil, offering the second cheek when the first has been struck. That’s the yoke of Jesus that he calls us to bear.

But riddle me this: How on earth can he call that yoke easy and that burden light? The way of self-denial, of submission to torture and death, the way that feels often enough like “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That doesn’t sound easy, so why does he say it is? I think it’s because we don’t have to be successful; we just have to bear up. Success is in God’s hands, not ours; all we have to do is trust that God’s Kingdom is victorious. If we will accept this yoke that leads us through the lowest, most ignoble defeat, then we are assured of success.

That’s why this passage from Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans has always held such power for me. I remember even as a teenager deriving a lot of hope from the fact that Saint Paul himself, a man of huge importance, struggled with failure. I identify with his frustration at being unable to make much headway in the project of self-reformation. I’m as caught up as anyone in our general cultural idea that life is all about becoming a better version of oneself, but more often than not I fail at the yogas I attempt to live by, and even when I don’t fail, those yogas don’t accomplish what I hope they’ll accomplish. The thing I want to do is the very thing I don’t do, and the thing I don’t want to do, that’s what I do. I know well enough what I should do, but find myself unable to meet the challenge consistently. Given my inability to pull myself up by my own bootstraps, how is any improvement possible? Paul’s answer resounds, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Because the thing is, when we take on Jesus’ yoke, the partner we’re yoked with is the very Son of God. He is like the powerful ox that pulls the cart inexorably to its true destination. Our contribution, compared to His, is minimal. Yet, if we take on that yoke, He takes our half-hearted, week-kneed, feeble efforts and strengthens them so that they become part of the transcendent story of God’s victory. Success is certain, indeed it’s already accomplished. We can stand up under our yoke and keep walking with Jesus through suffering and death, and right on through resurrection and ascension. He will recreate us as the version of ourselves that we ought to be, and that will be better than a thousand self-help programs. If we trust Him to do that, we will find peace.

The Good News of the Trinity

Sermon preached on Trinity Sunday, June 11 2017, at Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Eugene, Oregon

Scripture Readings: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; Matthew 28:16-20

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: We beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see thee in thy one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Trinity Sunday. We worship God in the Holy Trinity every week. But unless you’re a theologian, or at least a wannabe theologian like me, you may not see the point of reflecting much on the nature of this notoriously intractable doctrine of the Church. Of course there are others who have different ideas about the nature of God. To Muslims and Jews our talk of a Trinity sounds a lot like straight polytheism. Dualisms in which there are two equal powers, one good and one evil, are also pretty popular. But Christianity offers a distinctive way of thinking about ultimate reality not found elsewhere: a way that has a lot to teach us if we’ll let ourselves be taught.

This morning’s Collect states that the Trinity is an important doctrine, but doesn’t really say why. Is the Trinity just a point of doctrine that must be accepted and serves only as a kind of litmus test for who’s in and who’s out? Or is there good news there that deserves to be heard afresh? The Trinity is a mystery that tickles the mind, but is it good news? There are lots of mysteries I don’t comprehend, after all — the size of the universe, the power of music to lay my emotions open, the nature of free will — mysteries for which I’m grateful, because they affect me so powerfully and because their power is precisely in their mystery. I hope to show you that there the Holy Trinity is that kind of mystery and to think together with you about what it means.

Here’s something interesting: You’ve probably noticed, that both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed are arranged in three parts, corresponding to the three Persons of the Trinity. What you may not have caught is that all of them, Father, Son, and Spirit, are integral to creation. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth….And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord…begotten of His Father before all worlds…by whom all things were made….I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life.” They are separate persons, but their work is always unified. I think this is why we read Genesis Chapter One the Old Testament lesson for today. Almost no one would argue that the writer of Genesis was thinking of the Trinity in that passage. But pretty much all the early Christian readers of this passage agree that all three persons of the Trinity are actively present in creation. When God says, “Let Us make humanity in Our image,” all the early Christian interpreters agree, this is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit speaking to one another. But before that…let’s back up a bit.

In the beginning, God. Before the heavens and earth came into being. Before the Big Bang. Before there was any matter or energy or time. When there was no here or there, no now or then or yet to be, no times or places or beings or things. For endless eons of undifferentiated time: God. Christian theology teaches us that in this timelessness, God was “eternally coexistent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (By the way, the traditional formulation is male, but we must understand that we’re not talking about maleness or femaleness, we’re talking about Divinity using human relationship as the metaphor. We should always remember the metaphorical character of these names.) The Father is the Begetter and the Source; the Son is the Begotten One; the Holy Spirit is the One Who Proceeds. These Persons are equal but not the same. One image I have for this is a musical trio: none of the parts is the same, and without their differentness there can be no trio. Now the terms “beget” and “proceed” sound a lot like there must have been a time when the Son didn’t exist yet, or a time when the Holy Spirit had not yet proceeded from the Father. But that’s a mistake, which is why the Nicene Creed says explicitly that the Son is “eternally begotten of the Father.” God, the One who lives in eternity and stands outside the universe of created things, this God has always been Three Persons in communion with one another so lovingly, so intimately and so deeply, that they are really one Being.

That communion is so close, that the apostle John could make the straightforward claim that “God is love, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” The thing about love is this: love requires an object. (This reminds me of a joke: Did you hear the one about the guy who loved perfectly? Neither did I. Seems the fellow was foiled by contact with actual people.) There must always be an object of love separate from oneself; it’s what love means. If God is love, then there is a natural threeness that is entailed. The lover, the one beloved, and love itself. The Doctrine of the Trinity, says Saint Augustine, is primarily about understanding that the basic nature of God is LOVE, and secondarily it is about understanding what God has done for us.

The love of God, if it were a little less potent, might have remained fully and beautifully expressed among the Three Persons of the Trinity, as it had been forever. But love is magic: the more you love, the more love you have to give. Love cannot be bottled up even by the infinity of God, but spills out and overflows, and a universe springs into being, a universe with the capacity to participate in the divine love-life. But note the heartache God endures as a result of this creation, which began almost immediately to resist God’s love. No sooner did creation spring forth than love took on a new attribute: self-sacrifice. When love is reciprocated, its selflessness is a joyful, painless thing. But when love goes unanswered the pain of it is incredibly hard to bear. But this God, oh He’s willing to endure the pain for the sake of His creation. So the Begotten One, saves the world by becoming part of it, in the Incarnation, the second great mystery of Christian teaching. He lowered Himself to become human, with everything that means. But through a kind of divine sleight of hand, this doesn’t debase God to being less-than-God; rather it elevates humanity to divine status. Saint Gregory Nazianzen, one of the great trinitarian theologians, says that when Jesus was crucified, raised, and exalted to the right hand of God, that was His humanity that was crucified, raised, and exalted, and our humanity with His. When we cry to God “Abba, Father” we do so in the power of God’s Spirit as children of God, a status to which we are elevated by means of Christ’s work. Jesus teaches us to pray “Our Father” not so much because God is our Creator as because we are brought into the divine Sonship.

When we name God as Trinity, this is at least part of what we mean. This is a God who risks relationships even though they lead inevitably to pain and heartache. This is a God who, having created, is not satisfied to leave creation to its own devices, but continually steps in to redeem what would otherwise be lost. This is a God whose purposes cannot be thwarted, whose love is so powerful that even when He empties Himself He’s still too strong for Death! All that’s really good news, but here’s the bit that blows my mind: Because of what the God did in the human Jesus, humanity is brought into the life of the Trinity, where that same Spirit of love transforms us into persons worthy of communion with God. We already have glimpses of that communion even now, in the Eucharistic feast and in our love for one another. Because it is all God’s work, from creation to redemption to exaltation, we can have indomitable hope for ourselves and for one another, and indeed for the whole world. “Look!” says God, “I am making all things new.” This God, whose whole song is Love, simply cannot be stopped until the trio is joined by a whole choir.