The effect of standing in the Rockies, or the Himalayas, or of sailing on the vast, open sea is to feel a bit insignificant. As “the Bailout” of the American economy advances, and the numbers mount – to well over a $1.5 trillion committed by the federal government in the past few months, a kind of insignificance can settle in when we consider how measly are our own resources.
Who are you and I in the face of the titans of banking, industry, or government? We’ve never made – or lost – a single billion in our time, nor are we likely to, I dare say. How are we to feel about the mountains of money that are shifting tectonically around us? And should the fact of our own puny bank accounts result in a sense of low self-esteem? And how are we to give thanks on a day like this? Our attention from the serialized bailout is distracted for a moment by the violent and frightening attacks in India. What kind of Thanksgiving is this?
In the church we are sometimes reminded that parts of speech matter. For instance, in American society, today’s feast is a proper noun: Thanksgiving. It is a national holiday that has nothing at all to do with the church’s marking of time, the passage of her year. Our Prayer Book provides readings and a prayer or two for the occasion out of necessity, but the day is not included in the church calendar; the Pilgrims (such as they were) have never counted as saints. But they would have known that in the church thanksgiving is not a noun, but a verb. It is, perhaps, the most fundamental, crucial, foundational of all verbs in the life of the church. Its Greek roots are preserved in the adopted English word that the church now typically uses for the Mass: the Eucharist – which is literally translated, “thanksgiving.”
And the church is meant to be animated by this verb: thanksgiving. We are given life and action in it; we have something to do. We have thanks to offer to God. An old prayer of the church, not too much used these days, put it this way, in talking to God: “…give us that due sense of all thy mercies, that our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful; and that we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days….”
That’s a prayer full of thanksgiving verbs. We still use it when we say Morning and Evening Prayer here daily at Saint Mark’s. And as I utter those words I grew up saying, I wonder how long my life will have to be before the prayer, known as the “General Thanksgiving” finally takes over my heart, my life.
How long before I learn to be unfeignedly thankful to God, when I have gotten so very good at feigning it?
How long before I can more reliably show forth God’s praise not only with my lips but in my life?
How long before I am able, really, to give up myself to God’s service?
And I can hardly even think about walking before God in holiness and righteousness – not even for one day, let alone all my days!
And yet I believe that I can continue to try to adopt thanksgiving in my life as a verb and not a noun. This seems like a simple project, but I know it will not be: to make thanksgiving something I have to offer, not take; something I have to do, not something I merely get to enjoy.
But the more I become a pilgrim of thanksgiving – journeying on that pathway from noun to verb – the more I have the sense that I am surrounded by the astonishing beauty and generosity of God’s creation. It’s the same kind of feeling I had when I was able to glimpse from the foothills the high peaks of the Himalayas.
And it is not the dawning of insignificance you feel when you realize that God has allowed you to wend your way through his marvelous creation; it is sheer gratitude.
(And it’s not a noun that’s needed in the face of the violence we’ve seem in Mumbai these last few hours, it’s the kind of verbs that compel us to give up our lives to God’s service if ever we are to free the world of the scourge of this kind of violence.)
And who knows what the effect will be of all those mountains of bailout cash that are shifting and growing as we try to cope with the economic crisis of our time? Perhaps they will not make us feel insignificant either.
But for now, they are only nouns, these trillions of dollars. And we have a far more important verb to deal with this morning. We have thanksgiving to do. Thanks be to God for such a verb in our lives!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Thanksgiving Day 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
The Feast of Christ the King
Today we celebrate… - what do we celebrate? - the kingship of Christ. Yes, we also are gathered to celebrate the ordination of Andrew as priest, because Christ is King. In our OT reading Isaiah glimpsed the kingship of God – glimpsed the throne, overwhelming glory, angels, the lot, in a vision. ‘Yet my eyes have seen the King’. Must have wondered if his eyes needed testing afterwards. The gospel depicts much the same scene: Christ is seated on a throne, in glory, with angels around him. Yet King Uzziah has died and everyone is grieving; yet (we may presume from Matthew) there are hungry people, homeless people, plenty of tragedy. How come Christ is King? A case of those with eyes to see, to see through the outward circumstances, to see past the immediate circumstances (king dying, whatever) to glimpse the ultimate reality which is at the core of everything. Friends, Christ reigns. Despite our economic crisis; despite war in Iraq and escalating violence in Congo; …. Christ reigns. In fact history would suggest it is just these circumstances that may bring us to glimpse it. That the universe is not rolling uncontrollably in its orbit – but has been put in place, and continues to be sustained by Jesus, the creator, the word-made-flesh, the king who will return in glory.
It was the glimpse of glory – coupled with the transforming experience of forgiveness – that propelled Isaiah into ministry. To hear God’s call (presumably going on all the time – but this time he had the ears to hear) and to volunteer, he knew not for what.
And it is, so far as I know, the glimpse of God and the call of God – that has brought Andrew here. Goodness, it’s taken plenty of discernment – how many dioceses and bishops and seminaries, Andrew? – and plenty of patience on the part of those walking with Andrew and waiting. That walk has included time at Ground Zero soon after 9-11; and a few years in carpentry in Arizona. (you take following Jesus very literally, don’t you?). Can we still proclaim Christ is King having spent time amidst the dust and death and devastation of Ground Zero? Certainly it is no facile gospel that comes out of that experience. Christ has died – sure. Christ is risen – perhaps, though he sure isn’t very evident around here some of the time. But will Christ will come again? Either you give up hope: or you’re absolutely longing for it, judgment, glory and all.
Andrew is answering that question here today, with his life. Your example helps us to ‘get’ the kingship of Christ. Not because you put on fine robes and parody a king. (that would be, rather, pomposity – something that your brother and sister worked hard to deliver you from in the past; and I suspect Esme is already in training for that important work in the future). Your priesthood will help us understand the kingship of Christ when you are willing to engage with the pain of our world without hiding from it, when you are able to catch the eye of a hungry person who comes here for soup and recognize Christ -witnessing to the silver lining behind every cloud, holding firm to the hope that is set before you, demonstrating by your whole being that nothing – not homelessness or hunger, not divorce or death or twin-tower destruction – shakes the truth that lies in God: that Christ is risen and Christ will come again in glory. The meaninglessness and mess is ultimately out-narrated. You work for that day because you are one who has glimpsed the real world behind our current experience. Like Isaiah.
Isaiah is often read at an ordination, because of the parallels: you have determined a call You have glimpsed God, the fullness of God’s majesty and holiness – even if only the fringe of the hem of the robe. That concentration of godliness we assume to be terrifying – so terrifying, in fact, that we expect to die.
You have known your own weakness: that amounts not just to acknowledging your humanity and vulnerability, not just your Ground Zero hopelessness, but your sinfulness. For any of us our spiritual formation – our spiritual transformation – begins at that point of brokenness and dependence. We deserve to die; yet the grace of God is such that we not only don’t die, we are swept up into his purposes. We are invited to be part of his body. And we are called into God’s service. All of us.
God’s call = an invitation to Isaiah to hear the song of the angels. And join it. Literally, in fact, in your role as priest – to join in leading it among God’s people. At the sanctus at every Eucharistic celebration)
Following that call begins with sins forgiven, with the giddy freedom of knowing God holds nothing against you. So does yours. Prior to forgiveness, God’s holiness is terrifying. After forgiveness, God’s glory is contagious. And today the church is giving you the authority to mediate God’s forgiveness, to absolve sin, to be God’s seraph to God’s people. Being the seraphim, bringing forgiveness to others. Dangerous, vulnerable, vital. The building shaking
Now Isaiah didn’t have that privilege. The authority the church is investing in you today to forgive sins does not stem from the church itself: it begins with Christ. You can forgive the sins of others only because J died, and forgave you.
That means there is nothing about you can or should ever prevent you from forgiving others. Did you hear that? (Donatism). No matter how dreadful a mistake you make as a person, as a priest, it cannot and must not prevent you from offering God’s forgiveness as priest to others.
Because you do it in and through God, not anything of your own. Your ministry is not about you: it is about God.
That is the other cure for pomposity.
The role you played for your father years ago – taking him down a peg or two (reminding him you were the one with the rights to call him Fr Ernie). Hope Esme will play the same role for you. (Good job you’re not king, Dad, I hear her saying in the future)
You are being ordained at a time when the church is not just divided but dividing further, against a background of mainline decline, in a country heading for a serious depression. You’re crazy! Your job is not to reinstate the power of a former era; to pine for a time when the church exercised more power and influence in society; to imitate Christ’s kingship literally (that was the mistake of Israel’s kings). You are to be the seraph who commutes between the throne of heaven and the mess of a broken world; you are to be the donkey that carries the Christ the king, whether people recognize the king or not.
But by the way, Isaiah’s calling was pretty hellish. To tell people they were losers and heading for exile. We love to read the story of this call at ordinations but we always stop at verse 8. He’s volunteered but he hasn’t a clue what’s in store. I wonder if that’s how Andrew feels…
What will keep Andrew going?
Answer: the kingship of Christ.
Ultimately, nothing depends on you. Sure, the young adult program may not have its meetings…
Andrew: your priesthood qualifies you to preside at the eucharist, to lift others to the throne of God in glory. And to lead us as we join in the song of the angels around the heavenly throne:
Holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty
Heaven and earth are full of his glory: Hosanna in the highest!
Amen.
Preached by the Rev. Dr. Jo Baily Wells at the Ordination of Andrew Ashcroft to the Priesthood
23 November 2008
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia
Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
Sometimes, when I read the news or listen to some of the rhetoric which goes on in our church, or other churches, or other faiths, I have the distinct sense that the Scriptures are some of the most dangerous works ever set to paper, parchment, vellum, clay or stone. Wars have been fought, people are being killed, incredibly cruel and brutal things are being screamed, over the ways that holy writings are interpreted and read and passed on generation to generation.
And there are times when it seems that biblical literalism is stalking our age: people who are willing to justify many horrendous ideas and actions, in the name of their so-called literal reading of the Scriptures.
I don’t know if any of you ever watched the television series, The West Wing, when it was on television, but there is one scene from it which I remember vividly because it dealt with the whole issue of biblical literalism. At an event at the White House, the presidential character comes across a “Christian” talk radio personality. The subject of human sexuality comes up and she quotes to him from the Scriptures, chapter and verse. To which he responds with this set of questions:
I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, and always clears the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff insists on working on the Sabbath, Exodus 35:2, clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important, 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes us unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother, John, for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?
It is a funny scene, and the point is to highlight the inconsistency in taking certain portions of Scripture literally when it comes to sexuality, or the role of women, but not a vast number of other portions of the Scriptures.
It is part of the strangeness of American religion that we have been deeply affected by the rhetoric of fundamentalism which says that the Bible is literally true and its meaning is obvious; that the Scriptures say what they mean, and there is no contradiction, no complexity of interpretation to them; that what matters is how I understand the Scriptures. I like to think of this as the approach which I have heard spoken which says “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.”
And even when we know intellectually that that is not the case, when we understand there to be issues of interpretation and a host of other issues which make reading the Scriptures difficult, still we react slightly when we hear the Scriptures being proof-texted, or blanch slightly when someone mentions St. Paul.
One can see in the two modern responses to the Scriptures, either to accept the Scriptures whole-heartedly and supposedly literally, or to explain them away in profoundly deep and (I think) dangerous ways, the cumulative effects of the rhetoric of Biblical literalism.
But Biblical literalism is a relatively modern way of reading the Scriptures and a dangerous one.The early church was much clearer than we are that the Scriptures were dangerous, and were not primarily to be read and interpreted individually, but to be read and interpreted within the gathered community, the body of the Church.
In contradistinction to the simple literalism around the Scriptures or the simple dismissal of the Scriptures which we see today, the collect appointed for today gives us a method of interacting with Scripture in a far more complex and nuanced way.
Rite I
Blessed Lord, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them; that, by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.
Rite II
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.
And I love this collect not only because my father used to quote it to me all the time (one of the dangers of growing up in a clerical family), but also because I find it tremendously helpful when I open up the Scriptures, ready to write a sermon, and come across the inevitable difficult passage.
I am most enamored with the phrase “inwardly digest” the Scriptures. It is a gustatory metaphor for coming to grips with the Scriptures. We are to ingest, to ruminate, to chew the cud of the Scriptures in a bovine manner for hours, days, years, even our lifetimes. And notice that the collect is couched in the language of the people of God reading and wrestling with the Scriptures together, as a body. This is not something that I do on my own.
Which is good news as far as I am concerned when I read the Gospel passage for today. The parable of the talents is a relatively straightforward passage about stewardship and the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom is like a rich man who goes away and leaves his property in the charge of his servants or slaves. They are given his property to care for, for a time, which is precisely what stewardship is: caring for that which is not yours, which you will have to give back or return eventually. The two worthy servants increase the master’s property by their thoughtful care for it. The “wicked” servant merely buries his talent and gets punished for his terrible stewardship.
But then we come to that disturbing phrase: “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” It is a phrase that I will freely admit I am fundamentally uncomfortable with. My temptation is to attempt to explain it away or, using rhetorical slight-of-hand gloss over it or interpret it. But I’m not sure that I can do that convincingly, and even if I could, I’m not sure that would be very helpful, and so what I am left with is a difficult, difficult piece of the Scriptures. Scripture not as simple or clear or evident, but “an illegible stone,” with complex directions and dimensions, a confusing text which I cannot easily solve or explain.
If the way to read the Scriptures is, as the collect says, to “inwardly digest them,” that wonderful metaphor of feasting on the Word, what do we do with the pieces of Scripture which catch in our throats, which stick in our gullets, as we attempt to swallow them, to chew on them?
“...those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away...” That doesn’t sound like the Jesus who was deeply concerned with the poor, the exile and the outcast. And I find it difficult to reconcile all this discussion of binding and casting into the outer darkness, the weeping and gnashing of teeth, with my understanding of the God of mercy.
The literal reader of the Scriptures would say of this passage that it points to the judgment of God, God’s purity, God’s holiness, God’s otherness from the human race. The other brand of interpretation might try and explain the phrase away, or make out that it was a later interpolation by the community reading and preserving the Gospel of Matthew, in response to X, Y or Z going on in their communal lives or in their identity struggles with the Judaism of their day.
Both of these methods of interpreting the Scriptures are ways of foreclosing on the process of the inward digestion of Scripture, and the ongoing reading and ingesting of Scripture in the midst of the community of the faithful. Both are attempts to make simple what is not simple, to make clear what is not clear, to make black and white that which is grey. To set boundaries, to set limits, to define the ways in which we interact with the Scriptures, the questions and emotions and experiences that we bring to them.
It is, I think, much safer to know that Scripture is simple, clear and literal, or that Scripture can be explained away as the cultural literature, poetry and myths of some ancient tribes. There is less at stake, when I don’t have to be open to the Scriptures reading me back, questioning me back, about my relationship with money, about God’s judgment, about my own personal holiness, and about our holiness as a community of faith. And therein lies the problem with the modern ways of reading the Scriptures.They are not really reading the Scriptures at all, they are not really open to the Scriptures; they aren’t reading the Scriptures in anyway which allows of the Scriptures reading back into us.
And so, lest I attempt to use rhetorical flourish not to attempt to come to grips with “...those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away...” I will now attempt to share with you the place where I am, when it comes to wrestling with that particular phrase of the Scriptures. It is very difficult for me to accept, for me to integrate into the conception that I have of Jesus and of God. I find that this phrase sits in my mind alongside those phrases which assume slavery and the subjugation of women, which justify homophobia and xenophobia. I cannot accept them, but I also cannot simply dismiss them.They point to the complexity of the God of the Scriptures, of the person of Jesus, revealed to us in documents which are troubling and difficult. Nothing would make me happier than to know that Jesus is the liberal intellectual that my conception has made him, or that God is who I think he is. But it is the hard passages of Scripture which point to the limitations of my own images of God and of Christ.
Grant us therefore, Gracious Lord, so to hear the complexity and hardness of the Scriptures, so to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, so to ruminate on their difficult words and stories, their cultural insensitivities and their unquestioned assumptions, that we may find in them that “patience and comfort” which has been the Church’s hope for long ages.
For one thing is certain. Whether we like the Scriptures or not, or are comfortable with them or not (generally I think we are not), out of the Scriptures come our common life, our practice, and our hope. Out of the Scriptures, however distant or complex, however hard or convoluted, comes to us the voice of the Living God, speaking into our world, our hearts and minds, our very beings. It has been so for untold years, that those who gather together to worship and praise the living God have in their reflection and rumination on the Scriptures, heard the rumor of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Preached by the Rev'd Andrew Ashcroft
16 November 2008
Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia