Day: March 10, 2025

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

From the Sixteenth Century until the First World War, arguably the most powerful person in the world was whoever happened to be the head of the House of Habsburg, who controlled vast swathes of Europe and the Americas. There are still Habsburgs around, though most of their titles are now held by pretence. There is a peculiar ritual still observed when the head of the house dies, most recently in 2011 at the funeral of Otto von Habsburg, and despite it being a bit lengthy I want to reenact it for you this morning, because the punchline really requires an appreciation of its apparent pretention.

As the coffin arrives at the door of the Capuchin Church in Vienna, the master of ceremonies knocks thrice and then engages in this dialogue with the prior:

(The MC knocks thrice)

Prior: Who desires entry?

MC: Otto of Austria; once Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary; Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and the Bukowina; Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla, of Oświęcim and Zator, Teschen, Friaul, Dubrovnik and Zadar; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trent and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria; Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenburg etc.; Lord of Trieste, Kotor and Windic March, Grand Voivod of the Voivodeship of Serbia etc. etc.

Prior: We do not know him.

(The MC knocks thrice)

Prior: Who desires entry?

MC: Dr. Otto von Habsburg, President and Honorary President of the Paneuropean Union, Member and quondam President of the European Parliament, honorary doctor of many universities, honorary citizen of many cities in Central Europe, member of numerous venerable academies and institutes, recipient of high civil and ecclesiastical honours, awards, and medals, which were given him in recognition of his decades-long struggle for the freedom of peoples for justice and right.

Prior: We do not know him.

(The MC knocks thrice)

Prior: Who desires entry?

MC: Otto, a mortal and sinful man.

Prior: Then let him come in.

We all go down to the dust and in it were are all the same: sinners of Christ’s own redeeming.

The ceremony of the offering of the first-fruits as recounted in this morning’s lesson from Deuteronomy bid the Israelites to make a similar declaration: “A Syrian ready to perish was my father.” Or in the modern translation “a wandering Aramean was my ancestor.” Either way, the point is the same–namely, whatever great deeds I or my more recent ancestors may have accomplished, look back far enough and I came from nothing. Only by God’s provision do I have what I have, and so I offer back to him the first-fruits of the harvest, knowing that I too came from dust and am going to dust.

It may not be at first obvious why we are reading this lesson from Deuteronomy, which takes place not during the forty-year-long desert wanderings of the Israelites (a more obvious type of Christ’s own sojourn and of our pilgrimage through Lent), but rather occurs as soon as they’s establsished themselves well-enough in the Promised Land to get agriculture going. I think it is to make this point about always remembering God’s provision between that longer pilgrimage, that between birth and death.

That’s why, I suspect, this reading is paired with the story of Jesus’ fasting and temptation in the wilderness (one or another of the Gospel accounts of this event always being read on the first Sunday in Lent). Those of you who were here on Ash Wednesday know that I asked people to consider some plan for reading more scripture as a possible Lenten discipline. Perhaps it would have been wise also to point out that increased biblical literacy does not magically make one more faithful or sincere. The devil can quote scripture with the best of them, as he does in today’s Gospel in an attempt to trip Jesus up. Jesus’ answers are not primarily meant to show that he’s really good at contextualizing scripture against those who would pervert its meaning by cherry-picking and proof-texting, though that is certainly true. It is, I believe, more about understanding and living by this most basic proposition which permeates the whole of scripture and indeed the whole of human experience if we’re paying attention: God is sovereign and we are dependent entirely on him. Material provision, authority, and security (the three things with which Jesus is tempted) are God’s to dispense, and the last thing we should do is to think we can force God’s hand to get them, which is, in fact, the literal definition of superstition. It’s easy to ignore God’s sovereignty and our dependence if we’re doing pretty well, which is why–as I’ve said before in not so many words–wealth might be morally neutral (the jury is out on that) but it can be spiritually hazardous.

Friends, life is just a lot happier and a lot easier in the ways that matter when this realization results in gratitude, even during the wilderness periods of life. I am reminded of a pithy principle which I understand Anna Miller employed in her gourd-arranging activities; whatever other objects and little touches might ornament the table “gourds must predominate.” Well, in the Christian life, whatever else may adorn our lives, our work, our hearths and homes, “gratitude must predominate.”

I am more and more convinced that this is the point of giving something up for Lent, whatever that might be. Avoiding meat or chocolate for forty days is not, I’m sorry to inform you, going to make you a better person. In my experience, though, such practices can make us more grateful for all the wonderful things God gives us. This is what I think was missed by both some medieval people who hoped by such self-denial they could earn merit and by the more extreme reformers who “threw the baby out with the bath-water”–like Ulrich Zwingli, who caused chaos in Zürich by eating a sausage on Good Friday. Both approaches missed the point, which is that in a divine irony, lacking something can and often does make us more grateful for what we do have.

Here’s a silly example, but I think it’s apposite. I had two king cakes this year. One was made by Lisa Robeson for our Dimanche Gras brunch and the other was made by a local baker. I put an order in for the latter, because I was asked if I wanted to right after said baker agreed to hang a poster for last week’s concert in her shop. Long story short, Lisa’s king cake was delicious and the other king cake left much to be desired. In fact, I said to Annie that while she should let her conscience be her guide, I will eat the leftovers of said cake despite usually avoiding deserts during Lent, because it would be close enough to penance not to count against me. In truth, when I eat ashes for king cake and mingle my near-beer with weeping, to take some liberty the 102^nd Psalm, I’ll end up being all the more grateful for having the good one a week earlier and look forward all the more for next years. And I’ll remember that the good one was a product of a parishioner contributing something to our common life, just like the rest of the breakfast Larry cooked that day, and just like all the people who fed and housed the chamber singers the night before, and everyone whose efforts make our worship here reverent and beautiful, and who help keep our building warm and clean and safe, and who reach out to the larger community in the name of the church to share a bit of the grace of God with those outside our walls. It’s all grace upon grace, so how could one not be grateful?!

And so my prayer for you in the midst of this season of penitence and self-denial is that these practices can be an aid to you in a similar way. It works. It really works. As one of my favorites, St. John Chrysostom put it, “happiness can only be achieved by looking inward and learning to enjoy whatever life has, and this requires transforming greed into gratitude.”

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Recently, somebody about half my age expressed the opinion that her favorite example of biblical wisdom literature was the Book of Ecclesiastes. I think my initial response might have not been as careful as it should have been. I think I said something like “when I was your age I hated Ecclesiastes. It was my least favorite book of the bible.” I went on to explain what I meant, but I should have opened with this: “You are clearly more mature than I was at your age. As a young person I found Ecclesiastes gloomy and fatalistic, but now I finally get it. Good on you for figuring this out a lot sooner than I did.”

In case you’re not familiar with the book, you can be forgiven: because of the cycle of assigned reading (the lectionary) we are bound to follow we only hear it read in Church on a Sunday once every three years, and then invariably in late July or early August–not a peak time for church attendance. And if you’re only familiar with the eight verses adapted by Pete Seeger and popularized by the rock band The Byrds as the single “Turn! Turn! Turn!” you might get the impression that the book tap into the hippy zeitgeist, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

As an aside, this issue of biblical literacy is an important one to me, so I don’t want the fact that I get animated talking about it sometimes to come across as shaming anybody for not knowing a whole lot of the bible. That said, while our tradition of following the lectionary no doubt exposes all of us to a broader diet of scripture than is likely to be found in most non-liturgical churches, what we hear on Sunday mornings is not exhaustive. So, if you are looking for a Lenten discipline, I heartily recommend some that you consider adopting some pattern of daily bible reading. There are lots of schemes available on the market and online for reading the whole bible in a year, for example, but I think the best place to start is with the daily office lectionary in the back of your prayerbooks, which, though it doesn’t cover every single verse does give an excellent, manageable exposure to most of the bible. Then, if you want, you can even do what I’ve started to do–namely, taking note of when that lectionary skips several verses or even chapters, think to yourself “huh, why’d they cut that?”, and then go read it after you morning or evening prayer. That will familiarize you with some of the nastier bits of scripture that “they” (meaning the people who put the lectionary together) don’t think you’re man or woman enough to handle.

Anyway, back to Ecclesiastes. Like I said, I used to hate it because if you’re not familiar with it, the overarching message seems so gloomy and fatalistic. Vanity upon vanity, all is vanity! The word vanity there is actually the Hebrew הבל, meaning vapor, smoke, nothingness that the slightest breeze can sweep away. The best you can do, the preacher says, is live a simple life, enjoy your work, and try to die with a clean conscience, because one way or another, you will eventually die.

Being a part of the generation that was told over and over again growing up that we could change the world and that we could be or do anything so long as we tried hard enough, this is precisely the opposite of what we were trained to believe. It was a well-intentioned lie, but a lie nonetheless, perhaps an over-correction from an era in which children were to be seen and not heard combined with the optimism and social and economic progress of the historical “blip” which was post-war America. The suggestion that we are not all masters of our own destiny lies in stark relief against the cultural consensus under which I was raised.

I have become convinced that all the assumptions to which the message of Ecclesiastes provides a rejoinder serve as a spiritual straitjacket whose straps are the demands of moral perfectionism and whose sewn sleeves serve to limit the boasts of radical self-reliance. The only shears which can snip us out of this canvas-charactered constraint, this constitutional captivity, are the spirits of Ecclesiastes and of Ash Wednesday, which remind us of two facts we’d like to ignore: we are sinners and we are going to die.

All I’ve said about generational concerns notwithstanding, I think this point is in fact universally applicable, it may just strike those who grew up under a moral-therapeutic model of human identity and value as more acute, because that model makes the basic emptiness of such an approach more obvious after we’ve tried it for a while and failed. In simpler terms, we all need to be freed from the impossible expectations of moral perfectionism and total self-sufficiency. We all need to be reminded, like I said, that we are sinners and we are going to die.

This naturally lets a lot of the pressure off, but it’s about more than that. This is just the first step to the solution of getting us out of that straitjacket. After the realization of our sinfulness and mortality, we are able to see a way out of the dilemma. When we see we simply cannot measure up by virtue of our own will and efforts, we are able to call on the one who is our helper. When we say that we are sinners, that that is central to our being, not just the accumulation of personal mistakes, but rather a flaw in our nature which we cannot fix on our own by just being good, then we can finally do the one needful thing–namely, call upon the one who doesn’t just teach us how to be better, but whose own righteousness makes us better despite ourselves and our perennial inability to learn or remember that moral lesson. When we are told we are going to die, that we are mortal, we are given the opportunity to rely on the one whose very nature transcends our fundamental finitude, our cardinal contingency.

So, that is what we are about this day. I’ve been asked by a few, sometimes in a slightly accusatory tone by a couple of my favorite former interlocutors (both of whom were brought up in Methodism, so came by their high view of human effort honestly) why we have to keep doing this. Is there not a point at which we can stop talking about sin? My answer is that I cannot speak for anybody else having not reached perfection myself, and personally not believing it possible this side of paradise. I just know that I need this reminder daily, sometimes hourly, and especially on days like today, as we enter a season of more intense and intentional reliance on the one who saves us. I need it, because I so easily forget and fall back into the sort of pride that has me convince myself that I can do it on my own. To use the language of the Apostle Paul, I need the Law continually to convict me so that I can accept the Grace God offers through his Son.

This affirmation–“I am a sinner and I’m going to die”–then, is not gloomy, but liberating, because just the other side of that affirmation is the realization (whether for the first time or the millionth) that we are redeemed and we are promised new life. It’s not our doing; it’s the Grace of God working in us that which is well-pleasing in his own sight, more than we can possibly ask or imagine. Today we ask him to do it all for us yet again, and he whose property is always to have mercy stands ready, as ever, to accomplish all that he has purposed.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.