Author: John Drymon

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

A sign of the difficulty currently besetting the publishing industry, several magazines in recent years have enticed potential subscribers with a free gift subscription for the primary subscriber to pass along. So, we have given a subscription of The New Yorker to a friend for a few years, and just this week, said friend shared with us a gift subscription to The Atlantic. So I got the Atlantic app installed on my phone, opened it up, and the very first article that loaded up meant I had to read it right then and there. The title: “How Is the Israel Hamas Ceasefire Deal Like an Anglican Wedding?” That’s “clickbait” for a very particular type of person, and I am he.

If you’ve ever been to a wedding here or in any Episcopal Church, you may remember that after the couple exchange their “I do-s” (or actually, “I wills” in our service) there is a question for the congregation: “Will all of you witnessing these promises do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?” And we respond “we will.” Why do we say “we will”? Because it’s printed in the book. Do we mean it? I try at wedding rehearsals to say to everyone gathered there that they will say “we will” because they mean it; because they are themselves making a solemn promise to support the couple over the course of decades, and I hope that they take that seriously. I’m sure some (maybe several) do, but I’m not sure everyone does. We say it, because the rubrics in the book instruct us to do so.

The writer of that piece in the Atlantic assumed that very few at your typical wedding do, though, and he feared that those who helped broker the increasingly fragile ceasefire in the Middle East—the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Qataris, maybe the Americans—won’t hold to their own vows when things get tough. And unlike your average marriage, which typically takes some years before the couple want to murder each other, there will be no honeymoon here. I hope he’s wrong. I just don’t know.

But I really want to focus neither on Holy Matrimony nor on Gaza this morning. I bring it up, because there’s another time when we are called upon to make a similar solemn vow. At every Baptism we are asked this question: “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ.” And we answer “we will.” Are we just saying it because it’s on the page or do we really mean it?

We are in the business of making saints. Or rather, God is in the business of making saints, and we have the privilege of helping a little insofar as he gives us grace to do so. You’ve heard me say a thousand times that there is a difference between the majuscule and the miniscule, the “upper-case S” Saints and the “lower-case s” saints, and that all of us and all of those whom we’ll remember in a few minutes during the litany are probably in the latter category (though I encourage you to prove me wrong about that). I guarantee there will be no processions through the streets for St. John Drymon of Findlay day fifty or a hundred years from now. There are the famous men and women of whom the writer of Ecclesiasticus speaks and those who have no memorial.

But there is something which fundamentally connects all of us in the church—militant, expectant, and triumphant. Each and every one of us has been washed in the saving laver of Christ’s Blood. Life may seem a great tribulation sometimes, but we’ll all be clothed in white on that last great day, bearing branches of palm in our hands. The blessedness of the poor and the meek and the persecuted and the downtrodden will be ours then, and in can be ours today to a greater extent than we might imagine.

God being our helper, we can not only reach out to that crown of triumph even now when we allow him to work through us in supporting each other in growth in holiness, in upholding all our sisters and brothers in keeping the vows they made or that were made on their behalf and thus grow in holiness ourselves. This can be a virtuous cycle, and in that sense the church militant here on earth can serve as a sort of school for virtue, educating us, leading us toward the God who is love that we might become a bit more loving. All this can be accomplished when we take that baptismal vow “we will” as seriously as we ought to do.

And if you look around and scoff and say, “this peculiar lot is meant to teach me how to be holy!?” look again. You might be astounded when you sit in this classroom long enough. And ever give thanks that we can also look up to that great cloud of witnesses—the church expectant and the church triumphant—both for their examples and (I believe) for their intercessions for us before the throne of God. Thank God for them, and thank God that we’ll have an eternity of fellowship with them as we praise God together unto the ages of ages.

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

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

God only loves one type of person: sinners. Thank God we’re all sinners. Sometimes the trick is just acknowledging that’s what we are, and that’s what the tax collector has over the Pharisee. The full force of this parable might be dulled a bit for us because we are so accustomed to viewing the Pharisees as the “baddies” since Jesus frequently had run-ins with them. But not all Pharisees were like the ones that were trying to entrap our Lord. Most of them were just very faithful, very scholarly Jews who concerned themselves with following the Law as well as they could do. These were, as the late great Robert Farrer Capon said, the sorts of people from whom we’d be pleased to receive a pledge card, and we’d probably ask them to consider standing for election to vestry. If we had a Pharisee in the congregation today, I’d probably ask him to lead Sunday School for me this morning, because I know he’d do a better job than I, at least in terms of having all the relevant biblical information front of mind.

The tax collector, on the other hand, is a bad hombre. He’s a traitor to his own people because he extorts money from them on behalf of the Roman Empire. He survives on a twisted form of commission, whereby his livelihood consists of all the extra shekels he can wring out of the Judaean taxpayer which he doesn’t actually owe but which he thuggishly extracts anyway. So he knows he’s a bad guy, and that’s why he realizes he can’t save himself. The Pharisee can’t save himself either, but his own good works and respectability blind him to this reality.

Several Protestant churches observe today as “Reformation Sunday” which has always made me a bit uncomfortable, and I’m grateful that it’s not a feast on our calendar. Some sort of church reform and realignment was no doubt necessary in the Sixteenth Century, but I for one have always viewed this as a necessary evil, the reality of church disunity is a sadness and a scandal which we should pray God will heal in his good time, and it baffles me that the schisms which gave us so many “flavors” of Christianity should be celebrated.

So, I have issues with Martin Luther (and with Henry VIII for that matter, lest you think I can’t see the beam in my own eye). That said, he had some ideas that I think were pretty good, and I particularly like some of his most shocking statements—not being a controversialist myself, I guess I enjoy living vicariously through historical figures who stirred the pot. So, in order to spite the devil who wants nothing more than for us to trust in our own righteousness and thus despair, Luther suggested one should commit a small sin from time to time, just to remind ourselves that we’re covered by Grace. I would not personally recommend this approach, because I think we’re going to sin whether we make our minds up to do or not, but I do appreciate how edgy he was being.

More famously (or infamously), Luther is charged with saying “sin boldly.” Well, yeah, if you take two words out of context, this sounds bad. But here’s what he actually wrote:

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are in this world we have to sin. This life is not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day

In other words, consider the publican whose sin can convict him, who can be convinced he needs a savior. Thus, our own good deeds can become a stumbling block. The Pharisee’s approach is all well and good so long as he is perfectly righteous, so long as he is not a sinner. The problem is he is a sinner, he was born that way, he just can’t see it.

We often twist this parable by imagining that in being justified, the tax collector goes on to lead a virtuous life. He gets better, he acts more kindly, perhaps he pays back all those people from whom he extorted money. He certainly resigns from his inherently dishonest career. But Jesus doesn’t say that. That’s not part of the story. What if, instead, after a day or two, or maybe just as soon as he left the temple, he roughed up another taxpayer? And then the next week he shows up again praying for mercy. He can’t escape his wickedness. His chosen profession gives him plenty of opportunity for sin, yes, but he’d sin no matter what he was doing. Does he leave the temple justified after every penitential visit?

Yes he does, and we don’t like that. We love stories about reformed sinners who have a conversion and never mess up again in some way, large or small. But those people don’t actually exist. What we really want is for the tax collector to become the Pharisee. That satisfies our desire for fairness, but it deprives the publican of the possibility of justification.

There is a rubric in our prayer book which allows for the occasional omission of the general confession. I’ve known of places that omitted it for the entirety of the Easter season, which in my opinion suggests a gross misunderstanding of the meaning of the word “occasional.” Anyway, I understand why one might choose to omit it on Christmas and Easter Days, but I won’t do it because maybe those who only show up on Christmas and Easter could use the opportunity for confession and absolution as much as the rest of us. (On the other hand, maybe the people who only show up a couple times a year do so, because they’re so holy they only need that much church, unlike you and me.) I, for one, benefit from a daily reminder of my own sin and God’s amazing grace in calling me worthy in spite of it. Maybe I’m a slow learner. Or maybe I am, maybe we all are, a bit more like the tax collector than we’d like to think. And I’m actually glad of that, because, like I said at the beginning—God only loves one type of person: sinners. Thank God we’re all sinners.

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

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

This morning’s lesson from Genesis ends, I think, one verse too early, at least considering the thing I want to talk about this morning. When you hear it, you might think it a peculiar detail and understand why it may seem irrelevant, but I for one tend to think that even the most obscure bits of scripture sometimes have something to say to us. So, Genesis Chapter 32, verse 32:

Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh on the sinew of the hip.

In other words, the sciatic nerve of an animal is not Kosher, and this is a reminder of the injury Jacob sustained while wrestling with the angel.

Now, fast forward fifteen chapters. Jacob is an old man, his sons had all their drama—selling Joseph into slavery, reconciling, all emigrating to Egypt together—and just before he dies, Jacob calls his children and grandchildren to him to bless them and say farewell. And how do we find Joseph in this scene? We are told that he is leaning against his bed’s headboard. Why this detail? Maybe just to remind us that Jacob is old and decrepit, though that would seem to go without saying. Perhaps, though, it’s because he’s still suffering the limp he got from wrestling all night all those years ago. Surgical interventions to treat severe sciatica were about four millennia away, after all.

So maybe Israel himself might not have needed a reminder of the lasting effects of wrestling with God, there was always a literally painful reminder. But the generations which followed would require such a reminder, which became enshrined in their dietary law. Striving with God and man may leave a mark. Growing in virtue, subduing vice, wrestling with the demons in our own souls may create real, if invisible bruises; they may last a while, and they may not always be the most pleasant of reminders.

I should avoid getting too far into the weeds of theodicy, that pernicious problem with which theologians have wrestled since Job. The most basic answer to the problem of evil is that sin entered the world through human transgression, not divine appointment, and insofar as God allows bad things to happen, we have to come to terms with human agency, the cosmic nature of the fall, and the Will of a Providence which we cannot possibly understand and whose designs are as yet obscure to us. That may not be satisfying; join the club. When we start talking in terms of what seems fair and what seems unfair, we are responding in a natural, human way, but we may not like how far down we find ourselves by delving too deeply into that for too long. I may fancy myself a bit of a theologian, in my own dilettantish way, but I’ll leave that task to the honest-to-God mystics, the spiritual athletes among whose number I’ll never be able to count myself.

Instead, I’ll leave you with an uncomfortable question, or rather a series of them, to keep in a little cupboard back of your minds. Ask it of yourself when you know you find yourself in fine fettle, spiritually speaking, and maybe leave it in that cupboard when your soul is in some sort of acute pain. How might that sore spot be a gift? In what way was I wrestling with God? What did I learn and how did I grow spiritually? What am I given the courage and strength to do today because of this experience that I didn’t have before? Do I need this reminder—whether it’s guilt from a minor youthful indiscretion, trauma from a genuine tragedy, or something in that broad spectrum in-between—do I need this reminder still for my growth as a Christian and as a human being, or do I need God to take it away? The answer to that may be either option, that’s between you and God.

I suspect that for whatever reason, Jacob needed that reminder. Maybe when he was blessing his famously ill-behaving progeny, he needed to remember that he had been no saint himself, and maybe this made him a bit more understanding, a little more long-suffering, a little more loving.

I had a church history professor back in seminary who was trying to explain the justification for the doctrine of purgatory which developed in the middle ages and he used an interesting analogy. This by the way is not to argue for or against that doctrine; classical Anglicanism rejects it (the Article of Religion call it “a fond thing, vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather Repugnant to the Word of God”) but there have been plenty in the church since the catholic revival in the Church of England and here in Nineteenth Century that have sought to argue for it. You’re not going to get excommunicated or something for saying there is or isn’t a Purgatory, and my own opinion on the matter is neither here nor there. The point is that this professor of mine used a good analogy that I think is apposite this morning.

So the question was, how can purgatory be justified if Christ paid the wages of sin on the Cross? The best argument (at least to my mind) was that it’s not so much about doing one’s time to compensate, as it were, as it was about repairing the effects those actions had on our souls. The analogy was that of autobody repair. So the fender bender (moral evil) or the hailstorm (natural evil) made some dents, and purgatory popped them back out like a garage.

I like that image whether you think God has incorporated the Purgatory Auto Body Shop, llc. or if you believe that he can probably take care of that at the resurrection without it. I like it because I’m a bit like an old car that’s picked up some nicks and scratches over the years, body and soul. Sometimes they’re worth getting repaired and sometimes they’re just a good reminder (“don’t do that again!”)

We have some very minor damage on our car from a person who rear-ended us about six months ago. It was entirely the other driver’s fault, her car got it way worse than ours, and nobody was hurt. Long story short, the other driver was working for one of these delivery services and she didn’t have insurance, and she started freaking out. I was pretty indignant, and had it just been me, I would have proceeded to call the police at this point. But Annie was with me talked me down and we just let it go. I’m not advising anybody else to make the same decision in similar circumstances, but that felt right, and it feels right in retrospect, and now the car has a little, barely visible reminder that I married a more Christian person than myself.

So, maybe consider those dents and dings and scratches from your past run-ins, whether they’re entirely self-inflicted or the marks of an all-night wrestling match with God. You may be surprised what you learned and what you still need to.

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