Author: John Drymon

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

It being Independence Day weekend, I’m reminded of an exchange I witnessed back when I was in college. I can’t remember if I’ve ever shared this story in a sermon before or just in conversation, but it bears repeating anyway. We hosted a lecture by the noted pacifist theologian Stanley Hauerwas, and after his talk there was a panel discussion featuring members of the faculty. One of the panelists was a political scientist who questioned Hauerwas quite appropriately, I thought, about the speaker’s apparent rejection of patriotism. “Should I not be permitted to be proud of my country?” the professor asked. The speaker, in his thick Texas accent (which struck my Yankee classmates as somehow at odds with his politics) replied “you know as well as I do, that pride is a sin, and it will send you straight to hell.”

Now, I would disagree with Hauerwas’ myopic denunciation of patriotism. I personally agreed with the professor who saw being “proud of his country” as a positive thing. I think it’s important to note that there are really two different sense in which we use the word “pride.” One simply expresses a sort of appreciation and gratitude for something laudable, whether that be a country and its values, one’s church, some other institution to which one belongs, a family member, &c. This seems to me something perfectly acceptable and even praiseworthy. The other sense of “pride” in which one believes oneself better than another because of either a personal quality or one connected to one’s country or whatever, is the bad, sinful one.

Even so, Hauerwas was on to something about the destructive nature of pride, because the former can sometimes transform into the latter, and often it can do so so gradually that we have trouble pinpointing the moment it became a sin. So, it is one thing to be proud of one’s country when such patriotism is still objective enough to see that she may have some faults. It is quite another to engage in unreflective nationalism, to see being American as somehow making one a better person than one who happened to be born in another land.

The same can be said with regard to religion, as this morning’s Epistle and Gospel point out. It is one thing to be a faithful Christian; it is quite another to be inordinately proud of one’s own faithfulness. One of the great occupational hazards of being a Christian is self-satisfaction. It is a hazard rife with irony. So many Christians can become so self-satisfied precisely because they are doing what they ought: reading the bible regularly, going to church, evangelizing, helping the poor and needy, &c.

The seventy men whom Jesus sent to evangelize the areas to which he himself would later travel got dangerously close to such pride:

The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name.” And he said to them… “Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

The seventy had most certainly done great things for the sake of the Kingdom, and they were understandably proud of their efforts, and Jesus throws a bit of a damp rag on their pride. It’s as if he’s saying “don’t get too cocky. I’ve given you power, but it’s mine, not yours, and your joy should be based not on your own good works, but on the fact that you are mine.”

St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, puts it even more bluntly: “If anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Indeed, it is ultimately not we ourselves who effect the work of the Gospel, but Christ who is in us. Thus, as Paul says elsewhere, if we boast let it not be of ourselves but of Christ.

But too often we do take great pride in our efforts and merely coat that pride in a patina of false humility. There has always been a danger in the Church of spiritual elitism. That danger may be more evident in other corners of Christianity than our own, where having exactly the right kind of conversion experience or some particular spiritual gift or another can serve to separate the righteous from the reprobate. Even so, we are not immune to such pride. It is easy to get awfully chuffed because we’re especially faithful at prayer, or give sacrificially to the church, or donate our time and talents to some ministry or another. Like I said earlier, the great irony is that pride can rear its ugly head precisely because we’re doing what we ought to do. Thus, it is not actions but a spirit, the spirit of humility, real humility, which separates the saint from the Pharisee.

As difficult as this is, it’s remarkably liberating. We must make every effort to do God’s work, but when we fail not all is lost. When we place our joy and hope upon the foundation of God’s grace rather than our efforts we cannot suffer discouragement for too long when our plans don’t succeed.

Do you ever wonder why, in the first part of Gospel reading, Jesus advises the seventy to shake the dust off their feet if their message is not received someplace? I don’t think it’s to give offense to the rejecters, but to give hope to the rejected. It’s a reminder that failure happens, but that what we do isn’t so terribly important that the Kingdom will fall because we’ve failed. The seventy evangelists were counseled to accept the failure and move on, and that’s good advice for all of us. In fact, some bumps on the road, some times when we ourselves need to shake the dust off our feet, can be quite edifying, not just because we learn from our failures how to do better, but because we learn from our failures that it’s not all about us, and God’s plan will proceed apace regardless. As I’ve said before one of my favorite lines in our current Book of Common Prayer has us thanking God for are “those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on [Him] alone.” Failures save us from the kind of pride that we experience when we look in the mirror and think we see the model of sainthood. Unless we’re delusional, any of us can point to a failure or two or a dozen that have helped keep us from being too haughty. So, don’t be afraid to fail big time. It’ll probably happen in some aspect of your life at some point, and if we’ve not put all our stock in our own inherent saintliness, we’ll be able to survive. We’ll be able to kick the dust off our feet and go to whatever task God has for us next with more humility and grace than before.

+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 of the and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’ve said before that our the requirement in our tradition to stick to assigned readings means that timid preachers must reckon with texts they don’t want to. (And every preacher is wont to be timid from time to time about one issue or another!) Jesus says some pretty disquieting things in the Gospels, but what we read today might strike us as the most troubling. A man who wishes to become a disciple asks “Lord, let me first go and bury my father [and then I will follow].” And how does Jesus respond? “Leave the dead to bury their own dead.” Another wishes only to say goodbye to his family before setting out, and Jesus responds “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.” Jesus seems to be contradicting even his own prophetic heritage- you’ll remember from the Old Testament lesson that Elijah permitted Elisha to literally “put his hand to the plow and look back”, to take his oxen back home and say goodbye to his own family before following the prophet.

How do we deal with this hard teaching of Jesus? I don’t know entirely, and I’m starting to wish that I’d chosen to preach on the Epistle! Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel are shocking. This is the Jesus whom so many equate with “family values”, whatever people who use that phrase mean by it, and Jesus’ words seem diametrically opposed to those values.

I think we do a disservice to Jesus’ teaching if we opt to entirely “spiritualize” it. That’s a trick we’ve probably all seen before. It frequently comes up when a preacher is forced to talk about, Jesus’ teaching about money–namely, his command to give it all away. This is predictable. I knew a psychotherapist once who claimed that all contemporary Western people suffer from five psychological complexes–mother, father, sex, death, and money. It’s unsurprising then that we tend to “soft-pedal” our discussions of these matters. So, regarding money, a preacher will sometimes turn the whole thing into a spiritual exercise, saying “well, you don’t have to give all your money away, just don’t place all your trust in the wealth you have. Be ready to lose it if it comes to that.” Of course, the meaning of Jesus’ teaching in that matter is complicated, but there’s something more to it than how we’re supposed to feel about money. We are supposed to do something.

It’s much the same with regard to Jesus’ teaching about family. He’s not just saying, “be ready to lose your loved ones in the normal course of events (as they die or move away or whatever) without losing your faith.” It’s not an entirely spiritual teaching, even if we wish it were, because the spiritual meaning is so much more comfortable than a meaning with any practical implications.

But, then again, we can’t come to terms with an entirely literal reading of the teaching either. There is a chance that Jesus meant exactly what he literally said, but that would go against the expectation of the rest of scripture and of the Church’s historical teaching, namely that commitment to one’s family is not only “okay”, but is enjoined on us as a holy obligation.

So, it seems to me, there is something more complex in Jesus’ words than either the simple literal meaning or the entirely “spiritualized” meaning.

Perhaps, and this is just a hunch (albeit a hunch with some theological training backing it up), Jesus is warning his interlocutors and all of us–his prospective disciples today–against making excuses in a more general way. Specifically, he may be warning us against making our commitments to family an excuse for not doing his work.

Now, before I seem to say something too scandalous, let me explain what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that there aren’t family obligations which effect how we approach our own ministries in the church and in the wider world. I’m not saying that missing a Sunday from time to time to be with a sick family member is going to get us in trouble. I’m not saying that becoming a little less active in some role or another because you’ve got young children or teenagers is wrong. I’m not saying that family commitments shouldn’t figure in to how we determine what our own ministries in the church or in the world should look like. Family obligations are obligations given to us from God, and fulfilling those obligations is an important way to do God’s work.

What I do think we learn from reflection on the Gospel, though, is that sometimes misunderstanding the nature of those obligations can keep us from doing that to which we are called. In other words, we can convince ourselves that there is a barrier which doesn’t exist between our desire to serve and our ability. For example, I heard a number of anecdotes when I was in seminary from some of my older classmates. They had felt a call to the priesthood for years, but believed it to be absolutely unfeasible because of their children’s need for stability. So, many waited until all the kids were out of the house and in college fifteen or twenty years later and then realized that they could have moved earlier, the kids could have been in a good school and had friends and probably would have loved living in seminary housing.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the case in every family’s situation, but what I’m saying is that we’ve got to prayerfully discern what God may be calling us to rather than dismiss the possibility of some sort of ministry out of hand. We might find that our family obligations preclude volunteering to help with Altar Guild or serve dinner at the City Mission or whatever. Or, we might find that we can fit it in or, better yet, involve our family in it. The point is that individual situations with regard to family or work or any other commitment will open up new avenues for ministry and close others. It’s our responsibility to avoid making excuses and consider how precisely we are able to follow, what that can look like for each of us in the context of his or her own life. Scale back involvement in one area if you need to, ramp it up in others if you’re able. We’ve just got to do the hard work of thinking about it and praying about it first. If we do that, we might be surprised what God can accomplish through us for the sake of the Kingdom.

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

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

I think we forget sometimes just how cruel the ancient world was. Infanticide, often by means of exposure, was a daily reality in antiquity, practiced by parents of unwanted or “imperfect” babies. Bloodsport was a common pastime. Slavery was nearly ubiquitous (it must be noted, our just having celebrated Juneteenth, that modern Europeans perfected the institution of slavery as a means of cruel debasement in the Americas, and it was in many respects far more brutal than the form slavery took in the ancient world, but it was more widespread in antiquity, every major Empire in Europe, Asia, and North Africa practicing it, with the singular exception of the Persians, though even they have an asterisk next to that in the record book of history).

Most shockingly of all, the very concept of qualities like mercy and generosity and loving-kindness beings goods in themselves–not simply means for gaining some advantage–was essentially unheard of before Judaism and organized charitable activity (not philanthropy meant to attach one’s name to a public building or service, but honest-to-God aid to the poor and marginalized) did not exist before the Christian Church.

All of this is to put into context something which might have struck you as odd in today’s Gospel reading. Jesus saves the man from the country of the Gerasenes from demonic possession. We know that this is not a Jewish community, but a pagan, Gentile one, both by virtue of being on the opposite side of the sea of Galilee (a largely culturally Greek region) and because somebody is keeping pigs there, which no Jewish community would have tolerated. Now, by contemporary standards or by ancient Jewish standards we might have expected this miracle to have been greeted with joy and awe by all, except perhaps the swineherd who lost his pigs. But how did the people of this city respond? They were afraid and they asked Jesus to leave.

Here is a naked man who lives in a cemetery. Mark’s version of the story tells us that this man would rant and rave and cut himself with stones. One would think seeing this man come to his senses would be a cause for celebration, but not so in the country of the Gerasenes.

It is hard to say precisely why this would be the case. There are various theories. The one I find most convincing is, believe or not, from somebody with whom I generally vehemently disagree, French philospher and critic René Girard. Like a lot of people who get fixated on a particular idea or theme to the point of trying to explain everything by reference to it, Girard developed a view of anthropology which held scapegoating as the primary mechanism by which human culture is established. This leads to some pretty outrageous claims from a Christian standpoint, particularly as it regards the meaning and purpose of Jesus’ crucifixion.

However, in at least this one instance we see the power of the theory to explain otherwise seemingly-inexplicable behavior. Why on earth would anybody want a person to undergo this horrible experience and be disappointed that he’s been healed? Presumably even the most heartless members of a community would at the very least want to be spared having to look at this horrible scene day after day. Because, sinners that we are, we might sometimes want to have a target for our collective guilt and loathing. Just so might we communally impute our problems onto one unlucky person–he must have sinned that this befell him, his sin is greater than mine, and so he bears my sin, too. Look, we don’t even need to stone this one; he’s doing it to himself.

Think this doesn’t happen today? We have seen all too clearly, all too recently with tragic effect what happens when an individual or a group of people convince themselves that their problems cannot possibly be blamed either on themselves or simple bad luck or even thorny systemic issues with no simple solution, but must, rather be blamed on an individual or a class of people. That person or group over there is entirely to be blamed and must be made to suffer, whether they be schoolchildren or the congregation of a church or synagogue beset by a crazed gunmen or elected officials (as happened in Minnesota last week) or entire sovereign nations. As an aside, considering the anxiety in the world today considering the ongoing fighting in the Middle East and elsewhere and the entry, yesterday, of our own military in the conflict with Iran, I am not going to take a position in the pulpit, not being an expert in global geopolitics. I am aware that some clergy will be leveling judgments one way or another this morning, and I can only assume that they have a perfectly clear view of the ethics of warfare in the current situation (that’s sarcasm), but I do not. I will only bid your prayers for a peaceful and just conclusion and for safety for our own armed forces and for civilians who may be caught up in the conflict. What I can say, I think, is that in the context of this complicated situation, there is certainly scapegoating borne of resentment, which goes both ways just as surely as the bombs.

In all events resentment can become and in many situations historically and today has become the primary mode of interacting with the world until that Other is made to suffer. This has been used by fascist dictators and Marxist revolutionaries alike to create untold suffering. There will never be a shortage of angry young men, and now they’ve all got internet-connected computers in their basements to make the scapegoating more efficient.

Is there good news here? Yes. In fact it is The Good News. Jesus can save us from this cycle of rage and recrimination. When the man formerly possessed of Legion is healed, he is given not only freedom but a job to do–namely telling the people of his own city that there is a better way to live. We don’t know for certain whether or not the Gerasenes eventually accepted this message, but I suspect so, because I suspect Jesus wouldn’t have set the man to this task unless he knew it was going to work.

It can work and it does work and it will work. The catch is that it requires our own conversion, our own turning away (every day, perhaps) from pettiness and the desire to see ourselves as more deserving of God’s love than the person with whom we have the least in common, with whom we are at most enmity. It requires us to recognize that even the one who is most unlovely to us is just as loveable to God. Because in Christ, the one who has the most to need for forgiveness can, when given the gift of grace, is the greatest messenger of the Lord’s universal love. Because the church’s greatest persecutor might well become her greatest Apostle, as of old Saint Paul was made worthy to be. Because in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. For Christ came to save us all, and we must see each and every human heart as a fit place in which the Spirit of God might take up residence, to transform, and to be made and inheritor of the promises of the Gospel and a herald of the same.

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