Author: John Drymon

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

“I entreat Euodia and I entreat Syntyche to agree in the Lord. And I ask you also, true yokefellow, help these women.” We do not know the nature of the disagreement between Euodia and Syntyche, only that it was significant and harmful enough to the church in Philippi that word had reached Paul in prison and he felt the need to address it. It is also likely that the other person Paul mentioned here, Clement, was his deputy, left in charge of the congregation in his absence, that he was unable to effect reconciliation, and that he had to appeal to the bishop, as it were, to straighten the parish out. We don’t know for certain, but I strongly suspect that this is the same Clement who would go on to take up Paul’s letter writing campaign after the apostle’s martyrdom—writing two more epistles to those poorly behaved Corinthians—and who would eventually become Peter’s successor as bishop of Rome. Sometimes church fights are so bad that even a future pope doesn’t know how to sort them out by himself!
But notice how, after addressing the issue (essentially telling these two women to “straighten up and fly right” and calling on the whole community to help), Paul’s tone becomes much gentler. Don’t be anxious. The Lord is near. God’s peace will keep your hearts and minds. Contemplate all that is pure and lovely. The apostle was in the midst of his second long period of imprisonment in Rome, and while he would have a bit more time as a free man before he received his heavenly reward, he never made it back to Philippi. No doubt he longed to, but the nature of his ministry would not allow it. So in an important sense, this was his farewell letter to that congregation. He wanted to give them some parting words which were gentle and hopeful. He would not see them again, yet his heart remained forever connected to this community with whom he had shared the Good News of Christ Jesus and with whom he had shared the burden he had taken on in serving the Gospel.
I can relate to Paul this morning, though that is always a dangerous thing to say for all sorts of reasons! Unlike him, I will not even be able to dispatch an epistle in my absence—both because I don’t have apostolic authority as he did (I’ve always just been a simple country parson, even if I put on airs of some more elevated status sometimes), and because we have this unfortunate but necessary modern invention called “boundaries.” Those are sometimes a necessary evil, as they are for us moving forward from today.
But just as Paul and the Philippians could in the Apostle’s physical absence still maintain the spiritual bond forged as fellow-laborers through prayer and the mystical union effected by the Most Holy Sacrament across time and space, so too will the sacred friendship which we have established together over these last ten years be maintained in that nobler way. And I like to believe that book of life which Paul mentions, our names are written near each others’.
We are all entering a period in which the path ahead is somewhat shrouded. This can lead to anxiety, the antidote to which is greater trust in God’s Providence which cannot disappoint. That’s why I dug out that hymn from The Hymnal, 1940 which we just sang. Also, full disclosure, I chose the hymn because I personally love it. (This is the last time you have to hear me grouse about things that were better about old hymnals and old prayerbooks. You may decide to call a modernist to be your next Rector, so I’ve got to slip it in there! There are some treasures in the old hymnal that should have been carried forward, and “Lead Kindly, Light” is among them.)
Newman wrote those words after struggling with great impatience. He had become ill in Italy and missed his boat back to England. He wanted desperately to get on with his work, and whatever God’s plan was for him, it interfered with Newman’s own plans for himself. Once again, I can relate. Even more dangerous than relating to St. Paul is relating to John Henry Newman, particularly for someone of my churchmanship. (If you know, you know.) But I suspect we can all relate to Newman on this front. And his prayer in those moments must be ours. “Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.” Remember that during the search for my successor here, even as I must remember it in the coming days and months.
God will lead you on, and the plans he has for you in this parish, in this community and the various communities in which you live, in your homes, in your hearts are for joy and peace. Paul said as much to the Philippians in today’s Epistle, and it’s just as true for you. Even amid the encircling gloom, when you feel far from home, he has you by the hand and you need only take the next step.
“Finally, [brothers and sisters] whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things … and the God of peace will be with you.”
+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.


Many of you know that I generally have little time for performative righteousness among the clergy. One of the issues which gets brought up fairly frequently in some circles—though increasingly less these days, for reasons you can imagine—which I’ve tended not to worry terribly much about is the charge of anti-Semitism (or, more properly, anti-Judaism) in the Bible. With the possible exception of the author of Luke and Acts, every person who had a hand in writing the Bible was Jewish. Thus, even when John’s Gospel—the most frequent object of the charges of biblical anti-Semitism—refers to the “bad guys” as “the Jews”, we are seeing an internal division within Judaism between a group of Jewish leaders and a different group of Jews who were thrown out of the synagogue for following Christ.
Despite my initial lack of interest in what I’ve taken to be a manufactured issue, all of this morning’s lessons can be taken in a way which might prove problematic. In the Old Testament lesson from Isaiah, we hear the word of God as given to the prophet which suggests that God has become very angry at His people. Because God looked for justice and righteousness in Israel and found the opposite, he has sworn to tear down the hedge which protects His chosen people from the ungodly who would devour the Promised Land. The psalm adds an apparently later perspective, after the judgment proclaimed in Isaiah had taken place. The psalmist cries out to his Lord in words which seem to charge God with abandonment. While the God of Israel had planted a vineyard, He had indeed torn down its walls. The psalmist casts an accusatory “why?” and in what seems to be a defiant reminder to God of His own responsibility to His own people, the psalmist says:
Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine; *
preserve what your right hand has planted.

The psalm we just heard was not a song of praise but of protest, protest against none other than God Himself!
Shifting to the New Testament, Paul, in his Epistle to the Philippians, reflects on his Jewish bona fides:
[C]ircumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless.

He immediately responds to this by claiming that he counts this rather impressive CV of Jewish piety as loss; he seems to be rejecting his own heritage and its value system. Indeed, he calls it “refuse”- rubbish. The Greek word Paul uses here is, in fact, rather more rude even than “refuse.” I’ll leave it to your imagination, because I don’t want this sermon to get the equivalent of a PG-13 rating.
Finally, Jesus’ parable in Matthew appears to take things a step further. It is no longer an angry God (the landowner) who has despoiled the heritage of Israel, but the Israelites themselves, the evil tenants who killed the landowner’s messengers, the prophets.
The lectionary today has done a very dangerous thing in throwing all four of these reading at us in one day because, to be frank, they’ve made the assumption that the preacher who is given these texts to explain is going to treat them delicately. We might assume that the majority of the clergy are smart enough to avoid the false conclusion these four reading might suggest when taken out of context, but centuries of Christian anti-Semitism stand as evidence against the claim that such an assumption is a safe one. Medieval persecution of Jews which were believed to have poisoned water holes and defrauded debtors were more than occasionally “egged on” by stupid and malicious clergy. A case can be made that there was more compliance than confrontation from the churches when facing the catastrophe which was the holocaust, and much of this might be attributed to the false and offensive belief that the Jews killed Jesus. Even today, there are sadly many who call themselves Christian but engage with offensive conspiracy theories about God’s own people and Jesus’ own religion.
So, how do we marry what I hope is our wholesale rejection of so-called Christian anti-Semitism with an appreciation of this morning’s lessons as being part of the inspired Word of God? I think Jesus’ own words must be our staring point. After he shares the parable, he asked his audience what should be done with the evil tenants, and they respond without charity and apparently (considering the fact that Jesus’ audience was Jewish) with a lack of understanding of the referents of his parable:
They said to him, “[The landowner] will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

Jesus’ Jewish audience gives the argument which an anti-Semite would, because they didn’t understand the parable either.
Jesus immediately recognizes where this is going and he rejects the position:
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:`The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner;this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

Far from rejecting His people, God has come to give them a new and everlasting foundation. There is a great deal that could be said by manner of explicating this, for which there is not nearly time enough in this sermon. For the initial questions which arise from Jesus’ words here, I would, for now, refer you to St. Paul’s argument in the Epistle to the Romans, particularly the eleventh chapter, in which the Apostle states without reservation that God has not by any means rejected His people, and that with regard to election, the faithful Jew (even if he does not recognize Jesus’ status as Messiah) is guaranteed salvation due to God’s irrevocable promise to his forefathers.
The Good News here for Christian or Jew is that God does not engage in breach of contract, as it were. God keeps His promises to Jew and Christian; He’ll never be so short on Grace that he has to cut back benefits or apply a means test, and for this we can be truly and eternally grateful.

+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.

It seems to me that it’s pretty misguided, if not positively dangerous, to base one’s worldview around a cliché. This may strike you as non-controversial, (who would do that?) but let’s consider some examples. “I’ll forgive, but I’ll never forget!” or a second, which is like unto it, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!” I think some people really do live by these aphorisms, which seem more likely to produce resentment than anything approaching actual mercy or forgiveness. Thank God that God does not seem to live by these aphorisms or every one of us would be doomed.
One cliché my father-in-law mentions sometimes that I think he heard from a radio evangelist when he was a kid sounds a little better, but only until you scratch the surface. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything!” Well, sure, it’s important to have convictions (particularly as it pertains to Christian doctrine), but taken to an extreme and applied to every possible controversial topic this leads inevitably to rigidity and an inability to grow in one’s understanding of the world.
And, one more bad aphorism: I hope I need not belabor the point that “God helps those who help themselves” is not in the bible. Neither is it borne out in reality for countless folks who seem to persistently strive for success but just can’t seem to get there, whether out of some personal problem or as a result of being born with the deck stacked against them. Worse, at least as far as I’m concerned, is this particular adage implies a sort of Pelagianism, or “works righteousness”, which can lead us to believe in a God who will only love us and show us mercy if we work hard enough for it.
For what it’s worth, we 21st Century Western Christians are not the first people ever to be in danger of adopting the religious ideology of a hallmark card or motivational poster. It seems the exiled Jews of the Sixth Century B.C. were prone to the same problem of taking folk wisdom clichés and turning them into an all-encompassing worldview. “What do you mean,” the Lord said to Ezekiel, “by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, “the Fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge?” In other words “why do you keep saying, the parents’ sins will be visited on their children?”
Now the question about whether or not this is how God operates is found throughout scripture, and the biblical witness is complicated. Some would disagree with me here, but I don’t think scripture is actually self-contradictory on this issue, but there is a tension in the text that would take more time to tease out than we have today. It should suffice to say that while there is good evidence, particularly in the deuteronomistic books of the Old Testament, to believe that the results of wickedness in one generation can certainly negatively affect future generations, the overwhelming message found in both the Old and New Testaments is that God does not directly punish people for sins their ancestors committed.
So there is a distinction here between the generational effects of sin and what God does as judge and avenger. Apparently Ezekiel’s people, however, were not so keen on clarifying this distinction, instead assuming a pithy adage from Poor Richard’s Babylonian Almanack as sufficient basis for a coherent theology.
It’s a shame our Old Testament lesson skipped 21 verses, because those verses make the point even more explicit. If somebody is an idolater or an adulterer or a robber or commits usury or sheds blood, that person is in trouble. But that person’s parents and children are not. God may punish the wicked, but he doesn’t take it out on their families. End of story.
You’d think the response to the clarification by the Lord through the prophet Ezekiel would elicit some gratitude and relief. But how does the house of Israel respond? “That’s not fair!”
This is such a human response. Last week we saw the flip side of this coin, as it were, with the laborers in the vineyard who wanted to be rewarded for their hard work more than the people who didn’t do as much, even if we got ours. Just as it is with reward, so it is with retribution. “Sure, I’ll take my lumps so long as the other guy, the one who did me wrong, really gets it… and his family, too.”
We can understand where this impulse is coming from; Ezekiel’s audience was suffering; they were in exile in Babylon. They wanted to see God’s vengeance. I am reminded of just how powerfully they felt this on the 28th day of every month in the psalms appointed for Evening Prayer. So, tomorrow evening, I will, with great discomfort, recite once again for about the 300th time since I started praying the daily office in earnest about twenty-five years ago, “Happy shall he be who takes your [Babylonian babies], and dashes them against the rock!” This is not a godly sentiment; that’s not why it’s in scripture (and it is scripture; we don’t get to pick and choose). It’s not normative, but it gives us a powerful sense of how exactly God’s people felt when they were in Babylon.
Ezekiel is calling his people, and, indeed, he is calling us to a better way. On the one hand he is just stating a fact about God’s justice, which is not ours, but he’s also speaking a word to us, to convict us of our anger and hatred and desire to see retribution done against those who may not even be personally responsible for some harm done to us. God alone is judge of both hearts and actions, and he judges us as individual moral and spiritual agents, not as representatives of some clan or class of people.
Now this last statement is controversial. It cuts against a particular orthodoxy embraced by both fundamentalists and religious liberals and by both the left and the right in the political sphere. It is essentially the same lie, though of course neither “side” would much appreciate being compared to the other, and it is especially difficult because like all good lies there is enough truth in it to be believable. All the problems of the world are caused either by some evil or communal guilt borne by “that group over there” which is an inherently sick class of people or all the problems of the world are caused by our privileged group which is inherently sick and collectively guilty. Both of these responses is present at both ends of political and religious spectrums, depending on the issue in question. So, your two choices are victim blaming or performative, self-indulgent confession. Pick your poison.
None of this is to suggest that one ought not be aware of how one might have benefited from the sins of one’s ancestors or attempt to make some restitution based on that reality. That is another issue entirely, worthy of careful consideration, and moral theologians shouldn’t cede that issue to secular activists and technocrats. It is worth addressing as the church. It is to say, however, that each of us inherits precisely the same guilt as everyone else, Adam’s sin, and we needn’t start some complicated accounting to see if you were born more guilty than I based on what your great-grandparents might have done versus what mine did. We are all equally stained by original sin, and some complicated accounting of past transgressions doesn’t change that. Indeed, this only leads to an endless, generational cycle of blame and violence. If we start down that dark path, we get the Hatfields and McCoys or the Greek and Turkish Cypriots or the Hutus and Tutsis.
It is significant, I believe, that the same prophet who spoke God’s word in today’s Old Testament reading, later mediated God’s word which provides the solution to this horrible cycle of blame and shame and unending violence. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” May God be swift to remove that stony heart from our breasts, the heart which delights in enmity and rage and retribution, and implant within us the heart of flesh, that we may be merciful and kind, slow to anger and quick to forgive. Just as God’s wrath is slow to rise and ready to abate, may we in our efforts to become more Christlike have the same spirit, for the sake of our souls and for the sake of the world.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.