Sermons

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

Those of you who have been subjected to my sermons over the years know that I have a particular bête noir, namely the myth of human progress that took hold of Protestant theology in the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries. The horror of the First World War forced a reassessment, and a rediscovery of more sober views of Original Sin and the sovereignty of God. Naturally, this wasn’t the first time such a dreadful disaster forced a reëvaluation along these lines. Perhaps less known to us, but which stood until the last century as the definitive disaster to befall the West, was not a war but a natural disaster–namely the Lisbon earthquake, which took place on All Saints’ Day 1755 and which killed tens of thousands in Portugal and Spain and what is today Morocco.

This disaster led to an increased concern with theodicy, the problem of evil, the question (to put it simply) of why bad things happen to good people. I am not accustomed to quoting Voltaire, since I think, his being a Deist, his “answer” to the question is not entirely satisfactory, even if his most famous meditation on the problem, in the novella Candide, is redolent of the answer to be found in Ecclesiastes: best to tend one’s garden, whatever Dr. Pangloss says. In any event, Voltaire’s statement of the problem is compelling, both in the novella and in his poem on the Lisbon disaster, which I’ll not read in full but whose opening lines should suffice to highlight the problem:

Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth!
Affrighted gathering of human kind!
Eternal lingering of useless pain!
Come, ye philosophers, who cry, “All’s well,”
And contemplate this ruin of a world.
Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,
This child and mother heaped in common wreck,
These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts–
A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,
Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,
Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,
In racking torment end their stricken lives.
To those expiring murmurs of distress,
To that appalling spectacle of woe,
Will ye reply: “You do but illustrate
The iron laws that chain the will of God”?
Say ye, o’er that yet quivering mass of flesh:
“God is avenged: the wage of sin is death”?
What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.

The world is an evil place and full of suffering. Voltaire and Job pose the essentially same question, albeit arriving at polar opposite conclusions.

In today’s Gospel Jesus asks the question yet again, and his answer, though not of the warm, fuzzy variety does give us a path forward. Here we have Jesus responding to two tragedies which are otherwise not to be found in the historical record–which I contend is not evidence that they didn’t happen, but rather highlights the fact that in a world full of suffering, the victims of all but the most horrific examples of cruelty are sadly soon forgotten. The eighteen upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell were almost certainly simply bystanders, victims of slapdash construction and “being at the wrong place at the wrong time.” The Galileans slaughtered by Pilate’s men were not only blameless; they were righteous, having been in the midst of offering the appointed sacrifices to God. Jesus’ point is that bad things do happen to good people. There is no neat correlation between faith and prosperity.

Perhaps the Pharisees wanted Jesus to identify some clear reason these victims “should have been punished.” Maybe they were just trying to trip Jesus up. Or maybe they were genuinely struggling with the same question that Job and Voltaire were struggling with, and with which we, too, continue to struggle. We don’t know what the Pharisees’ intentions were. In any event, Jesus didn’t give them the kind of answer they wanted; if we’re honest, he doesn’t give us the answer we want, but he does give us what we need. He doesn’t say “everything happens for a reason”, as if the Gospels were Hallmark Channel movies and Jesus is the charming love interest character. What he says, rather, is “repent.”

Now that seems harsh, but it only is if we have a very narrow view of the nature of repentance, if we think all it is is saying “I’m a rubbish person.” You see, true repentance includes both a turning away and a turning toward. Yes, it includes the recognition of and sorrow for our sins. It also means finding in our God the assurance of forgiveness and a relationship which can lead to growth and abundance. I don’t mean abundance in an earthly sense–whether it be material prosperity or a shield against life’s difficulties. I mean abundance in bearing the fruits of the spirit–love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

I think this is why Jesus immediately follows his rejection of the Pharisees’ desire for an easy answer to the problem of evil with the parable of the fig tree.

You can sometimes tell that I choose the art for the bulletin long before writing my sermon. I think that image, which I chose because it’s interesting, shows Jesus as the vineyard owner and some nondescript guy as the gardener. Now, I think that’s all wrong. I don’t know who the vineyard owner is supposed to represent in the parable. Parables can be tricky that way. Maybe he’s supposed to be God the Father, whose love may take the form of wrath (that’s not the primary mode in which our God “whose property is always to have mercy” operates, but it’s not entirely off the table). Or maybe he’s supposed to be the devil, whose chief delight is in cutting down the child of God, severing that child from the roots of God’s beneficence, before he or she has the chance to bring forth good fruit. So, I don’t know who the vineyard owner is supposed to be. I do know that the gardener is Jesus Christ, whose own good spirit tends and fertilizes and waters our souls that we might flourish.

None of this means that we will be spared hardship. The curse of Original Sin, the fallen state of creation, means that even an old, sturdy tree might fall victim to blight or be torn out by a tornado. But the more firmly rooted we are, the more we allow Christ to tend our souls, the better able we will be to whether the storms of life without losing heart, and the more assured we’ll be that when this life is over there is for us an eternal garden in which every good fruit will be preserved by the spiritual gardener, and where we may commune with him unto the ages of ages.

+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.

In one of my sermon-preparation “rabbit holes” this week, I came upon an article from 2019 about a strange occurrence at an agricultural school in Britanny. A fox snuck into the free-range hen house at dusk as its automatic doors were closing, trapping it inside. One would think that this would be an ideal turn-of-events for the fox, a sort of all-night, all-you-can-eat buffet. Well, that was not to be. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it should suffice to say that the facility’s 3,000 avian inhabitants were fine, and the fox was no more. Perhaps this should serve as a lesson about teamwork. Or maybe there’s something inherently hearty about Breton poultry. “Le coq Gallois” being a national symbol (and redundant in Roman times–gallus gallus) perhaps “les poules Francaises” decided it was time for the ladies to show their mettle. (That was a joke which required knowledge of both French and Latin, for which I apologize.)

I can personally vouch for the qualities of the humble hen. During my previous call Annie and I went on a visit to some parishioners who lived more-or-less off the grid, down a terrifying dirt road in Stone County Arkansas. I had heard it said that going to Stone County was like traveling back to the Stone Age, which was neither entirely fair nor entirely unfair. Anyway, the couple wanted me to come out to meet and say a prayer over a newborn donkey whom they had delivered that morning; I was grateful for the invitation, and all the more grateful not to have been present for the birthing itself. They had quite a menagerie out on their property, I was fascinated by all the types of farm animals I’d never really seen up close, and the couple indulged my city-boy curiosity. We came to an open coop containing a fine looking chicken, and (again, being completely uninitiated in the ways of livestock) I did what anyone would do when encountering a cute, domesticated animal, and reached out to stroke it. Friends, this was not the correct approach. A great clamor arose from Henny Penny, feathers flew and beak sought its target, which I was just quick enough to pull away. While our hosts remained politely silent, Annie quite rightly interjected: “Why did you do that?” My response: “[Shrug]… I dunno.” That was the first and last time I attempted to touch a live chicken.

Despite not knowing anything about the care and nurture of poultry, I should have remembered the image Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel. A mother hen is protective of her brood, as mothers of most of the more advanced species of animals (humans included) are. They know what spells danger ; whether it be a fox in a Breton hen house or a clueless priest.

I believe Christ is communicating at least two things here. First, naturally and explicitly, that the fox, whom he identifies as Herod will succeed in killing him, the mother hen. This is the most basic reading, and it is a prediction which would come to pass very soon after Christ made it. Let’s not get too bogged down in pointing the finger for who historically holds the most culpability–it was not “the Jews” as a people; but the Romans, Herod’s court, and the Jewish temple leadership all had a role to play.

The more interesting thing happening here, and the more apposite for us, is that the risen Lord, now invulnerable to the foxes of the world, protects the baby chicks which are God’s children and Christ’s own sisters and brothers. What I’ve said from this pulpit before about sheep pertains as much to chicks. Humanity may seem a less elegant creation, though this is due to free will and the fall rather than how God made us. The sheep are hard-wired to know and follow the shepherd and the baby chicks are hard-wired to gather under the wings of their mother, while we have the capacity to wander and get lost and fall victim to all sorts of predation. We can be really smart about how to breed livestock and really dumb about doing the very things we’ve bred them to do ourselves. If only we would permit the mother hen, who is Christ, to gather us under his wings we’d be protected from all that assails us. “How often would I have gathered [the] children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings,” laments our Lord, “but ye would not?”

The form of the foxes which seek to devour us–the world, the flesh, and the devil–are manifold. They are social and they are personal. They take forms which those in Jesus day could not have anticipated, through modern commerce and technology and other complex societal factors which would have been foreign to them. But at heart they all prey upon the same human problems that have been with us since the fall–the strong preying upon the weak, charlatans preying upon the lonely and the simple, a selfish disposition preying upon the better angels of our nature, pride convincing us we’ve no need of a savior.

Even the kindest, most loving, most long-suffering human parent might be forgiven in extreme circumstances for cutting us loose. But in the ultimate extremity, the battle against the infernal fox of sin and death, Christ will take us under his wings and protect us. No matter how many times we strike out on our own, he’ll welcome us back to that place of perfect shelter. And he’ll fight fiercely to protect us unto eternity.

I’d like to close with the words of St. Julian of Norwich, who lived as an Anchoress in a cell adjoining the sanctuary wall of her parish church for many years, with one interior window through which she received the Holy Communion and one exterior window through which she dispensed wisdom to those who sought it from her. Having prayed in her cell myself, and seen others praying there, it remains a place of pilgrimage, albeit scandalously often overlooked, to this day. I am personally convinced (though, it not being in scripture, you are not obliged to agree) she was not just some great poet or theological thinker, but was given a series of genuine visions from God, like the prophets of old, between the 8^th and 9^th of May 1373. Among these “shewings”, Dame Julian was given the following insight, which I think neatly sums up this quality of Christ our God:

God chose to be our mother in all things *
and so made the foundation of his work,
most humbly and most pure, in the Virgin’s womb.
God, the perfect wisdom of all, *
arrayed himself in this humble place.
Christ came in our poor flesh *
to share a mother’s care.
Our mothers bear us for pain and for death; *
our true mother, Jesus, bears us for joy and endless life.
Christ carried us within him in love and travail, *
until the full time of his passion.
And when all was completed and he had carried us so for joy, *
still all this could not satisfy the power of his wonderful love.
All that we owe is redeemed in truly loving God, *
for the love of Christ works in us;
Christ is the one whom we love.

+Amen.

+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.