Sermons

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

The nature of marriage (on which this week’s Old Testament lesson and Gospel focus) serves as an important model for all Christians, whether married or single. In fact, the shape which the scripture says God intends for marriage is not only a model, but it is a sign and symbol of God’s grace. That is to say that the grace of marriage is a visible, tangible expression of God’s grace for all people.

We learn from the Old Testament reading that the bond of marriage actually goes beyond a relationship of mutual responsibility and interdependence. These may be the fruits of a good marriage, but the essential bond between a couple committed to a lifelong relationship is something even more profound. “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” This language indicates something even more profound than mutual support and love. It suggests a total recasting of identity. Marriage is not something two people share as if it were a possession; it is a sacrament possessed by God himself which profoundly transforms those who enter into it, such that on some level they become a new creation, a different person, “one flesh”.

Then we learn in the Gospel that on some level, marriage is indissoluble. Here it gets very touchy. I mentioned a few weeks ago that the lectionary gives us texts we might not choose to think about or preach on, and Jesus’ discussion of divorce, considering the reality of marriage in our society and even among our number, is perhaps more frightening for me to preach about than any other issue. I have a friend who has been a priest for decades who once told me “maybe you should just avoid talking about three things from the pulpit- divorce, abortion, and gay marriage. As tempting as that might be, it seems irresponsible considering the lessons we heard this morning. To ignore the Gospel because of its difficult would show a tremendous amount of cowardice, and it wouldn’t be fair to any of you to just leave it hanging there because of my own trepidation. So, here goes…

“They are no longer two, but one flesh,” Jesus says. “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Actually, our contemporary translation misses the point a bit in its attempt to use inclusive language, because the older translations make it clear that the distinction is between God’s actions and human interference: “what God hath put together, let no man put asunder.” Underneath this is the implication that a human attempt to break apart a divine institution is doomed to failure.

Certainly this is a point on which we might find some conflict between Jesus’ own expectations and our experience in the world of sinful people and dreadful realities. There are certainly situations in which one party seems to be more-or-less blameless in divorcing his or her spouse, and for which a faithful analysis of the teaching of scripture says as much, such as certain situations when there is infidelity or abuse.

But in many cases, because of original sin, it seems that we are forced to choose between two less-than-ideal choices: remain in a marriage which is unhealthy and shows no hope of attaining health, potentially bringing harm to the couple and their children, or else dissolve something that God sacramentally established. It’s a catch-22. That’s what original sin does; it forces us to live in a world of moral ambiguity. Jesus said “be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect,” but the reality is that we’ll not get to that point in this life.

So the response to this terrible reality must be one of humility. Just as in so many other difficult choices wrought with moral ambiguity, we must approach God, offer the seemingly impossible situation up to God, choose and act, and then ask forgiveness in case we’ve chosen and acted wrongly. And then we move on, not flagellating ourselves, but confident that if forgiveness were needed it was granted.

In all events, we learn from today’s lessons that marriage is, at its core, an indissoluble transformation of identity. This is why (and here is the Good News for everyone, whatever his or her marital status) the relationship between Christ and the Church finds marriage as its chief metaphor. Christ’s marriage to the Church is indissoluble because of the eternal nature of Christ’s one sacrifice on the Cross, and a motley agglomeration of men and women have been transformed such that they have become the very body of Christ. Just as the husband and wife become one flesh, so have Christ and his Church.

And it is not only the church catholic which is transformed in her marriage to Christ, but each of her individual members. By virtue of each Christian’s baptism, he or she is given an eternal, indissoluble link with the Savior, a bond which transforms each of us into something he or she was not before. As St. Paul wrote in his second epistle to the Corinthians, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” Surely the soul’s bond with Christ is something like marriage, for the Old Testament prophets spoke of idolatry as either adultery or prostitution, and that beautiful biblical book of poems attributed to Solomon, the Song of Songs, depicts the life of faith as a love affair with God.

This is why the mystics spoke so much about spiritual marriage. St. Teresa of Avila said that Christ marries our souls, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, my favorite figure from church history as some of you know, referred to the human soul as “the Bride of the Word”. As strange as it sounds this is a truth in which we can take great comfort. Our souls have a spouse whose very nature is defined by fidelity and unconditional love. We have a partner who cannot but remain faithful despite the devices of our wandering hearts, who cannot but love us in spite of how unlovely we may sometimes think ourselves to be.

This is a great comfort, but it is also a tremendous responsibility. Our relationship with Christ is a primary relationship, just like a relationship to a spouse. In our Baptisms we, or those presenting us when we were infants, made promises just as profound as wedding vows, and in our Confirmations we have reaffirmed those vows, making a mature promise to live by them. We have promised not only an abiding belief in the truths of the Apostle’s Creed, but in the actions which flow from those truths: continuing in prayer and fellowship, perseverance in resisting evil, proclaiming the Gospel in word and example, and serving others in the name of Christ to name but a few.

After church, I would propose that you go back and look at your prayerbooks at the order for Holy Baptism, starting at page 299, and at the order for Confirmation on page 413. Find there your vows. They present a tall order, as it were, and all of us have at some point or another fallen short. But thanks be to God that every time we stumble, the Lord remains faithful, providing forgiveness to the soul he has taken has his spouse, and giving each of us opportunity to hold up our end of the relationship.

+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.

A week ago was the ninth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood, and I was reminded of a moment during the liturgy that some of you know about. After the oath that I believed the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Scriptures to contain all things necessary to salvation (the one uniquely Anglican theological oath a priest-to-be has been require to make consistently throughout the last half-millennium) and the promise to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church and to obey the bishop, the ordinand is supposed to sign a physical copy of that declaration. I believe obedience to just authority is a most important thing in the church, so it was not my scruples but my nerves which made me accidentally sign not in the space reserved for my own signature, but in that reserved for the bishop’s.

Of course, the Declaration of Conformity got signed properly later, everything’s legal, I assure you, and it was not the my taking that oath (as critical as it was and is), but the bishop’s prayer and the laying on of his hands that made me a priest. But in today’s Old Testament lesson and today’s Gospel we hear of some prophets who failed to do anything like attempt to sign a declaration to make things official, and they certainly didn’t have a bishop lay on hands.
First, in the passage from Numbers we learnt of Moses being overwhelmed by the demands set on him as God’s vicar, His agent, among the children of Israel. So, God had him appoint seventy men and He put some of the spirit that rested on Abraham and placed it upon those seventy, that they might share in the administration of His people. This is a foreshadowing of the priesthood which was to develop in the early church.

A bit of history: while at first there were only Apostles and those who came to replace them, known as bishops, there came a time in which the Christian population grew so large that they could not do all the work of the Church. So, they let some of the spirit given to them—the Grace of their ministry—rest upon qualified, designated people who came to be known as presbyters, elders, or priests.

Anyway, Moses ordained those seventy men to help him in carrying out God’s work. But then, as we heard, there were two elders of the tribe, called Eldad and Medad, who began prophesying in the camp. They were not present for the solemn ordination liturgy that day in the desert, and yet they showed signs of the same Spirit, the same Grace, which rested upon the other seventy. This made Joshua most upset. “My Lord Moses, stop them!” he exclaimed. They had not been ordained properly! They had not signed a declaration of conformity! And yet, they were obviously given gifts to do God’s work among the people. Thus, Moses rebuffed Joshua; “Are you jealous for my sake?” he asked. “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them.”
Perhaps Joshua had fallen victim to a certain kind of elitism, what today we would call clericalism, which holds that only those properly vetted and duly ordained can possibly be leaders of God’s people. Perhaps it was also a bit of legalism, an obsession with policy and procedure which can at times frustrate the actions of the Holy Ghost. Probably it was a little of both, and thank God Moses’ response was clear. He might as well have said, “Get over it! Your high view of your own position and your obsession with rules cannot stand in the way of God’s will.”

Jesus’ response to the apostles was very much the same. The apostles didn’t much care for this other chap who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name but who lacked the proper credentials to do so. Jesus’ response was much like Moses’ response: “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.” Perhaps the disciples also had fallen victim to that elitism, which today we would call clericalism. Perhaps it was also a bit of legalism. Probably it was a little of both. And one way of interpreting Jesus’ rebuke of the apostles is the same as how we might interpret Moses’ rebuke of Joshua: “Get over it! Your high view of your own position and your obsession with rules cannot stand in the way of God’s will.”

The message I get from these texts is that clericalism is deadly and an inordinate reliance on rules is deadly. This isn’t to say we ought not to have a high view of the priesthood. It is a gift from God to the Church. This is not to say that rules about how the life of the Church proceeds are all meant to be broken. There are certain Sacramental functions and certain areas of Church leadership in which only a priest is permitted to function for very good reasons. However, this text is a warning to me, lest I become so enamored with clerical authority that I withhold the privilege to serve and to lead from all of you, by either being an autocrat or by just doing all the work because I think I’m the only one who knows how to do it the right way. This last is a particularly difficult lesson for me, but I’m always trying to get better at it. These texts should also send a message to all of you. I think the message is something like: “Don’t get complacent!”

Certainly, you can be happy, if you wish to be, that you have a priest here to do the priestly work of preaching and teaching and dispensing the sacraments and providing pastoral care and leading this parish. On Thursday I had my monthly lunch with other clergy from around the deanery, a number of whom are Interim-Rectors or supply clergy, who shared with me the difficulty their parishes were having due to going a year or two without permanent, instituted clergy leadership. That, I’ve gathered, was a frustration here for you, too, before I came here two-and-a-half years ago. In all events, you’ve got what amounts to tenured clergy leadership (and I hope not too much buyer’s remorse), but, don’t let that or me withhold from you the ability to serve and to lead in ways which are meaningful to you. If I do put the kibosh on such service and leadership I’d better have good reason, and if not, you should call me out on it, just like Moses did to Joshua and Jesus did to his apostles. I promise I won’t bite, because I recognize how much this church means to so many of you. It means so much to me, and I’ve not been here as long as many. I realize how dangerous it is to preach a sermon like this, but take it at face value, because I really believe that any one of you might be an Eldad or a Medad, like we met in today’s Old Testmant, or an unlicensed exorcist, like we met in today’s Gospel. Step up and look around. There’s plenty of work to do.

+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.

Those who are somewhat aesthetically inclined will probably have experienced something I have over the years. One can take a text which rubs one the wrong way and have it sung to a beautiful setting, and the text doesn’t seem so bad. It especially helps if it’s sung in another language, but even that is not particularly necessary.
One of those texts, which I encountered in school (and I apologize if this is seen as heresy by the schoolteachers in the congregation) is Pilgrim’s Progress. I hated it. It could have been John Bunyan’s puritanical beliefs conflicting with my own burgeoning high-churchmanship, or it could have been my adolescent grandiosity which held that straight allegory was just lazy writing. Anyway, I didn’t like it until I heard Ralph Vaughan Williams’ opera based on the text.

And the text actually does make a good point. Life, Bunyan said, is a pilgrimage, a journey toward our eternal reward, and it is beset by dangers and distractions. The life of faith is a life of resolve. One must remain steadfast to get past the pitfalls which are set before us by the machinations of evil forces. That is real pilgrimage. Going to Jerusalem or Rome or to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in England (a trip I plan to make next summer) are good exercises. But the real pilgrimage is that of life, and it’s not as easy as getting your visas and jumping on an airplane. As Bunyan wrote, or actually as the hymnwriter Percy Dearmer paraphrased Bunyan, “He who would valiant be ‘gainst all disaster, let him in constancy follow the Master. There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent his first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.” There are many dangers along the way, but the pilgrim approaches them with the boldness that comes from a living faith.

The prophet Jeremiah found out the hard way. In this morning’s Old Testament lesson he wrote, “I did not know that it was against me that they devised schemes, saying, ‘let us destroy the tree with its fruit. Let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will no longer be remembered!’” That the way of faithfulness, the good pilgrimage, made one to be at odds with the world was a hard lesson for Jeremiah, and yet in the end he had faith that God would pave the way for his progress. He realized that it was no one but the God of Israel who judged righteously, who tried hearts and minds and brought about justice.

Likewise, the psalmist knew that only God could deliver him from the scorn of his enemies. In one breath he laments “The arrogant have risen up against me, and the ruthless have sought my life; those who have no regard for God.” But in the next breath he proclaims “Behold, God is my helper, it is the Lord who sustains my life.”
It is, I am humbled to admit, John Bunyan, who got it right, too. “Who so beset him round with dismal stories, do but themselves confound, his strength the more is. No foes shall stay his might, though he with giants fight; he will make good his right to be a pilgrim.”

Even more, however, than the flesh and blood enemies of whom Jeremiah and the psalmist wrote, the devices and desires of our own hearts can serve as the chief enemies which confound our progress as pilgrims. And perhaps chief among these obstacles is the sin of vanity. In Pilgrim’s Progress, the pilgrim, named Christian, faces perhaps his most difficult test at Vanity Fair, where he and his traveling companion, Faithful, are put on trial, accused by characters like Lord Hate-good, Envy, Superstition, and Pick-thank. If all this sounds weird, try reading the whole book.

It is a Vanity Fair of sorts which serves as the obstacle to the Apostles in today’s Gospel:
Then they came to Capernaum; [it says] and when [Jesus] was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.

Jesus, of course, knew the answer before he asked the question, and so he revealed that great paradox which is at the heart of the Christian life “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

How counter-intuitive this truth is in our day and age. If you watch much television, and watch all the reality shows found thereon, you’ll know that fame and self-promotion are now, as ever, very prevalent objects of desire. Now I don’t begrudge the fame of the American Idol or the Survivor or whoever is reckoned worthy of dating the Bachelor, and I don’t even know for sure that everyone appearing on such programs is self-absorbed. I don’t even begrudge people who enjoy watching such things; I might feel the temptation do so if we had television in the Rectory, so thank God we don’t. However, I wonder if these things are a symptom of a culture too much in the grip of vanity.

So how may one avoid this pitfall on the pilgrim’s road? How do we combat the inordinate desire for greatness and recognition which militate against our progress? I wish I knew the answer to that question better than I do. I have, however, been fortunate enough to begin to answer it for myself, not because I’m especially humble and not because I’m an especially good servant, but because I’m in a position to see some good examples. Since I sort of know what happens around the parish, I’m lucky enough to see some of the hard work that people here do with no apparent desire for recognition or reward. I know that many do the same kind of work in the community or at their workplace or in their homes. I shall not name names, because said servants might be embarrassed to be called out, precisely because they have no desire to be seen as the greatest. I’d say they know who they are, but many probably don’t because they’re not concerned about sizing themselves up against their fellows. I want to be more like those people. As much as I kinda don’t like John Bunyan, I want, to say along with him “Since, Lord, thou dost defend us with thy Spirit, we know we at the end shall life inherit. Then fancies flee away; I’ll fear not what men say, I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.”

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