PROPER 11, YEAR A

July 23, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

 

At this time of year, it seems that weeds are a big problem in our gardens, lawns, and flowerbeds. I’m definitely no gardener. So, when I see a flowerbed beginning to choke up with weeds, I resist the temptation to try to do the weeding myself. In my horticultural ignorance I’d probably pull up what look like weeds only to discover later that they were among the most valuable plants in the garden. Better to rely on gardeners who know what they’re doing.

 

The parable in today’s Gospel describes a similar problem. Both Jesus and his listeners know all about weeds. A certain kind of noxious weed, known as tares, has a similar appearance to unripe wheat. And Roman law explicitly listed sowing tares in someone’s wheat field as an act of malice or revenge as a punishable crime.

 

As the householder in the parable tells his servants, however, once the damage is done, it’s futile to try to weed the tares out. It’s virtually impossible to tell the two plants apart in their early stages of growth. Moreover, their roots are intertwined, so you’ll probably pull up a lot of good wheat with the bad weeds. Better to wait until the harvest, when they can be separated, and the ripe wheat gathered into barns, but the tares bundled as fuel for the fire.

 

Of course, Jesus is not just dispensing advice about good farming techniques. He’s talking about the Kingdom of God. He’s teaching his followers how to understand and deal with the evil they encounter in the Church and in the world around them.

 

In one traditional interpretation of this parable, the enemy who sows the weeds is the devil, and the weeds represent those Church members who seem to obstruct and thwart the Christian life to which we’re all called together. The Methodist preacher Will Willimon describes how we perceive these weeds in our midst: 

Weeds are the people who come up with great ideas for programs but never follow through, so we’re scurrying around at the last minute, trying to pull things together. Weeds are the rumormongers who pass along a damaging bit of gossip . . . Weeds are the demanding souls who drain all [a congregation’s] energy . . . and then leave in a huff, saying they want to find a more caring church.

 

No doubt, we could each add our own list of pet complaints about people who keep our life together from being everything that we think God intends it to be. So many noxious growths we’d love to weed out if we had the chance.

 

In the late fourth century, Saint Augustine of Hippo drew on this parable in opposing the heresy known as Donatism. The Donatists were a group in North Africa who wanted to purge the Church of all notorious sinners. Their position was that those who committed serious sins after baptism—particularly the sin of denying Christ in times of persecution—could not be forgiven and should be excommunicated for life. Bishops and clergy who thus proved themselves unworthy should be defrocked and never again allowed to say Mass or administer the Sacraments. 

 

Against this rigorist vision of an exclusive society of saints, Augustine argued that the Church is really a hospital for sinners. The weeds and tares grow together in this world, and it’s not always possible to tell which is which. Appearances can be deceiving. Moreover, unlike weeds and wheat, people change. At the last judgment, those whom we regarded as good and holy people may turn out to have been the worst sinners; and those whom we despised as notorious sinners may turn out to have been the greatest saints. So, we avoid rushing to premature judgment, and leave it to God to sort the wheat from the tares in the end.

 

In the meantime, we live in an imperfect Church, in an imperfect world, full of imperfect people: what Augustine called a mixed field of wheat and tares growing together. In this situation, God calls us simply to be faithful, to grow in grace, and to cultivate several basic dispositions we need to become the people that he calls us to be.

 

The first of these necessary attitudes is patience and tolerance. Many people we encounter from day to day bore us, irritate us, and annoy us—whether by stupidity, insensitivity, rudeness, or a simple lack of consideration. We don’t have a choice about that, but we do have a choice about how to respond. We can either get ourselves all worked up and angry; or we can choose to overlook it, and let it go.

 

The second necessary disposition is the willingness to give the benefit of the doubt. For example, we walk into a room where three or four of our friends are having a conversation, and as soon as they see us, they stop talking. At that point, we can assume the worst: that they’ve been saying bad things about us behind our back. But maybe the truth is that they were planning a surprise birthday party for us. And while it may be just as foolish to get our hopes up by always assuming the best, Christians are nonetheless called to give the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.

 

The third necessary disposition is the most important of all: namely, the willingness to forgive. Sometimes giving the benefit of the doubt turns out to be misplaced because people do hurt us. Yet, the definitive mark of the Christian life is forgiveness: as we say daily in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In any community, it’s inevitable that from time to time some of us are going to hurt one another. We’re all sinners. But a genuinely Christian community is a place where people are learning to forgive. Conversely, the one characteristic habit that’s totally inconsistent with the character of a Christian community is the deliberate nursing of grudges, the willful refusal to forgive.

 

So, in this life we live in a mixed field of wheat and tares: in patience and tolerance; giving the benefit of the doubt when possible; and forgiving when necessary. We thus wait in hope for the final harvest when God will separate the wheat from the tares, and gather the wheat into his barns. And we pray that we may then be found among those who “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

PROPER 10, YEAR A

July 16, 2017

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N.J.

 

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

 

More than forty years ago, I approached the rector of my parish to discuss the possibility of going to seminary and seeking ordination to the priesthood. During the long conversation that followed, I asked what sorts of personal qualities he thought a priest should have. He replied by telling me what the rector who’d sponsored him for ordination had told him. A priest, he said, needs to have a high tolerance for failure. About four out of five things that you try to do in the parish don’t work, at least not as you’d hoped and planned.

 

I found this answer both surprising and unsettling. The priest who gave him that advice was well known for being a competent, methodical, well-organized, and highly effective rector. 

 

Over the years, however, I’ve come to understand something of what he was saying. Parish ministry does bring its share of frustrations and disappointments. In retrospect, though, I do think that he was exaggerating. It’s not really four out of five things that don’t go as planned. It’s maybe more like two out of three.

 

The Parable of the Sower in today’s Gospel calls that long-ago encounter to mind. A sower goes out to sow. But, as the parable explains at length, not all the seed yields grain. Some falls along the path, where it’s eaten by birds; some falls in stony ground, where it can’t take root and is scorched by the sun; some falls among the thorns and is choked by weeds. Obviously that sower must also have a high tolerance for failure.

 

This parable answers an implicit question that must have been on the minds of many among the multitudes that Jesus was addressing. If Jesus is so great, then why aren’t more people following him? The same question may have persisted in slightly different form in the early Church: if Jesus is truly the Messiah of Israel, then why have so many of his own people rejected him? And if he’s truly the Savior of the world, then why do so many of the world’s people refuse to accept him as such?

 

From time to time, we may even be tempted to ask an analogous question in this parish: given all that is so indescribably wonderful here at Christ Church, why aren’t there more people here? But in every generation of the Church’s history, people have asked that question in one form or another. Not: what is it that attracts those who are here, but rather, what is it that makes others stay away?

 

I’m inclined to think that Jesus tells the Parable of the Sower to address precisely this sort of question. The images of the Sower and the Seed bear multiple layers of meaning. At one level, we can think of the Sower as God the Father sending his Son Jesus, the Word Incarnate, into the world. At another level, the Sower is Jesus, proclaiming the Kingdom of God among his people Israel. And at still another level, the Sower is the Church, preaching the Gospel and calling the world to faith in the Lord’s death and Resurrection. In each case, however, not everyone’s able to hear, understand, and respond to the message, just as some types of ground are unable to receive and support grain-producing seed.

 

Yet, the parable assures us, it’s all okay. Never mind the seed that falls along the path, or on the rocky ground, or among the thorns. In the end, what’s important is the seed that falls in the good soil and brings forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. A crucial bit of background for understanding this parable is that a good yield for grain-bearing seed in those days was seven or eightfold. So, our Lord is clearly describing a miraculously abundant crop that more than makes up for all the seed that’s wasted.

 

To put the point another way: in the long run those who hear and receive the Word grow and multiply in amazing numbers. The final success vastly outweighs what seem the present failures. 

 

The parable challenges us to take the Sower as our model and guide. It’s been said that the single most important sentence in this parable is the first one: A sower went out to sow. In other words, the sower doesn’t stay home and keep the Word of God to himself. 

 

Nor does he worry over much about how much seed he’s wasting. He doesn’t try to verify that this or that patch of ground is good soil before he gives it some seed. He just ambles along, slinging the seed hither and yon. Bad agricultural practice, perhaps; but the point is how different the economics of the Kingdom are from the economics of this world.

 

We’re called to share the Gospel in the same way: not worrying unduly about whether our witness is falling on receptive or deaf ears. Instead, we do what we can, and leave the results to God. At times it may seem that our efforts are going to waste. But then some seed falls on good soil in places where we least expect it, and sprouts up to an amazingly abundant harvest.

 

So, the other side of the advice my rector gave me about needing a high tolerance for failure is that sometimes God surprises us with unplanned and totally unexpected successes.

When I was in seminary, on my very last Sunday in the parish to which I was assigned for fieldwork, a young man who’d recently started attending that parish approached me during Coffee Hour and thanked me for something I’d said to him about two months before. Those words, he said, really changed his life. The irony was that I couldn’t even remember the conversation let alone anything I’d said, and I had to ask him to remind me!

 

In the years since, that same pattern has repeated itself over and over again. Particularly in moments when I’m feeling demoralized by some apparent failure, someone thanks me for something I said or did to bring about some major breakthrough in their life—in a way that I least expected and indeed had no idea about at the time. But according to the Parable of the Sower, that’s precisely how the Kingdom of God works.

PROPER 9, YEAR A

Sunday 9 July 2017

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

 

During the past week we celebrated our national Independence. And today’s readings invite us to reflect further on the meaning of freedom.

 

As I mentioned in my sermon on July 4^th, the contemporary world tends to define freedom in negative terms as the absence of external restraints on our thoughts, speech, and behavior: the ability to say and do whatever we want without having to answer to anybody. When I was a teenager, I waged a relentless war of independence against all the adults in my life who wanted to curb my freedom to smoke, drink, go out without saying where I’d be, and stay out as late as I wanted.  This negative drive to free oneself of all accountability is typically adolescent; it gets us into trouble; and sooner or later most of us—most of us—get over it.

 

But freedom also has a positive meaning.  Imagine a young woman who’s known from the fifth or sixth grade that she wants to be a lawyer.  Pursuing her chosen profession entails years of grinding study to get good grades in high school, college, and law school, until she finally passes the bar, lands a job in a law firm, and gets started on her career.  And that’s only the beginning. For her, freedom is the ability to fulfill her calling. But notice that this type of freedom severely restricts her liberty to do whatever she wants whenever she wants. When there’s an important exam in the morning, it’s not a great idea to go out on the town partying the night before. If the opposite of freedom is servitude, then all those years of college and law school are a kind of servitude that leads to a greater freedom.

 

In the Christian understanding, true freedom is the ability to fulfill our calling to know, love, and serve God in this life and enjoy him forever in the next. And what keeps us from this freedom is not so much any earthly king, governor, legislature, or magistrate, as the spiritual force we call sin. 

 

Much of our culture thinks of sin itself as a form of freedom. So many petty rules of morality seem to have no other purpose than preventing us from having fun and being happy. But that’s not what sin means in the biblical worldview. It’s something much deeper and more insidious than just breaking the rules. In today’s epistle, Saint Paul vividly describes sin as a form of spiritual slavery. Its power is such that even though we know and want to do what’s right, we end up doing what we hate. Sin catches us up in patterns of self-destructive behavior, from which, try as we may, we cannot break free by our own efforts. Understood this way, sin is the opposite of freedom. True freedom is first of all freedom from sin: freedom to become fully the people that God created us to be. 

 

In today's Gospel, Jesus says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Here, the word “yoke” refers to a wooden beam placed over the neck of an ox or mule. The harness on the animal is fastened to the yoke, which is in turn connected to a cart or a plow.  So, when you put a yoke on an animal you subject it to your control, and make it work to serve your purposes.

 

In the ancient world, the yoke was also a symbol of political servitude.  Slaves were said to be under the yoke of their masters.  The Jews spoke of themselves as being under the yoke of Roman rule, from which they longed to be free. But in his Letter to the Galatians, Paul writes of slavery to sin as another form of yoke: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

 

In biblical times, moreover, a yoke referred not only to a contraption for harnessing animals, but also to a cross beam laid on the backs of prisoners for a forced march.  So, Jesus took his yoke upon him, when he carried the cross on the road to Calvary.

 

True freedom is costly; it requires sacrifice. But as Christians we believe that our freedom from sin and death has already been won by Christ’s own sacrifice of himself on the cross. And his exhortation to take his yoke upon us is really another form of his invitation to take up our cross and follow him.

 

So, our choice really is between two yokes: the yoke of sin, or the yoke of Christ. Like a yoke, the Christian life subjects our unruly desires and passions to God's will. When we take Christ’s yoke upon ourselves, we renounce our liberty to serve our own pride, greed, luxury, and ambition. Conversely, we oblige ourselves to do whatever God asks of us even when it's the very last thing we feel like doing. 

 

Yet paradoxically, Jesus says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." What can he possibly mean by this? Well, on another occasion he criticizes the scribes and Pharisees, and says that they "make up heavy loads and pile them on the shoulders of others but will not themselves lift a finger to ease the burden."  By contrast, our Lord's yoke is easy and his burden is light—precisely because he shares them with us.  When we take up our cross, Jesus is right there, shouldering it with us. Were he not there, its weight would crush us.

 

The choice between the yoke of sin and the yoke of Christ is not unlike the alcoholic's choice between the yoke of the bottle and the yoke of abstinence. One leads to darkness and destruction, the other to light and life. One leads to slavery, the other to freedom.

 

So, on this weekend after Independence Day, we remember that true freedom consists in knowing, loving, and serving God in this world and enjoying him forever in the next. This freedom cost our Lord nothing less than the cross to liberate us from the power of sin and death. It costs us everything as well when we take up our cross and follow him. Still, he promises us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Only by taking his yoke upon us do we discover and experience for ourselves the service that is perfect freedom.

 

INDEPENDENCE DAY

Tuesday, July 4th, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

 

On Independence Day, we give thanks for the political freedom that we enjoy in this country. But—what is freedom? And what, in particular, does Scripture teach us about the freedom that we celebrate today?

 

A helpful way of approaching the question is by means of a distinction between a negative sense and a positive sense of the word, namely “freedom from,” and “freedom for.”

 

People today mostly use the word in the negative sense: “freedom from.” This means the opposite of bondage, imprisonment, slavery, servitude, or subjection. By this definition, the free person is someone who’s able to do whatever he or she wants to do, without being constrained by external authorities, whether in the form of parents, teachers, bosses, police, or governments. When I was a teenager, I waged my own personal war of independence for more and more freedom from my parents’ restrictions on where I could go and how late I could stay out at night.

 

Many people seem to identify this negative ideal, “freedom from,” as what we celebrate on the Fourth of July: freedom from foreign rule and political oppression. In 1776, the Thirteen Colonies decided that they no longer wanted a Parliament in London telling them what to do, so they declared independence and fought a revolutionary war to win their freedom from British rule.

 

And we can’t read very far in the Bible without encountering a similar theme: God sets his people free from their oppressors. The decisive event in Old Testament history is the Exodus, when God leads the Hebrews out of bondage in Egypt.

 

So, one side of freedom is freedom from having to do what we’re told by those who would take control of our life and make our decisions for us.  The other side, however, is “freedom for.” Once cast off our chains, we inescapably face the question: what have we been freed for? How do we become truly free?

 

The modern world and traditional Christianity give two completely different answers to this question. Modern secularism makes freedom an end in itself. It equates freedom with personal autonomy: the ability to take control of our life, decide our destiny, and pursue self-defined meaning and fulfillment on nobody’s terms but our own.

 

The classical Christian view is very different. Christianity teaches that true freedom consists of the ability to live according to our God-given nature, to achieve God’s purposes for our life, and to become fully the people that God has created us to be. 

 

To return to our Old Testament example, after the Exodus from Egypt, the Children of Israel come to Mount Sinai. At the Red Sea, they’ve received freedom in the negative sense, freedom from servitude and slavery in Egypt. But at Sinai God gives them his Law, the Torah, which bestows freedom in the positive sense, the freedom to fulfill their God-given purpose by living as God’s chosen people and thus becoming his light to the nations.

 

Or, to take an analogy from the natural world, God created fish to swim in the sea. So, a fish is most truly free when it’s able to do just that: swim around unhindered by fishing nets, oil spills, or other obstacles, feeding, breeding, and doing whatever else fish do. 

 

But suppose a fish decides to do something contrary to its nature as a fish: for example, by jumping out of the water and trying to walk around on the land like an amphibian, reptile, or mammal. In the absence of some evolutionary breakthrough making this new action possible, the fish attempting this feat becomes not more but less free. Unless it can get back into the water it will suffocate and die.

 

We human beings are much more complex creatures than fish, but the same principle holds. we’re most truly free when we’re able to live according to our nature and fulfill our God-given purposes. Conversely, when we act contrary to our God-given nature, by disobeying God’s laws, or by pursuing goals that go against God’s will for us, then we become not more but rather less free. And like the fish that jumps out of the water and tries to walk around on the land, we risk destroying ourselves in the process.

 

So, in order to attain true freedom, it’s absolutely crucial to understand what we are by nature, and the purposes for which God has created us. Very briefly, the Christian answer to this question is that by nature we’re made in God’s image; and our purpose is to know, love, and serve God in this life, so that we may enjoy him forever in the next.

 

Both the biblical witness and our experience of being fallen creatures teach us that we simply cannot fulfill this purpose by own efforts, no matter how hard we try. We find ourselves enslaved by innumerable addictions and destructive behavior patterns that rob us of our dignity and freedom. But the good news of the Christian Gospel is that by his death and resurrection Christ sets us free. The cross and empty tomb constitute our declaration of independence from sin and death. Christians are people who’ve discovered the sure path to true freedom in following Jesus Christ as Lord.

 

On this day, then, we celebrate and give thanks for our nation’s declaration of independence from a foreign king and parliament. But, at the same time, we must never declare independence from Jesus! For he’s the true king of the whole universe—the sovereign to whom we owe ultimate and absolute allegiance above all earthly powers. And in his service, we find perfect freedom.

PROPER 8, YEAR A

Sunday 2 July 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

Matthew 10:34-42

 

This past Thursday, June 29th, marked the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles and Martyrs at Rome. And today the appointed Collect and readings are those appointed for "the Sunday closest to June 29." So, it’s not surprising that they emphasize the theme of apostleship. Let’s listen again to today’s Collect:

 

O Almighty God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee …

 

So, on the Sunday closest to the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, we pray that we may find our unity in the apostolic teaching, and so be built into a holy temple acceptable to God.

 

Who or what, then, are the Apostles? The Greek word apostolos comes from the verb apostellō, “to send,” and basically means “one who is sent.” The Apostles are those whom the Lord has sent.

 

The Gospel readings over the past few Sundays have been taken from the discourse in Chapter 10 of Saint Matthew in which Jesus chooses and commissions the Twelve Apostles. It begins with Jesus calling them and giving them authority to cast out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and every infirmity. Then he charges them to travel from town to town and village to village, preaching that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs, and thus relying completely on the hospitality of those to whom they’re sent.

 

As for those who offer such hospitality, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” 

 

The underlying Jewish concept is that of a shaliah (shall-LEE-ach), a Hebrew word meaning legal emissary, representative, or agent. The key characteristic of a shaliah is that of being empowered to speak and act in the name of the sender—so that in interacting with the shaliah one is virtually interacting with the sender himself.

 

Incidentally, the noun shaliah comes from the Hebrew verb shalakh (shall-ACH), to send out. And it just so happens that the standard translation of shalakh in biblical Greek is apostellō, “to send,” and the translation of shaliah is apostolos, or “apostle.”

 

In the New Testament, then, the Apostles are emissaries whom Christ sends out into the world, authorized to speak and act in his name. An Apostle is thus a representative person, one in whom the sender himself is virtually present and active. When we receive the Apostle, we receive Christ himself.

 

This concept grounds the doctrine of apostolic succession. As Christ sent the Apostles into the world, so the Apostles eventually transmitted their responsibility and authority—to preach, to administer the Sacraments, and to govern the Church—to their successors, the bishops. 

 

The key differences between the Apostles and the bishops were, first, that the Apostles were eyewitnesses to Christ’s Resurrection, an irreplaceable office. And second, where the Apostles generally exercised an itinerant ministry, traveling from place to place preaching the Gospel, the bishops generally stayed put as the Church’s leaders in one place.

 

Thus, in each place where the Apostles planted the Church, they consecrated bishops to be their local representatives. And in turn, by means of prayer and the laying-on-of-hands, these original bishops transmitted their office to their successors, and so on, down through the centuries to the present day.

 

Our parish belongs to the Episcopal Church. Sometimes we hear it said that the term “Episcopal” designates a church governed by bishops. But that’s only half true since clergy and laity both participate actively in our church’s governing structures. No, the real claim being made, the real gift being celebrated, is apostolic succession: the presence in our midst of bishops who’ve been consecrated as successors to the Apostles.

 

Just think: When we were confirmed, the bishop laid hands on our heads with prayer for the strengthening of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That sacramental action incorporated us into an unbroken chain going all the way back to Christ’s Apostles themselves. It signified our participation in what the bishop represents: namely, the Church’s unity the world over, and the apostolic faith’s continuity down through the centuries.

 

When I was ordained to the priesthood, thirty years ago now, I knelt before my bishop as he prayed and laid his hands on my head. At that moment I received God’s commission to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments as a priest of the Church. But this commission came not from that particular bishop per se—nor from the local congregation, nor from the Diocese, nor even from the entire Episcopal Church—but ultimately from Christ himself, via that long line of bishops going all the way back to the Apostles.

 

By the Sacrament of Holy Orders, bishops, priests, and deacons become Christ’s public representatives in the Church today. At the risk of oversimplification, Deacons represent Christ the Servant; priests represent Christ the eternal High Priest, and Bishops represent Christ the Chief Shepherd.

 

This is emphatically not to say that ordained ministers are infallible or perfect. On the contrary, we’re all profoundly unworthy of such a high calling. But it is to say that despite our many imperfections and shortcomings, Christ has promised to be present and active in his Church through the ministries of those whom he’s called and sent.

 

Moreover, through the Sacraments of Holy Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist, Christ calls and sends all Christians into the world in his Name. The reason why he calls some of us into Holy Orders is not to give us special privileges, but instead to use us to build up, strengthen, and equip the whole People of God. 

 

So, in a manner corresponding to our many and varied vocations, Christ calls and sends each of us, lay and ordained alike. As the members of the Church, we’re an apostolic people: Christ’s representatives and emissaries in the world. And to each of us alike, Christ addresses his words in today’s Gospel: “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me.”