Sept. 25, 2011
Attuning to God
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Since the advent of Netflix, my wife and I have gone through several television series. Right now we’re coming to the end of our obsession with House, M.D. Dr. Gregory House is a compelling character because he is a living contradiction. On the one hand, he is cruelly blunt with patients, he belittles his subordinates, he’s addicted to prescription painkillers, he’s into pornography and hookers, he lies to get his way, and is always skirting the edge of either being arrested or sued. He is a thoroughly despicable person.

On the other hand, he is like a dog on a bone when it comes to healing his patients. He will not rest until he cracks the mystery of their illness. He claims that he is doing this only to solve medical puzzles, not because he actually cares about people. But you suspect that his passion and calling is truly as a healer.

Is he, then, despicable? And which would you rather have as your doctor if you were gravely ill? A mean, immoral atheist like Dr. House, who stays on your case until you get better, or a charming, respectable churchgoer who doesn’t really care? Which one is the sinner, and which is the saint?

These are the questions that both Ezekiel and Jesus are asking in today’s readings. Who is righteous? Who is wicked? How do you tell the difference?

Ezekiel the prophet was addressing people who were pious, law-abiding, and well-respected. They knew who they were – the righteous. They also knew who they weren’t – the wicked, those other people who were out of God’s favor, living on the margins of religion, shamelessly flaunting their godless lifestyle. Their world was divided neatly between the good and the bad.

In our gospel today, Jesus was speaking to a similar crowd – chief priests and elders of the temple. They stood proudly in their own assumed righteousness, in their piety and social standing. They looked down upon Jesus’ association with the wicked and the unclean, and demanded By what authority do you teach and heal, and who gave you this authority? Who do you think you are? You’re not one of the righteous, obviously.

According to people who study human development, this kind of worldview is typical for a fairly low level of maturity. Starting in early adolescence, it is normal to define oneself as part of the right group - to conform to a common way of thinking, dressing, and behaving - and to set oneself against those who are different. It’s a black-and-white world, and such things as inconsistencies or subtleties are rejected as a threat.

But some of us never grow out of this phase. In fact, when I’m feeling pessimistic, it seems as if most of the world is stuck in early adolescence. Those of the opposite political party are dead wrong on every matter; even their motivations are bad. You’ve got those who are saved and those who are damned. There are evildoers and there are champions of liberty. There’s the righteous and there’s the wicked, and never the twain shall meet.

The prophet Ezekiel cut through all this. He would not let people rest comfortably in a dualistic view of themselves and the world around them. He told them that if a so-called righteous person sins, they are a sinner; if a so-called wicked person does what is right, they are righteous. Both are judged according to their ways, not by their supposed religious status.

And Jesus replied to his detractors the same way. He said, in essence, I know who and what you are. Your hearts are far from God. And those you despise, even the tax-collectors and the prostitutes – yes, the wicked – are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. So much for dividing humanity into neat compartments of good and evil.

I am reminded of that wonderful story about Samuel the prophet being told to go to the family of Jesse of Bethlehem, where God’s new king would be revealed. Samuel looks over 7 of Jesse’s sons, all strapping young warrior-types.

But the Lord says to Samuel Do not look on [their] appearance or on the height of [their] stature…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. And the Lord revealed to Samuel that David, the youngest, the smallest, the lowly shepherd, was the one to anoint. Why? Because the Lord looked on David’s heart, and his heart was right with God.

This is what matters. This is why Ezekiel, blowing past all social categorizations of the righteous and the wicked, says to all of them Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. This is why Jesus said You must be born from above. What matters to God is not whether we are a “good” person or a “bad” person, whatever we think that means, but the condition of our heart. Is it attuned to God, or not? Is it fresh, is it newly born?

So how do we find that attunement?

I used to be very disciplined about spiritual practice. I did all the traditional things a spiritual person is supposed to do. But at some point, it was as if the training wheels fell off. What became important then was riding through the day with an open heart and mind, with faith and trust in the Spirit. Look, Ma! No hands!

In some ways this kind of spirituality of attunement is much harder for us, because it requires a moment-by-moment authenticity, a wakefulness, an honesty about where we really are, and an awareness of our need for God.

So when Ezekiel speaks of getting a new heart and a new spirit, I don’t think he means that it is a one-time thing. That’s the fallacy of the born-again Christians. We’re not cut off from God one day and then the next, completely connected for evermore. We have to seek a new heart and a new spirit every moment.

As Paul wrote in our second lesson today, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. In my experience this is a continual process, learning to be attuned to the Spirit, cooperating with grace, becoming freer and more loving over time.

Fortunately, this is not something we have to do all on our own. As Paul goes on to say, For it is God that is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So God plants both the desire for redemption, and the ability to move towards it.

Most of us are neither terrible sinners or angelic saints. I suppose there are those who are truly wicked or truly righteous, but they’re on the far edges of a very large Bell Curve. The rest of us in the middle need to drop those categorizations about ourselves and others, and try to look as the Lord looks: on the heart.

And as we look there, we will see a mixed bag, depending on the day. But we also might see as the Lord sees, which is a heart that is trying to become new, to stay freshly born. As Thomas Merton said in that prayer that is so often quoted -

O Lord, the fact that I think
I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe
that the desire to please you
does, in fact, please you.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire to please you.
And I know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road.

Proper 20, Year A
Jonah 3: 10—4:  11
September 18, 2011

A Question of Kin and Connection:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

You know the story Jonah—Jonah the reluctant prophet who, when asked by God, to go to Ninevah—the capital of wickedness, the center of corruption, the home of the cruelest of all Israel’s enemies—heads straight in the opposite direction.  Jonah who chooses certain death (or so he thinks) in the raging waters of a violent storm.  Jonah, who weathers that storm in the belly of a whale.  Jonah who finally and most reluctantly travels to Ninevah to proclaim an oracle of repentance.  Jonah—a short-winded preacher whose sermon, in Hebrew, amounts to only five words—and in English eight.  Jonah—some say he was a failed prophet for God did not smite those Ninevites.  Some say he was a stunning success.  After all, 120,00 Ninevites and their cattle responded to his short sermon by putting on sackcloth and ashes and changing their ways.  Jonah, the disgruntled prophet who waits and watches on the sidelines hoping for the destruction of Ninevah.  Jonah, the Israelite, so angry at God for saving his enemies the Ninevites that he begs to die not once but twice.  

What kind of story is this—this story of a runaway prophet, this story of an angry prophet, this story of a prophet unlike any other prophet.  Some focus on Jonah of the whale and make it into a children’s story romanticizing that time in the belly of the whale.  There are even those who think that Dr. Seuss was talking about Jonah when he wrote The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

Some see this story of Jonah as a story of repentance—Jonah’s and the Ninevites’.  After all, Jonah does, in the end, go to Ninevah and the Ninevites do repent.   But I’m not so sure about all that.   I don’t hear repentance in Jonah’s words.  I hear anger and resentment and a deep sense that the Ninevites—the other, the enemy—don’t merit God’s compassion.  

So I wonder—what is this story all about?  What is the story the storyteller is telling?

My mom was a storyteller.  Every time she had a point to make about how I should be living my life, she’d pull out a story—the story of the wayward girl, the story of the college drop-out, the story of the long winter and the search for green grass under the snow.  With each of these stories, my mom was making a point about how I should be living or looking at my life.

So I wonder—what is the back story behind the book of Jonah?  What is the teller of this story saying to her people and, by extension, to us?  

This story of Jonah is not history—of that I am sure.  The Book of Jonah was written long after Ninevah had been destroyed.  The story, itself, is something else indeed.  This story was written at a time when Israel was recovering from a horrible defeat and a forced exile, a time of re-grouping, looking inward, focusing on their special status as the children of the Covenant.  This story was told at a time when the Israelites had forgotten that Abraham was to be father of all peoples, that the temple was to be a house of prayer for all nations. This story of Jonah was one told to a people who had even forgotten their obligations to the strangers and aliens who lived among them.  I wonder if this is the story of a question—a question about kin and kindom, a question about what we owe to and what we want for one another.  A story challenging the very notion of limits to connection. A story about limitless connection.  A story and an invitation.  An invitation to care as God cares for even the most ruthless of people.  An invitation to care as God cares for creation itself.


I’m beginning to think that the story of Jonah is really about that open question at the end of the book when God says “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” How does Jonah, how do we, respond to God’s question, God’s invitation?  What do we say ?

What do we say—you  and me and us—us as individuals, us as a faith community, us as members of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, The Episcopal Church, and the worldwide Anglican Communion, us as Americans, us as citizens of the world, us as part of God’s creation.   How do we respond to God’s great compassion?  What do we—what do you and I—do  with that open question God asks?  Do we, like those Ninevites and their cattle, clad ourselves with sackcloth and ashes and turn to God and to connection with all of God’s creation or do we with Jonah of the ship and Jonah of the shrub clad ourselves with the garb of insiders, holding tight to our version of the right, our sense of ourselves as somehow different from and maybe even better than others—different in our capacity to understand complexity, more enlightened, more tolerant, more compassionate, more right.

I don’t think this is a question we answer only once in our lives.  I know that this is a question that confronts me, and I suspect you as well, again and again and again.  The question at it’s base is “Who is kin to me?”  “Who is kin to us?”  and “What does this mean for how we live with one another?”

Sept. 11, 2011
The 10th Anniversary of 9/11
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

10 years ago this day, we were fixed before television sets, unable to comprehend what our eyes were seeing. Low-flying jets roaring down the avenues of Manhattan like avenging demons, exploding into the World Trade Center towers. People jumping to their deaths from unimaginable heights, as those on the ground looked on with horror. The towers crumpling like a stack of cards, as 3,000 office workers, firemen, and police were crushed under tons of debris. Hordes of pedestrians running for their lives from a vast, billowing cloud of smoke.

Last winter, I went to the site. For me, the most powerful experience by far was visiting St. Paul’s Chapel, part of Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall St. St. Paul’s is up a small rise and just a little ways from Ground Zero, but amazingly, it was spared any damage. As the dust cleared after the towers fell, there it stood, its high steeple gazing serenely on that terrible scene below.

Before anyone had a chance to think about the consequences of what they were doing, the Episcopal community there became the center for rescue and recovery workers. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 8 months, countless volunteers ministered to the weary and the traumatized - cooks, massage therapists, clergy, musicians, prayer partners, social workers.

Exhausted recovery workers slept on cots with hand-made quilts and teddy bears made by volunteers. They prayed in the pews and held quiet conversations, doing whatever they had to, to maintain their sanity after digging through rubble for body parts. Today, around the perimeter, there is a permanent exhibit of what took place. The most moving of all are the photographs people left behind, with candles and notes. It is heartbreakingly sad, but it is also a place of resurrection, where we see the transcendent power of human and divine love that triumphs in the midst of evil and death.
This weekend I’ve also been thinking beyond the initial event, about what has taken place over this past decade. There has been much good. As we heard Joseph say to his treacherous brothers in the first lesson today, - Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good. God always brings some good out of evil. That’s the power of the resurrection.
There is a greater awareness of Islam, more books, news, movies, and interfaith activity. Particularly since this year’s revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere, most of us understand that not all Muslims are the same. We have improved our security, as any airline passenger well knows. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are practically powerless. We have a greater appreciation for the great sacrifices that our soldiers and their families make.

But in the past decade, we have also done harm. As all humans do when in mortal danger, we have thrashed around into some pretty dark areas. Because of the evil done to us, we have justified doing evil to others: torture, secret prisons, unspeakable things hidden from public, even Congressional, oversight. And most destructive of all, a devastating war in Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11, but was sold as such.

We must be careful not to become what we hate. As St. Paul said in the second lesson two weeks ago, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Now it’s easy to dismiss this as a naïve sentiment in the dangerous world we live in. And yet this is the gospel we profess to live by: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. This isn’t some abstract ideal. Jesus is actually asking you and me to do good to those who hate us.

In today’s readings, we hear of Joseph forgiving his brothers who had sold him into slavery, taking care of them in a time of famine. In the gospel, a man is chastised for refusing to have mercy on someone who owed him money, after he had been forgiven his own debt. And Jesus tells us to forgive those who sin against us not just 7 times, but 77 times – that is, without ending.

But how do we forgive those religious fanatics of 9/11, caught in the grip of evil, who murdered 3,000 of our fellow citizens? For that matter, should Jews forgive the Nazis? Should Muslims forgive Christians for the Crusades? Are some things unforgiveable? Not according to Jesus.

Some resolve this conflict by saying that faith is entirely about private matters and personal relationships. A different set of rules governs public life. But this isn’t consistent with scripture or church teaching. We are accountable to God’s ways throughout our whole life, not just compartments of it.

Last week I talked about how we might continue to love those from whom we have had to separate ourselves. In this case, I said, love might consist of refusing to imagine them as one bad thing and demonizing them. It would include trying to understand their point of view, especially their pain that causes them to be harmful. It would include looking at our part in things. All of this is very difficult to do, of course. It is a kind of cross, a form of self-denial.

I don’t know about you, but in the past decade I have heard relatively little about trying to understand why so many young Muslims are angry with us. In order to understand them, we would need to look beyond the monstrous actions, beyond their many wrong views. We would need to look to their motivations, to their sense of injustice and pain, to see why they are vulnerable to the magnetic force of evil.

Remember that it was the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that were attacked. These buildings were symbols to the attackers. Is it possible that they have a point, that perhaps global capitalism and American militarism may not always be a good thing for everyone? That perhaps we should be less cocksure of our way of life, and more sensitive to those who don’t want it taking over their world? To even entertain this question is a form of humility and self-denial. Not even our President seems willing to get near this cross.

This kind of reflection doesn’t mean we will end up tolerating violence against us, unless you’re a complete pacifist. But it might mean that we look for ways to overcome evil with good. It might mean that we look for ways to care for people who might otherwise become our enemy.

In the last decade, I have heard relatively little about this, as well. It’s mostly security and tough talk, even among politicians I like. What about a massive global buildup of the Peace Corps, economic development, education, healthcare – aren’t these things more inexpensive than war? Don’t they make friends? Aren’t they forms of love and forgiveness? And in the long run, won’t they overcome evil with good?

This is how I want to honor the dead of 9/11. I want to make sure we create such good will among those who are radically different from us that they will not think of doing such a thing to us, ever again.

And I also want to respond to this dangerous world with something that I have far more control over, my own life. Peace begins in the human heart. If I keep learning to forgive, to understand, and to create good will even toward those who don’t act the same towards me, I will have contributed to peace in this world.

Sept. 4, 2011
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

I don’t know if you’ve been listening to our second readings over the past few weeks, but St. Paul has been giving some beautiful advice to the church in Rome - to all of us, really. True, it is mixed in with his usual obsessions, but there have been some gems. Today Paul says The one who loves another has fulfilled the law. All the commandments are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We know this to be true. We are happiest and we create the most harmony around us when we love. When we love, we do fulfill God’s intention, God’s commandments. Now it’s easy to do this at times. But how do we love a person when we’re in conflict with them? What does love look like then? The other two readings today take us into this difficult territory.

In the gospel, Jesus says that when someone sins against us, the first step is to go to them, face to face, and try to communicate. If we don’t get anywhere, he says, well, then, bring in two or three others, and talk together. Maybe they can help you work it out. If that still doesn’t work, widen the circle, bring in more wisdom.

What Jesus is saying is that we are to do everything possible to reconcile ourselves to another when we’re in conflict. That’s what love looks like. It’s the kind of love that the prophet Ezekiel was asked to demonstrate to the nation of Israel.

God had shown Ezekiel how Israel had parted from God’s ways, and now, having this knowledge, it became Ezekiel’s responsibility to speak to the nation about it. In fact, God tells the prophet that if he does not speak out, if he turns away and pretends he doesn’t see, their blood will be on his hands. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. So God demands Ezekiel’s best effort at affecting reconciliation between God and Israel.

Jesus, too, asks his followers to do the same. If we see sin, if we are divided, he says, don’t turn away and pretend it doesn’t exist. Not to act is to act, to participate in the division. We have a responsibility to affect reconciliation. Talk to the person, bring in others if you need to, but do whatever you can to bring about understanding and a restoration of relationship.

That’s what love looks like in conflict: the persistent effort to reconcile. So this gospel is not, as some would have it, a justification for angrily confronting others with our self-righteousness. It’s about a determined attempt to restore community when it is broken. This kind of love is hard work, even a sacrifice.

John Wesley, the 18th century Anglican whose followers founded the Methodist church, understood how we tend to avoid this sacrifice. He knew that in his own community, behind people’s backs, there were complaints and whispered accusations. He also knew that this first step in reconciliation risks a great deal by speaking directly to the other. But he said Do not avoid it so as to shun the cross.

It is a kind of cross. That’s how it feels, like trudging up Calvary hill, going to talk to the other, risking getting hurt again. So sometimes we take the easy way out, and we know what that is. Instead of first speaking to the other directly, first we pretend it didn’t happen - just let it go, we tell ourselves. Then, of course, we feel awkward when we’re in the same room. And so the second step, instead of bringing others in to help, is to avoid the other entirely. Better to just not talk at all. Finally, instead of openly asking the community for its wisdom and guidance, we whisper, we poison the air around the offender.

Do you see how the two approaches head in directly opposite directions? What Jesus advises is a gathering in, an effort to bring back together in a relationship of mutual understanding. The easy way pushes further and further apart, until there is no relationship at all.

This is how the Anglican writer C.S. Lewis portrays hell in his allegorical book The Great Divorce. Hell is a vast city, but with no one living at the center. Everyone has moved out further and further away, because they can’t stand each other and they prefer to be alone. And he wrote this before suburbia was even invented!

Well, all this talk about reconciliation is good, but what do we do when after all our efforts, it doesn’t seem possible? What does love look like then?

Jesus says<em> If the offender refuses to listen, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector</em>. Now I’ve always heard this as a justification to shun the other. “You know, if you’ve given it your best shot and it doesn’t work, then write off the miserable wretch. Cast him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

But wait a minute. Who were Gentiles and tax collectors to Jesus? He may have recognized them as being outside the norms of community, but they were the very ones Jesus gathered, regardless. Matthew, the author of this gospel, was a tax collector, brought by Jesus into the inner circle, and he wrote down today’s story!

And so it can be, by God’s grace, between us and those to whom we cannot be reconciled. We may have talked to the other face to face, even brought in others to help, but still, we remain miles apart in terms of mutual understanding.

Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, which is to say, recognize that the other is outside the norms of friendship and community. Acknowledge the break that remains. As the old song goes,<em> You can forgive, and you can regret, but you can never, never forget</em>.

But even though you don’t forget, Jesus shows us how to remain in relationship, somehow, if possible. You’ll be a bit guarded, perhaps, but you can be respectful and kind. Do not exclude them from your prayers or your concern; do not poison the air around them. Do not hold on to an exclusively negative judgment about who they are. Even gather them into your circle from time to time. That’s what love, even forgiveness, can look like between those who have never been able to reconcile.

But let’s take it one step further than the gospel went today. What does love look like when the other continues to hurt us, to be unfair? What do we do if they not only refuse to communicate about what is broken between us, but to re-create the brokenness every day?

This is where physical separation is appropriate, even good. The abused wife or daughter must get away. The beleaguered employee should find another job. God does not intend for us to be doormats. That’s not love. But even when we physically separate ourselves from another, there is still something we can do internally to reconcile ourselves to their continuing presence in our memory, in our heart.

Again, the easy thing is to shun, to try to exclude from our thoughts the other who has hurt us. We harden our view of them into one, bad thing, and then try to forget.
But we can never, never forget. Better to invite them into our inner circle, to pray for them, to try to understand our part in things. Better to understand that they would not be so harmful if they were not so wounded themselves, to be humble enough to know that they are a mystery to us. This, too, is a sacrifice, a risk, a kind of cross.

And then we can place them with us in the greatest circle in which we, too, stand - the circle of God’s love for all humankind. Sometimes the only reconciliation that can happen is in God. In God, we are all brothers and sisters in both brokenness and healing. We are no different than anyone else in this regard, even the one with whom we have had to break relationship. And in this great circle, we are always together.