A Moment of Clarity

Last Sunday of Epiphany (Year B)
12 February 2012; 8 am Spoken Mass; 10 am Sung Mass

Transfiguration Sunday
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.  As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. (Mark 9:2-9)

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.

 Here in Ashland, we have great light.  After a day of working on this homily on Monday, I found myself driving with Elena over to the Y for an evening workout.  As we came across Ashland Street, we looked up to the East.  The late afternoon sun fell on Grizzlie Peak, wrapped in fog, appearing to us as fluffy white clouds hugging the cedars and ridges. Lit by the light reflected back up from the snow on the ground up there, the clouds suddenly glowed brightly, even brilliantly, as if hiding a great light up on the Mountain.  The magical moment gave me a very vivid visual image in my mind to work with as I struggled with this text on the transfiguration of Christ up on Mount Tabor.

All of today’s readings are about light or sight:  Elisha must see Elijah taken up into heaven in order to have a double dose of his spirit, Paul in 2 Corinthians says that “the god of this world” has blinded “the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light,” while God has given to believers “the knowledge of the brightness of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus takes Peter, James and John up to the mountain, where they see Christ change shapes (“metamorphosed”), burst into brilliant light, and then appear alongside Moses and Elijah.

What Paul calls the “brightness of God in the face of Jesus” is what the story of the Transfiguration is about:  the steady, unchanging sum of brightness around the Deity.  Jesus’ transfiguration is a brief glimpse of the true state of affairs, normally hidden from our sight.

Transfiguration Sunday ends the season of Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.  In a very real way, the scene here is what we call in popular parlance an epiphany, a moment of clarity when all of a sudden we see things as they really are.

We all have seen such a moment of clarity, both good and bad.  It is when you realize you have found the love of your life.  It is when a person in discernment comes to know what it is that God is calling them to.  It is when you suddenly are sure what your passion in life or work is.  It is what makes a destructive drunk “hit bottom” and begin to reach out for help.  It is when you realize you are in a destructive relationship and need to break it off.  It is when a diagnostician suddenly puts together all the symptoms, pathology, and life details of the patient and intuitively knows what disease she is dealing with.  It is when a scientist suddenly recognizes the pattern and comes up with a new hypothesis or theory.  It is when, of a sudden, we know that we love and trust God.

But this epiphany to Peter and his companions stretches his mind a bit beyond what it is ready to receive.  His reaction to this revelation of Jesus’ true glory shows he has misunderstood.  Seeing the two great icons of the Jewish tradition before him alongside Jesus—Moses for the Law and Elijah for the Prophets, he calls Jesus “Rabbi” and says it is a good thing that these figures have come to endorse the authority of Jesus.  He suggests that he build three Succoth—temporary shelters—in their honor.

Succoth (tabernacles, or booths) were set up for the duration of the major harvest festival.  They stood for the tents of Israel during the 40 years of wandering in the desert while being fed on the Mannah, the bread from Heaven, and symbolized human reliance on God, an appropriate sentiment for a harvest festival.

The prophet Zechariah had said that when the Messiah came, all the nations of the earth would go in pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the Succoth Festival and build such Booths as commanded by Moses.  God would punish any nation not doing by withholding the rain and sending drought, the punishment that Elijah had famously brought on King Ahab for three years (Zech 14:16-18; Exod 23:16; 34:22; 2 Kings 17).

Seeing Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Peter wants to build small shrines commemorating the event that showed that Jesus was yet another great figure in the history of the religion of the Jews, perhaps even the Messiah who would force all Gentiles to become Jews by invoking Elijah’s curse of drought.  But the narrator comments, “He didn’t know what he was saying. He was scared witless, after all.”
The glory of God reflecting in the face of Jesus is a revolutionary fact:  it challenges Peter’s assumptions.  He is confuses things, and thinks somehow that Jesus is getting his authority or endorsement from the appearance of the ancient prophets.

But God intervenes and sets things straight.  A light-filled cloud appears and covers everything. A voice identifies Jesus as the first thing, the real item. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to what he says!’   The cloud disappears, and all that remains is Jesus himself.  Moses and Elijah are not longer around.

The transfiguration is a moment of sudden clarity for the disciples that they don’t fully “get” until after the resurrection: that the “glory of God is shining in the face of Jesus,” that, in the words of John’s Gospel, “Whoever has seen [Jesus] has seen the Father.”

Just before the verses we read today in 2 Corinthians, St. Paul says that Christ is the image of God, and that we all, beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ, “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18).
How is it that we can “gaze upon the glory” of our Lord?   How can we “listen to what he says” rather than build tents on the hillside, memorials to our own prior conceptions?

It is important to reflect on our Lord and Savior often and regularly.  That is why daily prayer and scripture reading is an essential part of any Christian’s effective spiritual discipline.  Regular Church attendance helps, but in gazing upon the Lord’s glory, we must be the Church, not simply attend Church.  It is not just a passive act of admiration.  Following Jesus in doing corporeal acts of mercy, in serving our fellows, in standing with the outcast, the downtrodden, and the sick–these give us an experience of who Jesus is and what he does.

Given the stresses of life, it is easy to lose heart.  It is easy to believe that people cannot change.  But the miracle and mystery of our faith is this—we canchange because God can change us.  In the Apostles’ Creed we affirm that we believe in “the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”  This makes no sense at all if you don’t believe that God is at work transforming us, and thatwe shall be changed.

Just as God sent that shining cloud to drive away Peter’s silly preconceptions and plans, God works with us as we look into the glorious face of Jesus and try to hear his voice.

The faith that we are being changed from one glory to another in the direction of the image of Jesus is reflected in the classic line from African-American preaching quoted often by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Lord, I know I ain’t what I outta be.  And I know I ain’t what I’m gonna be.  But thank God Almighty, I ain’t what I was!”

Such change is sometimes hard, so hard that at times we do not know whether we will be able to bear it.  At other times it is seems easy as taking off a heavy winter coat in the summer heat.

When Paul says this turns us into “the image of Christ” he is not saying it removes our individuality.  What he describes is a transformation into our true selves, the individual people God intended when He created each of us, with all that makes us who we are, but absent the brokenness that we so often mistake for what makes us who we are.

One of the greatest foundation stones of my personal faith is the experience of seeing transformed brothers and sisters around us, and seeing ourselves over the years as God works with us and changes us.  It doesn’t mean we are perfect, only that God is making progress in finishing his creation in us.

Charles Wesley in one of his hymns summed it up this way–

Finish then, thy new creation,
Pure and spotless let us be;
Let us see they great salvation perfectly restored in Thee:
Changed from glory into glory,
‘Till in heaven we take our place.
‘Till we cast our crowns before thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

It is not just in heaven when all of God’s creation is done that this happens.  As we are transformed here and now, quickly or slowly, it makes us look around us in amazement of these tokens of God’s love and then gaze all the more, “lost in wonder, love, and praise,” on the author and pioneer of it all.

As we look upon Christ’s glory, may God so work with us all and change us.

In the name of Christ, Amen.

Forum Februry 19  Fr. Tony will lead a study and discussion on Confession and Reconciliation.  Come and learn or re-learn the grace of this oft overlooked sacrament.

Freedom Sunday, February 26: Trinity is part of over 4000 churches worldwide who will address the issue of human trafficking next Sunday. This is an issue in our area: girls are recruited into prostitution from high schools, immigrants who are enslaved by those who brought them to the US may work in our community, and we buy things that were made by enslaved workers. Chief Mike Moran from Talent will describe the current situation in the Rogue Valley and what we as a community can do about it. Please join us at 9:00 a.m. forum for this important discussion.

Morning Prayer is chanted each morning at 7:15 a.m. in the church.

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper/Mardi Gras Celebration February 21, 5:30 p.m. where you can eat, drink, be merry AND contribute to the greater good. Come to this Party of Parties and enjoy music, food, wine, great company and two auctions – both silent and live. It costs you just $10 per person to attend this terrific event.  See below for the auction items available.

Lent Soup Suppers and Study begin on Wednesday February 29.  The book we will use as our study is Paul Zahl’s Grace in Practice: a Theology of Everyday Life.  Copies have been ordered by Bloomsbury Books and will arrive on Friday Febrary 17.  Cost of the book is $15.  The book is also available from Amazon, and on Kindle.

The Other Trinity Book Group has selected another book for Febrary/March. It is Cynthia Bourgeault’s book: The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. This is a quote from our Presiding Bishop: “A remarkable invitation into the origins and wisdom of Christianity, through the apostolic witness of Mary Magdalene. Expect a challenge, perhaps more than you’re ready for. This book should change something, as it invites you to deepen your capacity for love, through the witness of Jesus’s beloved disciple.”—The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori. It should be an interesting book to read as we enter into Lent.  We will meet again on March 1 in the Library from 5:30-6:30 p.m.  Contact Sara Hopkins.

This Week

Feb 20    7:15am     Morning Prayer and every morning during the week

Feb 20               Office Closed

Feb 20    7:00pm     Men’s Group

Feb 21    8:30am     Sewing Women at Trinity in Parish Hall

Feb 21  11:00am     Parish Nurse Office Hours

Feb 21 9:00-4:00     Sacrament of Reconciliation available in church

Feb 21    5:30pm     PARTY OF PARTIES EVENT

Feb 22    9:00am     Trinity Trekkers – meets Ashland Ave across from the bank

Feb 22       Noon     Ash Wednesday Liturgy with Disposition of Ashes

Feb 22    7:00pm     Ash Wednesday Liturgy with Disposition of Ashes

Feb 23    9:30am     Parish Nurse Office Hour in Ministries Office

Feb 23  10:30am     Bible Study in Parish Library

Feb 23       Noon     Holy Eucharist and Healing Sacrament in Church

Feb 23    7:00pm     Choir Rehearsal in Church

Feb 17  11:00am     Library Committee

Lenten Schedule

Ash Wednesday Liturgy,
Imposition of Ashes, and Holy Eucharist
February 22, Noon and 7:00 p.m.

Lenten Soup Suppers
Study and Discussion Program:
Paul Zahl, Grace in Practice: a Theology of Everyday Life
Wednesday evening  6:00 p.m.
Beginning February 29

Morning Prayer
Daily 7:15 a.m.

“Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven,

  and whose sin is put away!

Happy are they to whom the Lord imputes no guilt,

and in whose spirit there is no guile!

While I held my tongue, my bones withered away,

because of my groaning all day long.

For your hand was heavy upon me day and night;

my moisture was dried up as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,

and did not conceal my guilt.

I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.’

Then you forgave me the guilt of my sin.” (Psalm 32: 1-6)

Admission of fault and expression of remorse for our wrongdoings are part of a healthy process of amendment of life.   Such acts of confession and contrition have always been seen as a necessary step in repentance and helping us to find peace with each other and within ourselves. That is why we have a general confession of sin in almost all of our worship, both Morning and Evening Prayer offices and the Holy Eucharist.

In addition to General Public Confession and our private confessions to God in our prayers, the Prayer Book (pp. 446-452) provides for a private confession of sin between a penitent and “a discreet priest.”  The Reconciliation of a Penitent is an ancient ritual.  Though not one of the two Sacraments specifically instituted as such by our Lord while he lived (Baptism and Eucharist), Reconciliation (often just called “Confession”) is counted in Anglicanism and the Episcopal Church as one of the Sacraments of the Church (along with Confirmation, Holy Matrimony, Anointing of theIll, and Holy Orders).

Due to countless images in movies from the rite as practiced in the Roman use, when we hear “confession,” we often picture a special booth with a priest on one side of the screen and the penitent on the other.  But in the Episcopal Church, the rite takes place either in the church (usually near the altar rail) or the clergy’s office.   We recognize that it serves as an aid in personal repentance and amendment of life.  It helps us be more honest, less inclined to tell God how we think our failings should be understood, as we might if praying alone or confessing generally in public.  It allows for pastoral counseling and some spiritual direction.   Because we do not see confession as a one-size-fits-all requirement, for us “All may.  None must.  Some should.” That is, we welcome and encourage all to confess as they feel the need, we require no one to do so, and we recognize that some people really ought to avail themselves of this sacrament since it is such a powerful tool in helping us forgive ourselves for past mistakes and find reconciliation.

Since private confession to a priest is not compulsory for us, and since it takes time and effort, and, quite frankly, often provokes embarrassment in us as we “fess up” in front of another person, most Episcopalians never bother to seek the sacrament unless they attend an Anglo-Catholic Parish.   I think this is worth a second look for Broad Church Episcopalians (and even Low Church Episcopalians) as the centuries long practice of confessing one’s sins to God in the presence of a priest who can then pronounce absolution remains a powerful experience, and very helpful in putting an end to past wrongs.   I have found in my own life that it is an important way to make a break with past sins.   This is why as your rector and pastor, I am recommending it as part of our Lenten discipline and preparation for Easter.

I am reserving most of Shrove Tuesday (February 21) to hear confessions so that you might be able to go to Ash Wednesday services the next day with a sense of a new and fresh start.  Appointments can be made by calling the Trinity Parish Office.  I always am available to hear confession upon request.

If you have never done this and are nervous, don’t worry.  There are two rites you can choose from, and both are simple and easy, and generally only take 5-10 minutes.  I will guide you through it if that makes you feel more comfortable.  And rest assured that anything you say in this context is fully confidential, never to be repeated or referred to again.  It is between you and your God.

In confession we unload our baggage, and dump the toxic waste we have been carrying around with us.  Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are loaded down and exhausted with a heavy a burden.  Take my yoke upon you and become my students.  I am gentle and kind and you will find a complete rest.  For my yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is so light you’ll think it nothing at all” (Matthew 11:28-30).   Confess your sins and God will separate you as from them as far as the east is from the west. Confess them in the presence of another, expressing true repentance and amendment of life and you will find it easier to walk away from that past.  You won’t want to go back to the toxic waste you have unloaded.  And you will find that Jesus’ burden is light indeed.

–Father Tony+

The Reverend Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D.

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Year B)
12 January 2012; Single 9 am Sung Mass

(Followed by annual Parish Meeting)
Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland,Oregon

2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45

A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.” But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (Mark 1:40-45)

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen.  

A few years ago, I was serving as altar assistant and cantor for Wednesday noon services at a small Church inWashingtonDC.  Most of the people who came were employees from the nearby Department of State.  But I remember one member of the congregation very graphically.  He was clearly disabled by mental illness: he often was unable to care for his basic hygiene needs, and unwilling to seek help.  Most of the other worshippers clustered on the other side of the church away from him, because, frankly, his behavior was bizarre and he smelled very bad.  One priest began to get help for the man’s hygienic and then his medical needs.  The man became belligerent and drew away.  Another priest used later the sacrament as a reward to encourage the man to change his behaviors, with some good results.  He began to take his meds and make his talk-therapy appointments.

In this, I learnt an important thing.   We in the Church are an odd mix of misfits and walking-wounded.  Those of us most thankful for the grace God has shown us are the most engaged with those still suffering, the most patient with the debasements of others.   They also tend to be the least sentimental, and the least willing to make things worse by engaging in enabling behavior that just delays recovery.

In today’s Gospel reading, one of the “living dead” appears:  a leper.  He begs to be made clean.

Leprosy in the Bible is probably not merely Hansen’s disease, the highly communicable and, until antibiotics were discovered, hopelessly disfiguring and fatal disease that we call leprosy. In the Bible, it almost certainly includes any fungal or viral disease of the skin like ringworm or athlete’s foot.  Leprosy was highly polluting in terms of ritual impurity, and was to be avoided at all costs for this reason. It was a source of “dirt,” disgusting filth, and was contagiously contaminating.

Lepers were beyond the pale of society.  They lived apart from family, community, or village.  They had to warn others they were even approaching: true pariahs, untouchables.  No one wanted to see them, hear them, or even know of them.

Jesus as a practicing Jew, believed that the purity rules were God’s commandments.  These included the laws that allowed for lepers, once their symptoms disappeared, to be ritually purged of uncleanness through a small sacrifice, a ritual washing, and a declaration of cleanness by a priest in theTemple.

The leper says to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”    He kneels, and begs Jesus to cure him and remove the ritual uncleanness.

Jesus’ is deeply moved in reaction.  But the text here is somewhat unclear.  Some manuscripts say Jesus isangry or indignant, presumably at the sight of a person whose situation sums up what is wrong with the world.  Other copies say simply that “his stomach turned.”  The usual translation follows the most common Koine Greek sense of the word and takes this as meaning, “his stomach turned with pity.”  But the original core meaning of the word here in this context suggests another possibility:  “his stomach turned in disgust.”

The sense would be, “Although Jesus’ stomach was turning in disgust, he stretched forth his hand and said to the man, “I do so choose.  Be made clean!””

He heals the man and declares him clean, in one act overthrowing all the claims of the Temple establishment and righteous interpreters of the Law.  They claimed that salvation and purity were found only through the orthodox, authoritative religious Temple brand.

To calm things a bit and keep a lid on the story of miracle-working that had been attracting huge audiences but no congregations, Jesus tells the man to go through the motions of the Law to reclaim legal purity.  But he still has overturned the claims of the Temple rites.

“Though his stomach was turning, Jesus said, ‘I do so choose. Be healed.’”

Jesus is revolted by the leper.  His religion tells him the man is untouchable.  The commandments of his God tell him that the man is impure, filthy, something to be fled.  Like the man in my old Wednesday parish, the leper was filthy and stank.  He had no business coming near the worship of the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

But for Jesus, mercy and humanity were always more important than purity.  The sufferer in front of him trumped all the sub-clauses of God’s Law. He held his nose, as it were, and still reached out and hugged the smelly wretch.

This really marks just how radical Jesus was. The religion of the day declared, with the full authority of scripture literally cited and interpreted through authoritative tradition, that impurity was contagious. It spread from the unclean to the clean. People who want to please God must avoid it, lest they commit sacrilege against the Temple of God, the land, and risk God’s wrath.

Despite this, Jesus knew that love and goodness were more contagious than impurity, because of who God was—a loving parent who would always give the child the best food, a wonderful master of the weather who gave the blessings of rain and sunshine to righteous and wicked alike, a merciful friend who would get up in the middle of the night for a friend just because he was knocking at the door.  This is what Jesus preached, and what Jesus lived.  He spent most of his time with the dregs of society:  drunks, traitors, and whores.  “It is the ill who need a physician,” he would said, “not the well.”

“Though his stomach was turning, Jesus said, ‘I do so choose. Be healed.’”

Despite his revulsion, Jesus chooses to heal the man, even to touch him in the process.

Love for us Christians is not a condition of the feelings.  It is a state of the will, a choice made by the one who loves.  It is the disposition to serve, help, forgive, and engage for the good of the beloved, whether kindly or fiercely.

Here in Ashland, land of New Age and Spiritual-but-Not-Religious, we often hear it said, “Trust your feelings.”

I have to say, with some embarrassment, that whenever I hear that, I cringe.

This is not because I have buried my feelings, cut off emotion, and learned the rigorous discipline of logic and data.  It is because in my experience, feelings can be very dangerous guides to thought and action.

I have seen far too many families ruined, lives unhinged, marriages and partnerships destroyed, and people put in jail because they were “following their feelings.”

As a result, whenever I see the first Star Wars movie, when the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi comes to Luke Skywalker and tells him, “Luke, trust your feelings,” I want to jump out of my chair, and yell, “NO, LUKE!  DO NOT TRUST YOUR FEELINGS.  THEY ARE VERY, VERY DANGEROUS!”

The advice is to trust feelings is good, as far as it goes.  We process a lot of material at a subconscious level, and our gut intuition sometimes is a very valuable—even a life-saving—factor in crisis situations.  And being authentically in touch with our emotions and able to sort our good ones and not-so-good ones is a crucial skill.

But the fact is, none of us is perfect, and none of us have perfectly trained consciences or feelings.  We need to learn when and how to trust our feelings to not be misled by them.  And this is done in community.  It is what spiritual direction and retreats is about.  It is what Church is about.  It is what going to group is about—whether therapy or support group, or 12-Step meeting.  One of the things we first learn is howimportant our feelings are—not as signs of the truth of the world and what we should do, but rather as indicators about what is going on inside of us and of danger areas for us.

We need never think that our uncleanness is a barrier keeping us from Jesus. We need not fear that a disability we may have can keep us from the love of Jesus.   What keeps us from Jesus is our fear itself. Our fear may make us so nervous that we might not, like this leper, run to Jesus and kneel before him and beg him to heal us. We need to reach out to Jesus and beg him to heal us.

And then, in thankfulness for his grace, we follow Jesus.  The fact that our stomach may turn, whether in disgust, fear, or trepidation, when we are called upon to do some service of one kind or another, or help a person particularly offensive to us, is not a sign that Jesus is not calling us.  It is a sign perhaps that He is calling us beyond our comfort zone to a good that we could not have aspired to ourselves.

Disfiguring skin disease is unpleasant.  Smelly and messy lack of hygiene is gross.  But this is what we are called at times to embrace.  And what about HIV/AIDS?  Or nasty, ugly, just plain mean mental illness? Drug or alcohol addiction?  The madness and dementia of old age?

Like Jesus, we need to choose to heal, to reach out and touch the leper, to choose to welcome the smelly and crazy guest.  This act of choice is what we call love.  And it is where God intersects with human life.

May we so serve and follow God’s call.

In the name of Christ, Amen.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12
One worship service only at 9:00 a.m.
followed by the Trinity Annual Meeting
There is no Sunday Forum

Evening Prayer is Sunday night at 5:00 p.m.

Morning Prayer is chanted each morning at 7:15 a.m. in the church.

Southern Oregon Repertory Singers present Mozart and More Sunday at 3:00 p.m. in theSOUMusic Hall, Dr. Paul French as conductor.

The Other Trinity Book Group has selected another book for February/March. It is Cynthia Bourgeault’s book: The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. This is a quote from our Presiding Bishop: “A remarkable invitation into the origins and wisdom of Christianity, through the apostolic witness of Mary Magdalene. Expect a challenge, perhaps more than you’re ready for. This book should change something, as it invites you to deepen your capacity for love, through the witness of Jesus’s beloved disciple.”—The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori. It should be an interesting book to read as we enter into Lent.  We will meet on Feb. 16 and March 1 in the Library from 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper/Mardi Gras Celebration February 21, 5:30 p.m. where you can come to eat, drink, be merry AND contribute to the greater good. Come to this Party of Parties and enjoy music, food, wine, great company and two auctions – both silent and live. It costs you just $10 per person to attend this terrific event.  We are still accepting donations of “stuff”, services, or dollars.  Your donated dollars will go toward purchasing special auction item packages, for everyone’s bidding pleasure!  Call Linda Wilson at 541-708-0189.   If you find yourself with an extra bottle or two of wine, or would like to purchase a couple to contribute toward general good feeling, please bring those bottles of wine to church on Sunday. We will have designated collection areas as you enter the church or parish hall. Your donations will be opened and distributed at our Party of Parties.  See you there!

Sunday Forum on February 19  Fr. Tony will lead a study and discussion on Confession and Reconciliation.  Come and learn or re-learn the grace of this oft forgotten sacrament.

Freedom Sunday-Forum February 26, 9:00 a.m.: Human Trafficking and the Rogue Valley: Mike Moran, Chief of Police, Talent OR   “Slavery ended in the United States over a hundred years ago, right? Wrong! Today a form of slavery, human trafficking, is a growing problem in theUSA and all around the world. Could a trafficked person be in your neighborhood? Yes! They could be working at your local restaurant, nail salon or farm. They could be working as a servant in the house down the block. We would like to think human trafficking would never occur close by. But, we would be wrong.” (Anglican Women’s Empowerment).   Join us for a discussion of what is happening in our area and what we can do to help as a Christian community. (Sara Hopkins)

This Week

Feb.12   5:00pm     Evening Prayer
Feb 13     7:15am     Morning Prayer and every morning during the week
Feb 14     8:00am     Men’s Breakfast
Feb 14     8:30am     Sewing Women at Trinity in Parish Hall
Feb 14   11:00am     Parish Nurse Office Hours
Feb 15     9:00am     Trinity Trekkers – meetsAshland Aveacross from the bank
Feb 16     9:30am     Parish Nurse Office Hour in Ministries Office
Feb 16   10:30am     Bible Study in Parish Library
Feb 16       Noon      Holy Eucharist and Healing Sacrament in Church
Feb 16     5:30pm     Trinity’s Other Book Group
Feb 16     6:00pm     Choir Rehearsal in Church
Feb 17   11:00am     Library Committee

Lenten Schedule
Ash Wednesday Liturgy,
Imposition of Ashes, and Holy Eucharist
February 22, Noon and 7:00 p.m.

Lenten Soup Suppers
Study and Discussion Program:
Paul Zahl, Grace: a theology of everyday life
Wednesday evening  6:00 p.m.
Beginning February 29

In Ictu Oculi (In the Twinkling of an Eye) Juan de Valdés Leal 1672

“My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.”
― Woody Allen

Bronnie Ware for many years cared for patients in the last twelve weeks of their lives.  The Australian hospice nurse has recorded their dying insights in her blog, Inspiration and Chai , and also in her book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing.

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

In the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21), Jesus tells the story of a wealthy farmer facing a bumper crop who realizes he cannot possibly store all the produce about to be harvested.  So he makes elaborate plans to tear down the old barns and replace them with larger ones before the harvest.  He describes to himself how good things will be when he’s completed his plan: “Friend, you have many good things stored up for years to come.  So take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”  But God says to him, “You idiot!  This very night—before you can do any of this—your life will be required of you!  Now who’s going to get all that you have prepared?”  Luke, the narrator, adds,  “That is how it will be for anyone who piles up treasures for himself and is not rich with God.”

The hospice nurse’s comments remind us that living happily is a matter of living in integrity and honesty about ourselves, and this is clearly implied in Jesus’ condemnation of being distracted by secondary matters in this parable.

What do you truly regret?  How can you change things so that you feel happier about things?

–Fr. Tony+

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Year B)

5 February 2012: 8 am Spoken Mass and 10:00 am Sung Mass

Homily Delivered at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-12, 21c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-29

Jesus left the synagogue at Capernaum, and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. (Mark 1:29-30)

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The Hebrew Scriptures readings today deal with the majesty and power of God.  Hearing Second Isaiah, it is hard to think that God is anything but all-powerful and all mysterious:  the inhabitants of the earth look like grasshoppers to him, and even the mightiest of dynasties are mere seedlings he uproots in a second.  The Gospel reading today deals with Jesus making use of that power by healing sick people, including Peter’s mother-in-law.

We often misunderstand these images, and think that somehow God is sitting out there apart from the universe, all-powerful, and, like some divine bureaucrat or mail-order operation, keeping track of prayer requests and making Good things happen for Good people and Bad things for Bad people.

But this is not the world we live in.  Here in this life, often the wicked prosper, bad things happen to good people, and prayers for vindication and health seemingly go unanswered, like those of Job.

I was raised in a religious community that taught that Almighty God blessed the righteous, punished the wicked, and heard and answered the prayers of the righteous. My wife and I had a major trial in our faith just after we were married while we were still in college and just starting our own family. We had become friends with a young couple that went to Church with us. They were good people. After several years of unsuccessful efforts, they were able to get pregnant and had a beautiful little baby boy. After a month or so, though, it became apparent that sometime was wrong. He had been born with a genetic defect: the upper layers of his skin were not fully connected with the deeper layers. If you touched him slightly on the arm, it quickly would turn into a large blister, would easily burst and become infected. There was little that the doctors could do. Despite two months in intensive care, the baby’s body was covered with what essentially were second-degree burns. He was held suspended in a light net to prevent further damage from the bed. His parents were not allowed to touch him, so they could not even comfort him as he screamed his little life out in agony. During the ordeal, we prayed. Our friends prayed. The Church elders prayed and anointed the baby with healing oil, carefully, on the inch or so of sound skin on the side of his head. The whole community prayed. And the baby suffered and slowly died.

It is not the only time in my life when I wished that the world were as simple as I had been taught in Sunday School: my mother-in-law’s cancer, my father’s Alzheimer’s disease.

Now in fairness let me say this: I have also seen prayers answered in wonderful and miraculous ways, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually: a deadly disease stopped in its tracks and healed, broken relationships mended and strengthened, mental illness managed.  I know that miracles happen.

But there are just too many cases where God, if Good, seems absent or impotent, or if Almighty and All-present, seems to be a monster, some cipher far removed from the most basic demands of human goodness, let alone divine goodness.  How do we get our heads around it?

I cannot today answer the problem of theodicy, or the justice of God in the face of evil in the world.  But let me give a few observations to might help each of us work through this.

Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), also known by the acronym Ari (the Lion) was a key figure in the development of the Jewish mystical Kabbalah tradition.  He was part of the Sephardic Jewish community, expelled from what is now Spain and Portugal in 1492.  Much of his thought was directed to the problem of Evil, trying to make sense of how God could be Good and trustworthy in the face of the sort of evil that had forced thousands of Jews to convert to Christianity at swordpoint, killed countless thousands of others, and finally driven the Iberian Jews into exile.

A key idea in Luria’s teaching is the idea of Divine “Contraction” (tzimtzum).  He tells a story of the universe’s origin where Creation is basically a negative act in which God’s essential self must bring into being an empty space and time in which Creation can occur. The Almighty was all-Good, all-Powerful, and All-Present.  God was everywhere.  God, Goodness Itself, was all there was.   Only by contracting into itself, like a man inhaling in order to let someone pass in a narrow corridor, could God bring into existence an empty space where Creation could occur. Creation begins with a Divine exile.

Luria in part is using an idea that had been around from the 5th century.  St. Augustine of Hippo made the point clearly that Evil was not an equal active thing standing over against Good, but rather the absence of Good.  What God created, by definition not-God, also by definition would have gaps in the All-Goodness that is God.  For Augustine, God was actively engaged with creation.  The Incarnation of Christ was the best example of this.

The fact is, God is not a divine Santa-Claus keeping lists of the Good and Bad, deciding thereby whom to shower with gifts.  Neither is He, in the words of C.S. Lewis, some kind of wacky great uncle to whom we only need to reach out and ask for help.

The problem in part comes from that word “Almighty.”  The Hebrew Bible pictures God as thoroughly over all things.  One of the Hebrew names for God is El Shaddai, translated into Greek as Pantokrator, or the One who holds all things, into Latin as Omnipotens “the all-powerful” and into English as “God Almighty.”

In the Creed we say “we believe in God almighty.”   This is a shallow statement indeed if all it means is ‘we believe that somewhere out there exists an unlimited power that can choose and perform anything it likes, and we need to be on the right side of it.”  “Belief” must be trust, and to be worthy of trust, you must have more than just power.

The term El Shaddai did not refer so much to autonomy and power as to Mystery or Sustaining Comfort.  In its most ancient meaning it referred to God of the mountaintop or God of nourishing breasts.

So too the mysterious term Pantokrator in the Creed:  the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams writes the following about what it means to call God “The One Who Holds All Things”:

“[N]owhere [is God] absent, powerless, or irrelevant; [in] no situation in the universe [is God] at a loss. … [in] no situation [is God] not to be relied upon…”  For Rowan, to say “Almighty” is not a great wish-fulfillment fantasy, rather it is “a way of saying that God always has the capacity to do something fresh and different, to bring something new out of a situation—because nothing outside of himself can finally frustrate his longing” (p. 16, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief.)

The image here is not of a God disjoined from and disinterested in creation, but intimately urging it on to its best result.   Instead of a divine clerk taking applications for favors when hearing prayers, putting some petitions into a pile marked “grant” and others into a pile marked “deny,” God here is “more of a steady swell of loving presence, always there at work in the centre of everything that is, opening the door to a future even when we can see no hope.”

Rowan uses another idea of St. Augustine and applies it to Jesus’ miracles, which were, he says, “really just natural processes speeded up a bit, ‘fast-forwarded.’”  Thus God’s action is always at work around us, always ‘on hand’, always behind and within the universe, and not bifurcated into ‘nature’ and ‘supernatural or divine intervention.’

“But what if there were times when certain bits of the world’s processes came together in such a way that the whole cluster of happenings became a bit more open to God’s final purposes? What if the world were sometimes a bit more ‘transparent’ to the underlying act of God?” (pp. 44-45)

One of the major parts of Jesus’ ministry was healing, whether of mind or of body. The gospel stories of Jesus healing the sick—like those in today’s Gospel reading from Mark—tell us that the ultimate purpose of God does not include disease, suffering, and death. Jesus’ ministry of announcing the in-breaking of the reign of God focused in large part in healing physical and mental suffering. This tells us that God doesn’t like horror and disappointment for us any more than we do.

God the All-encompassing is always at work, but that work is not always visible. God the All-loving is always at work, but sometimes the world’s processes go with the grain of God’s final purpose and sometimes they resist.  After all, this universe is created, and God had to hold his breath to make space for it.

But things can come together in the world at this or that moment, and the ‘flow’ of this created world can be eased and more directly linked with God’s final purposes.  On occasion, perhaps a really fervent prayer or a particularly holy life can help the world can open up a bit more to God’s final good purpose so that unexpected things happen.

To use Luria’s image, sometimes God “exhales” a bit and reclaims some of the created world here and now, making his good purposes absolutely clear here and now.  That’s what we call a miracle.

We’re never going to have a complete picture on how that works.   We don’t see things as God sees them.  But we owe it to God, to God’s creation, and to each other, to think, say and do those things that might give God, as it were, additional space in which he can exhale.

We must pray, act, and serve in ways that have some chance of shaping situations so that God has more breathing space, can come more directly in the processes we see about us.  This isn’t something we can manipulate; miracles aren’t magic.  The Lord’s Book of Blessings is not a mere Book of Spells.

It would be very comforting if we knew the formula, but we don’t.  “All we know is that we are called to pray, to trust and to live with integrity before God (to live ‘holy’ lives) in such a way as to leave the door open, to let things come together so that love can come through.” (p. 45)

Jesus showed us the path here.   In emptying himself, and opening himself perfectly to God’s purposes, he got out of the way of God’s final purposes, and ended up able to be an instrument by which these were seen as breaking into everyday life.  This is what the miracle stories in the Gospels are about.

We should amend our ways when we oppress others, and work to overcome all forms of such abuse of God’s creatures. We should pray, sometimes fast, to give God such breathing room.  Soon we will have Lent, and this is a great opportunity for denying ourselves, confessing our failings, and getting out of God’s way.

May we work to make the world and our lives a little more congruent with what God’s ultimate purposes are. For what the Almighty wants for all of us is good indeed.

In the name of Christ, Amen.

Sunday Forum meets today in the Parish Hall at 9:00am with Fr. Tony leading a discussion on Approach to Scripture.

Contemplative Eucharist  Sunday night, February 5^th, at 5:00pm.

Trinitarian Author Book Signing  Parishioner Gloria Boyd will be at the Ashland Public Library on Sunday, February 5th, from 1:00am to 2:00pm, introducing her first novel, Sincerely Louise, based on the life of her mother growing up in the twenties.

Annual Meeting is Sunday, February 12th.  There will be one combined service at 9:00am.  The meeting will follow.  The reports for 2011 were distributed via e-mail this last week.  There are a few printed copies in the Parish Hall if you did not receive one or do not have an e-mail address registered in the church office,.

Party of Parties  Each year newcomers to the parish ask, “So what is this Party of Parties we keep hearing about?”  Once a year, the Outreach Funding Committee organizes one big event to raise money for the non-profit organizations inAshland, the widerRogueValley, and internationally who are successfully ministering to the community.  These organizations apply to Trinity’s Outreach committee for a specific amount of money.  In past years we have given from $15,000 to over $20,000 to assist others.  How the Party of Parties works is that one evening before Lent starts, we have a whiz-bang social event.  The event includes a silent auction, a live auction, the infamous Pancake Supper with wine (who would have thought that combination would work?)  Prior to this night, the members of the congregation are requested to host a party sometime during the year. The host chooses the date, the theme, the activity, and the host underwrites the cost of the event.  We the congregation are then invited to sign up for the parties that appeal to us and pay a modest amount for a reservation to attend the party.  ALL the money goes to the Outreach Committee for distribution to other non-profits’ support. On the Party of Parties night, we learn which parties we get to attend from those we selected.  Some fill to overflow and there is a waiting list.  Others have plenty of space to accommodate late registrants.  It is an Everyone Wins situation.  We get to have lots of laughs at the Party of Parties, enjoy a night/afternoon out to the parties of our choosing, andTrinityChurch has the privilege of supporting the good work of other agencies in addition to our own ministries.  If you haven’t attended in past years, try it.  It is a good cause.

 Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

Mardi Gras Celebration

February 21, 2012 – 5:30 p.m.

Trinity Episcopal Church Parish Hall

Where can you go to eat, drink, be merry AND contribute to the greater good?  That’s right, Trinity Ashland’s Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras gala.  Come to this Party of Parties and enjoy music, food, wine, great company and two auctions – both silent and live. It costs you just $10 per person to attend this terrific event.  See you there!

Do you have that Special Something for the Party of Parties Mardi Gras Auction?

We are still accepting donations of “stuff”, services, or dollars.  Your donated dollars will go toward purchasing special auction item packages, for everyone’s bidding pleasure!  Join in the celebration of Trinity’s Outreach.  Email Linda Wilson at lindalorna@gmail.com or call her at 541-708-0189.  Feel free to leave a message, as we might be traveling.

Seeking Bottles of Wine (Filled) If you find yourself with an extra bottle or two of wine, or would like to purchase a couple to contribute toward general good feeling, please bring those bottles of wine to church on Sundays. We will have designated collection areas as you enter the church or parish hall. Your donations will be opened and distributed at our Party of Parties on February 21, 2012 – Mardi Gras!

Freedom Sunday-Forum Feb. 26, 9:00am: Human Trafficking and the Rogue Valley: Mike Moran, Chief of Police, Talent OR   “Slavery ended in the United States over a hundred years ago, right? Wrong! Today a form of slavery, human trafficking, is a growing problem in theUSA and all around the world. Could a trafficked person be in your neighborhood? Yes! They could be working at your local restaurant, nail salon or farm. They could be working as a servant in the house down the block. We would like to think human trafficking would never occur close by. But, we would be wrong.” (Anglican Women’s Empowerment).   Join us for a discussion of what is happening in our area and what we can do to help as a Christian community.

The Other Trinity Book Group has selected another book for Feb/March. It is Cynthia Bourgeault’s book: The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. This is a quote from our Presiding Bishop: “A remarkable invitation into the origins and wisdom of Christianity, through the apostolic witness of Mary Magdalene. Expect a challenge, perhaps more than you ’re ready for. This book should change something, as it invites you to deepen your capacity for love, through the witness of Jesus ’s beloved disciple.”—The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schiori. It should be an interesting book to read as we enter into Lent.  We will meet on Feb. 16 and March 1 in the Library from 5:30-6:30pm. or details about which type of notebooks are needed. 541-482-1611 ext. 180.

 This Week

Feb. 5      5:00pm          Contemplative Eucharist

Feb 6        9:30am          Pastoral Care Committee

Feb 6       1:00pm          Endowment Committee

Feb 6       7:00pm          Men’s Group

Feb 7        8:30am          Sewing Women at Trinity in Parish Hall

Feb 7      11:00am         Parish Nurse Office Hours

Feb 8        9:00am          Trinity Trekkers – meetsAshland Aveacross from the bank

Feb 9         9:30am          Parish Nurse Office Hour in Ministries Office

Feb 9      10:30am          Bible Study in Parish Library

Feb 9             Noon         Holy Eucharist and Healing Sacrament in Church

Feb 9        7:00pm        Choir Rehearsal in Church

Many of you have heard that the Episcopal Church, like Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Lutheranism, is a liturgical church. Many tend to think that this means simply that we use prepared scripts for our worship (in our case, texts primarily from the Book of Common Prayer), with congregational responses and set written prayers. But the word liturgy itself means much more than working from a written script. It comes from the Greek word leitourgia, which originally meant the duty or work one performed for the community at one’s own expense and then among Christians came to mean the duty or work of proper community worship. It implies the worship through ritual (an established usage or form) and sacrament (an outward symbol that makes present inward realities).

The great Benedictine liturgical scholar Aidan Kavanaugh was a key force in the New Liturgical Movement that brought about the renewal and updating of Roman Catholic and ecumenical worship forms in the mid- and late-20^th century. Before his death in 2006, he compared good liturgy to a well-prepared and presented social function or meal with these words: “The liturgy, like the feast, exists not to educate but to seduce people into participating in common [shared] activity of the highest order, where one is freed to learn things which cannot be taught.”

Good liturgy should free our emotions, and trigger our imagination, and thereby produce insight. The liturgical imagination is different from and in some ways broader than narrative or visual imagination. It uses a broad variety of tools: the spoken word and story, repeated phrase, music, light, color, taste, movement and smell. A simple part of all of this is posture. The old rule for explaining all the ups and downs in Anglican worship runs this way: we stand to praise (including singing), we sit to listen, and we kneel to pray. And while old knees and constrained space may mean that at Trinity we stand at times when other Anglicans kneel, the rule generally holds true. Through all these varied means, liturgy works on us, plays on our sense of identity and community, our reason and our emotions, and our sense of awe and beauty. In so doing, it allows us to connect with the unseen world, and with those who have gone on before us.

Liturgy is profoundly countercultural, and wonderfully transformative. It is the reason, quite simply, that I love to “play Church.”

–Father Tony+

The Reverend Anthony Hutchinson, Ph.D.

Sermon 4th Epiphany 2012                                                                                Morgan Silbaugh

As someone who has preached for quite a few years, I get asked from time to time if I reuse old sermons. The answer is no, because wrestling afresh with a set of readings is a wonderful way to keep the mind active and to discover new things. I even discovered something new about today’s readings which I will tell you about in a bit.

One of life’s joys is playing the games you played as a child with children and grand children. While there were no hand-held games in my youth, I can play games like Sorry, Fish, Chinese Checkers and Pit with grandchildren. One game I played which I think is not still around is Authors. And I invite you to imagine yourself as the author of Luke’s Gospel looking at today’s reading from Mark. Is there anything there that troubles you?

In today’s Gospel Jesus astounds the synagogue congregation by teaching as one having authority and not as the scribes. I did a delayed reaction as I pondered the word authority. Does it mean the speaker is literally the author of the words spoken? Looking it up, authority and author do come from the same Latin root auctor which does mean originator. Can Jesus’ teaching with authority mean that his teaching is entirely original and rootless? That hardly fits with his constant consistent pointing beyond himself to God and God’s Kingdom.

I also found myself asking just who decided that the scribes lacked authority since they were the official interpreters of Israel’s Holy Scriptures, the Torah. After telling myself that that was a good question, I turned to a modern scribe, a learned commentator on the Gospel, to see what he had to say. Here are the words of F.C. Grant on he taught them as one who had authority. “(that is)…as a prophet, by direct authorization from god and not as a scribe. The scribes were the official teachers or expounders of the torah; as a member of a school, the scribe would teach what he had learned from his master…the scribal tradition. Jesus, as a lay teacher of religion, not educated in the scribal manner but inspired by the divine spirit spoke with immediate and personal authority. Mark does not say that he spoke as a prophet, but this was certainly the impression men gained.” 

Jesus is, in short, inspired as the prophets were inspired, and that inspiration gave divine authority to his teaching. Like Elijah and Elisha before him, his teaching was yoked to mighty acts. Elijah was sent BY God to Zarephath where he did something outrageous, the sort of thing an opponent might cite in a campaign debate. At the city gate he encountered a poor widow gathering sticks. He asked her for water and for food, a morsel of bread. She replied as the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug. I am now gathering sticks, so that I may go home and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die. Elijah the prophet said to her what God’s angels usually say when they terrify someone “do not be afraid….. Do as you have said but first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son.” Stop the story there for a moment. What sort of prophet is this who takes food from a woman and a child facing starvation? But the story does not stop there, Elijah promises that the meal and the oil will not fail until good harvests return. She and her household and Elijah ate this miraculous, divinely-promised food for many days. Were this not enough, when the woman’s son became so ill that there was no breath left in him, Elijah carried the child to the upper chamber where he was lodged, stretched himself on the child and cried out O Lord, my God, let this child’s life come into him again. the Lord listened to the voice of Elijah, the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.  It is worth recalling and remembering what the widow of Zarephath said when her son was restored to her. Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is true. Word and deed are interwoven when it is God’s Word that is spoken.

This pattern is repeated in today’s Gospel. Jesus teaches with power and then the power of the living God is so manifest in him that the unclean spirit within a man tries to dodge and escape, saying What have you to do with us, Jesus Of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. Jesus will not be avoided and he drives out the unclean spirit from the man. And Jesus is recognized as the Holy One of God.  Those in the synagogue see the authority of Jesus’ teaching and the powerful healing he carries out, but I think that when they cry out   a new teaching–with authority! He commands the unclean spirits and they obey him, they miss what even the evil spirit sees- the hand of God at work through Jesus. The author of Luke’s Gospel had Mark’s Gospel available to him and repeats Mark virtually word for word, except that he deleted the reference to a new teaching. I draw comfort from discovering that Luke was troubled as I was by those words. My mind kept going back over them again and again, wanting to argue that the energy and the power of Jesus were real and very present, but was the teaching really new?

The trap here is that we too could slip into of recognizing only the newness of Jesus’ teaching, only the authority of Jesus, and missing his place in the long line of prophets sent by God to speak for God and to do mighty acts by the power of God. In short, we need to be careful lest we see less than the unclean spirit of the story and fail to see Jesus as the Holy One of God, renewing, refreshing, revitalizing  and continuing the prophetic work of Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel. Jesus is very clear about this, even if we often are not. He points beyond himself again and again. He is true to the vision of the prophet given in Deuteronomy- one who speaks God’s word and does not presume to speak words that are not from God. His initial proclamation is not the Kingdom of Jesus is at hand, but the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. When called good, he even refuses that much acclaim. When asked Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus said Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. We need to see and celebrate the power of Jesus’ words and deeds without forgetting their Divine Source.

Now I have bad news for this liberal community of ours. God is not a Democrat. Then too, I also have bad news for the few, the proud, the brave, the conservatives among us. God is not a Republican, either. It has always troubled me that the traditional form of the Lord’s Prayer, much as I love it, speaks of trespasses rather than sins. That seems to take them too lightly, since trespassing is more of a misdemeanor than a felony. I want my sins, and those of others, to carry more weight. But did you notice the penalty Deuteronomy sets for prophets passing their own words off for God’s? It is no trespass, but a capital crime, punishable by death. Wake up and hear the bad news. It is a dangerous thing to presume to speak for God. Susan B. Anthony, the great advocate of women’s rights, once said I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. We are the heirs of the prophets, and have been joined to Christ by the power of God’s Holy Spirit in baptism. In St. Francis words, we are called to preach the Good News, using words if necessary. We are called to “make no peace with oppression,” to continue God’s work of liberating captives, bringing good news to the poor, healing the sick and opening the eyes of the blind. No small task, and one to be taken on with fear and trembling. With Jesus, we need to be aware that it is God’s power and we are channels of that power, not its originators.  Even as we rejoice in the actions of the living God whose free-flowing Spirit brings wisdom and courage and hope, we also need to ground firmly our words and our work in the broad, deep, long history of the Holy One who gave us the Torah, inspired the prophets, and who sent his Son into the world to live and die as one of us.

If speaking for God is such risky business, what CAN we say? Perhaps returning to basics offers us a solid base from which to begin. The great Rabbi Hillel, a near contemporary of Jesus, was once asked by a scoffing pagan to teach Torah while standing on one foot.  Hillel responded What is hateful to you, do not do to others. The man forgot that he had come only to jeer. “Does it mean that heathens and Jews and all of us are brothers and sisters? Does it mean that we must be kind to one another?” he asked wonderingly. Hillel replied “That’s it my son, the rest is commentary. Go and learn.” How very appropriate it is to hear Hillel’s words in this Epiphany Season when we remember those foreign Magi who came to the Christ child’s stable not to scoff, but to worship.

Jesus was a bit less concise, but no less clear in his summary of the Law. Those of you who have joined the Episcopal Church in the last forty years have no way of knowing it, but in those long ago days of the 1928 Prayer Book, every Eucharist included either a recitation of the Ten Commandments or this Summary of the Law. Week after week we heard.

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith. 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. 

He does not go on to say that the rest is commentary, but I wish he had. What I had not really remembered until doing my homework for this sermon is that it was a scribe’s question “Which commandment is the first of all?” that led Jesus to perform his own version of Hillel’s marvelous act of paring down and clarifying what God is trying to teach us, and what God is calling us to do and to be. I invite you to listen for the voice of God’s Spirit here and now. I invite you speak in God’s Name only the words God gives you. And I invite you to stand beside Susan B. Anthony suspecting yourself and others when too much clarity about God’s will seems to emerge. Then, go ahead and speak and act boldly. Be the people of God, bright lights in a dark world. But never forget Hillel’s flamingo-footed summary of the Law nor the command to HEAR what our Lord Jesus Christ says Love God and Love Neighbor. Those who do this, Jesus himself has affirmed, are not far from thekingdom ofGod.