Baptism with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1)

“I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” From the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel for today, chapter 1, verse 8.

     In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

     How appropriate it is, that we enter the Advent season with this clear statement from the evangelist Mark, that something, and someone good, is coming into the world. Mark gets right to the point: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” No birth narratives, as in Luke’s Gospel, no genealogy, as in Matthew’s Gospel, no long theological statement, as in John’s Gospel. In other words, no credentials. Just a short, clear, unadorned statement of his theme, the good news of the coming of Jesus.

     It is worth noting that Mark says, “The beginning of the good news,” not just, “the good news,” which he could easily have done.  This is the beginning of a journey which leads to eternity, a journey which has no end. And that beginning has its roots in the words of the prophets, from long before the time of Jesus, who prepared the way for him. It is possible to think of the Gospel as a new beginning, a restatement, as it were, of the words of the prophets, to complete their prophecies, to show their full, true meaning, in the revelation of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God. And, of course, the beginning of the Gospel recalls other beginnings, like Creation, like the Exodus, like the building of the Temple, and so on. These are beginnings which really have no end; every moment, really, is a beginning, and so share in the great beginnings of the history of our salvation, and all beginnings are steps on the path to our eternal destiny.

     Mark begins by quoting, or rather misquoting, the prophet Isaiah. The source of the first part of the quote is actually the prophet Malachi, and the rest of it is from Isaiah. But the two quotes make one message: God is sending a messenger ahead of him, to prepare his way. We’ve heard this so many times that perhaps we don’t really hear the message: that the Lord himself will be entering the world, the world that we know and that he made. He will not be speaking indirectly, as it were, through prophets, or from clouds on mountaintops, or in dreams and visions to a few chosen individuals. He will be coming into his world, and he wants his messenger to make this known. In other words, the Lord is going to walk the earth himself. This foreshadows the Incarnation, the presence of God in Jesus.

     John is the messenger, and the coming of Jesus is the message. But what is “the way of the Lord?” How do we prepare it? What are the “paths?” How do we make them “straight?”

     John the Baptist prepares the way of the Lord by proclaiming the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. His is the “voice of one crying in the wilderness.” And the people who respond to his call are making the Lord’s paths straight by confessing their sins and accepting John’s baptism. This foreshadows the grace of Christian baptism, which includes the forgiveness of sins, and begins a new life in God.

     But John doesn’t stop with his baptism. There’s more. “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me.” In other words, the baptism of repentance is not the end of the story. It is not the goal, the end of the spiritual life of the people in the story, and it’s not the end of ours either. “One who is more powerful” is coming after John the Baptist; and the One is bringing something more powerful than John’s baptism.

     John says, “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” John’s  baptism is only preparation for the baptism which Jesus brings. “Spirit,” as we know, means “breath,” “life,” the life of God. It is that life in God which Jesus is revealing to us, and which John calls “baptism with the Holy Spirit.” To make the meaning of this more clear, I would prefer that the Gospel reading continue with the verses which describe the baptism of Jesus by John, and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus. This doesn’t mean that the Spirit was absent from Jesus and was being added to him in John’s baptism, but rather means that Mark is making clear Jesus’s relationship with the Father and the Spirit. It is in that relationship, the life of the Trinity, as the Church came to name it, that we are called to participate.

     We are included in that life. Our catechism says that Christian baptism unites us with Christ in his death and resurrection, includes us in God’s family the Church, and includes us in new life in the Holy Spirit.

     “John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness,” the Gospel says. The Greek behind “wilderness” also means “desert,” and we need not think that the desert is only geographical. It can also be spiritual, psychological, social; it can be any area of life in which we feel the absence of God. It also was and is a place, geographical or otherwise, where people go to search for God, where people can turn toward him free of distraction. That was the impulse which impelled the desert hermits and monastics of the early Church. The same impulse urges on many hermits and monastics and others today. It is worth noting that the word ‘hermit’ comes from the Greek for ‘desert’ – ‘eremos.’

     John came “proclaiming a baptism of repentance,” as our translation has it. Many of you have heard me before about this word “repentance.” It comes from Old French, and means “to be sorry.” It fails to carry the full meaning of the Greek word behind it, which includes renunciation of past failings, but also includes a strong sense of turning on to a new path, of directing the mind along a new way, the way toward God. That is why Mark introduces John’s baptism of mind-changing (if I may be forgiven such a clumsy expression) right after he mentions the straight paths of the Lord. The changed mind follows the straight paths, the way of the Lord. That’s what John’s baptism is, the “baptisma metanoias,’ as the Greek has it; it is the experience of the freed mind following its path to its true end, its life in God.

     So that is the beginning, and the goal, of the Gospel which Mark is proclaiming. John’s baptism leads to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to the full participation in the life of God which Jesus has brought us, and continually brings us, as we encounter him in all the beginnings, all the new moments, of our lives. In nomine, etc..

 

       

Recognizing Grace (Incarnation / Pascha)

The following is an extract from a fictional sermon, preached by the curate at the end of Michael Arditti's novel Easter.

      "To respond to the Easter message, we must give up our obsession with sin --- and, in particular, Original Sin --- which is a libel both on us and our Creator. We must renounce the myth of the Fall which, by spreading a gospel of despair, gives rise to the very evil it purports to explain. If we are to take a leaf out of Genesis, then let it be the one on which "God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good." Good, mind, not perfect. Perfection is impossible in a world which exists in time.
     Time [is] a mixed blessing: the source at once of our freedom and our discontent. It is our fate, as the creatures closest to God, to be the ones most aware of the distance. Which is why, when Christ came to earth, it was as a man. By becoming one with us, He reminded us that we are one with God. And, although in our liturgy, we speak of Christ as perfect, what we're actually celebrating is his imperfection: that, in Him (as in us), perfection and imperfection are one. God's greatest gift to humanity is not that He gave us perfection but that He gave up his own. God personified Himself in Jesus and, by extension, in you and me...We must stop tormenting ourselves with our faults and see that humanity --- even the messy bits --- is a thing to honor, not to revile. After all, the Word became flesh...Can there be any surer stamp of divine approval?
     The truth is that Christ became incarnate not in order to redeem a sinful people who had cut themselves off from salvation, but to reassure a suffering people of their unity with God. Or, to put it another way, the world was not in a state of sin waiting for Christ to rescue it; the world was in a state of grace, waiting for us to recognize it.
     So I ask that...you acknowledge not just the Son's sacrifice but the Father's: not just the Crucifixion, when 'eternity redeemed time'...but the Creation, when eternity subjected itself to time. That is the Spirit from which we are born and that is the Spirit to which we will be restored. For, in God, there is no death but only an everlasting life in which we will be free of all the defects of our bodies and all the constraints of our personalities, as we return in a state of perfected energy to become one with eternal bliss. Amen."
    

Canticle of the Sun

“Most high, all powerful, all good Lord! All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing.” From Saint Francis’s poem, the Canticle of the Sun. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

     Very little of my talk tonight is mine. Almost all of it consists of two quotations. I’ll read a translation of Francis’s poem ‘The Canticle of the Sun,’ and I follow it with a quotation from a book by Bede Griffiths, which recalls themes in Francis’s poem and which brings out Francis's ideas in theological terms. I begin with Francis’s poem:

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord!
All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing.

To You, alone, Most High, do they belong.
No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all Your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and You give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor!
Of You, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
in the heavens You have made them bright, precious and beautiful.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
and clouds and storms, and all the weather,
through which You give Your creatures sustenance.

Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water;
she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.

Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom You brighten the night.
He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth,
who feeds us and rules us,
and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of You;
through those who endure sickness and trial.

Happy those who endure in peace,
for by You, Most High, they will be crowned.

Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death,
from whose embrace no living person can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will.
The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks,
and serve Him with great humility.

      This hymn of Saint Francis is a great poem and reminds us of the psalms which partly inspired it. It is a strong expression of Francis’s perception of the presence of the Lord in all things. Another expression of this reality comes from Bede Griffiths, a Catholic monk and priest who lived in India, in his book ‘Return to the Centre.’ I want to read now a rather long quotation from that book. It seems to me that Bede Griffiths states in theological terms, the same insight which Francis expresses in his poem.

     “Jesus knew himself in the eternal Ground of Being…He knew himself as the eternal manifestation of the Father, as communicating eternally in the bliss of the Spirit. His was an experience of personal relationship. The…One beyond being, revealed itself to him as Father, and the bliss of the Supreme revealed itself to him as the Spirit of love eternally welling up from the depths of God and eternally returning to its source. Reality itself is this eternal procession of self-manifestation, of self-knowledge, and this eternal overflow of bliss, this eternal self-giving in love. This is what is happening in each one of us, if we could only know ourselves. We are forever coming forth from the Father into the light of self-knowledge, forever returning to the Father in the bliss of love. All our knowledge in this world and all our striving for love is only a pale reflection of this everlasting wisdom and love.

     If we could go down into the depths of any being, a grain of sand, a leaf, a flower, we should come upon this eternal mystery. Beyond the molecules and atoms, beyond the protons and electrons, beyond the living cell with its genes and chromosomes, there is an energy, a force of life, which is continually welling up from the abyss of being in the Father, continually springing up into the light of the Word, continually flowing back to its source in the bliss of love. The Holy Trinity lies at the heart of every creature.  This mystery is hidden in the heart of every person, but we fail to see it: we are turned in on ourselves and are not touched by the grace of the Creator. But there are some in all ages and in all times who wake to this knowledge, who know the Truth. These are the seers, the prophets, the wise men…Each approaches it from a different point of view, each expresses it in different terms, but in all the mystery is the same, the one eternal Truth manifesting itself in space and time, the one unchanging Light reflecting itself in human consciousness. [Francis, of course, was one of these people.] Jesus [and Francis] were men who knew the Truth and who surrendered [themselves] to Love in total self-giving. This is the final revelation of the mystery, the Father revealing his Self to the world and communicating his Spirit, and this Self and this Spirit are Love.

     In other words, the ultimate Mystery of being, the ultimate truth, is Love. This is the essential structure of reality.” It is this mystery, this truth, which Francis expresses in his poem. “This is the eternal pattern of the universe. Every creature in the depth of its being is a desire, a longing for Love, and is drawn by Love to give itself in love…The nucleus throws out its protons and electrons and they circle around it, held by the attraction of Love. The sun throws out its planets and they circle round it, held by the same attraction. The cell divides and then again unites, building up the body in love…There is a continual dance of love, a continual going and returning. Ultimately it is the one Love giving itself continually so as to create this form and that form, building up the universe of stars and atoms and living cells, and then drawing everything back to itself; everything coming into being in the Word as an expression of love, and everything returning to the Father, to the Source, in the love of the Spirit."

In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Authority (Matthew 21)

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 21, verse 23.

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     It may seem odd that the lectionary for today has paired these two stories, the first in which the chief priests and elders question Jesus about his authority, and the second, in which Jesus questions them about an apparently unrelated topic, a father’s difficulties with his contrary sons. But when we listen to the stories closely, we realize that one subject unites them: authority and its nature, its basis, who exercises it and how, what may or may not happen, and what the consequences are. The way Jesus handles the subject illustrates what he thinks about it.

     Let us recall where this story is placed in Matthew’s Gospel. Earlier in the 21^st chapter, Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph, he drives the moneychangers and buyers and sellers from the temple, and causes a fig tree to wither. This last seems to us rather harsh, perhaps, but it is a reminder that there is a certain toughness in Jesus which all who encounter him need to be aware of. It is with these stories in mind, these very recent events, that the chief priests and elders ask Jesus about his authority. The events in themselves are rather alarming, and questions about it are justifiable.

     Notice what the chief priests and elders take for granted: that there is such a thing as authority, and that Jesus has it, or something like it. Of course they want to know where it comes from, so they can decide what kind of authority it is and whether they need to respect it or not.

     Now authority in the society that the priests and elders and Jesus live in has three sources: God, or heredity, or military might, or some combination of these sources. The empire is based on force; the rulers don’t even pretend to rule with the consent of the people. The rulers acquired their empire by force, and they legitimize it by saying that God willed it, and it must be so, because, after all, they won. And the authority of the priests comes from God as well, inherited in priestly families. There is no vocational priesthood in this society, only a family-based institution deriving its authority from divinely-sanctioned heredity.

     Jesus, of course, has no imperial authority, although the Evangelist does say that he’s from the House of David and so is royal, perhaps even a king. And Pilate asks him in chapter 27, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus doesn’t deny it, but he doesn’t affirm it either. In any case, in today’s story, he doesn’t claim royal authority. We know from the Letter to the Hebrews that the earliest Christians considered Jesus to be the Melchizedek High Priest, but he makes no such claim in our story either. In other words, Jesus avoids making any claim to traditional authority. Jesus does something else entirely.

     Jesus does something that every genuine spiritual teacher does: he asks a question of his questioners. And he promises an answer if his questioners answer him correctly. As it happens, he doesn’t actually answer their question --- not with a straight answer anyway. But it is in the question-and-answer that Jesus begins to reveal his attitude to authority.

     “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? ... they answered Jesus, ‘We do not know.’ And he said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’” In other words, Jesus is saying, “if you won’t tell me where John’s authority comes from, I won’t tell you where my authority comes from.” There is authority, but what it is, and where it comes from, is not known, at least to the priests and elders. Jesus knows what it is and where it comes from, but he is taking a roundabout way of telling them and us what it is.

     The first clue to the answer is in the questioning itself. The fact that the actors in this story are asking each other questions means that the source of true authority can’t be revealed in any other way. The kind of authority that relies on force does not like to be questioned: kings and emperors and other rulers, religious functionaries, economic powers, and all the other powers that the people of the story know about and take for granted. The religious authorities of the time of the story definitely don’t allow themselves to be questioned. But question them Jesus certainly does, and in that questioning he points them, and us, in the direction of true authority.

     “We do not know,” say the chief priests and elders to Jesus. They answer this way out of fear of another penetrating question from Jesus, but also out of fear of the crowd, who regard John’s baptism as coming from heaven. But there is more than fear in their answer; there is also, I like to think, a hint of humility, a hint of awareness that maybe they have something to learn about true authority after all. By admitting that they do not know, they have opened themselves just enough to allow a new truth to come to light. That little opening is all Jesus needs, so, like the artful spiritual guide that he is, he decides to tell them a story.

     Now we know why the Parable of the Two Sons is included in today’s reading. It is the beginning of an answer to the question of the chief priests and elders, “By what authority are you doing these things?” Jesus is not giving them the conventional, canonical, legalistic answer they are looking for; there isn’t one, really. He is leading them into a wider awareness of spiritual reality, the source of true authority.

     We remember the Parable of the Two Sons. The first refused to work in the vineyard, but “changed his mind and went.” The other agreed to work, but didn’t. “’Which of the two did the will of his father?’ They said, ‘The first.’” Then Jesus says, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” In Jesus’s world, tax collectors and prostitutes have no authority whatever, and the authorities disapprove of them, yet they receive the reward which according to the belief of the time, they should have been denied. Jesus upends the conventional understanding of authority, of who is important and who isn’t, of who gets into the Kingdom and who doesn’t. The real authority here is God himself, and not the usual ideas that people have about God. God is not interested in convention, legality, canonical ways of doing things. As a friend of mine said many years ago, “God is not religious!”

     The first son who says that he will not go into the vineyard and yet does go, is responding to genuine authority. The vineyard is the Kingdom and the first son sees it for what it is. The tax collectors and prostitutes see it too. John the Baptist saw it and pointed it out to them; he is the prophet of true authority, which invites everyone into the Kingdom. Conventional authority is always looking for reasons to exclude people from the Kingdom. The second son, who says he will go but does not, missed the point of the invitation. Perhaps he disapproves of the low-status people who are already there. Conventional authority routinely sorts people by status; true authority does not. True authority invites everyone into the Kingdom.

     “Even after you saw it,” Jesus says to the priests and elders, “you did not change your minds and believe him,” … believe John, that is. Even after the priests and elders got a glimpse of the Kingdom, they still stubbornly held out against the idea that tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of them. But the invitation still stands, backed up by true authority, which Jesus has revealed in today’s Gospel.

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. (24.IX.14 Adv., 1.X.17 Adv.)

    

    

    

    

Opinions (Romans 14)

“Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables.” From the Letter of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, chapter 14, verses 1 and 2.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Well, as we have just heard, we have it on the authority of the Apostle, that eating only vegetables is either the consequence, or the cause, of weakness in faith!! There we have it! Perhaps each is true! We have been warned! And perhaps this is why people say to me, from time to time, that they disapprove of Saint Paul, not to forget his remarks about sexuality elsewhere in the Letter to the Romans! But, of course, we can’t judge all of Paul’s writings on the basis of one or two lines from his letters, and, of course, he does tell us not to quarrel over opinions, including, I think, opinions about him and his writings! And keep in mind that Paul is not saying here that he has this from the Lord; we’re hearing Paul’s own views here. So vegans need not feel that the Lord disapproves of them!

     Our translation titles this section of the Letter, ‘Do not judge another.’ It is not accidental that the first occasion of judgment in today’s reading, which in this context means negative judgment, is food. It takes only a moment to realize that in our own society we are endlessly opinionated and judgmental about food, about eating, about everything connected to them. Perhaps we are puzzled or annoyed by the food preferences of others, perhaps others disapprove of our preferences, and say so, especially when they connect them to fashionable ideas about health. We live in what must be, along with Manhattan, one of the most food-obsessed cities on earth. This is a consequence of mass prosperity and scientific agriculture, which have given us choices which people in previous times, and in poor places today, could not possibly have. Our situation gives us time and opportunity to develop obsessions, snobbery, fetishes, superstitions, and just plain nonsensical ideas about food. Now of course Paul is writing about people making food choices for what they believe to be good and sufficient religious reasons. But we need not restrict our understanding of his meaning, to a particular situation two thousand years ago. Food still remains an occasion for judgmental ideas today, and we must not let them overtake us, and lead us to “despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat.” “For God has welcomed them,” Paul writes. Meals are to be occasions of fellowship, celebration, and not for exclusion, disapproval, judgment. We remember that Our Lord commands us to feed the hungry. I’m reminded of a remark that C S Lewis is supposed to have made, that “the only people who are invited to banquets are those who already have enough to eat!” Food and our attitude to it are at the center of our Christian lives. Our Eucharistic worship teaches us to be reverent toward food and thankful for it. The more reverent we are in our worship, the more reverent we will be in other meals. And this reverence works in the other direction too. We are never to take food for granted, never to think that it is merely routine, uninteresting, unworthy of respect.

      And so, by extension, we are never to take people for granted either. We remember the word “companion,” which means, “someone we share bread with.” Paul adds the curious remark, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servants of another?” This is a reminder that in meal situations, we are to be careful not to judge someone on the basis of perceived low status; these are servants, in Paul’s letter, but they could be anyone we perceive to be lower on the totem pole than we are. “And they will be upheld,” Paul writes, “for the Lord is able to make them stand.” In the end, the only status that matters is the status that Our Lord gives us. Our social arrangements are temporary, and, ultimately, they are trivial. At the Heavenly Banquet in the Kingdom, they won’t matter at all.

     “Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike.” What a prescient remark that was! Christian history is full of disputes about the calendar. In the first few centuries of the Church, there was much disagreement about how and when to commemorate the Resurrection, and, in fact, the date of Pascha, of Easter, is still a matter of contention today. Whom and what to remember in the calendar, and how, and why, and when, or whether Christians should have such a calendar at all, are still matters for argument. This problem is thick with opportunities for judgmental attitudes, accusations of disorder, irresponsibility, heresy, schism, apostasy, all of which lead almost inevitably to physical violence, even murder and war. Christian history is full of it, and the religious violence in the world today is no different. We humans have a lot of difficulty living with others whose ways are different from our own. We humans have a hard time living with pluralism and ambiguity, the awareness that there really are other ways of doing things, and maybe those other ways are right and our ways are wrong.

     The solution that Paul offers is a call to a higher reality than the temporary arrangements of a calendar. “Let all be convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord.” Paul goes on to write, “We do not live for ourselves…if we live, we live to the Lord…” That is, the only reality that matters, is that we all belong to the Lord, regardless of what we think about food, or calendars, or anything else. We all, in the end, are equal before the Lord and his judgment seat. That is the only judgment that matters. “For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God,” Paul writes. “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” This is a promise that our tongues too shall give praise to God, but the precondition, as it were, is that “each of us will be accountable to God,” as Paul writes. The judgment of God will be the requirement that we see our own judgments for what they are: ultimately, attempts to exclude others from their life with the Lord. Once we see ourselves, once we accept God’s judgment, only then will we be able to bow to him, and our tongues will give praise to him.

     So we have come a long way from disputes about food and the calendar. These apparently small things can lead to very big consequences. So let us welcome each other then, “but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Son of Man, Son of God (Matthew 16)

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Today’s Gospel is about questions and answers to questions. The first question is about public opinion; “who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The second is about the opinions of the disciples only; “but who do you say that I am?” These two questions are still being asked, and the answers in today’s reading resemble answers still being talked about today. The nature and meaning of the Son of Man are still live issues.

     Scholars and theologians have been debating for some time about the meaning of the title ‘Son of Man.’ For some, it is a Messianic title, for others it is simply a way of saying that someone is human, and nothing more. There are variations on these themes, but there is no final consensus on what the phrase means. In today’s Gospel, the implication is that it is a Messianic title.

     The disciples offer a number of suggestions in answer to the first question; these suggestions are reducible to one: the Son of Man is a prophet. No one actually says that the Son of Man is Jesus, or that Jesus is merely a prophet like the others in the list. But that is all that the disciples come up with, at least as a report of what people in general are saying.

     Then Jesus asks the disciples for their own thoughts, not just a summary of poll results. It is interesting that Peter answers, and no one else. Peter silently, in his own mind, makes two connections: that Jesus is the Son of Man, and that the Son of Man is the Messiah. Peter then blurts out, without any preamble or explanation, the words "You are the Messiah". And then he adds to the Messianic title, and proclaims that Jesus is not only the Messiah, but the “Son of the living God.” We are well beyond mere prophecy here. Peter is declaring the uniqueness of Jesus, and his particular relationship with God. Jesus is no mere prophet, but is another kind of person entirely. Rather, he is the fulfilment of prophecy, the fulfilment of Messianic expectations.

     Jesus says to Peter, “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Peter, in other words, has perceived clearly in Jesus, signs of God’s activity and nature. Peter has listened to Jesus’s teaching, seen his signs and wonders, and put it all together in the way that Jesus knew that he would. Jesus recognized in Peter his openness to God; Jesus names this recognition, his "Father in heaven." That is why Jesus calls him the Rock. There is in Peter a solid core of spiritual awareness. That awareness, that strength, enables Peter to see the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, when others can see only a prophet. 

     I’ve been thinking about why the other disciples do not answer the question, “but who do you say that I am?” It is likely that there is more to the conversation than the Evangelist has recorded, but the fact that it is not recorded is itself part of the message. It is worth considering what this silent message may be.

     “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you,” Jesus says. The disciples, flesh and blood as they are, have not reached the same depth of insight as Peter. So, they preserve their silence, and in their silence, they are open to the revelation that Peter has put before them. So that they can really hear what Jesus and Peter are saying, they listen and don’t distract themselves. Jesus and Peter are leading them past the stage of mere prophecy, up to a new level of understanding. Consequently, Peter, the Rock, is someone on whom Jesus can begin building his Body in the world, and he begins with the disciples, right then and there, by revealing his true nature to them, and Peter’s nature as well. The receptive silence of the disciples makes this possible.

     It is clear from this text, that the gathering of Jesus’s people, his Body in the world, is called to be rock-like. “The gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” The powers of darkness, of evil, will not be able to overcome Christ's Body in the world, if it retains this character, this Rock of faith in the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. The Rock is strong faith in Jesus as Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, or, as later formulas would state it, of faith in Jesus as God incarnate, as a union of human nature and divinity.

     Next, Jesus, still addressing Peter, says, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven.” In other words, Peter, by seeing Jesus clearly for who he is, has opened himself, or has been opened by his "Father in heaven," as Jesus says, to direct perception of divine reality, to a level beyond what the other disciples have reached, so far. This awareness of divine reality is called here "the kingdom of Heaven." And this experience is expressed as a gift from Jesus to Peter, because Jesus, who embodies the Kingdom, visualized as handing over the Keys, has recognized in Peter this leap in perception. The Keys have always been within reach; now Peter is able to perceive them, to "receive" them, as it were, to become aware that they have always been there, waiting for him, so to speak. In Tradition, the "power of the Keys" has long been regarded as juridical and jurisdictional, as mere institutional authority in the Church; but it is much more than that. The "power of the Keys" is that unity of mind, that unity of spirit, between Peter and Jesus, that makes Peter's understanding, and our understanding, of Jesus as Messiah and divine Son, possible. That understanding is available to all of us, and so the Power of the Keys is available to all of us. It is not the possession of one person only, of one authority only.

      It is clear from this text that, at the very least, life in the Church has eternal consequences. “Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” We can, in other words, create our own eternal destiny. We all of us have the ‘Power of the Keys,’ the power of access to the Kingdom. And one of the Keys is faith in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God. Peter was the first to recognize Jesus for who he is, and so he was the first to receive the 'Power of the Keys,' that is, Jesus helped Peter become aware of what his declaration means. Jesus made him aware of the consequences of his faith, the power of his faith. We, all of us who know Jesus as Messiah and Son of God, have the same power, to loose in heaven what we loose on earth.

     “Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.” You would think that the disciples, having learned who Jesus is, would want to proclaim the news far and wide, to announce the arrival of the Messiah at last, to announce the end to all earthly injustice and the beginning of God’s reign, right here and right now. But no, that is not the kind of Messiah Jesus is. There is much that he has to undergo, and there is much for the disciples to experience, before they can reveal this secret. In the very next line, which is not in today’s reading, the Evangelist says, “From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering.” The disciples, including Peter, do not yet know the full nature of Jesus’s Messiahship. And so they must remain silent, until they are truly ready.

     Who do we say that the Son of Man is? These days, there is a tendency to neglect the revelation of Jesus as Son of God, and to emphasize his nature as Son of Man; a tendency, in other words, to neglect the real meaning of the Incarnation, and to dwell too much only on the humanity of Jesus, on the ‘Jesus of History,’ so-called. This has several consequences. One is to think of Jesus only as the Son of Man, as only human. So that is why the disciples report that people, probably including themselves, think that the Son of Man is merely a prophet. Being only human, they think, he can’t be any more than a prophet. It’s a logical, natural conclusion to reach.

     This idea has consequences for the Church. If we imagine that Jesus is only human, then our association with him in community can’t get beyond the level of mere affinity. We hear his prophecy, we hear his teaching, we like him, and it, and so we think of ourselves as nothing more than followers of the great prophet and teacher. This is good as far as it goes, but it goes no further than that. 

     But let us hear what Jesus actually says about himself, and about his Body in the world. When Jesus accepts the titles of Messiah and Son of God, he follows them immediately with a description of his Body in the world, which is more than a community of like-minded followers only, of disciples only. His community is built upon the Rock of the revelation of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God, far beyond a prophet. The powers of Hell cannot overcome that Rock, because it is founded on God himself, and not merely on our affinity for a prophet. The ‘Power of the Keys’ opens the way to the kingdom of Heaven. The power to bind and loose means that in our earthly lives we are creating our eternal destinies. Peter was the first person to recognize the Messiah; once he did this, Jesus was able to reveal the true nature of the community which would flow from that recognition. May we all recognize Jesus as Son and Messiah, now and always. Amen.

      

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.  (24.VIII.14 Adv., 27.VIII.17 Adv.) (revised 27.viii.23)

Loaves and Fishes (Matthew 14)

     “And all ate and were filled, and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.” From the Gospel for today, the Gospel according to Matthew, the fourteenth chapter, verse 20.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     I’ve preached on this Gospel before, three years ago. It doesn’t seem like that long, but there it is. I resisted the temptation to look up my previous sermon and rewrite it. Once, many years ago, in a parish in Toronto, where I was deacon and scheduled to preach, I pulled a sermon out of my file, thinking that I could save myself the trouble of preparing a new talk. And so I proceeded to deliver that homily, only to realize halfway through that I had in fact preached exactly that sermon, to that very congregation, three years before! There was nothing for it except to push on, which I did, hoping that no one would notice. Well, of course, they did notice. “We forgave you!” said one very generous member of the congregation. That was a good reminder to the young preacher, as I was, not to look for shortcuts or to fall for deceptively easy solutions. So when I discovered that I would be preaching on the story of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, as the old translation calls it, I resolutely decided not to look at my previous remarks. I didn’t want to give in to my anxiety that maybe there was nothing new to say about today’s story, that maybe all I could and should do was repeat what I said before. After all, this story is so familiar, and there are stock responses to it which preachers have resorted to, that it would be easy just to give in and go with the familiar, the tried and true. 

     The problem that this story presents is, of course, its impossibility. In the world that we know, bread and fish don’t miraculously multiply hundreds or thousands of times, and that beyond the actual needs of a hungry crowd. We call this kind of story “mythology” or some such word. Whatever the word, we don’t recognize the world that this story comes from. It is not our world, and for some people that is the end of the matter. And for them there is nothing more to say about it.

     But there is more to say about it. It’s true that the story isn’t 21^st century news reporting, but that doesn’t mean that it’s false. The meaning of the story is not restricted to its surface detail, but also includes what it says about the world that it portrays. And it’s that portrayal that can speak to us today.

     The Evangelist placed this story between the death of John the Baptist and Jesus’s walking on water. We may think of it as a kind of response to the death of John the Baptist, and a preparation for what is to come. The grisly realism of the execution of John is followed by stories of an unselfish, very generous, living, and life-giving, reality. The reality that Jesus reveals in this incident is as unlike the worldly power of the story of John the Baptist as it can be. The story reveals a deeper reality, whose power Jesus uses to feed the crowd. There is nothing wrong with taking the story literally, as a report of historical fact, if we believe that Jesus is the Incarnate Lord, who can act freely in the world in such a way as to reveal his own nature and the real nature of the world in which we live. But we are not limited by hearing the story in any particular way, and we are free to interpret it creatively.

     Basically, this story is about the freedom of God, and about the freedom of people to respond to Him. To tell such a story about Jesus is to say that there is more to reality than its surface appearance. Because Jesus is free to act in his very creative and generous way, so are we free to respond in similar ways. The story is about possibility, about the appearance in the world of something totally new. There is nothing in the everyday world that we know, that could make such an event possible. But the fact of this event means that real freedom is built in to the world, both God’s freedom and ours. In other words, we are not limited, and God is not limited, to our usual, common-sense, cause-and-effect, everyday understanding of how the world works. We may think of this story as part of the long preparation in the Gospels, for the ultimate free act of God in the Resurrection. And that free act is what gives meaning to all the stories of signs and wonders and miracles in the Scriptures. All the signs and wonders are, so to speak, incomplete on their own. They find their fulfilment in the ultimate freely life-giving, life-affirming, act of the Resurrection.

     There is nothing inevitable about the response of the people in this story. They could easily have chosen not to see what was happening; they could have been blind to it; they could have turned down the food that was freely offered to them. They could have doubted Jesus; they could have doubted themselves. But in faith they accepted the possibility that Jesus opened up before them. “And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.” The possibility that opened up before them was not limited to them alone; in other words, there was enough left over to include others who were not there, but who would be there in the future. The multiplication of the loaves and fishes is an ongoing event, to which all are invited.

     It is possible to understand this story as a description of church life, especially liturgical life. “Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.” That’s as neat a summary of Eucharistic liturgy as I have ever read. If we in our liturgy place ourselves in that crowd with Jesus, we are present with him and open up to ourselves that experience of freedom and possibility which Jesus represents, which, indeed, he is.

     In our society and economy, we are very good at multiplying, if that is the right word, foods and products and who-knows-what-else, in profusion. Yet there are still many, millions actually, here and around the world, who don’t have enough to eat. I’ve been hearing lately that we Americans typically waste something like 40% of our food. This is a stunning contrast to the “twelve baskets full” of leftovers after the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Those leftovers were not wasted. We can be sure that they fed others not mentioned in the story. Our story is a clear reminder that we must do better in making sure that all are fed. And we can actually do this. We don’t live in a subsistence economy, as the people of the Gospel story did. Yet even in that economy, Jesus taught people that real generosity is always possible. Always. In fact, to emphasize the point, the story is repeated, in chapter 15 of Matthew’s Gospel.

     Even the head-count in the two stories reminds us of the possibility of real generosity. “And those who ate were about 5000 men, besides women and children.” Or, “those who had eaten were 4000 men, besides women and children.” Women and children were not included in the head-count (age-bias and gender-bias, we call this, in our time) but they were definitely included in the distribution. No one was left out. And our liturgy, which echoes these events, must always remind us that no one is to be left out of the distribution, not only liturgically, but also among all the hungry of the world.

     The freedom of Jesus in this story is our freedom as well. The generosity which he teaches is available to us as well. We can be, must be, as generous as he is. The possibility which Jesus puts in front of us is there for us to respond to. Our Eucharistic liturgy reminds us, empowers us in fact, to do this.

     “And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full.”

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

    

    

    

    

 

Wheat and Tares (Matthew13)

“Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears, listen!” From the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 13, verse 43.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

     The whole of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, in which today’s reading is found, is a collection of stories about seeds, growth, and the Kingdom of God. To make one continuous selection, today’s reading, named in the old translation as the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, is actually put together from verses separated by the Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Parable of the Yeast, and even a short bit on the use of parables. In that short bit, Jesus says, “I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.” So all these seed-stories are meant to reveal a secret, something hidden from the beginning, from the foundation of the world. Jesus makes it easy for us to understand today’s parable, since he provides not only the story but an   interpretation as well! This puts a preacher in the odd position of having somehow to improve upon, or even add to,  Our Lord’s understanding of his own words.

     So I went to the beginning, to the book Genesis, to read what it says about the foundation of the world. Right after the waters were gathered together and the dry land appeared, God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” This is on Day Three of the creation, in the first Genesis account in chapter 1 of that book. There is in fact nothing hidden about the creation of seed-bearing plants; it is the most important thing that happens after the creation and the appearance of dry land. The seeds of the Kingdom are planted at the moment of creation, in the "kingdom of the Father." So I think that what “hidden” means here is "embedded in the creation;" it can also mean “overlooked,” “forgotten,” “ignored,” or perhaps simply “not thought of.” Jesus is proclaiming a way of understanding the world which may not have been thought of before, or which has been overlooked. Jesus is teaching a way of seeing the world, the actual physical world, which reveals something of God’s purpose and the nature of his Kingdom. This purpose and nature are built-in, as it were, in the created world. The seed stories, and today’s story of the Weeds among the Wheat especially, draw on real-world experience to say something about God and his relationship to the world which we know.

     A farmer sowed good seed in his field, and someone else came along and sowed tares among the wheat. “So,” the Gospel says, “when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.” The main point here, which is so obvious that perhaps we don’t think of it, is the inevitability of growth. Yes, the wheat and the weeds grow up together. Of course they do! They grow, inevitably and necessarily. Now of course something can interfere with the process and ruin the crop, bad weather, disease, and so on, but, left to themselves, both wheat-seeds and weed-seeds will grow to maturity following the laws of nature. (I should say at this point that nowadays we don’t call weeds “weeds;” they are now “native plants,” which may or may not be endangered!).  What we may call a “law of growth,” which includes the growth of the Kingdom, is in the background, the foundation, of this and all the other seed-stories in this chapter.

     There are many things we can say about seeds and growth, that help us to understand the nature of the Kingdom. The first thing we notice about seeds is how small they are, indeed hidden in fact, most of the time, hidden meaning here simply "out of sight." “Hidden from the foundation of the world,” as Jesus says. Growth begins with small, almost invisible, individual seeds. They are planted and grow in the ordinary, everyday world that we know. They grow invisibly, secretly, silently, revealing their nature when they break the surface of the soil and present themselves as beautiful plants. This quiet process is so commonplace that we hardly notice it, we take it for granted. As one commentator writes, “Growing things make no noise.”

     So it is with the Kingdom. There is no force coming from outside of the world to impose the Kingdom on us. Rather, the Kingdom is in each one of us, the “children of the Kingdom,” each of us a seed growing according to the law of God in us, each of us in the ordinary, everyday world that we know, each of us in our quiet way (or perhaps not so quiet!) doing what we can to make God’s Kingdom known in the world. The story of the Wheat and the Tares, or the Wheat and the Weeds, is a story about the ordinariness of things, about the Kingdom coming into being in the world that we know. It is about each seed becoming what it is supposed to be, by following the law of its nature. And all seeds together are collectively transforming the world, perhaps silently, and secretly.

     Not without opposition, however. “An enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat…so when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well.” (It is necessary to remember that the weeds in this story, the tares, the proper name of this weed, are indistinguishable from wheat). This describes the world that we know, in which good and evil exist together. Here again the emphasis is on the ordinary, the everyday, real this-world experience. The Kingdom of God is growing all the time, and opposition to it is constant and always present. Our Lord’s response to this is interesting. He says, “Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” This is to avoid uprooting the good with the bad, but it is also to avoid being too quick to decide which is good and which is bad. As I said a moment ago, “weeds” are now “native plants,” and it is not clear that they are necessarily bad. And we remember that wheat and tares resemble each other. Jesus would not let the slaves gather up the weeds, but he does send his angels to “collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers.” It may be clear in a mature wheat field which plant is wheat and which not, but in the everyday world that we know, it is not always clear what is good and what is evil. Just as weeds become native plants, so too apparent evils at one time become goods at another. That is why Jesus doesn’t let the slaves, which we may think of as the lower forces of our nature, decide what is evil and so try to uproot it. Rather, Jesus send the angels, which we may think of as the higher forces of our nature, our nature as transformed by deepened spiritual insight, insight which is slow to condemn, to make the selection. Only then can true evil be uprooted. Only then will the “righteous shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Only then will we know how to distinguish between wheat and tares, between good and evil, between sinners and righteous. Amen. (VII.2014.Adv., 23.VII.17.Adv.)