Watchfulness (Matthew 24)

    “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (Matthew 24: 42).

      In Nomine, etc..

     We’ve entered the season of Advent, and the beginning of a new liturgical year. Of course, we experience more than one new beginning every year. There’s the civil New Year that begins on January 1, there’s the school year that begins every August or September, which I suspect every parent of school-age children experiences as the real new year, regardless of the civil or the church calendar. And Orthodox Christians begin their liturgical year on September 1. We remember that in the Old Style calendar, the New Year began on March 25, followed by a week of celebration culminating on April 1, April Fools Day, which we still commemorate, more or less, every year. So we have our choice of new years, every year. We have more than one opportunity, every year, to have a sense of beginning anew, starting fresh, without being attached to one way, and one way only, of experiencing the passing of time. We have three or four new years, each year, to wake us  up, to remind us of the passing of time, to get our attention, to call us out of habit and routine, to become aware of the real situations in which we find ourselves, to become watchful in fact, to be ready for the unexpected, as Our Lord is telling us to do in today’s Gospel.

     As we know, there are two themes in the Advent season, Incarnation and the Second Coming. The Second Coming is called in the New Testament the Parousia, which means presence or arrival. Our Lord is telling us to be aware of his presence, of his continuous presence and future arrival. The 24th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is about signs of the end of the age, persecution to come, sacrilege to be suffered, false prophets and false messiahs to be avoided, and about the coming of the Son of Man, whose angels will gather his elect from the four winds. These are alarming signs and stern warnings. They are, in fact, not only warnings about a future; they are  descriptions of the dark side of the ancient world, and of our world too. Things haven’t changed much in two thousand years.

     It seems to me that, in telling us to keep awake, Our Lord is telling us not so much to be looking forward, anxiously or otherwise, to an unpredictable future event, as he is telling us to pay attention to present reality. “You do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” is a way of saying, “You do not know when you will see the real nature of things; you do not know when the veil of routine, of ordinary daily life will fall away and you will see life, the world, in all their glory!” We have glimpses of this when we mark new year commemorations, and for a moment we see things afresh, and we begin again, and then the veil of routine returns. Our Lord refers to this when he says, “Before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.” Now the surface meaning of this passage is clear; it is a description of a catastrophic flood event of a  kind we know well, and of heedless people being swept away in a natural disaster. But there is more to this passage than its literal surface meaning.

    The passage does not have to mean only that a lot of heedless people were swept away and drowned. It can mean that the flood, that is, the power and presence of God, can sweep through the routines of life and clear them away, so that what is left is a new perception of life and the world. The Noah story is about just that, clearing away all that blocks our perception of the world as God sees it, and as God means us to see it. The world after Noah is a new Eden.  Our Lord calls this “the coming of the Son of Man.” Our Zen Buddhist friends call this “the falling away of body and mind,” that is, the falling away of all that blocks our perception of reality. And it is reality, divine reality in the world, that Our Lord wants us to wake up to.

     We are awake when we do not take the routines of life to be the whole of life. We are awake when we do not take superficial, partial explanations of reality for the whole of it. We are awake when we ignore false prophets and false messiahs. We are awake when we pay attention to Our Lord.

    So let us take the  opportunity given us by the arrival of this new church year, another new beginning, to shake off the slumber of routine, and to wake to the arrival at any time, of the coming of the Son of Man.

     “Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

    In Nomine, etc.. Amen.  (26.XI.16 Adv. Latin)

     

             

Sadducees and the Resurrection (Luke 20)

    “Then some of the scribes answered, Teacher, you have spoken well.” Luke 20:39.

    In the Name etc.

    Much of chapter 20 of Luke’s Gospel, in which today’s reading is included, is a series of questions to Jesus, challenges really, and Jesus’s replies. The challenges and replies present some of Jesus’s techniques as a spiritual guide. They also present Jesus’s point of view, if I can put it that way, as less earth-bound and narrow and literal than that of his challengers. And Jesus’s point of view, whether expressed or not, is part of his teaching.

    First, there is the challenge to Jesus’s authority, at the beginning of the chapter, by priests, scribes, and elders, the religious authorities of the time. He replies by asking a question of them, about the source of John the Baptist’s authority: is it human or divine? They decline to choose, and so does Jesus. But he does answer; his reply makes it clear that Jesus has authority in himself, because in him there is no division between human and divine. Jesus doesn’t need to choose one or the other, and he is prodding his challengers to understand that they don’t need to choose one or the other. This comes from Jesus’s own awareness of his closeness, his unity, with the Father. And Jesus’s hearers, by not arguing back, show us that they may perceive, without saying so, the reality of Jesus’s awareness of his own true nature, and perhaps they have glimpsed, however unconsciously, that they are free of any need to make a choice  between the human and the divine.

     The next challenge is the question about paying taxes, whether it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. The authorities “sent spies who pretended to be honest,” so we know what Luke thinks of this challenge, and probably all such challenges. But Jesus refuses to be entangled in the question, or to be worried about spies, and uses the opportunity to free his questioners from the need to see a conflict between the emperor and God, or, to put it another way, to free them from their need to see a conflict between the human and the divine, or to have to choose between them. The Gospel says, “being amazed by his answer, they became silent.” In their silence, they begin to perceive what Jesus is opening up to them. By leading his challengers into silence, Jesus is making it possible for them to experience a new truth.

    And so we come to today’s Gospel, the Sadducees’ question about the Resurrection. It is apparently intended as another trap, a trick question like the others. In any case, Jesus doesn’t fall for this one either. We get a glimpse into the reasoning of the Sadducees, who present the paradox of the seven brothers being married successively to the same woman. And they take for granted that the woman is defined only as someone’s wife. They assume that earthly relationships will continue in eternity. The Sadducees make the interesting point that the purpose of marrying a widow is to “raise up children for his brother,” as the law of Moses says they’re supposed to do. In other words, the only immortality that the Sadducees believe in is the continuation of a family line. In their view, not only is there no resurrection, there is no earthly immortality either in this story, a double challenge to Jesus. How will Jesus answer this double challenge, to decide whose wife the woman will be, and to say something about her, and her seven husbands’, lack of earthly descendants, in apparent violation of the Law of Moses? The Sadducees think they’ve got Jesus here, stuck between an unanswerable conundrum about resurrection and a story about an unfulfilled earthly need for descendants, to fulfill the law of Moses , and also the only immortality that the Sadducees believe in. Tricky problems indeed, for Jesus to unravel.

    And  unravel them he does. To this challenge Jesus actually gives a straight answer in plain words, altho the intent is the same as with the other challenges: to free his hearers from a narrow and literal way of thinking, and to open their minds to an expanded understanding.

    “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but...in the resurrection...neither marry nor are given in marriage.” In other words, earthly roles and genders are left behind. The Sadducees’ problem is nonexistent. Jesus is liberating them from having to think in everyday, this-world categories. In our own time, obsessed as many are with gender and sexuality and much else besides, this teaching is a corrective,  reminding us to subordinate our limited, earthly concerns to an awareness of ourselves and everyone else, past, present, and future, as spiritual beings with an eternal destiny, in which our earthly lives are only beginnings, first steps in the journey to the divine.

    Those who neither marry nor are given in marriage are “those who are considered worthy of a place in that age,” that age being eternity. We leave behind this world and everything in it, to enter that age. As the Apostle says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” The Sadducees think that flesh and blood should inherit, and indeed according to them there is nothing else but perishable, earthly inheritance. But Our Lord makes it clear that there is more than flesh and blood, more than the limitations of this world. “Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection,” he says. They have left behind this world.

    We are children of the resurrection when we leave behind narrow, earth-bound, literal-minded ways of thinking, and open ourselves to the life-giving presence of God. We do that by letting Jesus challenge what we take for granted, and by remaining in the silence into which he leads us, when he answers our questions. We understand that we don’t need to choose between the human and the divine; we understand that we don’t have to restrict ourselves to this-world ways of thinking, and we realize that to be human is to be on a journey to God. Then, with the priests and scribes and elders and Sadducees, we perceive the reality that Jesus is opening up to us. Then we may say with the scribes, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” In the Name, etc.. Amen. (6.XI.16. Adv.-n.d.)

    

     

    

    

    

   

Zacchaeus (Luke 19)

    “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” (Luke 19.9-10).

     In nomine, etc.. 

     There’s a lot going on in today’s story about Jesus and Zacchaeus the tax collector. The first thing we hear is: “he was a chief tax collector and was rich.” Actually, it’s the second thing we hear; the first thing we hear is his name, Zacchaeus, which means “pure” or “innocent”...it makes an interesting contrast with his occupation, as though his name is something he hides behind, or perhaps aspires to.

    By the time of our story, very early in the first millennium according to our calendar, tax collectors were contractors supplying the Roman state with an agreed-to amount of taxation for a particular district. In the period before the emperor Augustus, contractors would bid on tax collections, contracts would go to the highest bidders, and the contractors had to ensure the collection of the agreed-to taxes. If they bid too high, they would be in trouble, so it is easy to understand that the system would be full of opportunities for corruption and abuse. We can understand why”tax collector” and “sinner” were practically equivalent in the minds of most people. Not only were these contractors tax collectors, they were often money lenders and traders in commodities as well, with even more opportunities to make lots and lots of money. By the time of Jesus, tax collection had been reorganized to reduce contracting out, but there were still many opportunities for abuse.

    Tax rates were actually quite low compared to what we’re used to. Depending on conditions and the needs of the government and the military, taxes on wealth and property were around 1 to 3 percent. But in the  subsistence economy of the time, even tax rates like these could be burdensome. And in a steeply class-divided and status-conscious society, with vast differences in wealth and status between the lowest and highest classes, it is easy to understand that there would be a lot of resentment, and hostility toward the wealthy --- hence the belief that tax collectors, publicans as they were called in the old translation, were “sinners”. And since they were often moneylenders, charging interest in violation of the law of Moses, that only made it worse. Add to that, the fact that some of them were commodities traders, hoarding and charging what they could get away with, “sinner” was probably the most polite word that people could apply to them. I learned the other day that Jericho, Zacchaeus’s town, was a center of trade in balsam wood, a valuable commodity that Zacchaeus might have traded in. So we have an understanding of the kind of man Zacchaeus might have been, and of what people likely thought of him.

    All of this makes Jesus’s connection to Zacchaeus very interesting. Jesus evidently knows him, and expects to visit Zacchaeus in his house. What does this tell us? Is there some kind of network that Jesus and Zacchaeus belong to? Is Zacchaeus one of a group of people, rich businessmen and others, who take care of Jesus as he goes from town to town? It is an interesting question, how Jesus was supported in his ministry, since there is no evidence in the Scripture that Jesus worked for money, altho tradition tells us that he was a carpenter. Zacchaeus may have had some role like this in Jesus’s life, but of course we can only speculate. We don’t know. But the story as we have it still gives us much to reflect on.

    For starters, Jesus is willing, even eager, to make it clear to everyone watching, that Zacchaeus is a friend, that he is happy to be seen with him and to stay with him, and Jesus wants everyone to know it. Zacchaeus wants everyone to know it too, as he makes clear in his delight in welcoming Jesus. We know how the crowd reacts: “All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’” But Jesus is having none of it; he doesn’t allow public opinion to get in the way of his seeing Zacchaeus as he really is, and he is in effect telling the crowd to see Zacchaeus as he is, to pull away the veil, to blow away the religious fog that this word “sinner” places between themselves and Zacchaeus, and between Jesus and Zacchaeus and what Jesus knows that Zacchaeus is capable of.

    By accepting Zacchaeus as a friend, by recognizing him publicly, Jesus has released in Zacchaeus the ability to act in accordance with his true nature. His true nature is one of great generosity: “half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor.” Furthermore, he is willing to make up for any fraud he may have committed. The interesting point here is that he’s not admitting to fraud; presumably, that would have to be proven. But he’s willing to be convinced, and to make up for it several times over. This willingness, by the way, is an indication of just how rich he really is. In any case, Jesus’s acceptance of Zacchaeus as he is, makes his free generosity possible. Jesus makes no demands upon him, except the expectation of hospitality, and makes no judgment of Zacchaeus. Jesus lets no preconceptions about money or sin or anything else, get in the way of relating to Zacchaeus person-to-person, in freedom, spiritual freedom which comes from his understanding of Zacchaeus, and himself and everyone else, as a son (and daughter!) of Abraham.

    “Today, salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.” In other words, Zacchaeus, before all else, is a son, as all men and women are sons and daughters, of the people of God, chosen as all people are, to live with God in his kingdom.

    “For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”  The lost are the people who have forgotten, or who never knew, that they are sons and daughters of Abraham; the whole human race is called to life with God, which is what salvation is, in this life and in eternity. Jesus called Zacchaeus back to this awareness, which he had forgotten or neglected; today’s Gospel recalls us to the same realization, and makes it possible for  us to drop preconceptions and exclusionary words like “sinner” and remember that we are all called to a life of spiritual freedom, as Zacchaeus was called. Let us all, like Zacchaeus, come down from our sycamore tree, to see Jesus, and let us welcome him into our lives, to see Jesus, and ourselves, as he, and we, really are. Amen. (29.X.16 Adv. 30.X.16 TSP).  

    

   

The Mustard Seed of Faith (Luke 17)

     “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” (Luke 17:5).

     In nomine, etc..

    This chapter of Luke’s Gospel, chapter 17, is a collection of sayings and stories that appear not to be related to one another. It is as though Luke had to put these sayings and stories together somehow, and so he chose this particular order without considering any possible connections among them. It is possible that the arrangement was as casual as that, but, I don’t think that it was casual. I would like to bring to the surface some connections between the two parts of today’s reading, the saying about faith and the mustard seed, and the story about the slaves.

         “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’” The apostles are the Twelve, the inner circle of Jesus’s followers, the leadership of the disciples and other followers of Jesus. What the apostles learn from Jesus is the core of his teaching, which they pass on to others. So what we are hearing in this saying is an inner teaching of Jesus, which will become part of the public teaching of the apostles.

    Consider the demand, “increase our faith!” It isn’t a request; it’s a demand, at least in the abbreviated form we have it. It’s almost bullying, at least in my hearing. The apostles are taking for granted that faith is something that Jesus and they can quantify, that it is possible to have more of it in one person than in another. The apostles expect Jesus to top them up with it, like filling a container with grain or wine or water. The apostles want more of what they perceive Jesus to have, and they assume that he can give it to them.

    What Jesus actually gives them is a way of understanding faith that takes the faith-as-quantity idea and turns it upside down. He reduces the quantity of faith to the size of a mustard seed and says that the apostles don’t need any more faith than that. There is very little, almost nothing, to quantify, nothing to increase in size or amount. There is almost nothing, no-thing, to be “had” at all, to be accumulated or possessed.

    What there is, is something that Jesus expects to grow, expects the apostles to grow, and, furthermore, he expects them to transplant it once it grows. Faith is a seed, something organic, that is capable of growing into something much larger than itself. And, like the mulberry tree, the other plant in our story, it can be transplanted.

    The seed-and-plant analogy reveals what Jesus is getting at: the faith that the apostles already have is sufficient. It is the seed that will grow and spread. The mulberry tree, an image of the faith that will grow around the apostles, will spread into many places, including some that will seem very unlikely indeed. That is what Jesus means when he says of the tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea.” Jesus is not presenting faith as a kind of magic to move trees around; he is uprooting the idea of faith as a quantity, something to be accumulated, and planting in the apostles an awareness of faith as growth.

    What the two plants have in common, of course, is that they can grow and spread; the seed of faith that the apostles have, will do the same. That is the faith that Jesus wants to increase in the apostles: the awareness that faith is growing, living, spreading, and that growth begins from the seed of faith that they already have. They don’t need any more, any "increase". Faith, properly planted and nurtured, will grow and spread.

    Today’s reading lurches rather abruptly to the story of the supposedly worthless slaves. “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? The answer is supposed to be, no one would do that, there are  other things that the slaves have to do first. This is a glimpse into the hard world of Jesus’s time, a subsistence economy dependent on slavery and relentless, thankless work. But even in this sobering tale, so different from the previous saying, there are clues to understanding faith, and what the increase of faith means.

    We’ve moved on from mustard seeds and mulberry trees, to plowing fields and tending sheep. We’re still in the agrarian world of plants, and now animals. The seeds of faith have grown into fields to be tended, and the community of faith, represented here by sheep, has grown up around them. The apostles are the slaves in this story, and Jesus is their master. This reading sounds harsh to modern American ears, perhaps, but the implied teaching is about listening. If the apostles want to increase their faith, they will do it by listening to their master, and by doing what he requires of them. “Faith comes through hearing,” as Paul writes in his letter to the Christians in Rome. When the apostles really hear what Jesus is saying, then their faith will increase, the mustard seeds will sprout, and mulberry orchards will need tending, as will the flock of the faithful. Then the apostles will take their places at the table, with their master and all the faithful, past, present, and future. Their faith and ours will increase, as we listen, really listen, to our master. Let us listen to our master, as we gather at his table.

     “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’”

    In nomine, etc.. (1-2 X 16 Adv)

    

    

     

   

Bishop Marc's Sermon on the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16)

Sermon
September 25, 2016
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21
+Marc Andrus

How does the heart come alive, warm to the needs of those who suffer? That is the question at the heart of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. What this parable is not: a blanket approval of poverty; a general condemnation of wealth.

This question, of how the heart can, once deadened, be brought to life again, is that which occupies the poet George Herbert in The Flower:

Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
         Quite underground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown,
                      Where they together
                      All the hard weather,
         Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
... These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
         Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
                      Who would be more,
                      Swelling through store,
         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.


Like a poem, every parable may be thought of as a little world, a world in which there are not many distinct features, not a great deal of detail, or “world-building,” as it is called in fantasy and science-fiction writing. There is, however, enough world-building to intrigue us, and once we have accepted the invitation to enter this demi-monde, to give us some room to move around, discover things about, mostly, ourselves.

The central, transformative feature of the parable worlds that Jesus creates is found once we are inside the parable. So let me say a few things about the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus that caught my attention, before arriving at the question that lies at the center of the parable: the question about coming alive in the midst of life.

First, this is the only parable of Jesus in which a proper name is used, and it is no ordinary name, it is the name of one of Jesus’ closest friends, the brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany. The rich man is nameless; the poor man is identified as Lazarus. This reversal of the norm – Jesus lived in a world that is like ours in that there are many, many humble people who are nameless, and where there are a few people who gain widespread name recognition.

‘Lazarus’ was a popular Jewish name at the time of Jesus, so despite the fact that both Luke and John identify the three siblings who are Jesus’ friends by name, and uses the male name, Lazarus, also in this parable, it could be like telling a story today using a currently-popular name. But the reference to being raised from the dead makes this less likely – Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary is the man Jesus raised from the dead.

Maybe Jesus is pointing to an experience, from within the world of the parable to the shared world of his listeners, to press his point: the awakening of the heart does not take place by either having a divinely-given set of teachings (the Law of Moses, the witness of the prophets) nor even by the return of someone from the dead. The Gospel of John relates that after Lazarus was brought back from the dead by Jesus, far from being won over by this miracle, there were those who tried to kill Lazarus in order to erase his story from the minds of their contemporaries. As Father Abraham says in the parable, not even the witness of one returned from the dead can’t awaken a heart so stony that the witness of Moses and the prophets won’t work!

Another feature of the parabolic world is calling upon the Patriarch Abraham as the rich man’s father. Jesus derides his opponents who bolster their status by saying, “We have Abraham as our father.” “God can make children of Abraham out of stones,” Jesus replies – it is not one’s lineage that counts, but one’s deeds of compassion. The world of the parable surprises us, though. Abraham speaks across the great chasm that separates the rich man from the Beloved Community and says, “Child...”. I think this single word, “child” holds the key to the question of how the heart may be awakened.

The great Parable of the Prodigal Son, told by Luke only a few verses before the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus may be seen as taking place in the same parabolic world. After we have followed the career of the self-centered, profligate younger son, and he has been received into the bosom of his father, we meet a cold-hearted older brother. After the older brother pours forth his bitterness at father for having welcomed back the prodigal, the loving father says, “Child...”.

Like the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, we don’t see the end of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. If, however, we feel within ourselves a tug, a slight tremor of life when the parent says, “Child” to the cold-hearted one, we have not only entered the story fully, but we know how it ends.

Admonitions, divine teachings, exhortations, appearances from the dead, all of these may leave us unmoved. The experience of love that is “out of the blue,” unmerited, and unconditional, this alone is what cracks the husk that has built up around my heart. The rich man in torment may not know it at that moment, but Abraham’s loving reply to the cry, “Father!” – the acknowledgment of relationship that is not destroyed by sin – this tender reply, “Child” is the beginning of a new life for the rich man.

How have you heard God speaking “Child” to you? The appearance of the Resurrected Jesus Christ is not a device to convince us to change, but the living Jesus Christ is the One who speaks words of divine love, does acts of divine love in our midst. How does this happen for you?

One way that Christ continues to speak and act among us, in The Episcopal Church, is through our clergy, our priests and deacons. Their vowed responsibility to proclaim the message of God’s love, to proclaim a living Savior, takes many forms in daily life. I give thanks for the Diocese of California priests and deacons, gathered this past week at the Bishop’s Ranch for our annual Clergy Retreat. Their retreat is the occasion for my writing this sermon to you, the people of God in the Diocese of California, who, nurtured by love in your congregation are the voice, the hands and feet, of the Living Christ in the world.

+Marc Andrus

Lost sheep, lost coin (Luke 15)

    “The Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’.” (Luke 15.2)

    In nomine, etc..

    Our Lord gives us very little leeway in interpreting the two parables in today’s Gospel: the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin. Although Our Lord doesn’t actually say so in plain words, we are led to understand that the lost sheep represents a repentant sinner returned to the flock, and the story of the lost coin likewise is meant to convey joy in heaven, as a widow rejoices over the recovered coin. It is odd, it seems to me, that a sheep should represent a repentant sinner, since a sheep would apparently be incapable of acting on his own, of finding his own way back to the flock, but needs to be recovered by the action of others. And the coin is an even odder symbol, at least superficially considered, in a story about sin and repentance. But let us listen closely to these two stories, to discern the teaching that Our Lord is presenting.

     We begin with a crowd scene. “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.” All the tax collectors and sinners! As we know, the tax collectors were contractors working for the Roman government, who paid themselves as well as the government by extracting as much as they could from  taxpayers. It is easy to understand why Luke includes them with sinners, with all those who, one way or another, are in violation of the Law of Moses, at least as that Law is understood by the Pharisees, who regarded themselves as exemplars of obedience to the Law. And,  indeed, right off, the Pharisees complain about the tax collectors and sinners, and imply that Jesus should not be welcoming them or eating with them.

    Jesus responds to the crowd scene, and the Pharisees’ grumbling, with a story about another crowd scene, that of the lost sheep returning to the flock, and the shepherd’s gathering with his friends and neighbors to celebrate. The differences between the Pharisees’ reaction to the gatherings, and Jesus’s response to them, reveal Jesus’s attitude to sin and repentance.

    You’ve heard me, and other preachers too, I’m sure, talk about the Greek originals for these words, sin and repentance, and what they actually mean. The English words have a moralistic, individualistic cast to them which distorts, even hides, the original meanings, and adds a load of self-punishing guilt, which does not need to be there. As we have probably heard, sin translates ‘hamartia’, ‘missing the mark’, and repentance translates ‘metanoia’, ‘mind-changing’. The lost sheep makes the first meaning clear; the sheep has lost his way, and needs to be found by the shepherd and returned to the flock. The shepherd helps the sheep to change his mind, so to speak, to find his way back to the community. When Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd, he is saying that that is what his task is, to find those who have missed the mark, and lead them back towards it.

    What is the ‘mark’ that the lost one has missed? What is the lost one looking for? What is it that keeps the flock together, to which the lost one seeks to return?

    In the case of the flock, it is the shepherd that the lost sheep has lost track of. It is the common life of sheep and shepherd that is the source and goal of the life of the flock. This common life, this simple agrarian image of shepherd and sheep, is a way of describing the nature of Christian life, which is life shared with God; we are being brought into communion with God. We are created to participate in his life. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world, and our lives are being led into communion with God, not merely as individuals, but as members of a community intimately living with each other. We participate not only in God’s life, but also in each other’s, held together and guided by the great shepherd, whose flock and body we are. The goal is life with God in this world and in eternity, for the community, the flock, as a whole.

    That is what the widow’s lost coin represents. The coin reminds us of the pearl of great price in Matthew’s Gospel, the one thing more worth having than anything else. That one thing, that pearl, that silver coin, is life with each other and with God in the present, and in eternity.

    That is what the rejoicing of the widow and her friends, and the shepherd and his friends, is about. It is a hint of what the experience of life with each other and God in eternity is like. “Rejoicing” is probably the least of it. The experience is beyond what our words can only point at.

    It is not merely an individual event. Life with God necessarily includes everyone, past, present, and future. The friends and neighbors of the shepherd and the widow have to be there; they represent all those beings who share life in God with us. They complete the experience for us and with us. This reminds us of the Buddhist Bodhisattvas, who put off their own final release from the wheel of rebirth, until they can bring all beings with them. So too the great shepherd will find all the lost sheep, all those seeking to return to him and life with God. Then, and only then, there will be “joy in the presence of the angels of God.”

    Pharisees, in the Church and out of it, try as they may, cannot exclude anyone from life with God. Life with God is not about adherence to Law, to external rules and regulations and practices. Jesus came to fulfill Law, that is, to complete it, to meet its requirements and get it out of the way, and, he said, “I am come that they may have life.”  “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” the Pharisees say, disapprovingly but correctly. In our liturgy of bread and wine, we are welcoming the lost seekers, past, present, and future, and eating with them. We are welcoming all those finding their way to life with God. And we humbly rejoice that the great Shepherd has led even us to his flock, has welcomed even us to life with God. May we remain in the flock, may we find the lost coin, and rejoice with friends, neighbors, and angels, here and in eternity.

    In nomine, etc..  (10-11.IX.16 Advent)