Monday, August 1, 2011 -- Week of Proper 13, Year One
Joseph of Arimathaea
To read about our daily commemorations, go to the Holy Women, Holy Men blog

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 80 (morning) 77, [79] (evening)
2 Samuel 7:1-17
Acts 18:1-11
Mark 8:11-21

In the scripture, yeast is usually used as a metaphor for decay or corruption. A little yeast will quietly affect the whole measure of flour, just like a little evil or sin will quietly affect the whole community. Today we read of Jesus warning the disciples about the "yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod." There might be several ways of thinking of these warnings. A couple of yeasty characteristics come to my mind.

The Pharisees sought to promote religious observance. They urged people to be righteous, to follow the law and practice the ritual observances. They called those who would not, or could not follow the observances, sinners. Some Pharisees fell into the habit of judgment and condemnation, seeing only two camps of people -- the righteous and the sinners. Though they believed themselves to be promoting good religious practice, the effect was to create separation and alienation within the community.

The Herodians were all about power. They were given power by the Roman occupiers to keep the peace at whatever cost to the innocent, to control the situation with whatever alliance is necessary. Herod successfully empowered certain Jewish elites to help him consolidate power and he cooperated with Roman occupiers to keep the country secure. Security always trumped justice.

Beware of such yeast, the yeast of power and division. It is always hostile to the kind of unity and compassion that Jesus practiced.

A bit further in this reading, Jesus asks the disciples recall the two great feedings they have witnessed. "'When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?' They said to him, 'Twelve.' 'And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?' 'Seven.' Then he said to them, 'Do you not yet understand?'"

A possible understanding. The first feeding was done in Israel, and the twelve baskets full represent the twelve tribes of Israel. It is a meaning that any Jew would have perceived. The second feeding was done in the Gentile country of the Decapolis. Jesus is among Gentiles, and he heals and feeds them just has he has among his own people. The feeding story follows follows Jesus' healings of a Syrophonenician woman's child and a deaf man from the region. After this feeding, there are seven baskets left over. The standard Greek meaning of "seven" is "perfection." (3 represents the spiritual order; 4 the created order; 4+3=7 -- completion/perfection) This is a numerical meaning that any Greek would have perceived.

Jesus treats Jew and Greek with equal compassion -- feeding and healing all, and communicating with them through their own symbolic systems. He does not tell the Gentiles that they must join his religion before he feeds, heals, and gives Good News. He doesn't separate, but rather he unifies. He eats with both. He does not play power games. He only loves and serves.

Today is the feast of Joseph of Arimathaea, a patron saint for all of us who are wealthy (and that's most of the people who are reading this, including me). It is Joseph who courageously claimed the body of a convicted capital criminal and provided for a proper burial in his own tomb, despite the possible consequences from the authorities who had executed Jesus. He is one who used his power and wealth with compassion and generosity. He is an example for all of us who are comfortable -- to use our power for care and advocacy on behalf of the poor and oppressed.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011 -- Week of Proper 13, Year One
Samuel Ferguson, Missionary Bishop for West Africa, 1916
To read about our daily commemorations, go to the Holy Women, Holy Men blog

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 78:1-39 (morning) 78:40-72 (evening)
2 Samuel 7:18-29
Acts 18:12-28
Mark 8:22-33

There is seeing. And there is deeper insight.

Our reading from Mark today begins with the two stage healing of the blind man in Bethsaida. After the first touch, the blind man can see: "I can see people, but they look like trees, walking." Jesus lays hands on him a second time. Now he can see clearly. Many commentators have remarked how this healing seems like a metaphor for the way Mark describes the disciples' gradual illumination. The disciples learn and grow during Jesus' earthly ministry, but so often they fail to understand and seem so bumbling. But after the resurrection, they will see and understand in full.

Following the story of the two-stage healing of blindness, Mark gives us another story of staged enlightenment. Jesus asks the disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" Their answers are profound. The people see Jesus as one of the God-sent prophets. For 500 years there had been no prophet in Israel, not since the end of the exile, since Daniel, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi. The people had seen John the Baptist as the revival of the prophets. So the disciples tell Jesus that the people are saying that Jesus is the new prophet, like Elijah or John the Baptist.

Jesus then makes it more personal. "But who do you say that I am?" Peter speaks: "You are the Messiah." "Quiet!" Jesus says. It is a dangerous pronouncement. The authorities were always on the lookout for Messianic movements and their destabilizing, nationalistic tendencies. Rome broached no challengers.

If this passage were a symphony, the music has been building to a great crescendo: "You are the Messiah." Visions of triumph and grandeur fill the air. When Messiah comes, Israel will be restored to greatness. The Messiah will lead the people to throw off the yoke of foreign oppression. Jerusalem will be raised as the greatest of all cities -- the military, economic, and religious center of the world. All nations will see and acknowledge Israel's glory and power.

Jesus bursts their visions with a second insight. The "Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." It is not what is expected of the Messiah. The other prophets taught us to expect a triumphant Messiah, not one who suffers and fails. Peter takes Jesus aside to try to correct Jesus' vision.

"Get thee behind me Satan!" says Jesus in rebuke. "For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." The human addiction to power and glory is a terrible one, a devilish threat to Jesus' mission. If Jesus' followers define themselves by human standards of power and glory, they will completely sabotage his mission.

This Messiah will break violence not with violence but with love. He will be the suffering servant. He will be guided by compassion. Only love, compassion and suffering can break the vicious circles of pride, power and glory that inevitably exercise their will through violence and oppression. This is the deeper insight. This is the second vision, the subsequent clarity. As Mark tells the story, the disciples will not perceive it until the resurrection.

What do we see? How much of our focus is on the very human things of power and glory that feed our pride? How can we see the deeper, divine path of love, compassion and suffering that leads to new life? Can we see clearly enough to walk this other road?

Wednesday, August 3, 2011 -- Week of Proper 13, Year One
George Freeman Bragg, Jr., Priest, 1940
William Edward Burghardt DuBois, Sociologist, 1962
To read about our daily commemorations, go to the Holy Women, Holy Men blog

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 119:97-120 (morning) 81, 82 (evening)
2 Samuel 9:1-13
Acts 19:1-10
Mark 8:34 - 9:1

I usually read a passage like today's as an invitation to embrace suffering and sacrifice. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." I don't want to compromise the traditional understanding of the cross as a call of self-denial and willing suffering service, but it strikes me this morning that there is another experience that has some similar qualities.

When we become deeply engrossed in doing something that grasps our attention and challenges our skill, it is easy sometimes to lose our sense of time and even our sense of self. The social scientist Mike Csikszentmihalyi, who developed the concept of "flow," asks people to recall activities when time stops for us, when we find ourselves doing exactly what we want to be doing, and never want it to end? He tells a story to illustrate.

"I visited my older half-brother in Budapest recently, Marty. He's retired, and his hobby is minerals. He told me that a few days before he had taken a crystal and started studying it under his powerful microscope shortly after breakfast. A while later, he noticed that it was becoming harder to see the internal structure clearly, and he thought that a cloud must have passed in front of the sun. He looked up and saw that the sun had set." (from Martin E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness, Free Press, 2002, p. 114)

There are times when we seem to disappear, our lives lost, absorbed in the moment. Sometimes it is with another person, when we are so focused on their story or their being that we give ourselves completely over to their circumstances or need. Sometimes it is when we are working on a task and find ourselves so challenged that the task takes us out of our self awareness. We give ourselves over to the moment and its challenge. Time seems to stand still. Oddly, there is usually no experience of positive emotion when we are so absorbed. When someone is "in the flow," there is no one there to need the experience of pleasure. Maybe afterward, we might reflect on how satisfying or fun, or even ecstatic the activity was.

Seligman calls these moments "gratifications." They are tasks that challenge us and require that we concentrate and use our best skills. We become deeply involved, sometimes almost effortlessly. We have a sense of feedback, that what we are doing is its own goal. We become absorbed, so engaged that our sense of self as separate vanishes. Seligman teaches a version of "The Good Life," that urges us to discover and use our personal strengths every day in the main areas of our life to do meaningful acts that bring abundant "gratifications".

Some of our teens recently returned from the Episcopal Youth Event in Minnesota. They had a lot to tell about. They loved being with a thousand other Episcopalian teens. They made friends. Worship was "awesome." But they spent a lot of time talking about two service projects they engaged in on their return, one a Habitat project Kansas City, the other a fix-up, clean-up day at our campus ministry. In both cases they were doing hard physical labor that demanded considerable skill and concentration. They threw themselves into it. They worked for hours, but only expressed exhilaration. And, at the end, tiredness. It was great. It was fun. When questioned, they said, yes, it was like time stood still. They weren't watching the clock, marking time. They got into the task so much that these usually self-absorbed teens became absorbed. At the end, they felt good because they had done something meaningful that helped others.

Maybe it's not too much of a stretch to include such work as a form of taking up one's cross, losing one's life for Christ's sake and the sake of the gospel.

Five Smooth Stones

Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the wadi, and put them in his shepherd's bag..... David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; and the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground." 1 Samuel 17:31-49

"When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." 1 Samuel 17:50-18:4

"And the women sang to one another as they made merry, 'Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands.' Saul was very angry, for this saying displeased him." 1 Samuel 18:5-16, 27b-30

David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, "This is
Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite." 2 Samuel 11:1-27

"But Absalom spoke to Amnon neither good nor bad; for Absalom hated Amnon, because he had raped his sister Tamar." 2 Samuel 13:1-22

Stones chosen from the river bed
Fall into the sea of life
Ripples circle out into the world.

The first stone lodges in the forehead of Goliath
Freeing the people from fear
And launching David into his hero's quest.

The second stone lodges in the heart of Jonathan
Binding their souls in love
And joining them forever.

The third stone settles in the mind of Saul
Creating jealousy
And driving him out of his mind.

The fourth stone stirs desire for Bathsheba
Killing Uriah
And using power to satisfy passion.

The fifth stone falls on Tamar
Destroying her life
And dividing the house of David.

Stones of liberation and love,
Stones of jealousy and lust,
Stones of power.
Will we build or destroy?

The Rev. Ann Fontaine, Interim Vicar, St. Catherine's Episcopal Church, Manzanita OR, keeps what the tide brings in. She is the author of Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible.

Friday, August 5, 2011 -- Week of Proper 13, Year One
Albrecht Durer, Matthias Grunewald, and Lucas Cranach the Elder, Artists, 1528, 1529, 1553

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 88 (morning) 91, 92 (evening)
2 Samuel 12:1-14
Acts 19:21-41
Mark 9:14-29

Today's story of the prophet Nathan's challenge to the king David is so compelling. The king's power is absolute. Prophets can be jailed or killed. Nathan's story of the poor man and the little ewe lamb engages the monarch's imagination before he realizes that he is the target of the story. "You are the man!" cries Nathan. He speaks truth to power, like Jeremiah and John the Baptist and Jesus and so many others will in the future. How often power refuses to respond to truth.

There is a man who I know, a poor man. He's helped me on a number of occasions. I've known him for more than a year. He seems to me a good man. He doesn't have a car, so he walks, or he is dependent upon the very limited public transportation that we have. Recently he was injured on the job when he stepped into an uncovered drainage ditch in a poultry factory. He will have to have knee surgery. The company told him that he couldn't continue working on his injured knee. Worker's compensation will pay for his surgery, but the company did not authorize him for wage compensation through worker's comp. Without income, it took him only a short while to fall behind in his rent. He was living on a friend's couch, until that friend was evicted for non-payment. Now he's homeless, in a pretty tough place.

It wasn't always this way. He used to have a good job. I just learned "the rest of the story" this week. There was a time when he had a regular, steady job. He had a cosmetology license and made what he called a good living in a salon. But one night he drank too much, got in his car, and was arrested. When people are arrested for DWI, the car is impounded. Around here one of the local towing services gets a call from the police, tows the car, and keeps it until claimed. It took my friend several days to work through the legal process. He pled guilty. (A lawyer friend told me that was a big mistake. With his low alcohol level and a first offense he could have worked out a lighter sentence if he had hired a lawyer.) He paid his fines and other court costs, but that left him broke.

Every day that his car was impounded the towing company added another storage fee. By the time my friend was able to go to the lot to see to his vehicle, the costs to reclaim it were prohibitive. The towing company wouldn't even release some of his property that was in the car. It was a 1985 model, but very dependable. It was his means for traveling to the salon to work. He couldn't get to work. He lost his job. Not long afterward, his $150 cosmetology license renewal came up, and he didn't have the money. His license expired. As the daily storage fees mounted he gave up ever being able to retrieve his car. Life has been extraordinarily hard ever since. No car. No job. No home. He was making his way back with the dirty job in the poultry factory, when he was injured. Now he's in a pretty tough situation.

He made a mistake. A DWI. He regrets it. He admitted his guilt. As far as I know he doesn't drink or do drugs. I can' recall seeing him under any influence. But because he is one of those many people who live from paycheck to paycheck, he was impoverished by the fines, and, in essence, he forfeited his car. A lawyer tells me it happens all the time. That DWI arrest became a slippery slope that has destroyed what was a secure, productive life.

It is the car business that has stuck in my craw. I remember a similar situation a few years ago. A homeless man who lived in his van got permission from one of my friends to park in front of her house. (When people live in their vehicle, one of the biggest challenges is where to park it? Not many private landowners want a homeless person parking on their property, and police will usually have a vehicle moved from public spaces.) There was a neighbor who didn't know that my friend had given the van owner permission. The neighbor called the police. There is a strange van that has been parked in the neighborhood for a couple of days. The van was towed. By the time things got worked out so the owner could reclaim his vehicle, the towing company wanted nearly $500, an impossible amount. I went to the towing company to negotiate on behalf of my friend. He reluctantly dropped the costs 20%, and I paid for the vehicle's release. The woman who originally gave the permission to park in front of her house helped bail out the vehicle. The van owner could never have afforded it. Yet, in that vehicle was everything he owned. It was his home, his shelter.

So, I've got a Nathan project. It is not right that people who are on the edge can lose their most valuable resource -- their vehicle -- because of towing and storage costs that escalate so rapidly that they can never pay to reclaim their property. It seems like a form of legal theft to me.

I know plenty of people in my circle (and their children) who have been picked up for DWI. They pay their bail quickly, reclaim their vehicle, hire a lawyer and work the system. So many poor people cannot work the system. The fines and car charges accumulate. They forfeit their vehicle for a minor offense, or sometimes even, a mistake.

I talked to a probation officer and judge the other day who bemoaned how much of their time is spent trying to process people who can't afford fines, sometimes small fines, then fail to appear, then get into big legal and financial trouble.

"You are the man!" It's a terrible system that is grinding up some of the most vulnerable of our neighbors. When you are poor, a small mistake can be catastrophic. I'm going to look into this car towing-storage business. It doesn't seem right to me. But I'm not too confident that our local system will be as repentant as David.

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ - Mark 9:33-35 (NRSV)

There are some passages and quotations that always stick with me, even if I can't always remember precisely where to find them (thank God for Google!). The one for today's reading, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all," is one of them. Another along the same vein is from Luke:

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable.‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’ - Luke 14:7-11 (NRSV)

Both scriptures deal with the same thing -- the place (or non-place) for pride and the emphasis on the virtue of humility. Virtues are notoriously uncomfortable things; they're a lot harder to do than their opposites. Virtues these days also seem to be a bit less desirable, sort of like shopping in second-hand stores for a dress to wear to a White House state dinner or Hollywood gala. Just because there's a tiara involved doesn't mean it's made of diamonds.

The story of the wedding banquet has stuck with me for years, the part about not taking the higher seat, a place of honor, unless invited lest I be asked to move to make way for more exalted people. I have been reminded of this numerous times in my life, if not at a dinner party or gala. When I begin to be proud of something, someone or something comes to remind me that there are so many greater than I, more intelligent or more creative or more talented. Oh, I'm allowed to feel some pride when something I've done is good, but I'm reminded not to take TOO much pleasure in that feeling because it is transient and it's not healthy to be too attached to the feeling of pride.

Jesus reminded the Sons of Thunder that there were more important things than being considered important enough to occupy places of honor. There are duties required of people of honor, duties that seem to be for those lower on the status chain to accomplish. That's where humility comes in. Humble people do humble things because they need doing, not because they have to do them. They have a choice and they choose to let their actions speak louder than their words, to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. To be humble is to try to be transparent, to work behind the scenes almost invisibly and yet to do what needs to be done because it is the right thing to do, without looking for glory or fame. The joy is in the doing, not the recognition of having done it.

The tiara of pride is made of jewels of paste; the tiara of humility may be invisible, but the purity of its diamonds shine brighter than any visible light. It is that tiara with which Jesus crowns those who do not seek riches and fame but who quietly go about doing the work of the kingdom here and now.

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Readings for Sunday, August 7:
Psalms 66, 67 (Morning)
2 Samuel 13:1-22
Romans 15:1-13
John 3:22-36
Psalms 19, 46 (Evening)

Without a doubt, our Old Testament reading today, describing the incestuous rape of Tamar, is one of the most disgusting and one of the least redeeming stories in the Bible. It's hard to come away with any sort of redeeming lesson from reading this passage. It's place in the Daily Office, sandwiched between some fairly joyful and comforting passages, seems totally out of kilter in the day's readings. One has to wonder about the discussion that ensued in committee prior to its gaining a spot in the Daily Office. Where does one put this in the lectionary? What possibly is to be learned from such a brutal story? In fact, the richness of both the Gospel passage for today the Epistle, and the Psalms, provide a wonderful escape hatch, so that if one chooses to, the icky story of the rape of Tamar can be pushed aside entirely in our spiritual imaginations.

Yet, that tendency, to me, is exactly what this brutal story is all about--dealing with what I call "The Great Unspoken." The Great Unspoken is made up of all the terrible stories that all families have, and how unspoken it is often is directly proportional to the dysfunction the family has carried from generation to generation. It's made up not of what we say, but what we don't say. When we look at this story, the tempting tendency is to simply ignore it--and we see a lot of ignoring going on.

Let's start at the beginning--it seems rather implausible for Amnon to be burning with lust for Tamar as much as he was, and no one in the family even noticed. People don't just wake up one morning and say, "Gee...I think I'd like to have sex with my half-sister." David had to see something, and Absalom had to notice something, and royal households being a little bit like small towns, it just seems highly unlikely that the relatives and the hired help knew nothing. In fact, Cousin Jonadab's involvement in this story, and the fact he initiates the conversation with Amnon about how to trick Tamar affirms this. Tamar had to have noticed the extra attention she was getting and struggled with her own complicated feelings.

Meanwhile, The Great Unspoken keeps growing and growing. David sends Tamar in to Amnon without so much as a "be careful." Amnon intuitively knows what he did was wrong, going so far as to convert his unspoken shame to loathing for the victim. He even dehumanizes her vocally, calling to have "this woman" put out from his presence. Tamar, herself, loses the wise voice we saw earlier in this story and tears her virginal clothes, pours ashes on her head with the same hands that previously made a gift of bread, and Absalom more or less says, "get over it," but at the same time takes her in. (Did he do it to be kind, or did he do it because he knew and felt guilty, or did he do it because "this doesn't happen in 'nice' families?") As we travel further in the Daily Office this week, it will become apparent that the Great Unspoken will continue to wreak havoc in the royal family.

This story becomes a reminder that there are far better ways to deal with The Great Unspoken--whether it is among our kin, our network of friends, our workplace, or our parish. Yes, there are consequences to honesty or being proactive in the face of deceit or mental instability, but there are generally far worse and longer lasting consequences when we stuff those feelings or cause them to be manifest in a "sideways" fashion. I find it interesting in this story that nowhere do we see any of the characters approaching God for guidance, or lamenting or expressing their fears in the face of God. There's a Great Unspoken here, too.

The story of the rape of Tamar is a call to remind us that no Great Unspoken is too disgusting or nasty to take to God. It's a reminder that when we don't fully understand people, or they seem to behave in an odd or weird fashion, or over-react to a simple issue, that they may be carrying a Great Unspoken of their own. Finally, it's a call for us to address our own Great Unspokens.

What Great Unspokens block us in our own ability to be invited into full relationship with the living God? Are there Great Unspokens that create wedges in our relations to each other? Is today the day to fearlessly bring them first, to our prayer life, and later, to the place where reconciliation begins?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepsicatoid

Monday, August 8, 2011 -- Week of Proper 14, Year One
Dominic, Priest and Friar, 1221

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 89:1-18 (morning) 89:19-52 (evening)
2 Samuel 13:23-39
Acts 20:17-38
Mark 9:42-50

When I was a child, I was haunted by today's gospel. Childhood is so brutal, competitive and violent. Passions are untamed. Kids do mean things to one another. Life seems so much more absolute during childhood -- things are either right or wrong, good or bad; people are either friends or enemies. Our adults sought to civilize us with rules and punishments. They made it seem that it is a law of the universe that if you do certain things, particular punishments will result. Thus saith the Lord.

Later in life I heard a child psychologist say, "Children are wonderful observers and terrible interpreters." Children think so literally.

So I heard in the gospel: "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell..." The warnings go on to include feet and eyes, and by extension, it doesn't take much creativity to think of other body parts as well. It was a frightening scenario for a literal-minded reader, living as I did, in the naughtiness of childhood.

The sheer bloodiness of the whole thing was its undoing for me. It didn't take long to think of my own offenses that might justify my full dismemberment. Yet self-preservation kicked in. It didn't seem just. ("Fair" was a big word then.) And I looked around and saw a town full of adults who went to church and read their Bibles. They must have known this passage, but I saw no evidence of this particular penitence.

Living in the Bible Belt, this scripture was something that challenged our Baptist friends' claim to a higher respect for the Bible. There weren't any more amputations across the street at First Baptist than there were at my Episcopal church. They must not believe much more than we did.

So I adapted toward a more moderate view of punishment for sin. Actually, that's what seemed to work better for me. A bit less guilt; a little less punishment; a lot more grace. In my case, honey attracted more flies than a swatter could ever kill. I was more responsive to encouragement and rewards, inspiration and goals than I ever was to punishment. Punishment simply made me mad. It planted seeds of anger and rebellion that occasionally bore the later fruit of more extreme behavior.

But there are behaviors that seem to resist the power of positive thinking. Some things have to be handled with a sharp-edged cutting off.

People in 12-step recovery programs will testify to the necessity of amputating some behaviors at the risk of one's life. It is better to enter life maimed than with two-fisted drinking to go to hell.

There are certain patterns of thought and particular activities that bode ill for us and need to be dealt with forcefully. "Get thee behind me, Satan." Don't go there; don't even think about it. Quit. Right now. Never again. One day at a time.

Most of the time, a bit of positive, rational reinforcement is enough to turn me from less wholesome to more wholesome behaviors. But there are those things that need to be dealt with more severely. Some things simply need to be cut out, chopped off, and stopped.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 -- Week of Proper 14, Year One
Herman of Alaska, Missionary to the Aleut, 1837

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 97, 99, [100] (morning) 94, [95] (evening)
2 Samuel 14:1-20
Acts 21:1-14
Mark 10:1-16

Life is difficult. Life is complicated. I remember a conversation I had with a good friend the summer before we were heading away to seminary. Our anxiety was showing. We both wanted "the answer book." Is there ONE BOOK that we could take to seminary, and it would give us the answers we would need for all of the questions we knew we would face? So we contacted some priests we respected, asking for a ONE BOOK recommendation. Only one priest took our bait. He recommended a systematic theology book -- if you start here, you can't go wrong, he said. A few weeks into seminary, I got a note from my friend. "Don't quote that book!" he exclaimed. He had done so and harvested a crop of red marks.

How many centuries have we tried to set up a consistent, simple set of rules? Follow these and you will be okay.

Every system always seems to break down when it tries to define the mystery of love. It appears that love insists on transcending definition. It is hard to draw a box around love.

Today we've got some difficult and complicated conversations about love answers. The Pharisees ask Jesus, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce a wife?" They site the permissive tradition from the Torah. A man may write a certificate of dismissal and be divorced. (They site no such power for the woman, though there is evidence outside of Israel that some women could sue for divorce.)

Jesus moves to the heart. "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment." Remarkable. Jesus' words challenge the authority of the scriptural tradition, claiming that Moses got it wrong. God's will was more gracious than reflected in the command of Torah, he claims.

To support his challenge to Torah, Jesus goes to another place in scripture. "The two shall become one flesh ...Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." Jesus raises up God's intention that married people be faithful to their covenant and to each other in a lifelong divine union. (Hasn't every person spoken their marriage vows with a sincere, lifelong intention of faithfulness?)

Then we shift scenes. Jesus is in private with his disciples. His answer wasn't enough for them. They want more. So they get some more. "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." Pretty clear, isn't it? Bam. That's it. Rule. Law. From Jesus' mouth. That ought to end it right there. We've got the ONE BOOK answer.

That's the way it was for Episcopalians, until recently. We did not allow remarriage of a divorced person in the church.

Then we witnessed something complicated. There were people, good people, whose marriages died. It was tragic. Sometimes they continued to live together in obedience to their vows. Occasionally their relationships found resurrection. Thanks be to God. But others just seemed to continue to coexist in a living death. Married to outward eye; alone and alienated within. They obeyed the commandment, but it was not the abundant life that they read Jesus promised.

Some other people, good people, got divorces. Some divorces were contentious. Others were very civil -- each partner releasing the other from their vow in order that they both might get on with their lives more fruitfully.

Occasionally one of those, now single again, would meet someone, and the possibility of love might bloom anew. If that couple wanted to make a lifelong commitment to one another through marriage, we couldn't marry them. The rules, you know. We sent them somewhere else, say to the Methodists. Then some of them returned to church and lived happy lives together. They lived as "one flesh." But how can that be? It's against the rules. It's adultery pure and simple. Right?

So we went to other places in the scripture. We looked at the story of resurrection -- life out of death. We listened to Jesus' words about forgiveness, hope, and the recreative power of love. We saw the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the lives of these divorced and remarried Christians. We remembered Paul's words: "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and temperance. There is no law against such things." (Gal. 5:22f) We sought the heart of the matter. Eventually, we changed our rule. Within a raised set of expectations, some divorced Episcopalians now may be remarried in the church.

Some people think maybe we shouldn't have done that. It just opens the gates to other things. If we would only stick to the strict interpretation, we wouldn't have so many divorces and family breakups. Or would we?

The rules are always there to protect love. The intention is to provide love a nurturing container. But sometimes the rules seem to block love, don't they? What do we do?

It's hard. It's complicated. Maybe someone reading this is living in a fulfilling and abundant relationship that is not your first marriage. You are probably very thankful to have another chance at love. And we always are left in that difficult, complicated place of trying to do the best we can in a world that resists being neatly defined.

Takes some faith. And a lot of heart.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 -- Week of Proper 14, Year One
Laurence, Deacon, and Martyr at Rome, 258

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 101, 109:1-4(5-19)20-30 (morning) 119:121-144 (evening)
2 Samuel 14:21-33
Acts 21:15-26
Mark 10:17-31

The annotated Bible that I use is called The Access Bible. It is published by Oxford Press and is intended to be a study Bible for individuals and groups. It uses the New Revised Standard translation. I like this Bible because of the footnotes, the introductions to the various books of the Bible, and the occasional block of background explanation. I mention all of this because a footnote in today's reading offered me a couple of insights I've never thought about.

Today's gospel passage features Jesus' dialogue with the wealthy man who has diligently kept the commandments. "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." Not only is the wealthy man shocked and repelled, but the disciples are perplexed as well. Jesus amplifies their perplexity, telling them, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

In his lovable way, Peter makes one of his "Everyman" declarations. Seeking some credit, Peter says, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." He receives some reassurance from Jesus -- anyone who leaves such things for his sake and the sake of the good news will receive a hundredfold now, and in the age to come.

But The Access Bible footnote adds, "Peter exaggerates: He retains his home in Capernaum." So he does. I've visited that home, or at least what the Church has traditionally identified as Peter's home. According to the archeologist who led our tour, the foundations of this small building in Capernaum show that it was a home that dates to the first century, and that it was converted into a public assembly space in the late first century. The walls were covered with writing and the floor plastered. Many lamps were found there, but none of the typical household items. Many believe that it became a house church for the Christian community. There is a small room within the structure that remained its original size. It is called "Jesus' room" -- a speculation that it may have been preserved because it was where Jesus may have stayed while he lived in Capernaum.

The footnote brought back my memory of visiting the site that is traditionally called Peter's home. But it also leaves me thinking about Peter's exaggeration. I'm good at that too. I exaggerate my sacrifices.

There is something generous about the gospel account. There is no record of Jesus correcting Peter's claim of having left everything. Only an expression of Jesus' appreciation and his promise of a greater new communityto replace whatever was lost.

There is another footnote that caught my attention. When Jesus lists what his followers will receive in compensation for all that they have left or sacrificed for the kingdom, the list does not include "fathers." Here's the whole text: "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters, or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age -- houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions -- and in the age to come eternal life." No fathers included. The Access Bible footnote remarks, "the new family does not place anyone as head of the household or patriarch." Fascinating.

How different might our church history have been had the church focused on this non-patriarchal, egalitarian model for the church. What if this verse had been central to our self-definition, rather than Matthew 16:18 -- "I tell you, you are Peter, on on this rock I will build my church"? It seems like we might have perpetuated another exaggeration of Peter's.

“Whoever loves true prayer and yet becomes angry or resentful is [her] own enemy. [She] is like a [person] who wants to see clearly and yet inflicts damage on [her] own eyes.”

Evagrios Ponticos, “On Prayer,” in The Philokalia, vol. 1 (New York: Faber and Faber, 1979), p. 63.

I have a friend who often quotes a saying from Twelve Step Recovery programs, “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. This sounds like very ancient wisdom, far older than AA. Note, for example, the similar structure of the saying from Evagrios Ponticos quoted above.

Both point to something rather central in the Christian tradition, namely the premium placed on forgiveness. It’s right at the middle of the Our Father, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It’s also at the heart of many of Jesus’ parables and other sayings. It’s even an article of the Creed of our baptism, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” Jesus embodies costly forgiveness when he suffers and dies to give life to the world.

Forgiveness and reconciliation differ, insofar as reconciliation is a two way street. Forgiveness, by contrast, can be unilateral, and we are commanded to forgive whether the other person deserves it or not, whether our forgiveness changes the other person or not. Reconciliation requires reciprocity and aims at justice and the restoration of right relationship.

Not all hurts are alike, and forgiveness is often painfully difficult. For some kinds of wound, it can years of hard work and professional help. But notice something that both the saying from Evagrios and the one from recovery programs have in common. In both cases, the primary benefit of forgiveness accrues to the one who extends it. In the one case, it removes an obstacle to our relationship with God. In the other, it gets rid of something like a poison or cancer that is harming our own soul. I suspect, in fact, that both sayings point to the same underlying reality.

Forgiveness does not mean giving up on the quest for justice. It does mean forswearing revenge and giving up on the attempt to control the outcome. It means letting go of the other person and his or her power over us. It is ultimately for our benefit. Others may benefit, especially if we move past forgiveness to reconciliation. On the other side of forgiveness, we find the grace to let the past be the past, and rediscover our true freedom in God.

Bill Carroll

Friday, August 12, 2011 -- Week of Proper 14, Year One
Florence Nightingale, Nurse, Social Reformer, 1910

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, 978)
Psalms 102 (morning) 107:1-32 (evening)
2 Samuel 15:19-37
Acts 21:37 - 22:16
Mark 10:46-52

Whenever I read the story of Bartimaeus, something settles deep inside of me. This was the story that I first used when I was taught how to pray the scriptures using the ancient Benedictine method of Lectio Divina. The story has never been the same. From that brief time of prayer has come a rich, luminous connection with the sacred text.

With time and practice, more and more texts have become deeply alive through the practice of Lectio Divina. I am convinced that it is an exquisite way to let the scriptures speak and come alive to us.

There are various ways to describe and teach Lectio. Here's the method I use. I'm taking this from our St. Paul's Church web site at this address: http://www.stpaulsfay.org/id272.html

This is not intended as a four-step linear process, but rather as a movement between states of consciousness. Let your practice move naturally back and forth through these moments.

I. Lectio -- Reading Deeply
Expand your sense of consciousness and focus your attention. Read one of the scripture passages in such a way to you can hear the words deeply. Let God's speaking to you through these words. Slowly read, listening deeply. If you get distracted, go back to where you were. Hear what the scripture is saying. As you are reading, listen with your "third ear" and see with your "third eye." What catches your attention? What causes you to think or to wonder?

II. Meditatio -- Thinking Deeply
Take whatever caught your attention from your reading and think deeply and actively about it. Why did this catch my attention? What does it mean? How does it connect to the rest of the scripture and tradition? What did it mean to the first readers/listeners? Why is this important? What is it saying? Think actively and energetically. As you are thinking, listen with your "third ear" and see with your "third eye." Notice if something moves you. Be aware if you have feelings or emotional content around something.

III. Oratio -- The Prayer of the Heart
If you heart is moved or your emotions touched, go with the feelings. Let the emotional content of your thought explode into prayer. Speak to God with your heart. Let your deepest center be drawn into prayer. Offer whatever comes to Christ. Let your love speak. While you are praying, listen with your "third ear" and see with your "third eye." If your words of love begin to descend into love, let go of words, let go of thoughts, let go of emotions.

IV. Contemplatio -- Rest
Fall into love, into the silence, into the dazzling darkness that is beyond thought and feeling. Just be. And even let go of being, into the all. Let God be all. All is God and God is all. Rest.

+ + +

As you find your consciousness moving in and out of each of these moments, return to reading or thinking or feeling as seems best to you.

When your time is over, pick a brief passage or thought that may focus the content of your prayer time. Memorize or copy that thought; carry it with you during the day, and recall it from time to time. See how your prayer reveals something about what happens during you day.

If you have time, you might journal a bit about what happened during your prayer.

Try this method of prayer with today's story of Bartimaeus. See if it doesn't make the scripture come alive for you.

“After I had returned to Jerusalem and while I was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and saw Jesus saying to me, ‘Hurry and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ And I said, ‘Lord, they themselves know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. And while the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, I myself was standing by, approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him.’ Then he said to me, ‘Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”

Up to this point they listened to him, but then they shouted, “Away with such a fellow from the earth! For he should not be allowed to live.” And while they were shouting, throwing off their cloaks, and tossing dust into the air, the tribune directed that he was to be brought into the barracks, and ordered him to be examined by flogging, to find out the reason for this outcry against him. But when they had tied him up with thongs, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who is uncondemned?” When the centurion heard that, he went to the tribune and said to him, “What are you about to do? This man is a Roman citizen.” The tribune came and asked Paul, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” And he said, “Yes.” The tribune answered, “It cost me a large sum of money to get my citizenship.” Paul said, “But I was born a citizen.” Immediately those who were about to examine him drew back from him; and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him. Acts 22:17-29 (NRSV)

Our reading from Acts once again describes something that is illustrated multiple times, not only in this book but particularly in the Gospels--the visceral response of crowds to hearing the revealed truth. In Paul's case, this seems particularly true--the stories in Acts illustrate more than once a crowd listening to him with rapt attention, and then suddenly something happens to turn the crowd against him in a heartbeat. In this passage, it appears that Paul's own words did the trick.

Have you ever noticed that there's something about the recognition of the revealed truth that sparks such a visceral reaction in people that their response, at times, can be a heated and rather vicious non-recognition of it? Our passage reminds me of the wave of heated responses to Rob Bell's book, "Love Wins." The moment a few people read the book and publicly stated, "You know, I think the guy is right--maybe we're a little off on that popular traditional version of that Heaven/Hell thing," a virtual tsunami of condemnation ensued among some segments of Christianity.

In light of this story, other stories in Acts, and several of the Gospel stories, we can see that one of the fundamental concepts of Christianity is this: If you are really, really listening to what the stories of the New Covenant are all about, it will turn your world upside down. Everything you thought you knew like the back of your hand will be questioned, and everything you believed will be thrown into doubt. It's very common for our initial reaction to something new and revealed in our hearing of the Word to be one of pushing back in some way--to shout, "No, that can't be right! Everyone knows that...(fill in the blank.)"

The issue, then, becomes one of how we react to this news. Do we attack the messenger? Do we close our ears to it, followed by closing our heart? Do we scream, "Heresy?" Or do we simply take a step backward and say, "Hmmm. I need to think and pray on this one a little bit," and prayerfully ponder the topic?

I remember the time it was first suggested to me that that place we call Heaven might well include some political figures I really, really dislike, or some people in my world that really, really did me dirty. My initial reaction, flashing in my brain in bright neon lights, was, "NO! They can't be there! Heaven is a good place, for good people, and I don't think those people are good at all." For me to be happy, they had to be out. But over time, as I mulled over this thought (and my reaction to it,) I became reminded of my own track record of "not good," and realized my very exclusionary criteria would, in fact, exclude me, too.

This passage calls us to simply think upon, but not necessarily immediately react to those moments that the Good News in Christ doesn't sound particularly good, or when that sudden new revealed truth we hear tells us that everything we thought we knew, maybe we didn't know so well. What would happen if we could only change one thing about our reaction to such things over the upcoming week?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepsicatoid

"You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life;..."
--John 5:39 (NRSV)

Sitting at the desk of my days
Pages pile up
Paper and ink
Yellowed and curling
Dry dusty
Searching texts
While the Word knocks on the door of my room
A friend with a cup of tea.

The Rev. Ann Fontaine, Interim Vicar,St. Catherine's Episcopal Church, Manzanita OR, keeps what the tide brings in. She is the author of Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible.

Monday, August 15, 2011 -- Week of Proper 15, Year One
Saint Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer)
EITHER the readings for Monday of Proper 15, p. 980
Psalms 106:1-18 (morning) 106:19-48 (evening)
2 Samuel 17:24 - 18:8
Acts 23:12-24
Mark 11:12-26

OR the readings for St. Mary, p. 999
Morning Prayer: Psalms 113, 115 / 1 Samuel 2:1-10 / John 2:1-12
Evening Prayer: Psalms 45, or 138, 139 / Jeremiah 31:1-14 or Zechariah 2:10-13 / John 19:23-27 or Acts 1:6-14

I chose the readings for St. Mary

From the late J. Neville Ward:

The poet W. B. Yeats said once that he believed in what he called 'unity of being'. His father had taught him the term, arguing that beauty, when truly apprehended, does engage the whole of us. If a musical instrument is properly strung, when one string is touched all the others murmur faintly. Similarly, there is not more (or less) desire in lust than in true love, but in true love there are other effects as well; for in true love desire awakens pity, hope, affection, admiration, and, given the right circumstances, every emotion possible. And when that total excitation happens it becomes clear that something more than this one person is being loved; life is being loved, and God himself.

...This is why there are some features of the meaning of Jesus that make their impact only through devotion to his mother and the thoughts and feelings associated with her in the Christian imagination.

One of these thoughts that are given summary form in her is the idea of the oneness of love. The mother of Jesus is often called (to the embarrassment of the unimaginative) the Mother of God. Her love for her son is one and the same as her love for her God. She becomes in prayer the place where it is said that all human loving reaches its fulfillment as it becomes the love of God, as it becomes loving God.

That does not mean that by some pious mental gymnastics we have always to see only the Creator in the creature. A mother, in one of loves primordial contentments, gazing at her two-month-old baby after he has been fed, is not supposed to pull herself together and think of God, as though she has nearly fallen into idolatry. God does not wish to be substituted for her son, to take the place of her son in her affection. God's will at that moment is that she love her little human son. God has placed himself, as the object of her love, in the form of her child. It is a kind of incarnation. It would be idolatry only if her loving stopped there, at her child, if her child was all she really loved.

All human loving reaches its fulfillment as it becomes loving God. Our loving others will be more truly loving them, instead of using, possessing, dominating them, as it is ordered by our love of God. The Christian faith is that, as we grow in our loving, our love of the world and our love of God will blend. In heaven we shall love things and people and God in one single love, as the Blessed Virgin Mary loved God and her son in one love.

...Loving is primarily not a relationship to certain people and things considered lovable, but a disposition of the whole self to life. The more widely we love, the more deeply we love; this is because we are in fact becoming more loving, we are able to put more love into each loving relationship. Our loving becomes more a function of the whole self, not of simply a bit of it. Christian faith proposes an ideal of always loving, at all times and all places, so that our love of our children, our desire to have some beauty in our life, our concern about life's wrongness and what we can do, are all one and the same love of the incarnate Lord. (The Following Plough, Cowley, 1978, p. 112f)

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 -- Week of Proper 15, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms [120], 121, 122, 123 (morning) 124, 125, 126, [127] (evening)
2 Samuel 18:9-18
Acts 23:12-24
Mark 11:27 - 12:12

It is easy to get completely sick of politics. Sometimes you just want to wash your hands of it. It's all so corrupt and disappointing. What can a good person do? The odds are stacked against you. It's tempting to withdraw into our own little circles, reinforced by comfortable pieties. It is also easy to slide into cynicism. Cynicism is fun and tempting. You can stand back in smug self-righteousness and hurl snide insults at a system that is really easy to insult. You can say that the whole thing is corrupt. People are stupid and self-serving. Why spend the energy to try to fix or help, when it proves so fruitless, over and over? You can wash your hands of the muck of it all.

All three of today's readings are stories of the dirty muck of power and politics. If you thought you'd mind your own business today, retreat into the private purity of your sanctuary, turn off the TV, ignore the newspaper, read the scriptures, and simply pray the Daily Office... Gotcha.

Vast swaths of scripture are enmeshed in the mess -- telling stories of God's people struggling and fighting in the ugly ambiguity and violence of power. You can't escape the muck, at least not if you want to carry your Bible with you.

Today the sordid tale of Absalom's rebellion and coup against his father David comes to a bloody end. Or does it? So much of it started with the dysfunctional parenting of David. He allowed his son Absalom to grow up without healthy boundaries. He did not pass along his own spirit of servanthood. The king only bequeathed David's own Machiavellian temperament to his son. Even as David sends his loyal troops to fight their own brothers in a deadly war, David tells them to deal gently with the instigator of the rebellion. David will receive his soldiers' sacrifice and triumph with a grief that will dishearten the very people who risked their lives for him. It's an ugly tale.

Paul is under a gentle form of arrest as the Romans try to investigate what happened to cause a near riot. Some of Paul's enemies, religious people acting out of loyalty to their beliefs, conspire to assassinate Paul. Paul's nephew hears of the plot. Paul gets the intelligence to the authorities, and they take him under a considerable guard to the capitol to meet the governor. Politics, conspiracy and threats. More ugly stuff.

In the gospel we see Jesus fending off questions from those who aren't really asking questions. They only want to trap Jesus. So he turns the tables and traps them with his own lose-lose question. "I'll answer your question if you'll first answer mine. Was John's baptism from heaven or of human origin?" If they say "heaven," Jesus has them, for they opposed John. If they say "human," he has them, for the people loved John. Jesus plays the political brinkmanship game well.

Then Jesus tells a political parable. It is a metaphor about Israel. It is a story about corrupt leadership. The tenants will not give the landowner his due. It is also a story about the futility of violent rebellion. If some other tenants think they can succeed with violent rebellion, they risk utter catastrophe. Underneath the story is a metaphor about non-violent resistance. It is the rejected stone which actually becomes the cornerstone.

Those of us who are Biblical Christians do not embrace our traditional values when we withdraw from the dirty fray of politics. We are called to bring our values into our public struggles. If we don't, the politics of power and money and fear will trump the politics of Jesus.

Recently the politics of power, money and fear has dominated our political debate. Some politicians are willing to bankrupt the government to protect historic low taxes for the wealthy or to make partisan political points for their party. Welcome to the Biblical world. Threat and violence and conspiracy; corrupt leadership and a lack of imagination that can think only in terms of power. This is the stuff of David and Jesus and Paul. The Scriptures invite us to bring our values into the struggle, and work the system to help it do the best it can.

We can ask the tough questions and play the political brinkmanship game well, like Jesus did. We can bring the dangerous conspiracies to light, like Paul did. We can recognize when those we love are tearing the fabric of society apart, and deal with them with healthy self-definition, rather than David's dysfunction. Getting disgusted and withdrawing is an unacceptable option. After all, washing your hands of the whole matter was Pontius Pilate's solution.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 -- Week of Proper 15, Year One
Samuel Johnson, Timothy Cutler, and Thomas Bradbury Chandler, Priests, 1772, 1765, 1790

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms 119:145-176 (morning) 128, 129, 130 (evening)
2 Samuel 18:19-33
Acts 23:23-35
Mark 12:13-27

"Is it right to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"

I have a confession to make. I like taxes. (As I type this, I note a slight rush -- a slightly quickened heartbeat; a rise in blood pressure. I wonder... Who reads these things? Is is dangerous thing to say "I like taxes"? Liking taxes not as bad as being a Communist sympathizer in the 1950's is it? Is there a black-list for people who like taxes?)

For years my wife and I have been in a pretty high tax bracket. We both work. We have good jobs. Our children are grown and no longer deductible. Paying high taxes has seemed like a privilege -- a mark of financial success.

I like so much of what we do with our taxes. Our taxes unerwrite and improve our corporate life. Basic infrastructure. Education. Help to the vulnerable. I want us to have resources to solve problems that can only be solved at a corporate level. Solutions I can't contribute to any other way.

Oh, I don't always agree with the way my taxes are spent. I thought invading Iraq as a response to a terrorist act by a clandestine group of Saudi dissidents was the stupidest thing imaginable. Didn't want to spend a dime to do that. But it's part of being part of the whole. My dollars contributed to the death of more than 100,000 civilians in that country -- collateral damage they are called. My tax dollars financed that bad decision. I don't like that. But I like being in the whole system.

I like having water I can drink from the tap without any qualms. (When I'm traveling in places where you can't do that, it's so hard to remember to rinse my toothbrush with bottled water.) I like food that is inspected and safe to eat. Roads and sewers. Air traffic controllers. I could go on, but you get the idea.

I get a kick out of the things that government does so much better than the private sector. Like health insurance. Medicaid and Medicare as so much more efficient than for-profit health insurance.

Philosophically, I agree with the notion that "to those to whom much is given, much is expected." (John F. Kennedy and Luke 12:48) I like a progressive tax policy that requires those of us who are most able to bear a proportionately greater tax obligation to do so.

I also believe we have a responsibility to our neighbors. I like what the Epistle of James says: "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?" Taxes underwrite our corporate responsibility to care for the needy.

Someone argued with me that the Bible tells the church to take care of the poor, voluntarily through the church's charity. It's the church's job, not the government's, they told me. I once compared the value of a single major welfare program (Food Stamps) to the entire income of the Christian church in the U. S. They were comparable numbers. If the church gave every penny it receives to the poor, it might cover Food Stamps. (Then I wouldn't have a salary, and might need Food Stamps.) The point: Only taxes are a great enough resource to address some problems that are bigger than charity.

I'm no economist, but it seems to me that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is right. We should be investing to put unemployed people back to work to stimulate our current economy. Rebuild our infrastructure and build the job base. We need more resources to invest in the things that make for a healthier country. I want to see some tax increases. (The heart rate perked up again.)

Taxes are at historic lows. We've spent nearly 40 years tilting the tax code to benefit the wealthy. Why does our tax code favor income from wealth (capital gains) over earned income? Financial speculators threw our economy into the tank. Speculative trading accounts for up to 70% of the trades in some financial markets. How about a modest tax on every transaction? Exempt small investors. Might dampen speculation and raise our common revenues.

People like me can contribute more in hard times like this. I've got a lot more than I need to live on. And it seems silly that I'm in the same tax bracket as a billionaire.

Okay, that's enough of a tax rant to tick off nearly everyone. But I can tell you my answer to the question, "Is it right to pay taxes to the emperor or not?" In our system, it is the government that is charged by the Constitution to "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty." That is a worthy cause. But we haven't been paying the bill for that work for quite a long time. It's time we acted like responsible adults and raised taxes to do the work we are charged to do. Those of us who are most able to pay for that good work should do so. Happily.

“The devil has suggested to us that we appropriate the things that were provided for our common use and hoard them for ourselves, so that through this covetousness he might make us liable to a double indictment and thus subject to eternal punishment and condemnation—the one, of being unmerciful, the other of putting our hope in hoarded up wealth instead of in God. For he who has wealth hoarded up cannot hope in God, as is clear from what Christ our God has said, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’ (Lk. 12:34). He, then, who distributes to all from the wealth he has stored up has no reward owing to him for doing this; rather, he is to blame for hitherto unjustly depriving others of it. Further, he is responsible for those who from time to time have lost their lives through hunger and thirst, for those whom he did not feed at that time though he was able, for the poor whose share he buried and whom he allowed to die a cruel death from cold and hunger (cf. Jas. 2:15ff.). He is exposed as one who has murdered as many victims as he was then able to feed.”

--St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980), pp. 155-156.

St. Symeon’s teaching is remarkable only in eloquence, not in content. It is, more or less, the common social teaching of the Church fathers, rooted in the Holy Scriptures. For the fathers, all material goods are held in trust for God’s purposes. To enclose more than one needs to sustain the life of the body, when others starve, is a sin against them and against God, “the giver of every good and perfect gift.”

What then shall we do? We who have many good things, perhaps too many, as even those of us who live relatively simple lives by the standards of our culture do? We are to use these good gifts to show mercy. Not because that makes us especially good or deserving of praise, but because it sets our hearts free from any master less than God and rectifies an injustice that is in fact killing our neighbors. Almsgiving may look like charity to us, but it is in fact but one small step toward justice.

That this kind of teaching would almost certainly be decried as “socialism” today shows us how far we have departed from biblical values. We need Christian economists to talk about how wealth is distributed in our societies and how to organize economies to produce the goods we need efficiently and fairly. We need Christian business people who can generate wealth, not to hoard it but to use it for good and to share good things with those in need. But we also need to struggle against the ways that boundless greed traps us and harms our souls by dividing us from God and neighbor.

Bill Carroll

Friday, August 19, 2011 -- Week of Proper 15, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms 140, 142 (morning) 141, 143:1-11(12) (evening)
2 Samuel 19:24-43
Acts 24:24 - 25:12
Mark 12:35-44

When I read the story of the generous widow, I always think of Margaret. She was an elderly woman who had lived alone for many years. Her husband had died at a relatively young age. He was a butcher at the neighborhood supermarket. Margaret had been a homemaker all of her life, like so many from her generation. She raised their children, and every day she prepared their meals. Her husband came home each day for a sit-down lunch with her. The family ate dinner together every night.

Now her children were far away and mostly out of touch. She had lived alone on a fixed income for more than twenty years. Her income was the survivor's share of her husband's Social Security. He had been a life-long employee of a non-unionized supermarket with no pension plan. To say she lived modestly would be an understatement.

The first check she made each month was her tithe to the church. She faithfully contributed ten percent of her total gross income. In our church, she was above the mid-range of pledgers. She gave more than most, even though she had less than nearly anyone. No one would have known though. She was quiet. Present. Faithful.

She said she took the prayer list with her each Sunday and prayed every day for those who were listed. She read the Daily Office. She always brought a potato dish to our pot lucks.

If you watched her carefully, you would see a person at peace. She had an intimate, intuitive relationship with God, expressed so humbly that she rarely hit the radar screen.

There was a coherence around her. She didn't make or create waves. She simply walked with God and served quietly and modestly. She lived with a deep and abiding acceptance of things -- her state in life, her neighbors and friends, herself. The word "abide" comes to mind. She was a person who could "abide." She never seemed hurried, stressed or anxious. She was pleasant, respectful, and quietly happy. She is an saintly example for me.

I think of Margaret from time to time when I get too stressed or complicated or self-absorbed. When I feel anxious or worried. Though she had very little, she had everything. She knew and trusted God, and she accepted and loved life as it is.

I moved away from that community many years ago, but everywhere I go I keep my eyes open for other Margarets. They are out there. They are everywhere, in every congregation and community. They help ground us all. They spread peace and coherence. They know who and whose they are. Blessed are the meek.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring for ever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is your servant warned;
in keeping them there is great reward.
But who can detect their errors?
Clear me from hidden faults.
Keep back your servant also from the insolent;
do not let them have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. -- Psalm 19:7-14 (NRSV)

I'd like to have a dollar (hmm, in these inflated times, maybe a quarter would be more appropriate) for every time I've heard a sermon started with this invocation, or a variation of it. It's a good invocation - scriptural, short, sweet and to the point. It certainly seems a favorite among those who preach since so many use it in that context.

Reading the portion of the Psalm for this morning, I can't help but think of the Psalmist chanting glowing praise for God's law which he, the Psalmist, uses six synonyms and six values. The law is further described as something of great worth like fine gold or even the gold of sweet honey. Sometimes I wonder if this Psalmist might not have been a lawyer. Still, it does extol how he sees the law of God and passes that vision on to us.

It also crosses my mind too that people today glorify the law of the land -- as long as it is interpreted in their favor. The law of God says that the widows, orphans and strangers are to be sheltered, cared-for and protected; the law of the land manages to find umpteen million loopholes to close in the very faces of those widows, orphans and strangers while opening millions more for those who can pay to have the law interpreted in their favor. Yet if the law favors those on the other side of the case, then of course the law must be changed and forthwith!

What are the people of God to do? Many proclaim that this is a "Christian nation" founded on "Christian principles" and as such should follow Biblical principles. what makes this claim hollow is that many of the Bible's injunctions, laws if you will, are ignored while certain snippets are frequently quoted as if they were all the law and the prophets. There are many verses about caring for those who need care, yet the focus today is on how much can removed from their plate without their noticing that there's a pattern on the china and not very many mashed potatoes to cover it. Laws are more about restrictions on certain segments of the society rather than the well-being of all of it. In short, the laws of God about widows, orphans, feeding the hungry, visiting the sick and imprisoned, caring for the dying and above all the worship of God in all things are less important than retaining tax shelters and privilege.

I wonder --- what would happen if not just the preachers used that invocation before speaking but if all of us used it before committing to an act or a belief. I wonder what would happen if those Christians in congress would recite that prayer before rising to speak against legislation that would help provide a safety net for the most vulnerable? I wonder what would happen if they went into bipartisan meetings with that invocation in their hearts?

I wonder what would happen if I made that prayer throughout the day? What if I put the laws of God as they pertain to me and to those less fortunate uppermost in my mind instead of how I can get the most return for the least investment of time, talent or treasure?



Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.” So the king said to Joab and the commanders of the army, who were with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and take a census of the people, so that I may know how many there are.”

That day Gad came to David and said to him, “Go up and erect an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite.” Following Gad’s instructions, David went up, as the Lord had commanded. When Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming toward him; and Araunah went out and prostrated himself before the king with his face to the ground. Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the Lord, so that the plague may be averted from the people.” Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him; here are the oxen for the burnt offering, and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the Lord your God respond favorably to you.” But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. David built there an altar to the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and offerings of well-being. So the Lord answered his supplication for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel. 2 Samuel 24:1-2, 10-25 (NRSV)

Today's Hebrew Bible reading sets a chronological precedent in the story of "how people deal with God's will." Gad the prophet reveals for the first time in the Hebrew Bible that people are offered alternative choices in dealing with the Almighty. Prior to 2 Samuel, the standard operating procedure with God is "God speaks in some way, and the intended recipient either does it or doesn't do it." But what we come to discover in this reading is that these choices are really more of a Hobson's Choice than they are choices of free will.

Granted, these are not attractive choices. In my mind, David's choices for what to do with Israel run like this: 1) Punish everyone in Israel with three years of famine; 2) David can take the blame himself and be on the lam for three years; or 3) put Israel through three days of pestilence. One thing is clear: At this point, David is not ready to take the blame himself. He chooses "The hand of the Lord" (1 Samuel 5:6 establishes that this is a synonym for "plague") and, at that point, chooses to save his own hide. Some commentaries call this "David's strategy;" truthfully, I think that is rather charitable to David. He's been on the run before; it's not fun, and frankly, my gut reaction to his choice is that he's preserving his own skin, but he sort of lessens his guilt by picking three days over three years.

But what we discover, as the story unfolds, is when the angel of destruction appears on the scene, two things happen. First, God essentially says to the angel, "Sit tight a minute; let's not rush to judgment." This pregnant pause moment is all David needs to finally come around to his understanding of his own sins and the full meaning of the weight of his authority over the people of Israel. The sight of imminent destruction of innocent people gets David to finally come around to admitting, "I did it, this is MY fault," and he responds by making the appropriate sacrifices, even paying a fair price for the real estate for his altar, rather than simply having it given to him because of his power differential.

My gut feeling in this story is that it wouldn't have mattered which option David would have chosen--the outcome would have been the same. Eventually, David would have come around and chosen to accept the responsibility and make the appropriate sacrifices. Only the in-between in this story would have changed. I think about all the times we stress over "making the right decision" in our personal prayer lives, that somehow, we get into this delusion that we have power over God through our choices. We tend to discount the possibility that, no matter what we choose in our decisions over the most worrisome aspects of our lives, that God is perfectly capable of using the Hobson's Choice option on us--that no matter what we choose, we will eventually choose "taking it" over "leaving it," because we desire a relationship with God and God desires a relationship with us.

The various David stories in both books of Samuel are reminders that all of us, as God's anointed, do some really stupid things sometimes--we all sin, and we all have stories in our lives that we wish we could climb into that Back to the Future Delorean and change. But we don't get that option. We only get the option to move forward from where we are, with God's help. Today's story reminds us that even our wrong choices can, eventually lead to the right one.

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepsicatoid

Monday, August 22, 2011 -- Week of Proper 16, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms 1, 2, 3 (morning) 4, 7 (evening)
1 Kings 1:5-31
Acts 26:1-23
Mark 13:14-27

As I read the horrifying descriptions of the time of trial in today's passage from Mark, my mind turned to recent accounts I've heard from survivors of the Tsunami in Japan and of the attack upon the World Trade Center. From the gospel: "flee... the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat... Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days!"

Last week I heard some interviews with Japanese survivors. They were looking at damaged photographs that have been retouched and restored by volunteers from around the world -- generous photo restorers, giving their time to reclaim images of loved people and places. The survivors were remembering those who were lost, whose images now remain on the photos. One in the photo went back to get something precious from her home, and was swept out to sea. Another was pushing a relative who was wheelchair bound, and they were both too slow. Now their faces look back from the past. The memories were poignant; the suffering palpable.

This weekend my friend Fred Burnham visited our parish. He was just a few feet away from the World Trade Center on September 11. His visit brought back images and memories from that day. In the darkness and smoke, surrounded by percussive sounds, Fred and the group with him in a nearby building were certain that they would die that morning.

At one point, huddled in a dark, smoky stairwell, Fred had an experience of bonding love with a circle of friends who believed that they were all about to die together. He said that moment expanded into a transforming experience of the presence of God, the Source of love. He had no fear of death. Instead he was overwhelmed by the interrelatedness of Being, transforming this experience of terror into an experience of infinite love.

We asked Fred to reflect on what he has learned in the ten years since that experience. He talked about his twin passions for science and theology. He spoke about how interrelated all things are. He raised up two particular realities as key insights -- relationship and empathy.

Relationship is at the core of being. Relationship is as fundamental to existence as the individual properties of the things (or beings) in relationship. Fred offered a reinterpretation of the Great Commandment -- "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; this is the first and great relationship; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two relationships hang all the structure and the order of creation."

At the heart of our capacity for relationship is our capacity for empathy. Fred said, within our neurological structure are mirror neurons that allow us to look at another face and to interpret what they other is experiencing. We can feel what another feels. From this comes our ability to live with compassion, to be in empathetic relationship with another. Out of that relationship comes the call to love and to serve the other, because we can identify with them, we are in relationship.

Out of the ashes of 9-11, Fred has experienced an expansive sense of relationship and empathy for all humanity. It is on this foundation, he says, that Jesus invites us to live in the Kingdom of God, participating in what God is doing in the world. The whole story of the Bible, culminating in the Incarnation, is the story of God's empathic relationship with humanity. Insofar as we live, we live in relationship to this fundamental reality -- loving God, loving neighbor and loving self.

From the ruins of all our disasters rises the spirit of empathetic compassion in relationship -- resurrection in action. If we as individuals, and as a nation, are to share in the divine work of reconciliation and resurrection, we will have do embrace our fundamental calling to be in empathetic relationship with all humanity. How can we bring that vision to the next crisis? How can we bring that vision to our own time of trial?

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 -- Week of Proper 16, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms 5, 6 (morning) 10, 11 (evening)
1 Kings 1:38 - 2:4
Acts 26:24 - 27:8
Mark 13:28-37

"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near... And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake." (Mark 13:28, 37)

My dear friend and former spiritual director Macrina Wiederkehr sent one of her "Occasional Blessings" emails yesterday. Macrina is a Benedictine nun who lives nearby. Despite being hyperactive, full of energy and projects, she has a gift for pausing, and for calling others like me -- hyperactive and too full of energy and projects -- to pause. She likes to offer small prescriptions of awareness and abiding that can be like medicine for the prevalent disease of "hurry sickness."

In her note yesterday, she urged her friends to give ourselves "the blessing of one evening lived with exceptional awareness." She said to pick a night when you don't have other obligations, and give yourself time to see what blessing is waiting on you to have time.

Here is your homework, or more accurately: here is your blessing: You are simply to take a walk or sit at your window and be deeply and penetratingly aware. Whatever you see is God's offering to you. Whatever you see is a prayer! And you are to listen to what that prayer is saying to you without words. These are your 'spiritual sightings'.

As you begin this exercise turn to the Creator of Evening and pray these words from the poet, Rilke. [or choose your own words]

You are the tender evening hour that all poets equally love. You are the darkness pressing within them and the treasure each discovers, in surrounding you with endless praise.

As you begin your silent praise, remember that words are unnecessary. Your eyes will pray for you. Be present to your sightings. A few evenings ago when the great heat wave lifted I went for a walk. I am listing a few of my sightings below. These blessing prayers drew me into the self I have sadly been neglecting.

-- a crumpled, Sycamore Tree leaf
-- a small green shoot growing out of a seemingly dead branch
-- a goose with its long, proud neck raised to the heavens, standing motionless, keeping guard
-- a rabbit sitting at the entrance to the wooden cave made by a fallen Walnut Tree
-- 26 long stemmed mushrooms standing together on a grassy knoll watching the setting sun.

For a time, I kept vigil with them.
Then suddenly the cicada choir began to sing and my silence was only slightly broken. One lone bird joined the chorus and a firefly brought in her lantern. Rilke would say it like this:

A hundred thousand harps lift and swing you out of silence. And your primordial winds are bringing to all things and needs, the breath of your majesty.

(The two stanzas of poetry are taken from A Year with Rilke translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows)

A cat just sauntered by my window. Do I hear some distant thunder? The leaves are paused. I hear a train whistle. Somebody could write a country song about that. I wonder what will be today.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011 -- Week of Proper 16, Year One
Martin de Porres, Rosa de Lima, and Toribio de Mogrovejo, Witnesses to the Faith in South America, 1639, 1617, 1607

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms 119:1-24 (morning) 12, 13, 14 (evening)
1 Kings 3:1-15
Acts 27:9-26
Mark 14:1-11

So often, it is all about money.

In an extravagant, generous act, an unnamed woman poured a jar of costly ointment over Jesus, anointing him for death. Mark gives the cost of the perfume as equivalent to a day's wages for three hundred laborers. The act provokes a reaction. What a waste. Think of what the money for this ointment could have meant to the poor.

Jesus acknowledges the gift and the motives of the giver. "Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me." He goes on to say that "she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial." Later, the women who go to his tomb to anoint his body will discover that he has risen. Jesus says that this woman will be remembered wherever the good news is proclaimed. And indeed she is. Anonymously.

The other thing Jesus addresses is the competing value of helping the poor. "For you will always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me."

I've heard this verse quoted by some as an excuse not to give resources for the relief of the poor -- Jesus said that poverty is a problem that cannot be solved. I think that is a poor interpretation. Jesus was generous to the poor -- feeding, healing, teaching and befriending. I think he invites us to follow his example and to show kindness to the poor.

I would propose that the greatest division in our nation lies along this fault line: What is our relationship to the poor?

I think that most of the political conflicts in our nation today are competing visions about the poor.

There are those who believe that the system is fundamentally fair -- fair enough. Thanks to the freedom of opportunity our nation offers to all people, anyone with discipline and hard work can succeed. If someone is poor, it is probably because of their own lack of industry, talent or virtue. We destroy motivation and reward failure when we give away what should be earned. Give people a chance, but don't protect them from failure.

There are others who believe that the system is not fundamentally fair enough. There are some who enjoy unearned privilege, and many others who face such profound obstacles that they have very little possibility for success. Many believe that a just nation will expect the privileged to give power and resources to the underprivileged in order to even the playing field.

There is another debate about what responsibility we have toward others, regardless of our judgment of merit. Are food, shelter, and medical care human rights, or are they earned privileges? Do the wealthy and powerful owe anything to those who are poor and powerless?

Is a government just when it mandates values that take from some in order to give to others? Can a government be just if it doesn't?

I think these are the primary dividing lines that separate blue from red.

What would Jesus say?

"Love and hatred are not merely subjective feelings, affecting the inward universe of those who experience them, but they are also objective forces, altering the world outside ourselves. By loving or hating another, I cause the other in some measure to become that which I see in him or her. Not for myself alone, but for the lives of all around me, my love is creative, just as my hatred is destructive. And if this is true of my love, it is true to an incomparably greater extent of Christ's love. The victory of his suffering love upon the Cross does not merely set me an example, showing me what I myself may achieve if by my own efforts I imitate him. Much more than this, his suffering love has a creative effect upon me, transforming my own heart and will, releasing me from bondage, making me whole, rendering it possible for me to love in a way that would lie altogether beyond my powers, had I not first been loved by him. Because in love he has identified himself with me, his victory is my victory. And so Christ's death upon the Cross is truly, as the Liturgy of St. Basil describes it, a 'life-creating death.'"

Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1979), p. 82.

We might, as I myself have on other occasions, offer important cautions about what the suffering love of Jesus does and does not imply for our relationships with each other. It certainly doesn't imply women staying in abusive relationships, to cite one crucial example.

This quotation about the creative, suffering love of Christ, however, points us to a fundamental truth about our own life in Christ. It captures much of what is valid in so-called moral influence theories of the atonement without denying the objective change that the love of Christ has wrought in the world.

I do wonder how our families, neighborhoods, and congregations would be transformed if we were more open to the subtle, profound power of this "life-creating death." In the power of the Holy Spirit, every celebration of the Eucharist, every work of mercy, and every invocation of the Name of Jesus can open us up to the creative and transformative reality of our Lord's suffering, victorious love.

Bill Carroll

Friday, August 26, 2011 -- Week of Proper 16, Year One

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 980)
Psalms 16, 17 (morning) 22 (evening)
1 Kings 5:1 - 6:1, 7
Acts 28:1-16
Mark 14:27-42

I remember educator John Westerhoff saying something like this: The Christian life is nothing more than making promises, and breaking promises; and making promises again, and breaking promises; and making promises again, and so on. The important thing is to keep making promises again. He then pointed us to the promises of the Baptismal Covenant, which we make with good intention. Within those promises, we resolve to continue to get up and to try again each time we fail: "...whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord."

Last night I was speaking to a friend who has just returned from Japan where he was helping untangle some of the legal issues that have occurred in the aftermath of the Tsunami. Wills and other legal documents have been lost; whole families drowned. How do you sort out the complicated property matters and other relational issues?

He described a town that lay on the coast, protected by a thirty foot sea wall. The city was settled along a coastal plain, spreading inland for a couple of miles to the foothills of some descending mountains. The Tsunami was more than twice as high as the sea wall, he said. The water simply overwhelmed it and swept the town away entirely. Complete destruction all the way to the hills. Near the seashore, on the beach there is a pole that has been established in the ground. It reads in Japanese: "Fall down seven times. Get up eight."

"You will all become deserters," Jesus tells his companions. Unthinkable. Impossible. Peter protests, "Even though all become deserters, I will not." But we can be broken. Despite our best efforts or strongest intentions, we sometimes fail. At the heart of the prayer Jesus taught us looms the threatening possibility -- "Save us from the time of trial."

Jesus prays earnestly to be delivered from the time of trial. It is not to be. Peter's strong will and intention will be broken by that trial. He will betray the one he most loves. He will betray his deepest belief and commitment. He will be broken. He will fail.

You can feel it coming even before the fact. As Jesus prays in anguish, he asks his friends to stay with him just a bit. Stay awake. They don't have to do anything. They don't even have to pray for him, to carry his fight for him. Just stay awake. But they are tired. Exhausted. Drained. We get that way. How many days in the hospital has it been? How long have we kept going? We meet our limits. We fold.

"Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour?" Jesus knows what is coming is more threatening and harder than just keeping awake when exhausted. He urges Peter to pray for himself. "Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial." If Peter is withering now, what will happen when the real threat comes? Peter means well. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."

We sense what is coming. Peter will fail. At the most important moment of his life, he will shrink back. He will break. He will lie. He will deny his beloved friend. Three times.

Peter's greatest triumph is his subsequent willingness to live with his failed self and to renew his confidence.

Judas, who failed similarly, was too proud to do so. Judas' continued to insist on exercising full control of his life. Suicide is the ultimate act of control. Judas couldn't live with himself -- not a failed self.

But somehow Peter accepted his own miserable failure. He let himself be who he was. When Jesus rose from the dead to meet Peter, Peter willingly faced him and rejoiced, despite the shame.

I love the story on the beach, that concludes John's gospel. Three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Three times Peter reaffirms his love. It is a poignant reaffirmation. Three times he denied his friend. Now three times he confirms him. Peter is restored and empowered. "Feed my lambs. ...Tend my sheep."

If Judas had not been so willful, had not stayed in control and continued to take things into his own hands, he too could have been similarly restored.

Well... the day is here. Time to get to work. I've got promises to keep. And some to renew. I'll never keep them all.

"Fall down seven times. Get up eight."

They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’ -- Mark 7:32-37 (NRSV)

The reading is a natural one for the commemoration of two souls, Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle, who worked with, taught and ministered to the deaf and who, with others, began to make all of us aware that being deaf was not a stigma but a challenge.

To the people in Jesus' day, anyone who had something "different" about them -- deafness, lameness, paralysis, patches of differently-colored skin (vitiligo or leprosy, both were the same to them) -- were believed to be punished by God for something, either their own sin or that of their parents. A difference was not normal; it marked the person and his family as somehow flawed, broken, incomplete.

Today we still look at people in wheelchairs, with extensive scarring, white canes, crutches or odd pigmentation as "different." We even have names for them -- disabled, handicapped, invalid -- which seem to make them less "normal" and more abnormal, different, incapable of doing what normal people do, poor or weakened in condition, deficient in substance, somehow not as "valid" as the rest of us. Often we use the words without thinking of how our labeling can affect those we try to tag with such titles. Sometimes (usually?) we wish they could be cured of their affliction, made whole and productive. Jesus healed people like this, but as hard as we try, we can't always do it either as well or at all.

Part of it is that Jesus healed, we cure. There's a difference between the two, a very big difference. Curing means taking care of the illness, disease or disorder, restoring the person functionality and normalcy. The condition is partially or completely reversed and, barring some unforeseen difficulty, will not be returning to trouble the patient. Medicine and faith take the credit for the cure, but sometimes there is a ghost remaining inside the patient, the ghost of the illness, disease or disability that often remains when cure takes place.

Jesus healed -- blind people, paralyzed people, lepers, women with bent backs or prolonged bleeding, even people who had died. He healed them, not just their bodies but their souls, their relationships, their very beings. The woman at the well didn't need a cure, she needed to be healed of the mistakes she'd made, the way she lived, even how she appeared to her neighbors. The centurion was not even a Jew but had faith that Jesus could heal his servant, just by his word only, not even by touch or even being in the same house. The servant was healed, just as Jarius' daughter was. They were cured of whatever caused their deaths but they were also healed, as were their families and households. With Jesus the process was a complete one, both healing and curing.

There is a caution, though. Many who might be thought by others to have disabilities or disorders don't feel "broken" so they don't need curing. They make the most of who they are, the abilities, talents and skills that they have, and they bless us with their insights. They teach us what it means to be whole even if something is missing or impaired. They give us the opportunity to practice grace, the grace of acceptance and admiration for their strengths, not pity for their weaknesses. We have learned much in the two thousand years since Jesus walked on earth. We have learned and yet we still remain blind and deaf, more blind and deaf than those who actually need to use white canes or cochlear implants or hearing aids. Perhaps we should ask Jesus to heal us of our disease of superiority and need to "fix" people and things that aren't broken. And perhaps cure us of failure to see and hear what people like Gallaudet and Syle have to teach us.

Linda Ryan co-mentors 2 EfM Online groups and keeps the blog Jericho's Daughter

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his host!
Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created.
He established them forever and ever; he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed.
Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!
Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars!
Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!
Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth!
Young men and women alike, old and young together!
Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven.
He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his faithful, for the people of Israel who are close to him. Praise the Lord! Psalm 148 (NRSV)

The words of Psalm 148 might seem familiar to any of us who are familiar with an Episcopal Church Morning Prayer service, because some of this rings familiar in the words of Canticle 12, "A Song of Creation." Canticle 12 comes from The Song of the Three Young Men (also known as the Prayer of Azariah) from the apocryphal portions of Daniel; this song is heavily based in several Psalms, borrowing not just from Psalm 148, but also from Psalms 103 and 136.

What always strikes me with this Psalm is it, as does Canticle 12, illustrates things I am normally not in the habit of praising, lifting their praise to God. Imagining the stars and heavens and trees praising God is easy for me--sea monsters, hailstones, and storms...not so much. What particularly comes to mind for me is the difficulty I had in praising God while volunteering in the aftermath of the Joplin, MO tornado. I stood beside my truck in the middle of the debris field, turning and seeing in every direction I turned, nothing but devastation in every direction of the compass. My first thought was, "Huumph. The insurance companies call these "acts of God"--and people are supposed to find God in this."

The irony, and the miracle, of course, in this, was at the end of my short volunteer stint, I had seen God in this--many times over. God was in the faces of the power and light crews from all over the country accepting Gatorade from the back of our truck. God shined like a beacon in the face of a woman who brought her toddler to the distribution center barefooted because he had no shoes. God shattered denominational boundaries by riding shotgun along with the Presbyterian minister and the two Mormon missionaries who were assigned to distribute supplies donated by Catholic Charities with me. God grinned through stained and missing teeth from the man who showed me his splenectomy scar from being pinned in his house, who told me in no uncertain terms that he had been blessed by this tragic event of nature. His words still ring out in the middle of the night--"I never knew the world was such a good place."

The words of this Psalm call us to a strange invitation--an invitation to consider the possibility that the things that we are absolutely certain God cannot possibly exist within them, are, indeed, singing praise to God. How are we called to respond to their song?

Maria Evans, a surgical pathologist from Kirksville, MO, writes about the obscurities of life, medicine, faith, and the Episcopal Church on her blog, Kirkepsicatoid

Monday, August 29, 2011 -- Week of Proper 17, Year One
John Bunyan, Writer, 1688

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 982)
Psalms 25 (morning) 9, 15 (evening)
2 Chronicles 6:32 - 7:7
James 2:1-13
Mark 14:53-65

Some of the ways I think of God include aspects of the spatial. I think of God as the center of all being, the midpoint of life and creation. Dante ends the Divine Comedy in the center of the circle of the Holy Trinity, his desire and his will being "turned like a wheel, all at one speed, by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars." In some sense my imagination has been affected by the cosmologists' description of the singularity "before" time from which emerged the Big Bang of creation. I imagine God before and behind all that is, the transcendent center from which everything emanates and yet is completely connected -- the animating energy, loving Wisdom from whom pours the Spirit of being.

There is also the sense of God's immanence. God is the Center with no circumference. Deeply present, closer to me than the air I breath, as lifegiving as my blood, my thought before I think. The seeing, the seer and the seen. "Where can I flee from your presence?"

So we hear Solomon's dedicatory prayer for the Jerusalem Temple. "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!" Yet the ancients insist, God's Name may dwell in a place made with hands. The builder asks that God's "eyes may be open night and day toward this house."

So we think of a Temple. A dwelling for God's Name among us and a focus for our earthly prayer. I think of the holy places made with hands where I experience a divine presence. Our altar. The aumbry where we ask the Name of Jesus to dwell. An icon. A candle. Solomon asks God to hear the people of Israel when they pray toward the Temple. "O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive."

The Temple becomes a thin place of connection between heaven and earth, where oaths are confirmed and judgment rendered. A place of confession and forgiveness. Where the people bring their experience of catastrophe and find succor.

In the Temple there is ample room for the foreigner. Solomon asks that the prayer of the foreigner be honored in the Temple as the prayer of the Temple's own people. Our reading from James reminds us that we are to honor the poor and poorly dressed no less -- maybe even more -- when the congregation gathers in our holy place.

Solomon asks God's hearing of our prayer whenever we turn toward the Temple, wherever we may be. I have been with my Muslim friends as they face Mecca for their prayers, and I sense the groundedness of place and identity that comes from such a material spiritual anchor. I also find myself moved by those who come to receive communion in our own little church, who open their hands to receive the bread of Christ, and who look above and behind me at the east window image of Jesus welcoming the little children.

Where is our Temple? Where do we turn when we direct ourselves toward God?

My most common image involves a descent into the center of my being where I sense an opening into the infinity of God. A mutual indwelling opens in that vast singularity.

So many other things share a Templeish quality, all outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. Moses sees a burning bush, and behold, it is full of God. There is the Name. There are words, mere created letters or sounds, which open into the Word. There is the shudder of intuition that seems to radiate a meaning or emotion that is not our own.

We turn to the Temple. We become the Temple. We are to be the place where God's Name dwells. Maybe even occasionally, we might be the Temple that someone else may turn to, like Jerusalem or Mecca, to seek God's presence or succor when in need or threat. I send a word of thanksgiving and reverence to those friends and strangers who have served as my own Temple.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011 -- Week of Proper 17, Year One
Charles Chapman Grafton, Bishop of Fond du lac, and Ecumenist, 1912

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 982)
Psalms 26, 28 (morning) 36, 39 (evening)
1 Kings 8:65 - 9:9
James 2:14-26
Mark 14:66-72

There was a brief phrase in today's first reading that sent a chill down my back. It comes at the conclusion of Solomon's dedication of the first Temple. After Solomon held a great festival, the scripture mentions that "the great assembly" had drawn "people from Lebo-hamath to the Wadi of Egypt." The phrase describes the idealized boundaries of Israel during the reigns of David and Solomon. It is one of those troubling phrases in the scripture that contributes to tension and violence today.

There is some disagreement exactly where Lebo-hamath lies, but it is between mountain ranges somewhere north of Damascus in Syria and east of Beruit in Lebanon. The Wadi of Egypt is the eastern boundary of Egypt.

This is one of the phrases in scripture that Zionists, including Christian Zionists, cite to make profound territorial claims on behalf of modern Israel.

I've seen one map promoted by Christian Zionists that declares that God has given to Israel the land in the Middle East stretching from the Mediterranian to the Euphrates, from Egypt to Turkey. Anyone who does not support Israel's domination of this territory is an enemy of God, they say. Some of them also cite the faithfulness of Ezra and Nehemiah, and propose some similar form of ethnic cleansing in that territory.

During our visit to Israel and Palestine we were able to meet a number of Palestinian Christians whose families have lived in the Holy Land for centuries. They told us a bit of what it is like living under occupation. It was an ugly story. The numbers seem to show that Christians in Israel are being ethnically cleansed, in some sense. Palestinian Christians are leaving, those who can. They find life in their own land terribly constrained and even hopeless.

Our closest experience of some of their everyday life was the checkpoints. We went through the checkpoints and experienced what seemed like senseless harassment and intimidation. The government of Israel does not want tourists to stay in Bethlehem, which is in the Palestinian territories. So our bus of very ordinary American tourists was stopped at the checkpoint each time we went between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The wait was at least twenty minutes, at most fifty minutes. Twice we had soldiers armed with automatic weapons walk through our bus where we showed them our passports. The soldiers looked so young, so immature. One seemed almost chagrined that he was having to do this.

On another day we were all escorted off of our bus under gunpoint and processed about one hundred yards to go through a metal detector. There we witnessed close up the harassment and humiliation of the local population. A Muslim woman was in tears as she exposed herself underneath her full-body robe. Apparently the metal from her bra had set off the detector. An elderly man in flowing robes was held up for about twenty minutes. Finally he found what the contraband was. He showed it to the tourists as he eventually passed through the machine. It was a coin, less than half the size of a penny. A nurse was delayed from her work. She would be late to the hospital. Her metal buttons and zipper on her jeans made her inspection very time consuming. Every one of us, the tourists, set off the machine. We were waved through.

The ethnic cleansing of Christian tour groups staying in Bethlehem has been pretty successful. Our tour guide told us that very few groups are willing to put up with the hassle of the checkpoints. The company we toured with has an old relationship with the once thriving Christian community in Bethlehem. They persist in staying there for the sake of that struggling community. They thanked us for our patience, and for the hours of touring we sacrificed in order to make some contribution to the survival of our Christian brothers and sisters still living in Bethlehem.

I am no expert on the Middle East. But I experienced something that I would call injustice when I stayed among the Palestinians for a while.

There are those who declare that the world will never be at peace, that Jesus will not return, until Israel has dominion from Egypt to Turkey and from the Mediterranian to the Euphrates. I think those are the people who prevent peace.

In our reading today, the promises made to Solomon were conditional. The reign of the house of David and Solomon was conditioned upon their following God's commandments. The commandments include the expectations of justice, and they demand the same law for the foreigner as for the native.

Fulfilling God's intention for the Holy Land is more than domination on a map, particularly if that domination is accompanied by injustice. Those of us in the mainstream of Christianity need to confront the dangerous and unjust claims of Christian Zionism.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011 -- Week of Proper 17, Year One
Aidan and Cuthbert, Bishops of Lindisfarne, 651, 684

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 982)
Psalms 38 (morning) 119:25-48 (evening)
1 Kings 9:24 - 10:13
James 3:1-12
Mark 15:1-11

Solomon wowed the queen of Sheba. He excelled in wisdom. He displayed his great wealth in grand style. To look at Israel from the boardroom of the CEO, it was an impressive sight.

But below the surface things were not so pretty. Solomon's great building projects were driven largely by slave labor. Although this chapter denies that he conscripted forced labor from Israelites (9:22), that is contradicted in chapters 5 and 10 as well as by the motivation for the subsequent rebellion that divided the nation. The long simmering resentments over the privileges that Judah enjoyed, and the burden of supporting Solomon's extravagance were already sowing the seeds of rebellion even while Solomon entertained so exquisitely in court.

I can't remember the source, but I recall some reports from archeological studies that point to a dramatic change that occurred about this time in Israel's history. Throughout the days of the confederacy of tribes and through the early monarchy, there is little evidence of dramatic differences in economic status among the people of Israel. Wealth was fairly evenly divided and the most prosperous lived in a style that was not remarkably different from the common person.

Around the time of Solomon that changed. Archeologists see the emergence of signs of concentrated wealth and consumption among a small group of elite, alongside the presence of a slave class. There is a new division of wealth and class that did not exist in Israel's earlier history.

As I read of Solomon's exploits and remember the quick disillusion of his empire, two contemporary situations come to mind -- the Arab spring and the new concentration of wealth in this country.

In so many ways Solomon was a typical oriental despot. He displayed his status and power extravagantly, including his harem of wives and concubines. The account of his reign is full of weights of measures of gold and other luxuries. His legendary wisdom, it seems, was an elitist wisdom, not the kind of street smarts that creates a sustainable and just nation. His dynasty did not survive. Like today in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere, the subjects of Solomon's reign were hungry for an opportunity to topple the oppressive regime.

Lest our own nation be too complacent, we need to mark some of the signs of instability and injustice that do not make for a sustainable foundation. A profound economic gap has been growing in this nation beginning from the 1970's. Income has been flat for average Americans for thirty years. Wealth has become concentrated in fewer hands.

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski pointed out recently that 400 Americans own more wealth than 150 million other Americans.

In the past 30 years the wealthiest 1% increased their share of national wealth from 7% to 23%.

50% of all the children in our nation will depend on food stamps at some point in their lives. In our congressional district, the poverty rate recently rose from one-in-five to one-in-four. That happened in just over one year.

The August edition of "Mother Jones" has a series of graphs and reports that highlight how hard American workers are working -- productivity has increased dramatically -- while wages have dropped and jobs have disappeared. Corporate profits are strong and many companies have unprecedented cash reserves, but few companies are creating jobs to produce products for consumers who have little to spend.

It is as if all of the money has fled upstairs and just sits there among the elite. It is not the picture of a healthy, sustainable or just economy.

The irony of the purported rebellion of the Tea Party is that their goals only play into the hands of those who already have so much money and power. Tea Party policies can only accelerate the concentration of wealth.

While Solomon entertained the queen of Sheba, his kingdom crumbled beneath him. An American plutocracy of corporate wealth and power now dominates our policies while an underclass suffers and a middle class stagnates. These are not signs of stability.