Paul wrote:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
(From the Daily Office Lectionary – Romans 7:21-25a – July 4, 2012)
Occasional there are interesting coincidences between the Daily Office Lectionary lessons which we read following the “common of time” and whatever celebration we may encounter on the “common of saints” or the secular calendar. Today is American Independence Day, when the citizens of the United States commemorate gaining their freedom of the tyranny of the 18th Century British monarchy, and in the lessons today we find Paul writing about freedom from the tyranny of compulsive sin. ~ “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate,” he writes earlier in the lesson (v. 15). For many of people this is a daily experience; many battle with addictions and compulsive behaviors that they do not want – alcoholism, sexual addiction, eating disorders, and the list could go on. Paul here suggests that this is the human condition, that we all suffer this “slavery” to behaviors we’d rather not be doing, to habits of action or thought that are harmful to ourselves, to others, or to our relationships. ~ My “habit” is, to put it bluntly, laziness – that’s as good a term for it as any – the theological term for it is “acedia” which one of the Desert Mothers, Amma Theodora, said is characterized by weakness in the knees and pain in the limbs. That’s it, for sure! ~ I know that exercise and physical activity is good for me; I know that I feel better after I get up and move about, take a walk, do some yard work, build a wall. But I don’t do it. It’s the getting up that is the issue; it’s so much easier to just sit here and play around on the internet! ~ Yesterday, I took a walk to the local school and back; it’s not far, only about a mile. Today, I plan to do the same. Wretched man that I am, I’m going to do it. Today, I declare my independence from acedia, from laziness, from the “sin that dwells within me!” God in Christ help me!
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Fr. Funston is rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Medina, Ohio.
(Note: The illustration accompanying this post is by Bulgarian artist Desislav Gechev; it links to an article about Mr. Gechev’s work.)
Don’t the words of the priests and elders ring false? “We don’t know.” Matthew doesn’t tell us that they did know, but I think they did, or at least had a pretty good idea. I think they knew (or had a pretty good idea) that John was indeed a prophet, that his message of baptism and repentance was “from heaven” as Jesus puts it here. ~ I don’t think there’s anything wrong with answering “I don’t know” when that is, in fact, the case. I once had a parishioner who (it seemed to me) was constantly asking, “What will happen when we die?” My answer was always, “I don’t know, Martha. I haven’t been there yet. But here’s what our faith teaches . . . .” If the priests and elders truly didn’t know, they could at least have answered in this way: “We don’t know, but this is what we think . . . .” But they didn’t even do that. ~ Jesus constantly calls the religious authorities out for hypocrisy. He plays no favorites, either. Pharisees and Sadducees, priests and scribes, elders and rabbis, Jewish authorities of every sort feel the sting of his condemnation. A lot of books and blogs on the practice of ministry say, “It’s OK to say, ‘I don’t know’.” And it is when that is truly the case; in fact, if you don’t know, it’s better to say so than rely on some hackneyed-and-probably-inappropriate cliche or to make up some BS on the spot. But Jesus here is suggesting that it’s not OK to say “I don’t know” when you do know, or you have a pretty good idea; in that case, it’s rank hypocrisy. 
Our first reading this morning is from a little book from the Apocrypha called The Book of Wisdom. At one time church tradition ascribed authorship to King Solomon, but it is now believed to have been written sometime in the first or second century before Christ by a Greek-speaking Jew of the Diaspora. It is found in the Greek-language version of Jewish scriptures, not in the Hebrew version, and is therefore not considered as canonical scripture by Jews or by Protestants. Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox do accept it, and we Anglicans take a middle course, saying that we read them “for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet [we do] not apply them to establish any doctrine.” (Articles of Religion, Art. VI, BCP 1979, pg. 868). Well, here’s an example of life, then:
The end of June and we’re reading about Jesus’ triumphal entry? OK, whatever . . . . ~ At this time of year and at this particular time in the life of the Episcopal Church (just before the General Convention), my attention is drawn to the last sentence of today’s gospel lesson, the fact that people told one another about Jesus. ~ A couple of days ago, I mentioned a 
Paul’s logic is sometimes hard to follow and his rhetoric is often overblown, and he certainly had a tendency to go on and on about some things, but this point he makes clearly and simply, and concludes: “By one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” (v. 19) ~ This gets back to something I addressed in an earlier meditation: theories of the atonement and how it works for us. How is that we are saved? Is it by our faith in Jesus or through Jesus faith in God the Father and through his act of faithfulness to his message and mission? In this passage from Romans, Paul makes it clear that it is Christ’s obedience, his faith, his righteousness, not our own, that wins our salvation and accomplishes atonement. ~ There are many theories of how the atonement works. Theologically, I don’t think any of them really work. The best thing I’ve ever heard about how it works is from a Baptist preacher from Texas named Gerald Mann: “I have never understood all of those theories about how Christ atoned for our sin, but I do know that somehow in the cross event, God took upon Himself the blame for having created a world where things can go wrong. The resurrection is God’s declaration that eventually things will go right.” ~ And I am reminded of a line from the recent movie Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Sonny, the youthful innkeeper (played by Dev Patel), says to one of the elderly English guests (I can’t remember which one), “We have a saying in India, ‘Everything will be alright in the end… if it’s not alright, then it’s not the end’.” Through one man’s act of righteousness everything will be alright in the end.
We all know how this one goes. The owner hired more workers at various times throughout the day, finally hiring some who worked only one hour. At the end of the day, he paid all of the workers the same wage regardless of the time they worked. The earliest hired thought that was unfair and complain, to which the owner replied, basically, that he paid them what they agreed. Jesus ends with the famous aphorism, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” ~ Every time I read this passage the words that strike me most are “I will pay you whatever is right.” The definition of “right” in this circumstance, it seems to me, depends on who one is in the story, especially if it is set in our modern capitalist society. Perhaps not in Jesus’ time and place, but in our time and country with religious pluralism and economic disparity the definition of “right” is a variable thing. For the employer, a “right” wage would be that which maximizes his profit. For the supervisor in the vineyard, a “right” wage might be a perhaps larger amount sufficient to keep the workers happy and working. For the worker, a “right” wage would be enough to support his or her family with some for saving and a little left over for discretionary spending. For the government, a “right” wage would be at least enough to keep a worker off the public dole and to allow the worker to pay sufficient taxes to fund necessary public services. What is “right” is a hard thing to know. ~ In fact, I can’t imagine a modern worker accepting an employment contract that simply said, “Worker will be paid what is right”! Can you? Most employment agreements need to include a set starting wage in dollars-per-hour and a description of non-salary benefits including health insurance, pension or profit-sharing plan, vacation allowed, and so forth. Whatever is “right” needs to be carefully laid out. ~ Why should that be? Why isn’t there at least some universal notion of “rightness”? Shouldn’t there be some normative standard for the moral treatment and compensation of employees? Shouldn’t workers be able to trust their bosses to do what is “right” for them? I think there should be . . . but the truth is that human nature is “fallen”, that humans (both workers and employers) are greedy, that (as I’ve said) “right” is not always obvious. That’s why we have laws. That’s why we have regulations. That’s why government in a world where corporations are multi-national or trans-national or global (or whatever term you want to use for “great big and humungous”) cannot be “small”. Government needs to be big enough to lay down rules for how “whatever is right” can be determined in a pluriform society. ~ And the church and her members need to be “big enough” to speak up for what is “right” when others in our society – whether individuals, or big corporations, or the government – would do what is “not right”. If something is “not right”, speak up and say so! Be the first to do so, not the last.
So the story of Korah’s rebellion (which lead me yesterday to give thought to the current leadership crisis in the Episcopal Church) continues in today’s reading and Moses (now with Aaron) is again falling on his face! This time because God, righteously unhappy with the Hebrews because of Korah and his companions, decided to simply wipe them out. Moses and Aaron made the case that this would be (to coin a phrase) overkill. So God relented and decided only to wipe out Korah, his companions, and their families. The rebels “together with their wives, their children, and their little ones” (v. 27) stood before their tents and then “the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households – everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods.” (v. 32) And just for good measure, 250 Levites who’d been standing around with censers (as instructed by God through Moses) were consumed by fire which “came out from the Lord.” (v. 35). I probably don’t need to tell you that I find this story more than a little troubling! This vengeful warrior god taking out his pique on a large number of people, including small children, is not the god I particularly want to worship! ~ I once had a parishioner who was part of my team of lectors (folks who assist in worship by reading the lessons from Holy Scripture) who refused to read from the Old Testament: “I don’t believe in that god,” she would say. Well, I thought, neither did Marcion, but the church decided he was wrong, that the God of the Old Testament is the same God who is the Father of Jesus Christ, that we do worship that God, and we have to wrestle with the discomfort these ancient writings inflict upon us. Still, I didn’t insist that she read the Old Testament lessons. After all, this sort of reading (as I said) makes me more than a little uncomfortable, too! ~ And that is at it should be. The Hebrew Scriptures are the story of a people’s developing understanding of their God and their relationship with God. That story will have and does have the same sorts of violent and unpalatable events any human history will have. This is why the historical-critical method of studying the Bible is important, for it enables us to grasp what it actually meant to live as one of the Chosen People in any given era. The more accurately we understand the world of the Hebrews, the Israelites, or the church, the more we can see how the people of the Bible understood themselves to be in relationship with God. ~ A daily meditation on the Scriptures is not the place to wrestle with and resolve the difficulties and discomforts passages such as this episode from Numbers create. However, it is a place to suggest that approaching the biblical picture of God with a recognition that the Hebrews progressed in their apprehension of God, appreciating the historical circumstance of the Bible’s stories, allows us to see these stories in as positive a light as possible. Seen in this light, the more brutal parts of the Bible may still communicate valid insights – even to us. We simply don’t have the luxury of saying “I don’t believe in that God”! Rather, we have the responsibility to wrestle with these pictures of God.
Moses “fell on his face.” This is biblical language for expressing great despair and sadness, not the reaction to a leadership confrontation a modern person would expect. Anger? Yes. Hostility? Yes. Yelling and shouting and public protestation of one’s rightness? Yes. Falling prostrate on the ground in desperate sadness? Not so much. ~ It would appear that in the confrontation of Korah and his compatriots, Moses felt personal responsibility. He believe that what had gone wrong with the Hebrews was his fault. He seems to have believed that he himself had created an atmosphere which had led to less-than-perfect delegated administration and justice. ~ Unfortunately a leadership crisis in the Episcopal Church isn’t resulting in similar behavior from the church’s leadership. In recent months the two highest officials of the church (the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies) have had a public squabble over when and how one or the other might communicate with other persons in the church (the cause of the dispute was a video the PB made and sent to members of the House of Deputies, apparently without a “heads-up” to the PHoD). More recently, proposals for the church’s budget for the coming triennium have raised concern among many church members. In response to the first criticisms, the Executive Council issued a statement which was wholey inadequate (in my opinion) and failed to take responsibility. Then the PB (apparently distancing herself from the Executive Council of which she is actually a member and the chair) has come out with her own budget proposal. Now one or more members of the council have their backs up, writing blogs and making statements about being stabbed in the back. In all of this, there hasn’t been a lot of “falling on one’s face” going on. ~ The incident described in the Book of Numbers was really all about Korah’s personal grievances, suitably disguised for public consumption. Moses could have fired right back at him. But Moses suspected that his own earlier mistakes might be the cause of Korah’s uprising, that it was his failure which had created a setting in which discontent could germinate and ultimately promote the Levite rebellion. So, in humility, Moses admits accountability. Might a little of Moses’ humility be a good idea for the current crop of spiritual leadership? ~ Several church members recently have written blogs analyzing the budget and the business of the up-coming General Convention. Would that the Episcopal Church’s bishops, Executive Council, Presiding Bishop, deputies to General Convention, et al. would read these and consider their own roll in creating the situation in which the church finds itself. But I’m afraid they are too busy pointing the finger at one another, blind-siding one another, accusing one another of stabs in the back, playing turf wars, and engaging in cat-fights and pissing-contests. ~ We could use a little less of that sort of thing and a lot more falling on faces!
