That Which We Have Heard & Known

Occasional thoughts of an Anglican Episcopal priest

Tag: Judaism (Page 1 of 2)

Of Politics and Fences – Sermon for RCL Proper 25A

October 28, 2023 / / 0 Comments

What does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord”? The question arises because of today’s dialog between Jesus and some of the Pharisees about the relative importance of the Commandments. Jesus responds to a lawyer’s question about the greatest commandment and then follows his response with a question about the lordship of the Messiah, the anticipated “Son of David.”

Jesus very rarely claimed this title for himself and when he did it was generally in the sort of oblique way we see in today’s exchange. He doesn’t come right out and say “I am the Lord,” but he hints at it. Usually, however, it is applied to him by others. In daily usage among First Century Jews, addressing someone as “Lord,” was probably meant as an honorific synonymous with “Rabbi,” “Teacher,” “Master,” and so forth, the way we might use “Doctor,” “Professor,” or address a judge as “Your Honor.”

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Of Persistent Love – Sermon for RCL Proper 22A

October 7, 2023 / / 0 Comments

This is the second of three Sundays during which our lessons from the Gospel according to Matthew tell the story of an encounter between Jesus and the temple authorities. Jesus has come into Jerusalem, entered the Temple and had a somewhat violent confrontation with “the money changers and … those who sold doves,”[1] gone back to Bethany, and then returned to the Temple the next day. In last week’s lesson, “the chief priests and the elders of the people” demanded that he explain himself, asking, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”[2] In good rabbinic fashion, Jesus answers their question with a question and, when they cannot answer his question, he declines to answer theirs.

But, Jesus being Jesus, he doesn’t leave it at that: he goes on to tell three parables. First, a story about two sons, one of whom refuses to do as his father instructs but later changes his mind and obeys, the other of whom agrees to do as he is told but then fails to do so. The second, today’s story about a vineyard. And the third, a story about a wedding feast where the invited guests decline attendance so passers-by are dragged in off the streets, but one man (who fails to wear an appropriate wedding garment) is tossed back out into a place of perdition. We heard the first last week; we’ll hear the third next week. Today, we have heard “the Parable of the Wicked Tenants.”

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Of Jesus and Racial Slurs – Sermon for RCL Proper 15A

August 19, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Heavenly Father,

We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.

We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,

God of our weary years,

God of our silent tears,

Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;

Thou who hast by Thy might,

Led us into the light,

Keep us forever in the path, we pray.

Amen.[1]

Last week, Evelyn and I were in Topeka, Kansas, visiting our son and his family. On Friday afternoon we were at loose ends while the grandkids were at school and their parents were at work, so we decided to visit the Brown vs. Board of Education National Monument. This memorial is a small museum in what was the segregated, all-black Monroe Elementary School south of Topeka’s downtown. I’m glad we went to see it. It is a remarkable place, and a fascinating if sobering reminder of how bad racism has been in this country and how much further we still have to go to remove that stain from our nation.

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Soil Is People! – Sermon for RCL Proper 10A

July 15, 2023 / / 0 Comments

This is an old and familiar story, a comfortable story if you will … the parable of the sower.[1] We’ve all heard it before and we know what it means because Jesus takes the time to explain it. Jesus calls it “the parable of the sower,” but it really ought to be called “the parable of the soils.” The parable presents the variety of responses to the good news of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus uses the metaphor of the different types of soil into which the sower’s seed is cast. That “soil,” he explains, is people.

Some seed that falls on the path which, says Jesus, represents those who hear the good news but do not understand it. Because of the hardness or dullness of their hearts, the evil one, who resists God’s purposes snatches it away. It is not clear, in the parable or in Jesus’ explanation, why the devil seems to be more powerful in influencing the human heart than is God’s word, but then that is not the point of the parable. That, perhaps, is a teaching Jesus meant to leave for another day.

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Pin the Tail on the Donkey – Sermon for RCL Proper 9A

July 8, 2023 / / 0 Comments

A clergy colleague suggested recently that this Sunday’s epistle reading[1] makes a lot more sense if you add ‘Dear Diary’ at the start. I think he’s right. For seven chapters of his letter to the Romans, Paul the erudite and well-educated Greek-speaking rabbi has been going on at length about the Law and how it does or does not apply to Jews and Gentiles, how it does or does not apply to members of the church, and so forth. And then, all of a sudden, he’s no longer the learned Jewish Christian apologist; he’s just a guy complaining about life. He begins writing in the first person and bemoaning his inability to carry through with his best intentions. It’s like, “Dear Diary, I really screwed up and I don’t understand why!”

But this passage is not in Paul’s diary, it’s in his letter to the Romans, which the church has preserved as part of Holy Scripture, so here we are reading it during worship and trying to figure out just what the heck Paul is talking about! Is he, autobiographically and symbolically, describing a believer’s pre-conversion state? That is, does the misery described in these verses represent a person’s life before receiving the grace of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension? Or, alternatively, is he presenting himself as the stereotypical believer after receiving the grace of baptism? Does the conundrum Paul describes characterize the life of faith? And if he couldn’t get it right, who could?

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What To Do With the Akedah? – Sermon for RCL Proper 8A

July 1, 2023 / / 0 Comments

What are we to do with our first lesson today? The story of the testing of Abraham and the binding of Isaac, called the Akedah in Hebrew, “exudes darkness and mystery, and it brings before us a thousand questions, most of which have no answers.”[1] In the late 1300s an unknown English author penned a short treatise entitled The Cloud of Unknowing basically arguing that such “darkness and mystery,” and the thousands of unanswerable questions they bring, are really fundamental to our relationship with God. “[O]f God Himself can no man think,” he writes, “He may well be loved, but not thought. By love may He be gotten and holden; but by thought never.”[2]

The Spanish mystical poet, St. John of the Cross, made a similar point in his poem known as The Dark Night of the Soul. He wrote in the first verse:

Once in the dark of night,?
Inflamed with love and yearning, I arose?
(O coming of delight!)?
And went, as no one knows,
?When all my house lay long in deep repose….[3]

“In this first stanza,” John himself said, the soul relates the way and manner which it followed “to attain to living the sweet and delectable life of love with God; and it says that this going forth from itself and from all things was a ‘dark night,’ by which . . . is here understood purgative contemplation.”[4] This “purgative contemplation” has been called a darkening of the will, intellect, and senses,[5] or more simply a “remain[ing] silent, …not thinking of anything.”[6]

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God’s Faith, Not Ours — Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12C) — July 24, 2022

July 24, 2022 / / 0 Comments

“Name this child.” That’s what I say to parents of infant baptismal candidates as I take their children from them. The words are not actually written in the baptismal service of The Book of Common Prayer as they are in some other traditions’ liturgies, but there is a rubric that says, “Each candidate is presented by name to the Celebrant . . . .”[1] so asking for the child’s name is a practical way of seeing that done. It’s practical, but it’s also a theological statement.

There is a common religious belief found in nearly all cultures that knowing the name of a thing or a person gives one power over that thing or person. One finds this belief among African and North American indigenous tribes, as well as in ancient Egyptian, Vedic, and Hindu traditions; it is also present in all three of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The naming we do at baptism echoes the naming that takes place in Judaism when a male infant is circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. In that service, called the brit milah or bris, the officiating mohel prays, “Our God and God of our fathers, preserve this child for his father and mother, and his name in Israel shall be called ________”[2] and the prayer continues that, by his naming, the infant will be enrolled in the covenant of God with Israel. A similar thing is done when a girl is named in the ceremony called zeved habat or simchat bat, the “gift (or celebration) of the daughter” on the first sabbath following her birth.[3] With the name given at baptism, the church says to its newest member, “This is who you are: washed in the waters of baptism, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever,”[4] a brother or sister in the church, a fellow member of the Body of Christ, an adopted child of God the Father.

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Salt of the Earth: Sermon for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany, Year A, 9 February 2020

February 8, 2020 / / 0 Comments

A Buddhist tells this story:

Once upon a time, there was a tavern owner in Mumbai. He had a hard-working bartender, who was always trying to be helpful by inventing new ways of doing things. One hot day, the tavern owner wanted to go to the beach. So he left the bartender in charge while he was gone. The bartender had noticed that many customers ate a little salt after drinking their liquor. He didn’t know why, but not wishing to show his ignorance, he never asked. He thought it might be that the liquor needed salt to taste good, and he wondered why taverns didn’t just add salt to their liquor. He decided that if he did so, the business would make much higher profits, and the tavern owner would be very pleased. So he added salt to all the liquor, not knowing that the actual reason the customers ate the salt was to chase away the aftertaste of the liquor. To his surprise, when the customers came to the tavern and drank the salty booze, they immediately spit it out; they left and went to a different bar. When the owner returned from his day at the beach, he found his tavern empty, and all his liquor ruined.[1]

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Unpacking Scripture’s Cultural Baggage: Sermon for RCL Proper 7, Track 2, Year C (23 June 2019)

June 20, 2019 / / 1 Comment

This is a special Sunday for me. Friday marked the 28th anniversary of my ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church. It was on Sunday, June 23, 1991, that I celebrated my first mass. So I am grateful to you and to Fr. George for the privilege of an altar at which to celebrate the Holy Mysteries and a pulpit from which to preach the gospel on this, my anniversary Sunday.

Now that I am retired, I am filling part of my time studying Irish. In the world of Irish studies, I am what is known as a foghlaimeoir, which is to say “an Irish learner.” The truth is that I have been a foghlaimeoir for over eleven years, but I have not yet progressed to the level of Gaeilgeoir, that is, “an Irish speaker.” Studying Irish is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done; it is both fascinating and maddening, and I think that among the reasons for that are the cultural assumptions which underly the language.

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Lenten Journal 2019 (14 March)

March 14, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Lenten Journal, Day 8

Today, I shaved.

Now, most of the time, that’s not big deal. Men shave every day so one’s reaction to a 67-year-old man saying “I shaved” probably should be “So what?” However, the past several weeks trimming my beard and shaving have not been a regular part of my life.

As I have recovered from total knee arthroplasty, which is to say the replacement of parts of my left knee with bits and pieces of titanium and plastic, standing at the bathroom sink either long enough or steadily enough to use a sharp and pointy pair of scissors to trim my beard and a razor to shave my neck has simply not been possible. But after two months of recovery including several coached sessions of physical therapy and daily workouts on my own, today was the day to take the time to do both of those things … and not just that, but also to drive to my neighborhood barber and have my head shaved with a straight razor! I’ve not been this “cleaned up” since Christmas!

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