Recently four books relevant to the study of Anglican monasticism have appeared. I have read three of them and am now reading the fourth, and thought I would share some thoughts about them. This is in a way a promotion, and I am happy to do so, because I think the study of Anglican monasticism deserves more attention both by the reading public and by scholars.
Eldridge H. Pendleton, SSJE, has written a wonderful short biography of Bishop Charles Grafton, which I heartily recommend. But first a word about Eldridge. He died less than two months ago, on Aug. 26, 2015 . Eldridge joined SSJE in 1984, and in the thirty years of his monastic life made a deep impression on many people. He was a beloved spiritual director and advisor to many, many serious seekers after God. He is deeply missed, and I am sure he is with the Lord in glory.
Press On, The Kingdom: The Life of Charles Chapman Grafton (Cambridge, MA: SSJE, 2014). It is available from Blurb.com.
Charles Grafton was one of the three founding members of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, together with Richard Meux Benson and Simeon Wilberforce O'Neill. They began community life together in 1865 and made their vows in 1866, in Benson's parish in the village of Cowley, near Oxford.
He was born in Boston in 1830, educated at Boston Latin School and Harvard Law School, became active in the faith as a young man, and was confirmed at the Church of the Advent in Boston in 1851. He was eventually ordained and with Oliver Sherman Prescott, a fiery ritualist Anglo-Catholic, was drawn toward the idea of a religious community for men. Since this did not then exist in the Anglican world, he went to England to meet people moving in that direction, and there he joined Benson and O'Nell in the Cowley adventure.
His understanding was that Fr. Benson and the nascent community intended SSJE to establish an American branch, and so when the opportunity arose for him to return to the U.S. he did so. He eventually became the rector of the Church of the Advent, but left SSJE in 1882. He remained at the Advent until 1889, becoming Bishop of Fond du Lac, in Wisconsin, shortly afterward. His many works included the foundation of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, the re-establishment of Nashotah House seminary on a firm footing, the solidification of his own diocese, poor and unstable when he began his ministry there, decades of leadership of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, whose principles are now the basis of Prayer Book Episcopalianism, and pioneering ecumenical work with the Orthodox world. He died, full of honors, in 1912.
The property where Mount Calvary Monastery is now located was founded and developed by his Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity in Santa Barbara in the early 1950's. Even though the direct inspiration for the former St. Mary's Retreat House was the work of our own Fr. Karl Tiedemann, OHC, it is in a sense an indirect foundation of Bishop Grafton.
Pendleton shows in a clearly, compellingly written traditional biography -- that is, a biography which begins at the beginning and ends at the end and encounters the events of the subject's life in the order in which he himself met them (as not all modern biographies do) -- the course of Grafton's remarkable life.
Two virtues, beyond its wonderful writing, stand out in particular. First, Pendleton tells, perhaps for the first time, the unvarnished story of the breakup of SSJE in the early 1880's. Grafton was doubtless the precipitating agent. But Pendleton writes candidly about the interaction of other members of SSJE in it as well. In particular he describes the breakdown of the relationship between Fr. Benson, with his authoritarian ways, and Fr. Grafton, whose determination was as inflexible as Benson. Pendleton's work is the more remarkable in that he does not let Benson's subsequent deposition as Superior and his eccentricities anachronistically control the narrative. He quotes liberally from correspondence and shows how the events of 1882 unfolded in their contexts. SSJE is to be commended for opening its archives and shedding light on this complex series of events.
The second great virtue of this work is that Pendleton resurrects Grafton as a person. Grafton wrote voluminously but there is not a lot of self-disclosure in his works. Lacking this, the portrait of him here shows well his great energy, capacious mind and sophisticated understanding of the Church. His was a great spirit, but of a type which might not find much sympathy today. Pendleton reminds us that the church always stands on the shoulders of people of other ages, of other understandings, whose lives, when presented by a sympathetic, learned and skilled author, can shed light where once there was obscurity.
A book well worth reading!
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Dealing with anger -- and other thoughts
I was privileged to preach at All Saints Episcopal Church in Oxnard, CA, on August 9. I thought the sermon might be of interest as if makes reference to the Desert Fathers tradition about how to handle the sins/emotions/thoughts/logismoi that were such a preoccupation. And still are.
All Saints Episcopal Church, Oxnard CA
Proper 14B
August 9, 2015
Adam D. McCoy, OHC
From the fourth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, which we have just heard: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”
Many years ago, in the early 1970s, more than 40 years ago now, when I joined the Order of the Holy Cross at our monastery on the Hudson River in New York State, I found myself taking my turn cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. In those days we did not employ a cook, but since we had a lot of novices - more than thirty at that point – we did it all ourselves, preparing and serving three meals a day for forty or so members of the community and for anywhere from ten to thirty guests. One of the brothers in first vows was in charge, and he told us what to cook and how he wanted it cooked, down to the small details. I think he loved his job, because he really liked telling people what to do. He supervised every detail of the cooking and the serving, and then he supervised every detail of the cleaning up. He liked a tidy kitchen. His kind of tidy.
Not all of the novices who worked under his care enjoyed the experience. Most of us already had some experience cooking and cleaning and didn’t especially care for Brother’s hovering presence as we prepared the food. Nor did we especially care for his meticulously demanding instructions about cleaning up. Nor for his sometimes sarcastic remarks about our work. He was an enthusiastic follower of the diet plans of Adelle Davis, who preached a low fat, low sugar diet as the way to avoid cancer. Brother constructed our menus according to her rigorous principles, and not everyone in the community rejoiced in them. I must confess that when she died of cancer in 1974, some of us were not slow to draw a lesson from her ironic end.
This is all a long prologue to one fateful day. I forget exactly when it was. I forget the exact causes. I forget what had been cooked and served. In fact, forgetting was a good thing in this case. I do recall that it was during the final cleanup of the kitchen. I suppose Brother had been especially overbearing about something. I can imagine that I was likely not being my most charming, helpful, humble self either. At any rate. Temperatures rose. Words were exchanged. And exchanged again. Louder and louder. Pots flew through the air. Pans followed them. Heads were narrowly missed. Doors were slammed.
The next day when I returned to work in the kitchen, all was quiet. Too quiet. Brother appeared. He came over to me, put his arm around me, and said, “Well, let’s get on with it then.” And then quoted the very verse from Ephesians we have just heard. He left the monastery eventually and I stayed, but we have remained friends to this day.
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” I learned an important lesson that day. As good as we may try to be – and after all, I was training in the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and not doing a very good job of the obedience part – as good as we may try to be, anger, and other dangerous emotions, will happen. But they do not have to define our relationships or control our lives.
The ancient desert fathers and mothers in the monastic tradition knew this too. They, like Ephesians, connected it with the devil. Anger, and other harmful things, will overtake us. And if we give in to them, tempers will flare, words will be exchanged, pots and pans will be thrown, doors will be slammed, and relationships will be damaged.
The desert fathers and mothers called things like anger, pride, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, and lust “passions” or “thoughts”, and much of what monks and nuns did then and do now is to learn what our passions, our “thoughts”, are, to recognize them when they arrive, to know how they work in us in general, and more importantly how they work in me, to know which of my buttons they push, which well-worn paths they follow, which bad habits they evoke. And then, surprisingly, how to call them each by name when they arrive, know what they’re up to, and like a perfect host with an unwelcome guest, to know just where to put them so they won’t cause any more trouble till they decide to go away. Consciousness – awareness of who we really are and what can happen if we let ourselves be controlled – is the first thing. “Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” Know the truth about our own lives so that we can speak truth to each other. And as we grow in self-knowledge, the knowledge of the passions we are drawn to, the evil thoughts which come unbidden into our minds, we can grow also in the ability to keep from harming each other. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
How can we find the energy, the capacity to do all this? Our gospel reading this morning points the way. Jesus tells us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” We will find what we need by taking Jesus into our life, taking his life into our life. If we want to live a Christlike life, we cannot do it on our own steam. But we can do it if we take His life into our lives.
There’s no way I could put away my anger in that kitchen all by myself, and I didn’t, and neither did Brother. I exploded and so did he. And if we had left it there, it would have grown, making the next day worse and God knows how bad the day afterward would have been. But by not letting the sun go down on it, by dealing with it using the tools Christ gives us, we can pick up and start again.
One other interesting detail in today’s gospel catches my eye: Jesus compares the bread of his flesh to the manna the Israelites found on the ground in the wilderness during their Exodus out of Egypt. Moses told the Israelites not to store up the manna for the next day, but to eat it on the same day it appeared, trusting God to give them what they needed fresh every day. Ephesians tells us “do not let the sun go down on your anger”, in other words, use the grace God gives us at the time it is given. The bread Jesus gives us from his own flesh is like the daily bread we ask of God in the Lord’s Prayer. Manna stored in jars became wormy, and so does the grace of forgiveness we are given if we don’t use it right away. Eat today’s manna today. Do not let your anger linger till tomorrow. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Give us this day our daily bread.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
As the saying goes, “You are what you eat”.
All Saints Episcopal Church, Oxnard CA
Proper 14B
August 9, 2015
Adam D. McCoy, OHC
From the fourth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, which we have just heard: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”
Many years ago, in the early 1970s, more than 40 years ago now, when I joined the Order of the Holy Cross at our monastery on the Hudson River in New York State, I found myself taking my turn cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. In those days we did not employ a cook, but since we had a lot of novices - more than thirty at that point – we did it all ourselves, preparing and serving three meals a day for forty or so members of the community and for anywhere from ten to thirty guests. One of the brothers in first vows was in charge, and he told us what to cook and how he wanted it cooked, down to the small details. I think he loved his job, because he really liked telling people what to do. He supervised every detail of the cooking and the serving, and then he supervised every detail of the cleaning up. He liked a tidy kitchen. His kind of tidy.
Not all of the novices who worked under his care enjoyed the experience. Most of us already had some experience cooking and cleaning and didn’t especially care for Brother’s hovering presence as we prepared the food. Nor did we especially care for his meticulously demanding instructions about cleaning up. Nor for his sometimes sarcastic remarks about our work. He was an enthusiastic follower of the diet plans of Adelle Davis, who preached a low fat, low sugar diet as the way to avoid cancer. Brother constructed our menus according to her rigorous principles, and not everyone in the community rejoiced in them. I must confess that when she died of cancer in 1974, some of us were not slow to draw a lesson from her ironic end.
This is all a long prologue to one fateful day. I forget exactly when it was. I forget the exact causes. I forget what had been cooked and served. In fact, forgetting was a good thing in this case. I do recall that it was during the final cleanup of the kitchen. I suppose Brother had been especially overbearing about something. I can imagine that I was likely not being my most charming, helpful, humble self either. At any rate. Temperatures rose. Words were exchanged. And exchanged again. Louder and louder. Pots flew through the air. Pans followed them. Heads were narrowly missed. Doors were slammed.
The next day when I returned to work in the kitchen, all was quiet. Too quiet. Brother appeared. He came over to me, put his arm around me, and said, “Well, let’s get on with it then.” And then quoted the very verse from Ephesians we have just heard. He left the monastery eventually and I stayed, but we have remained friends to this day.
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” I learned an important lesson that day. As good as we may try to be – and after all, I was training in the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and not doing a very good job of the obedience part – as good as we may try to be, anger, and other dangerous emotions, will happen. But they do not have to define our relationships or control our lives.
The ancient desert fathers and mothers in the monastic tradition knew this too. They, like Ephesians, connected it with the devil. Anger, and other harmful things, will overtake us. And if we give in to them, tempers will flare, words will be exchanged, pots and pans will be thrown, doors will be slammed, and relationships will be damaged.
The desert fathers and mothers called things like anger, pride, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, and lust “passions” or “thoughts”, and much of what monks and nuns did then and do now is to learn what our passions, our “thoughts”, are, to recognize them when they arrive, to know how they work in us in general, and more importantly how they work in me, to know which of my buttons they push, which well-worn paths they follow, which bad habits they evoke. And then, surprisingly, how to call them each by name when they arrive, know what they’re up to, and like a perfect host with an unwelcome guest, to know just where to put them so they won’t cause any more trouble till they decide to go away. Consciousness – awareness of who we really are and what can happen if we let ourselves be controlled – is the first thing. “Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” Know the truth about our own lives so that we can speak truth to each other. And as we grow in self-knowledge, the knowledge of the passions we are drawn to, the evil thoughts which come unbidden into our minds, we can grow also in the ability to keep from harming each other. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
How can we find the energy, the capacity to do all this? Our gospel reading this morning points the way. Jesus tells us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” We will find what we need by taking Jesus into our life, taking his life into our life. If we want to live a Christlike life, we cannot do it on our own steam. But we can do it if we take His life into our lives.
There’s no way I could put away my anger in that kitchen all by myself, and I didn’t, and neither did Brother. I exploded and so did he. And if we had left it there, it would have grown, making the next day worse and God knows how bad the day afterward would have been. But by not letting the sun go down on it, by dealing with it using the tools Christ gives us, we can pick up and start again.
One other interesting detail in today’s gospel catches my eye: Jesus compares the bread of his flesh to the manna the Israelites found on the ground in the wilderness during their Exodus out of Egypt. Moses told the Israelites not to store up the manna for the next day, but to eat it on the same day it appeared, trusting God to give them what they needed fresh every day. Ephesians tells us “do not let the sun go down on your anger”, in other words, use the grace God gives us at the time it is given. The bread Jesus gives us from his own flesh is like the daily bread we ask of God in the Lord’s Prayer. Manna stored in jars became wormy, and so does the grace of forgiveness we are given if we don’t use it right away. Eat today’s manna today. Do not let your anger linger till tomorrow. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Give us this day our daily bread.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
As the saying goes, “You are what you eat”.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Jury Duty 2
The jury finished our work on Tuesday afternoon. It was fascinating to be a part of. And now I can talk (and write) about it.
We were sitting in judgment on a personal injury case, under California civil law. A young fellow driving a very large adapted pickup-type vehicle, part of a convoy on the way to a job, changed lanes, with a subsequent collision with a much smaller compact car. Both vehicles ended up horribly tangled at the side of the road, the truck on top of the car, with gasoline dripping down into the car. It was a miracle both drivers survived.
The woman driving the car suffered severe injuries to her left leg and pelvis. Though she can now walk again (with difficulty) and suffered no cognitive loss, her life is changed forever by this accident. The young man driving the truck died a bit more than a year ago of unrelated causes, and so there wasn't an equality of evidence for the defense.
The jury found him negligent and awarded actual past and estimated future medical damages. It also awarded money for pain and suffering, though not anywhere near what the plaintiff's attorney had asked. Under California civil law only 9 of 12 jurors need to agree to reach a verdict. Also under California law we had to completely disregard insurance as a factor, which is certainly different from what I encountered in civil cases in New York
I was impressed by the care with which the jury approached the decisions. I was also interested that what we found determinative was not what either set of lawyers spent most of the time on. They spun out quite elaborate reconstructions of what must have happened, since there were only two real witnesses to testify to it: the plaintiff herself and an employee of the company the offending truck belonged to. He spoke only Spanish, and was called by the plaintiff and examined in a very formal way: the lawyer read a statement sentence by sentence he had made in his deposition and after each sentence asked if he had said it. Yes or No. His testimony was not helpful to the defense, even though it was the company he worked for. The lawyers also spent a long, long time going over the plaintiff's injuries and likely upcoming surgeries.
But the jury was primarily interested in whether the man driving the truck broke the law as written. We decided he did. I tried hard to hear his side of the case as presented by the defense, since he couldn't speak for himself, but unfortunately for the defendants there just wasn't much evidence there. He changed lanes in a way he should not have. Everything else flowed from that.
We were sitting in judgment on a personal injury case, under California civil law. A young fellow driving a very large adapted pickup-type vehicle, part of a convoy on the way to a job, changed lanes, with a subsequent collision with a much smaller compact car. Both vehicles ended up horribly tangled at the side of the road, the truck on top of the car, with gasoline dripping down into the car. It was a miracle both drivers survived.
The woman driving the car suffered severe injuries to her left leg and pelvis. Though she can now walk again (with difficulty) and suffered no cognitive loss, her life is changed forever by this accident. The young man driving the truck died a bit more than a year ago of unrelated causes, and so there wasn't an equality of evidence for the defense.
The jury found him negligent and awarded actual past and estimated future medical damages. It also awarded money for pain and suffering, though not anywhere near what the plaintiff's attorney had asked. Under California civil law only 9 of 12 jurors need to agree to reach a verdict. Also under California law we had to completely disregard insurance as a factor, which is certainly different from what I encountered in civil cases in New York
I was impressed by the care with which the jury approached the decisions. I was also interested that what we found determinative was not what either set of lawyers spent most of the time on. They spun out quite elaborate reconstructions of what must have happened, since there were only two real witnesses to testify to it: the plaintiff herself and an employee of the company the offending truck belonged to. He spoke only Spanish, and was called by the plaintiff and examined in a very formal way: the lawyer read a statement sentence by sentence he had made in his deposition and after each sentence asked if he had said it. Yes or No. His testimony was not helpful to the defense, even though it was the company he worked for. The lawyers also spent a long, long time going over the plaintiff's injuries and likely upcoming surgeries.
But the jury was primarily interested in whether the man driving the truck broke the law as written. We decided he did. I tried hard to hear his side of the case as presented by the defense, since he couldn't speak for himself, but unfortunately for the defendants there just wasn't much evidence there. He changed lanes in a way he should not have. Everything else flowed from that.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Jury Duty
I haven't posted for quite a while. No apologies. A lot has been going on.
You can catch some of my thoughts on the Prior's Blog at the Mount Calvary website:
http://mount-calvary.org/category/blog/
After living in Santa Barbara a little more than a year and a half I was called up for jury duty. I have been called before, several times, in Orange County, when I was in Anaheim, and in New York City, when I lived there. But never picked. Somehow I always escaped. It may have had something to do with having been a police chaplain for the Anaheim Police Department, since they usually asked whether prospective jurors had any significant relationship with the police.
At any rate, that question didn't come up. There was no particularly good reason I should ask to be excused except that I had other not at all unusual things to do, which is not, I take it, actually a good reason to ask to be excused. So on Wednesday, April 8, 100 or so who were called showed up and were winnowed down to 40 or 50 after the judge, who was surprisingly lenient, let all but one of the people go who asked. There I still was. And to my surprise I was called to the jury box. And then the voir dire began. And again, nothing knocked me out.
I guess I was a little happy to have been called and chosen. The little boy who was always last to be chosen for the baseball team (bad eyes and uncoordinated; and was only chosen because everybody had to be) was finally on the team. Oh joy. I guess.
So for more than a week, 5 1/2 days of testimony, there we are. I can't talk about the case except to say that I am on a jury, so I won't. Both sides have now rested their case, we have been instructed by the judge, and the closing statements of the attorneys begin Monday. Who knows how long they will take. And then the jury will deliberate.
Maybe we'll be done by Monday late afternoon. Maybe not. Stay tuned.
You can catch some of my thoughts on the Prior's Blog at the Mount Calvary website:
http://mount-calvary.org/category/blog/
After living in Santa Barbara a little more than a year and a half I was called up for jury duty. I have been called before, several times, in Orange County, when I was in Anaheim, and in New York City, when I lived there. But never picked. Somehow I always escaped. It may have had something to do with having been a police chaplain for the Anaheim Police Department, since they usually asked whether prospective jurors had any significant relationship with the police.
At any rate, that question didn't come up. There was no particularly good reason I should ask to be excused except that I had other not at all unusual things to do, which is not, I take it, actually a good reason to ask to be excused. So on Wednesday, April 8, 100 or so who were called showed up and were winnowed down to 40 or 50 after the judge, who was surprisingly lenient, let all but one of the people go who asked. There I still was. And to my surprise I was called to the jury box. And then the voir dire began. And again, nothing knocked me out.
I guess I was a little happy to have been called and chosen. The little boy who was always last to be chosen for the baseball team (bad eyes and uncoordinated; and was only chosen because everybody had to be) was finally on the team. Oh joy. I guess.
So for more than a week, 5 1/2 days of testimony, there we are. I can't talk about the case except to say that I am on a jury, so I won't. Both sides have now rested their case, we have been instructed by the judge, and the closing statements of the attorneys begin Monday. Who knows how long they will take. And then the jury will deliberate.
Maybe we'll be done by Monday late afternoon. Maybe not. Stay tuned.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
Blest are the pure in heart
I preached this sermon at the funeral of my sister-in-law, Mary McCoy, yesterday, Friday, Sept. 12, at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church in Boulder City, NV. She and my brother Duncan were married 43 years. I was the best man at their wedding, and Mary was a good friend all that time. She was a wonderful person, and died too early, aged 66, of ovarian cancer. Duncan is a city councilman in Boulder City and both he and Mary are greatly loved and respected there. St. Christopher's was filled and overflowing. Mary's mother, now 98 years old, was in the front pew with Duncan and Duncan and Mary's daughter Elizabeth. It was a joy to know Mary and a privilege to be present at her death, and to preside and preach at her funeral.
____________________________________________________
Wisdom 3:1-5, 9
Psalm: 121
Revelation 21: 1-7
Gradual Hymn: 656 Blest are the pure in heart
John 10: 11-16 I am the good shepherd
From the book of Wisdom: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God.”
From Revelation: “I will be their God and they will be my children.”
From the Gospel according to St. John: “I know my own and my own know me.”
And from the hymn we just sang: “Blest are the pure in heart, for they will see our God. The secret of the Lord is theirs; their soul is Christ’s abode.”
Each one of these sacred texts points to a special relationship which people can have with God. To be in God’s hand. To be a child of God. To be God’s own, known by God and knowing God. To be pure in heart, to see God, to know God’s secret, to make a home in the human heart for Christ.
Deep down, isn’t that what everyone wants? Like a trusting sheep or a beloved child, to be protected through our lives, and to know we have a special relationship with God. But also to see and to know, with all that defines and guides and shapes a person who wants to see and wants to know.
A person with purity of heart combines these two great spiritual qualities: trust in goodness and striving to see and to know.
A person who is pure in heart fundamentally trusts that ultimate reality, the source of what is, which some call God, is good for her. She finds herself to be at home in her world, loves the people into whose lives she is born, loves what she finds in the wider world as she grows up, looks for and finds worthwhile work to do with her life, finds the right person to share her life with, and then launches out into the deep waters of adult life. That trust that she is in a good place, secure and worthy of her best efforts, that she is, in religious language, in the hand of God, that she is a child of God, is the source of her strength and solidity as she herself becomes a foundation for her family, for her friends and for her community. Not everyone calls this trust in the goodness of the realities of life faith in “God”. God does not need to be named to be present. No matter what a person calls it, this is faith in what is real, life-affirming, life-giving, life-sustaining, and a person who lives with integrity in her life in this sense shines goodness all around like a lamp that cannot be hid. Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy had this kind of faith, as anyone who knew her will tell you. She loved her world, her family, her work, her friends, with a steady flame of love that all who knew her well came to depend on, who found in her light and joy and peace.
A person who is pure in heart is also a person who seeks to know. There is a purity in the person who pursues the truth, and when the truth is found, places it in a context of love. Truth can be beautiful, awesome, inspiring. Knowing the truth really can set you free. Pursuing a lifelong path of learning opens the mind to wider horizons, and also commits a person to honesty. But we know that truth and honesty can be used not only to grow the soul, but can also be used as weapons, both in the greater issues of life and in the little everyday things that seem insignificant but which actually define people’s lives together. A person who is pure in heart seeks truth and when it is found, wraps it up in love, so that it is not an instrument of personal power or a weapon but a building block for something great and good. Such a person by following the truth in love begins to imitate God’s love, which is both true and kind, both honest and loving. I have watched Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy for more than forty years and I can honestly say that she was a person who was always looking for the truth, and a person who when she found it, had a gift of wrapping and presenting that truth with kindness, awareness of the fragility of a situation, tact and consideration. I cannot count the number of times I would be on the phone with my brother Duncan and at a certain point in his discourse, from somewhere in the background there would be this kind but clear voice that would say, “Duncan...”, calling the conversation to a slightly different channel. She was wise and she was kind, and she drew something better out of what was going on.
What I am saying is that even though Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy was not a conventionally practicing religious person, she trusted the life God gave her, with all its gifts and promises and challenges, and she looked for and to a large extent found truth, and was able to communicate it with love.
We encounter people to whom the gifts of trust and truth and love, the gift of purity of heart, are given and we think, What a remarkable person she was. And she was. I believe Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy was blessed, was pure of heart.
She was not perfect. But no one of us has to be perfect to love and trust that the life we have been given is good and worth living well. No one of us has to be perfect to keep looking for the truth and when we find it give it to others with love.
Praise God for Mary’s life. Praise God for the family she was born into and the family she created. Praise God for the good which flowed from her trust and from her truth. She is in the hand of God. She is truly a child of God, known by and knowing God, even though she would not often call the source of the goodness of her life God. And even though she would not often use the names, the secret of the Lord was hers. Her soul was Christ’s abode.
____________________________________________________
Wisdom 3:1-5, 9
Psalm: 121
Revelation 21: 1-7
Gradual Hymn: 656 Blest are the pure in heart
John 10: 11-16 I am the good shepherd
From the book of Wisdom: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God.”
From Revelation: “I will be their God and they will be my children.”
From the Gospel according to St. John: “I know my own and my own know me.”
And from the hymn we just sang: “Blest are the pure in heart, for they will see our God. The secret of the Lord is theirs; their soul is Christ’s abode.”
Each one of these sacred texts points to a special relationship which people can have with God. To be in God’s hand. To be a child of God. To be God’s own, known by God and knowing God. To be pure in heart, to see God, to know God’s secret, to make a home in the human heart for Christ.
Deep down, isn’t that what everyone wants? Like a trusting sheep or a beloved child, to be protected through our lives, and to know we have a special relationship with God. But also to see and to know, with all that defines and guides and shapes a person who wants to see and wants to know.
A person with purity of heart combines these two great spiritual qualities: trust in goodness and striving to see and to know.
A person who is pure in heart fundamentally trusts that ultimate reality, the source of what is, which some call God, is good for her. She finds herself to be at home in her world, loves the people into whose lives she is born, loves what she finds in the wider world as she grows up, looks for and finds worthwhile work to do with her life, finds the right person to share her life with, and then launches out into the deep waters of adult life. That trust that she is in a good place, secure and worthy of her best efforts, that she is, in religious language, in the hand of God, that she is a child of God, is the source of her strength and solidity as she herself becomes a foundation for her family, for her friends and for her community. Not everyone calls this trust in the goodness of the realities of life faith in “God”. God does not need to be named to be present. No matter what a person calls it, this is faith in what is real, life-affirming, life-giving, life-sustaining, and a person who lives with integrity in her life in this sense shines goodness all around like a lamp that cannot be hid. Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy had this kind of faith, as anyone who knew her will tell you. She loved her world, her family, her work, her friends, with a steady flame of love that all who knew her well came to depend on, who found in her light and joy and peace.
A person who is pure in heart is also a person who seeks to know. There is a purity in the person who pursues the truth, and when the truth is found, places it in a context of love. Truth can be beautiful, awesome, inspiring. Knowing the truth really can set you free. Pursuing a lifelong path of learning opens the mind to wider horizons, and also commits a person to honesty. But we know that truth and honesty can be used not only to grow the soul, but can also be used as weapons, both in the greater issues of life and in the little everyday things that seem insignificant but which actually define people’s lives together. A person who is pure in heart seeks truth and when it is found, wraps it up in love, so that it is not an instrument of personal power or a weapon but a building block for something great and good. Such a person by following the truth in love begins to imitate God’s love, which is both true and kind, both honest and loving. I have watched Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy for more than forty years and I can honestly say that she was a person who was always looking for the truth, and a person who when she found it, had a gift of wrapping and presenting that truth with kindness, awareness of the fragility of a situation, tact and consideration. I cannot count the number of times I would be on the phone with my brother Duncan and at a certain point in his discourse, from somewhere in the background there would be this kind but clear voice that would say, “Duncan...”, calling the conversation to a slightly different channel. She was wise and she was kind, and she drew something better out of what was going on.
What I am saying is that even though Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy was not a conventionally practicing religious person, she trusted the life God gave her, with all its gifts and promises and challenges, and she looked for and to a large extent found truth, and was able to communicate it with love.
We encounter people to whom the gifts of trust and truth and love, the gift of purity of heart, are given and we think, What a remarkable person she was. And she was. I believe Mary Elizabeth Lee McCoy was blessed, was pure of heart.
She was not perfect. But no one of us has to be perfect to love and trust that the life we have been given is good and worth living well. No one of us has to be perfect to keep looking for the truth and when we find it give it to others with love.
Praise God for Mary’s life. Praise God for the family she was born into and the family she created. Praise God for the good which flowed from her trust and from her truth. She is in the hand of God. She is truly a child of God, known by and knowing God, even though she would not often call the source of the goodness of her life God. And even though she would not often use the names, the secret of the Lord was hers. Her soul was Christ’s abode.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
A New People: Sermon for Pentecost 13
I was privileged to preside and preach at All Saints' Episcopal Church, Oxnard CA, this last Sunday: English at 9:15 and Spanish at 11:15. I share the English text of the sermon with you:
Exodus 12: 1-14
Romans 13: 8-14
Matthew 18: 15-20
Today’s lessons seem quite different from each other, but actually they all center on a very important theme: how God is creating his new people, saving us and showing us the Way.
The lesson from Exodus is the story of the first Passover. It describes how each family of the people of Israel is to sacrifice and prepare a lamb, doing two things: First, they take some of the blood of the lamb and smear it on the doorposts, so that when the angel of the Lord comes to execute judgment on the people of Egypt he will pass over the houses of the families of Israel. Second, each family shares a meal of the meat of the lamb to prepare them for the journey, the Exodus, they are about to begin. They are saved by the blood of the lamb and they are bound together in a ritual meal of the flesh of the lamb. These will become important symbols for all Christians. We are saved by the blood of the lamb, Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God. And we share the eucharistic meal of the body and blood of that Lamb, Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel this morning, Jesus tells us how we should live together as a people. He knows that sins against each other are inevitable among human beings, even among those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb and fed at His table. So he gives us instructions on how we should deal with those sins. First of all, we should not pretend that we do not harm each other through our sins. We do. We have done so in the past, and we will do so in the future. Pretending nothing has happened, hiding the truth, only makes it worse. The thing to do, he says, is to confront it directly. The first thing to do is to go quietly to the person who has hurt you and point it out. How many times have we said or done something that has hurt someone else and we don’t even realize what we have done! It may be that simply pointing it out is enough. Have you ever had someone tell you how you have hurt them, and you didn’t even know it? It is like a dagger through the heart! In many cases, that is enough. But if it isn’t, then Jesus suggests a graduated approach. First one or two, then an internal church meeting, if the matter is really important.
I think that the real point of this process, though, is in the sentence: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Remember what Jesus said to Peter? The very same thing! Jesus is telling us something incredible: that the power to determine the values of life is being trusted to the people of God. Into the hands of the new people of God is being given this divine power. The Church, the new Israel created in the blood of the Lamb and given strength for the journey in the new Passover meal of the eucharist, is trusted by God to discern and proclaim the truth and to reconcile those who stray away and hurt each other through sin.
In our reading from Romans this morning St. Paul takes this a step further: How do we actually live day by day with each other once we have become God’s new people, his new Israel on the way out of Egypt to the Promised Land? How do we move from conflict resolution to life together? “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Move away from the impersonal kinds of relationships that are defined by the law, what we should not do, and by business, using the metaphor of debt and payment, to define how we live with each other. Move toward a personal relationship, defined by love. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
We are saved by the Passover blood of Jesus Christ, and strengthened by the eucharistic meal for our journey, our Exodus. Let us understand that we have been set apart by God as his people. We are invited by Jesus to live in honesty, truth and charity with each other. We are empowered to discern and proclaim the values God wants us to practice. We are called by God to love each other as we love ourselves.
And this is all the more important because we don’t have all the time in the world. Things are moving more quickly than we think. Don’t delay. We should start living right now as if the Kingdom of God has already started.
Exodus 12: 1-14
Romans 13: 8-14
Matthew 18: 15-20
Today’s lessons seem quite different from each other, but actually they all center on a very important theme: how God is creating his new people, saving us and showing us the Way.
The lesson from Exodus is the story of the first Passover. It describes how each family of the people of Israel is to sacrifice and prepare a lamb, doing two things: First, they take some of the blood of the lamb and smear it on the doorposts, so that when the angel of the Lord comes to execute judgment on the people of Egypt he will pass over the houses of the families of Israel. Second, each family shares a meal of the meat of the lamb to prepare them for the journey, the Exodus, they are about to begin. They are saved by the blood of the lamb and they are bound together in a ritual meal of the flesh of the lamb. These will become important symbols for all Christians. We are saved by the blood of the lamb, Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God. And we share the eucharistic meal of the body and blood of that Lamb, Jesus Christ.
In the Gospel this morning, Jesus tells us how we should live together as a people. He knows that sins against each other are inevitable among human beings, even among those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb and fed at His table. So he gives us instructions on how we should deal with those sins. First of all, we should not pretend that we do not harm each other through our sins. We do. We have done so in the past, and we will do so in the future. Pretending nothing has happened, hiding the truth, only makes it worse. The thing to do, he says, is to confront it directly. The first thing to do is to go quietly to the person who has hurt you and point it out. How many times have we said or done something that has hurt someone else and we don’t even realize what we have done! It may be that simply pointing it out is enough. Have you ever had someone tell you how you have hurt them, and you didn’t even know it? It is like a dagger through the heart! In many cases, that is enough. But if it isn’t, then Jesus suggests a graduated approach. First one or two, then an internal church meeting, if the matter is really important.
I think that the real point of this process, though, is in the sentence: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Remember what Jesus said to Peter? The very same thing! Jesus is telling us something incredible: that the power to determine the values of life is being trusted to the people of God. Into the hands of the new people of God is being given this divine power. The Church, the new Israel created in the blood of the Lamb and given strength for the journey in the new Passover meal of the eucharist, is trusted by God to discern and proclaim the truth and to reconcile those who stray away and hurt each other through sin.
In our reading from Romans this morning St. Paul takes this a step further: How do we actually live day by day with each other once we have become God’s new people, his new Israel on the way out of Egypt to the Promised Land? How do we move from conflict resolution to life together? “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” Move away from the impersonal kinds of relationships that are defined by the law, what we should not do, and by business, using the metaphor of debt and payment, to define how we live with each other. Move toward a personal relationship, defined by love. “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
We are saved by the Passover blood of Jesus Christ, and strengthened by the eucharistic meal for our journey, our Exodus. Let us understand that we have been set apart by God as his people. We are invited by Jesus to live in honesty, truth and charity with each other. We are empowered to discern and proclaim the values God wants us to practice. We are called by God to love each other as we love ourselves.
And this is all the more important because we don’t have all the time in the world. Things are moving more quickly than we think. Don’t delay. We should start living right now as if the Kingdom of God has already started.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Two Miracles: Sermon for Pentecost 9
I preached this morning at Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, and as it was a written-out sermon, I thought I would share it.
________________________________
10 August 2014: Pentecost 9, Proper 14A
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105, 1-6, 16-22, 45b
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33
One of the things that struck me about the lessons today is how both the story of Joseph and the story of the walking on the water upset the normal expectations of life. In each of them there is danger and in each of them a miracle occurs, and something new grows out of each of them: in the case of Joseph, in his faithfulness through his terrible troubles the new people of Israel are made possible. In the case of walking on the water, the new Israel, the Church, and her faithful members, will find a way forward through terrible troubles that are still to come.
In order to get through our lives with some sense of equilibrium we often create an artificial sense of how things function. We look for stability, permanence, predictability. It isn’t so much that our personal experience is stable, permanent or predictable, but that there is an expectation that it ought to be. Having this ideal helps us smooth over reality, simplifies our nonreflective preconscious expectations. Families ought to behave a certain way, nurturing their futures, and when they don’t, in our constructs of likely consequences we expect terrible, irreversible results. Nature ought to behave a certain way, so we live in the expectation that it will, and when it doesn’t, we gird ourselves in disaster response for what will surely follow. But these two stories overturn both our “normal” expectations, and open our eyes to something new from God.
Families ought to behave a certain way. Brothers ought to love each other. It’s a rough and tumble kind of love, the way that brothers often do love each other. They give each other a hard time but when push comes to shove they unite and support each other. Except in today’s story, when push comes to shove, Joseph is shoved in a big pit in the earth and only escapes being murdered by his brothers because a slave trading caravan passes by. So what might be the Brady Bunch actually turns out to be more like Roots. Joseph is carted off to be a slave in Egypt. His brothers probably think that’s the last of him. Our normal expectation would be that both Joseph’s life and his family’s happiness have been destroyed.
But the Joseph story is not just about the treacherous and savage behavior of brothers to each other, a replay of Cain and Abel, an instance of René Girard’s theory of violence, a setup for family systems therapy for millennia to come. It is about how God is using human behavior to create a people for himself. Joseph accepts the reality of his situation and does the best he can with it, which in the end is very good indeed. His faithfulness and hard work lead him from the pit to the palace, and along the way he acquires great wisdom, including the wisdom of forgiveness, a wisdom which surely can only come from God. His brothers return, this time in great need, and instead of using his new power to punish them, he sets his family on a new path, which will ultimately lead to the Exodus, the Covenant, and the Promised Land.
The normal expectation of what would likely happen was overturned by a miracle: God brought the nation of Israel into being out of jealousy and homicidal intention. St. Paul says to us this morning, “The word is very near us”. The word was very near Joseph. That word brought the future for the salvation of the world out of that sordid family drama.
The miracle of Joseph is at the end of the story, after his years of toil, insecurity, and danger as a slave, a miracle which ultimately produces a people for God. Our gospel story this morning is structurally the mirror image of the Joseph story. The miracle is at the beginning and points to a future of insecurity and danger for a people of God just being brought into being.
Peter sees Jesus, leaps out of the boat, and begins to walk on the water. For the moment he disregards the conventional wisdom about water, so intent is he on the presence of the Word of God to him. But, we say, people can’t walk on water. Crucified people don’t rise from the dead. Twelve guys can’t just bring a new people into being because they think they can. Except they do.
The people called to follow Jesus, the Word of God, can’t possibly navigate the uncharted waters of the future by themselves. We know this, because we are those people today. We are beset – we have always been beset, which is one way to read church history – with who knows what kinds of uncertainties and dangers. Why try anything new? The world we know conspires to defeat every good effort. Our future is like deep water in a storm in the dark. We can’t possibly keep walking forward, let alone on water. Except we do.
In my former parish in Anaheim there was a feeding program. It came into being because a few people listened to the word of God one morning in church, when Matthew 25 was read aloud: Feed the hungry, it said. The word was close to them. They didn’t have much money, and there weren’t many people to do it. But they did it. They scrounged supermarkets for food, raised small amounts of money for milk and meat, talked their friends into helping, served the meal on the church china for hungry, homeless people, who used those dishes as carefully as if they were their own prized possessions, and for almost fifteen years every Monday night a couple of hundred hungry people sat down to a meal served to them by people who already had enough. There were deep water and storms along the way. But they always kept the word before them: Feed the hungry. They walked across that water every Monday night. I am sure you can tell me stories like that about Trinity. Because God is always calling us to cross the water. God is always lifting us up out of the pit.
Both these stories tell us that the way we see things is not the way God sees them. To the eyes of the world what happened to Joseph was surely the effective end of his life. Except that it was really just the beginning. To the eyes of the world the way things usually are can’t be transcended, especially in stormy times, distress and chaos. Except that those times are precisely the times when we can find the way through which God offers us in faith, finding firm footing not in our expectations and fears but in the Lord.
These miracles show us to keep our eyes fixed on the future. God will make possible what now seems impossible. When your whole world turns upside down and all seems lost, like Joseph keep on working, make the most of what you have, use the wisdom that comes to you. Who knows what God has in mind in the end. When the night is dark and stormy and the Lord just isn’t there, don’t be distracted by what in fear seems “normal”, by what is raging all around, like Peter was. Look through the storm and see Jesus calmly walking toward you. With your eye fixed on the Lord, who knows what you can do?
The Word is very near you.
________________________________
10 August 2014: Pentecost 9, Proper 14A
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105, 1-6, 16-22, 45b
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33
One of the things that struck me about the lessons today is how both the story of Joseph and the story of the walking on the water upset the normal expectations of life. In each of them there is danger and in each of them a miracle occurs, and something new grows out of each of them: in the case of Joseph, in his faithfulness through his terrible troubles the new people of Israel are made possible. In the case of walking on the water, the new Israel, the Church, and her faithful members, will find a way forward through terrible troubles that are still to come.
In order to get through our lives with some sense of equilibrium we often create an artificial sense of how things function. We look for stability, permanence, predictability. It isn’t so much that our personal experience is stable, permanent or predictable, but that there is an expectation that it ought to be. Having this ideal helps us smooth over reality, simplifies our nonreflective preconscious expectations. Families ought to behave a certain way, nurturing their futures, and when they don’t, in our constructs of likely consequences we expect terrible, irreversible results. Nature ought to behave a certain way, so we live in the expectation that it will, and when it doesn’t, we gird ourselves in disaster response for what will surely follow. But these two stories overturn both our “normal” expectations, and open our eyes to something new from God.
Families ought to behave a certain way. Brothers ought to love each other. It’s a rough and tumble kind of love, the way that brothers often do love each other. They give each other a hard time but when push comes to shove they unite and support each other. Except in today’s story, when push comes to shove, Joseph is shoved in a big pit in the earth and only escapes being murdered by his brothers because a slave trading caravan passes by. So what might be the Brady Bunch actually turns out to be more like Roots. Joseph is carted off to be a slave in Egypt. His brothers probably think that’s the last of him. Our normal expectation would be that both Joseph’s life and his family’s happiness have been destroyed.
But the Joseph story is not just about the treacherous and savage behavior of brothers to each other, a replay of Cain and Abel, an instance of René Girard’s theory of violence, a setup for family systems therapy for millennia to come. It is about how God is using human behavior to create a people for himself. Joseph accepts the reality of his situation and does the best he can with it, which in the end is very good indeed. His faithfulness and hard work lead him from the pit to the palace, and along the way he acquires great wisdom, including the wisdom of forgiveness, a wisdom which surely can only come from God. His brothers return, this time in great need, and instead of using his new power to punish them, he sets his family on a new path, which will ultimately lead to the Exodus, the Covenant, and the Promised Land.
The normal expectation of what would likely happen was overturned by a miracle: God brought the nation of Israel into being out of jealousy and homicidal intention. St. Paul says to us this morning, “The word is very near us”. The word was very near Joseph. That word brought the future for the salvation of the world out of that sordid family drama.
The miracle of Joseph is at the end of the story, after his years of toil, insecurity, and danger as a slave, a miracle which ultimately produces a people for God. Our gospel story this morning is structurally the mirror image of the Joseph story. The miracle is at the beginning and points to a future of insecurity and danger for a people of God just being brought into being.
Peter sees Jesus, leaps out of the boat, and begins to walk on the water. For the moment he disregards the conventional wisdom about water, so intent is he on the presence of the Word of God to him. But, we say, people can’t walk on water. Crucified people don’t rise from the dead. Twelve guys can’t just bring a new people into being because they think they can. Except they do.
The people called to follow Jesus, the Word of God, can’t possibly navigate the uncharted waters of the future by themselves. We know this, because we are those people today. We are beset – we have always been beset, which is one way to read church history – with who knows what kinds of uncertainties and dangers. Why try anything new? The world we know conspires to defeat every good effort. Our future is like deep water in a storm in the dark. We can’t possibly keep walking forward, let alone on water. Except we do.
In my former parish in Anaheim there was a feeding program. It came into being because a few people listened to the word of God one morning in church, when Matthew 25 was read aloud: Feed the hungry, it said. The word was close to them. They didn’t have much money, and there weren’t many people to do it. But they did it. They scrounged supermarkets for food, raised small amounts of money for milk and meat, talked their friends into helping, served the meal on the church china for hungry, homeless people, who used those dishes as carefully as if they were their own prized possessions, and for almost fifteen years every Monday night a couple of hundred hungry people sat down to a meal served to them by people who already had enough. There were deep water and storms along the way. But they always kept the word before them: Feed the hungry. They walked across that water every Monday night. I am sure you can tell me stories like that about Trinity. Because God is always calling us to cross the water. God is always lifting us up out of the pit.
Both these stories tell us that the way we see things is not the way God sees them. To the eyes of the world what happened to Joseph was surely the effective end of his life. Except that it was really just the beginning. To the eyes of the world the way things usually are can’t be transcended, especially in stormy times, distress and chaos. Except that those times are precisely the times when we can find the way through which God offers us in faith, finding firm footing not in our expectations and fears but in the Lord.
These miracles show us to keep our eyes fixed on the future. God will make possible what now seems impossible. When your whole world turns upside down and all seems lost, like Joseph keep on working, make the most of what you have, use the wisdom that comes to you. Who knows what God has in mind in the end. When the night is dark and stormy and the Lord just isn’t there, don’t be distracted by what in fear seems “normal”, by what is raging all around, like Peter was. Look through the storm and see Jesus calmly walking toward you. With your eye fixed on the Lord, who knows what you can do?
The Word is very near you.
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