Give What is Needed

PROPERS:          PROPER 22, YEAR C  

TEXT:                HABAKKUK 1:1-4, 2:1-4

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The principle of giving is to “to give what is needed, and not what you need to give.”       

 

            I remember with great clarity Monday morning, August 29, 2005.

 

            I was Canon to the Ordinary in Mississippi then, and had been scheduled to supply at Christ Church, Bay St. Louis, the day before.  It was not to be. A storm was looming off the coast. Hurricane Katrina was threatening the area. Reluctantly but wisely, we cancelled our travel plans. We were not going to race a hurricane.

 

            Nora and I were in our home at 901 Gillespie Street in Jackson that morning.  We were 160 miles north of the coast.  The winds and rain came – as you know, sideways.  The lights flickered and then went off. Branches, trash, and debris flew past our house in the 100 mile per hour winds. A neighbor’s ancient oak tree crashed down on our house, piercing the roof over our dining room.  Another neighbor, a few blocks away, died in her bed when a pine tree cut her home in-two.

 

            I was able to look around and say, “It could have been worse.”

 

            Then three days later Bishop Duncan Gray and I traveled to the coast.  I could not believe what I saw.  The first word that came to mind for me as we looked at the wreckage that was the beachfront was “Hiroshima.”

 

            Six Episcopal Churches along the Mississippi Coast had been destroyed – including a beautiful white wood-frame church we had built 12 years before when I was vicar of that congregation.

 

            To this day I cannot adequately describe the destruction I saw.

 

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            Quickly, very quickly, aid began to arrive. It was meant to assist our recovery.

 

            Some was very helpful. Some posed challenges to us.

 

            Within days of the storm, a tractor-trailer truck arrived at a recovery site we had established. It was full to the brim with unsorted, used clothing. Clothing that people no longer wanted.

 

            Many churches sent Books of Common Prayer, though most were missing pages 355 through 365.  They had been discarded by the congregations and sent to us because the pages of the Holy Eucharist were no longer there.

 

            Two women from Virginia offered to finance the building of a home for the headmaster of an Episcopal School in Long Beach.  But weeks of discussion and time-consuming haggling about specifics led to their not funding the project.

 

            But those instances were the exceptions rather than the rule.

 

            A prosperous Mississippi businessman made an offer to Bishop Gray.  He would give $750,000 to assure that all coastal Episcopal clergy remained employed for six months.  That generous gift allowed those destroyed congregations to continue ministry to their flocks.  Pastoral care was assured. Not a single priest left a cure.

 

            People around the country began to send the most fungible of all donations – cash. Many thousands sent generous checks of various amounts. Others sent gift cards to Walmart or Home Depot.  Truckloads of bottled or potable water were sent to thirsty communities.  Free-standing kitchens popped-up on the coast to feed hungry and homeless people.

 

            The Church Pension Group, six months later, funded a conference in Orlando for all the impacted clergy and their families, to assist in their recovery. The pension group also funded a full-time pastor to represent the bishop to all the communities on the Gulf Coast.  The problems he would help those congregations solve were several years in arising.

 

            One of my colleagues and I were asked to address a national conference about lessons we had learned from the bitter experience.  My thoughts congealed around a basic motto: “Give what is needed, not what you need to give.”

 

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The first lesson today was selections from the Book of Habakkuk.  Habakkuk is the eighth of the minor prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. You can easily tell that his days were not easy:         

 

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen? 

Or cry to you "Violence!"
and you will not save? 

Why do you make me see wrong-doing
and look at trouble? 

Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.

 

Habakkuk lived and prophesied in difficult times – in the years just before brutal armies from Babylon – modern-day Iraq – conquered Judea and laid waste to the Holy City of Jerusalem.  The Jewish people had to learn through those traumatic experiences that their gifts, their perseverance, and the grace of God – God moving in their midst – would bring about better days.

 

            So, it was.

 

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            Last year at this time, we, as a parish, faced a fork in the road.  For months the parish had languished with unhealthy finances. We were without a permanent rector.  Covid still cast a dark shadow over us.

 

            But you gave what is needed, and not what you needed to give. The parish has been revitalized and blessed. The ministries are lively. Outreach is at our heart. Education, fellowship, and worship abound.  Attendance is very good.

 

            But we are still in the midst of we might describe as “interesting times”.  The challenges are not fully abated. And your response is vitally important.  In the days ahead, remember how the Mississippi Coast was rebuilt… How Judea came back from captivity in Babylon: Give what is needed and not what you need to give. 

Mini-Easters

 

PROPERS:          PROPER 13, YEAR C  

TEXT:                COLOSSIANS 3:1-11

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2022. (My last Sunday at St. Paul’s)

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The bottom is not the end; it is the beginning of God’s redeeming work.                 

 

            In the years which preceded her stunning success with a series of novels about a young wizard, J. K. Rowling’s life was anything but easy.

 

She was a recently divorced single mother living on public assistance in Scotland. As if to add insult to injury, her beloved mother died, leaving Rowling feeling alone with her young daughter.  She pondered her dismal outlook as she awaited a bus to carry her across town.

 

Life had been difficult – maybe even cruel.  She lived the life of the faceless masses. She was at rock bottom.

 

But Rowling had a sense of perspective on her desperate circumstances. She didn’t sugar-coat it. “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life." 

 

She had been to the bottom, and the foundation was solid. It is wisdom that many, many people – some in our midst today – know from 12-step programs.

 

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            I have spent considerable time and energy pondering what I would say to you on my last Sunday as your priest.  How would I encapsulate the essence of my faith, forged out of 35 years in active ministry?

 

            I went back to the beginning – to the summary of my belief from the beginning.  I call it existential redemption.God works through all circumstances to bring about new life. Mini Easters, I call them.

 

            Paul would loved to have written about my early life.  He came close in the lesson from Colossians today.  My life served as an example of what Bishop Gray, Jr. said many years ago: “No one’s life is a complete loss.  They can always be a negative example in a sermon.”

 

            Without going into detail, I was lost, wandering, and seeking to hide the holes in my psyche.  Yet, against all odds, I believed.

 

            My life began to change 50 years ago this past Thursday, when I met a slender, beautiful, strawberry blonde at a political gathering at the Buena Vista Hotel in Biloxi (Our daughter, in the sixth grade, had to write her autobiography. She had to tell how her parents met. She wrote simply, “My parents met in an old hotel in Biloxi.”  We told her she had to change it.)

 

            My renewal had begun but was nowhere near finished.  For years I wrestled with demons – mostly internal – and a sense of direction.  The gift of children was a great joy.

 

            I perceived the whiff of a faint call to enter seminary, which I did at age 32. But the bottom had not been reached.  After my first year, I remember sitting on the wind-swept brow of Sewanee Mountain wondering how I could be worth anything as a priest.

 

            All that I heard in response to my plaintive tears was the rush of the wind.  The bottom had been reached.

 

            Over the next two years, aided by Nora and good friends, God forged me into a person he could use to share his good news.  During my senior year, my mother died, and a dear friend perished in a helicopter crash.  Despite the losses, I began to see glimmers of new life coming into my own life.  Forged – with its focus on heat and force – described the process well.

 

            A frightened, doubt-filled young man was ordained at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Jackson, Mississippi, on May 30, 1987.  And it is a testimony to the grace of God that I have been used over the past 35 years to share the good news of God’s redeeming power.  

 

It is more of a testimony that I have been blessed by agents of grace and mercy in many of the saints I have encountered over the years.  Many have gone to their eternal reward, but their impact on my life lives on.

 

A blessing. More specifically, to share the good news that God seeks to bring new life in all circumstances, to all people.

 

            To be clear:  I have fallen short.  I have made mistakes.  My words have not always been the right ones.  There has been a tragic remainder sometimes.  But God’s grace has always been the goal.

 

            The tomb is empty.  Maybe not the way we wished, but empty just the same.  The only thing that keeps some form of new life from emerging from the figurative or literal grave is standing in the way of his movement.  We can continue on the pathway of loss, bitterness, anger, brokenness, and alienation if we wish.  But God invites us to discover new life.

 

            As St. Paul wrote so clearly in his Letter to the Colossians: “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.”

 

            No matter what life deals us, we are new creations… new beings… the old self is dead. Life will never be the same.

 

            It has been an unspeakable joy to share this journey with you.  God bless you all.

Speaking to Us Today?

PROPERS:          PROPER 12, YEAR C  

TEXT:                HOSEA 1:2-10

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 24, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        Prophecy may, in fact, be “the canary in the coal mine” – if we listen.

 

 

            One of the seldom-mentioned fathers of the early church lived in Carthage – in Africa, across a narrow Mediterranean strait from Sicily. His name was Tertullian, and his works are studied by early church scholars.  He lived during the second and third Christian centuries.

 

            He is remembered today for his writings and his engagement with an early church heresy called “the New Prophecy” or Montanism.  But today I mention him because of a question he posed that raises a question for us today: “What hath Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

 

            There are many layers to that question, and many reasons for it. For our purpose today, though, I raise it for this reason: “What has the prophet Hosea to do with us today?”

 

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            A good question for various reasons.

 

            What does a minor Jewish prophet from 3,000 years ago and half a world away have to say to us today?

 

            What does a prophet who lived in a marriage of infidelity have to tell us?

 

            Hosea is remembered in our Christian Bible as the first among the minor prophets – as opposed to Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  He is known as one of the 12.

 

            He lived and prophesied in the Northern Kingdom, Israel, after that kingdom parted ways with the Southern Kingdom, Judah.  He came after the heady days of the united monarchy, under David and Solomon.

 

            Israel -- as a separate kingdom -- was walking on thin ice.  Their royalty was folks like Ahab and Jezebel, whom we have heard about in recent weeks’ lessons.  The people had largely forsaken the god of the covenant, YHWH, and the Law which was to guide them and order their lives.  They had migrated to the indigenous gods of that land.  From a faith perspective, they were being unfaithful.

 

            Which is where Hosea comes in.  He uses an autobiographical method to describe Israel’s conflicted existence. He says he marries a woman named Gomer – a woman he knows to be unfaithful.  In the first lesson passage today, she gives him three children – two sons and a daughter.

 

            Their names describe the betrayal. 

 

God instructs him to name the first son. "Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel."

 

            Soon, a daughter is born. God gives a name. "Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen."

 

            The name of the second son contains a similar judgement.

 

            The analogy is potent and pointed.  Gomer has been unfaithful.  Israel has been unfaithful. Evil will befall succeeding generations.  That is the price to be paid for the people’s unfaithfulness.

 

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            I can’t help but wonder.  In light of this passage, what do I need to hear?  What do we need to hear? What do Hosea’s words have to say to us today?

 

            A thought: The General Confession we include within this service – the one we will say in just a few moments – is not what many of us think it is.  It is not a personal confession; it is a corporate confession – a confession of the community’s failures and shortcomings.  These are the words we say, our fessing up to sins as a body.

 

            The old confession noted “that we have erred and strayed like lost sheep.”  That seems a little more to the point. So, what do we need to hear from Hosea?  Would he prophesy to us in the same way he prophesied to Israel?

 

            Have other things in our lives… other idols, priorities, comforts, aspirations, goals, brass rings… replaced focus on the eternal one?

 

            I don’t have answers now. I wrestle with these questions.  I invite you to do the same.

  

Questions to Ponder

PROPERS:          PROPER 12, YEAR C  

TEXT:                COLOSSIANS 1:15-28; LUKE 10:38-42

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        We proclaim a God that is the God of all creation.

 

            In 1953, an English evangelical named John Bertram Phillips published a book that was unlike others he had written.  He had been known as a biblical translator and had published several works of that type.

 

            But in 1953 he published something different – a book to address the world that emerged after World War II. The post-war world was more complex.  Would the old-time religion speak to the complexity?

 

            The book he published that year was entitled Your God is Too Small.  I assume it sought to speak to that more complex world, offering spiritual solutions for that new era.

 

            I think he could not begin to fathom the questions we have today.

 

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            This past week as I exercised at the Daphne YMCA, I did what I frequently do – I listened to a Fresh Air episode.  That is an NPR podcast that originates at the public radio station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

            The episode was from 2011, and it featured the physicist and mathematician Brian Greene, a professor at Columbia University.  He spoke about the complexity of creation, and the challenges posed by physics, as explained by Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and the relatively new developments associated with quantum physics.

 

            The two – physics and quantum physics – do not agree.  Physics tell us about how large bodies act in space, and quantum physics describe how the subatomic world functions.  But they conflict is significant ways.

 

            Brian Greene and other scholars are seeking a unified theory which will explain both.  It goes well beyond my ability to understand or explain. I do know, however, that what the James Webb space telescope is showing us puts this subject on the front burner.

 

            Brian Greene was seeking to explain possible ways of viewing creation. He spoke of a multiverse, and various theories about that very complex subject.  He likened our universe to a loaf of bread, representing one slice in that loaf. But, he said, that there may be other universes – like other slices of bread – existing within the entirety of creation.

 

            Other worlds might exist at the same time and in the same space as ours. It boggles the mind. Like J.B. Phillips said, our God may be too small. As St. Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, we see through a glass darkly.

 

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            St. Paul wrote more, too, this time to the Church in Colossae:

 

Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers-- all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

 

            The theories that I mention, but do not endorse, today challenge our understanding of the cosmos. Perhaps just like Copernicus or Galileo.  Today’s notions must seem radical to us.  We wonder like Nicodemus: “How can this be?”

 

            Well, like a story I heard from a law student at Ole Miss, “Maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t.” But we should be mindful of this: Jesus posed a whole new way of viewing the world. Jesus told Nicodemus that we “must be born again.” Paul proposed a radical notion about the roots of life. The apostle John proclaimed that God makes all things new. And what could be more radical than rising from the dead?

 

            Is our God too small?  Maybe the context in which we place God is, indeed, too small.  Whatever the truth about creation, we proclaim a God who created it, a God who sustains it, and a God who will ultimately bring it to completion.

 

            It behooves us to sit like Mary at the feet of the master, and be open to the new creation he brings.

  

A Higher Calling

PROPERS:          PROPER 10, YEAR C  

TEXT:                AMOS 7:7-17; LUKE 10:25-37

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The divine spirit overrules the Law.    

 

            Laura Thatcher Ulrich was a little-known professor of history at Harvard University in the 1970s.  She was married to another professor and was a Mormon – thereby facing limits on her role as a woman, a wife, and a mother.

 

            In her teaching and scholarship, her area of focus was ordinary people – and the importance and impact those people had on the trajectory of history.  She wrote a book about such a woman – a Puritan midwife and healer in the 18^th century, who lived a routine life.  It was about that ordinary woman and was entitled “A Midwife’s Tale.”

 

            She won a coveted Pulitzer Prize for that book.  But it was a simple quotation from that book which brought much attention: “Well behaved women seldom make history.” It was meant to be an encouraging statement:  Well-behaved women should make history, but it doesn’t usually happen.

 

            The quotation, however, became a slogan among the growing movement of progressive women.  I have even seen on bumper stickers: “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”  It is a battle cry that, in order to affect the course of history, you may have to break some dishes.  It’s like those sayings: “To make an omelet, you have to break some eggs” and “Sacred cows make the best hamburgers.”

 

            That interpretation of the quotation can be construed to be similar to the late Congressman and Civil Rights activist John Lewis’s admonition to “Make good trouble.”

 

            In other words, in order to do good, don’t be hamstrung by the rules, or the law.

 

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            That seems to be exactly the point Jesus is making this morning. In a conversation with the man I grew up knowing as the Rich Young Ruler, Jesus is asked “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

 

            In response, Jesus turns the table. “What do you think,” he asks.  The young man quotes the Summary of the Law: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus tells him he has answered correctly.

 

            The man responds that he has done all those things since his youth. And he wants more… perhaps to bolster his self-assurance: “And who is my neighbor,” he asks.

 

            Jesus does what we call a paradigm shift.  He does not detail the Law.  He does not recount the Deuteronomic Code.  He tells a story.  We know it as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

 

            You know the story.  It is familiar.  Like the young man and the Law, we have heard it since our youth.  The people who refused to help the wounded traveler – a priest and a Levite -- were both highly-esteemed in the community of faith.  They knew that the Law said they were to have nothing to do with this unclean, unidentified traveler. So, they took the other side of the road.

 

            But a Gentile… a goyim… a Samaritan… a foreigner, not one of the faithful, came by and cared for the man.  He took him to an inn and paid for his care.  He acted according to a higher good.

 

            In the first lesson, the prophet Amos spoke of a plumb line. – a plumb line that God had put over Israel.  He said that it had been placed among the people.  Some might point to the Law… or its essence… as that plumb line.

 

            But Jesus tells us, and the plumb line tells us, that there is a higher good that goes beyond the Law.  It is something that cuts through the flesh and marrow of human existence.  It is the divine spirit which should animate and guide our lives.

            It is the person of Jesus… and the essence of his teaching… which should motivate us and drive us toward doing the right thing.  Regardless of what the world… the Law… and others might say. 

Life on a Roller Coaster

 

PROPERS:          PROPER 9, YEAR C    

TEXT:                LUKE 10:1-11, 16-20

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JULY 3, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The path toward a New Creation is both immediate and slow – like justification and sanctification, and the creation of “a more perfect union.”  

 

            Two-hundred-forty-six years ago tomorrow, the Declaration of Independence was issued in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. July Fourth has been known as our Independence Day – freedom from the yoke of British governance.

 

            Just over 234 years ago, the Constitution of the United States was ratified.  Its Preamble included these words: “We the People of the United States, in Order 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 to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 

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            “… in Order to form a more perfect Union…”

 

            On page 298 of the Book of Common Prayer, the rubric preceding the sacrament says that “Holy Baptism is the full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s body the Church.  The bond established by God in Baptism is indissoluble.”

 

            My question, then, is this: Why do we struggle so much as a nation and as people of faith?

 

            A bit of theology and perspective might help us understand.

 

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            Regarding our individual struggles as people of faith, I am reminded of the difference between justificationand sanctification.  They are each present and active factors in baptism.

 

            Justification is immediate.  We are “made right” in the eyes of God.  Your sins – both past and yet to come – are washed away.  You stand as New Beings in God’s creation.  You are a full member in the Household of God.

 

            Sanctification is another matter.  It begins in the sacrament of baptism, but it only begins then.  Your future life of growing in the grace you have received, in being formed more fully into a child of God, is a lifelong process.  It may be that very process of sanctification that brings you to the church today.  You seek to grow in the gift you have been given.

 

            Yet none of us reaches perfection. We are like this nation as we perpetually reach for the brass ring of perfection or a perfect union. It always eludes us.

 

            Paul Tillich, the 20^th century theologian, compared the perspectives on sanctification of the two great 16^thcentury reformers, John Calvin and Martin Luther.

 

            Calvin saw the process of sanctification as a gradual, constant, slow, upward movement toward holiness.  It could be compared to circular staircase, always ascending toward perfection, but never reaching it.

 

            Luther, on the other hand, saw a much more dynamic, unpredictable process of sanctification – perhaps like a roller coaster ride. Exhilarating highs as we reach the peaks, and devastating lows as we go into the depths. Still, the process continues as life goes on – up and down, high and low, being perfected and then falling short. But we do so within the context of having already been justified.

 

            We still reach for the brass ring.  It always eludes us. Yet we seek it.  Our holy mission continues. We strive, yet we never attain.

 

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            “… in Order to create a more perfect Union…”

 

            This is where perspective merges with theology.

 

            Two-hundred-forty-six years ago the people of this land began that journey. Two-hundred-thirty-four years ago we articulated that aspiration in our governing document.

 

            In all those years, we have seen amazing highs and challenging lows – much like a roller coaster ride.  The Civil War… the conquering of the West… the Great Depression… various national scandals… the 1960s… the struggle with Civil Rights… leaders with clay feet… debates about governance… It has been anything but an upward, always-ascending move toward a more perfect union.

 

            But the journey continues – both for us as people seeking to be sanctified and as a nation seeking to be a more perfect union.

 

            It has never been easy.  Jesus sent 70 of his followers out on the road in the gospel lesson today.  They were to carry his message to the people – some who would hear it; some who would not.

 

            The mission was not perfect.  The work was not finished.  But it was a beginning.

 

A Matter of Philosophy

PROPERS:          PROPER 8, YEAR C    

TEXT:                GALATIANS 5:1, 13-25

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, JUNE 26, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        A challenge for us is to listen to “our better angels.”

 

            Many of us, I suspect, have had the idea that Christianity arose ex nihilo – out of nothing – from the nations of Judea and Israel.  In terms of bread baking, there was no starter.

 

            But there was. The world of religion and philosophy was a rich gumbo that produced – and birthed – the roots of the faith we practice today.  Jesus and his followers were deeply influenced by the world around them.

 

            First and foremost is the Jewish faith.  Jesus lived and died a Jew. Christianity, as such, did not exist. That would only come decades later.  Jesus’ quarrels were not with Judaism, but with the religious authorities of that era.  He saw that the Law, which had been given as a gift to order life, had been bent and shaped to become a burden to common people. Hence, his verbal battles with the Sadducees, Pharisees, and scribes.

 

            Like muscles are built by the resistance of weight, Christianity emerged from Jesus’ resistance to the religious authorities.  It sharpened and clarified his message.

 

            But there was more.  It came later and influenced early church leaders.

 

            The Western World at that time was formed by the Greeks.  More so than the Romans, who dominated the military world at that time, the residual influence of Alexander the Great molded thought and scholarship.

 

            This was known as Hellenistic Thought – as exemplified by the philosophical schools of thought that were more than 300 years old. Their age had allowed them to permeate the thought of the day.

 

            Chief among these were Platonism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism.  They each had their followers, and they did not agree.  But we can see their impact on Christian thought – especially after the worldly ministry of Jesus – in those who followed him.

 

            Paul is an excellent example.  He was a Hellenistic Jew.  He was well-educated.  He was bright and articulate.  You may not want him as a guest at your party, but he managed to express his views well.

 

            Paul was greatly influenced by Stoicism. Our understanding of stoicism these days is a thin gruel of what that philosophy was to Paul.  Instead of just bucking up and acting like nothing has happened – which is our modern understanding – true stoicism had to do with the rejection of passions and their unhealthy actions. Behaviors such as fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, and carousing were frowned upon.

 

            Paul listed those precise behaviors in the first lesson today – as works of the flesh. As an aside, I would note that Paul would likely not be a good guest at Mardi Gras.  But I suspect that we could all agree that his list of works of the flesh is pretty accurate.

 

            In contrast, Paul gives voice to stoic philosophy.  He counters those acts of passion with those that are not rooted in passion. Hear his words: “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”

 

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What is my point in all this?

 

I guess I could raise the question about political discourse these days. Are debates today motivated by passion or reason? Which is a more animating force in Facebook?

 

This is more to the point: Do you listen to the voices of your better angels? Are you motivated by resentment, bigotry, fear, or suspicion? Or by the higher motivations of empathy, care, understanding, compassion, and of course, love?

 

I think that is the message for us today: Our words and actions should be moved by calm reason rather than by passions from our shadow sides.

 

If we can do that more frequently, we and others can live in more Christian harmony.