St. John's Episcopal Church

Sermon for Sunday, February 15, 2009 (Year B, Epiphany 6)

St. Paul writes, “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize?… Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.” (1 Cor. 9:24-25)

In chapters 8 and 9 of his First Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul acknowledges the freedom one enjoys as an individual, but warns that by exercising our rights, we may lead astray a new believer or a person of weaker faith.  In this letter it appears that the issue comes up in reference to eating food sacrificed to idols — the primary focus in chapter 8.  Paul writes that a knowledgeable Christian might understand that since there are no gods save the One God, it makes no difference whether or not one eats food sacrificed to some Greek deity, since the sacrifice is inherently meaningless.  However, to someone new to the Christian faith, who only a few weeks earlier may have been offering sacrifices to the deities, eating such food might cause spiritual confusion or perhaps even a crisis of faith.  Paul’s point is that even if one feels free to eat food sacrificed to idols, it may be better to refrain from doing so out of consideration for newer or weaker members of the Christian community.

In chapter 9 Paul broadens this discussion of rights and responsibilities, and advocates self-discipline in all things.  To illustrate his point he refers to the runner who competes for the winner’s prize, in this case a wreath worn on the head.  His reference is to the Olympic games which originated about 776 B.C.E. and were held every four years until the 4th century of the common era.  For many centuries the games were an important religious and political event in Greece.  They provided both an occasion for worship of the gods and an opportunity for athletes to win not just the victor’s crown of laurel leaves, but lasting fame and glory for themselves and for the city-state they represented.

Paul recognized that this would be a great sermon illustration, because Greeks knew the importance of the games and especially valued the foot races which were the most important Olympic events.  Victorious runners were to them what pro football, basketball, and baseball players are to us — national heroes and role models.  Paul’s point, then, is that we Christians are competitors who should not seek a crown that fades away, but an everlasting crown of glory; and in order to compete at our best, we need to exercise self-discipline and commitment.  We should be ready to lay aside our rights in order to model appropriate spiritual self-control and commitment to Christ for others.  By doing so, we gain the victory.

In recent weeks, and even this past week, we have seen several examples of competitors who have failed of self-control and thereby set very poor examples for the spiritually young or weak.   

One example is Ruth Madoff, wife of investment tycoon and Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff.  Mrs. Madoff is said to have removed $15.5 million from a Massachusetts investment firm just before the collapse of her husband’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme.  I suspect her behavior will make it hard for Mrs. Madoff to claim that she was unaware of her husband’s activities.  When Madoff goes off to jail, perhaps his wife will join him.

A few days ago we learned that Michael Phelps, the 23-year-old Olympic swimming star, had been photographed smoking pot at a party in South Carolina.  Local law enforcement authorities seem to be building a case against Phelps, whose lucrative endorsement contracts are drying up like water on the sunny concrete apron of a swimming pool.

Again, this week we learned that New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez (“A-Rod” to the tabloids) used banned substances during the period from 2001-03 and lied about doing so.  He cited “an enormous amount of pressure to perform” as the reason for his transgression.  Holder of a 10-year, $275 million contract, the richest in baseball history, A-Rod may go on to break the all-time home run record and earn an extra $30 million by doing so.  But it’s unclear now if anyone will care.

And finally, on Thursday night CNBC aired a program on the housing market meltdown entitled “House of Cards.”  This two-hour show detailed how the many facets of the mortgage industry and financial markets interlocked to create a perfect storm of bad decision-making.  Seen from this side of the collapse, it’s a sad and tawdry story:  

Clearly, many home buyers were misled by unscrupulous mortgage brokers, but some knowingly gambled with their homes and lost. 

Clearly, some mortgage originators hired unqualified personnel, including former pizza delivery people; paid these folks up to $20,000 a month to generate loans; and encouraged them to falsify buyers’ income in order to close the deals.

Clearly, bankers and Wall Street investment houses took everyone for a ride using instruments which assumed that housing prices would never fall and homeowners would always make their payments.

Clearly, when this house of cards finally collapsed, lots of people got hurt, including whole cities and nations around the world which have been left holding worthless paper.

And clearly, among the injured are millions of prudent homeowners who did everything right, but whose homes and IRAs are now worth 25, or 35, or 45 percent less than a few months ago, and who now are asked to bail out those who caused this problem — that is, people like you and me.  

What do these situations have in common?  What is it that links the mortgage market meltdown with A-Rod’s use of performance enhancing drugs with Michael Phelps’ experimenting with pot with Ruth Madoff’s multi-million-dollar shell game?  In my view, all four of these situations involve people who took some degree of personal responsibility for other people’s money and then failed in their fiduciary (or trust) responsibility.  To borrow Paul’s imagery, these people, and many others, chose to compete for the crown that withers away rather than for the prize that lasts.  Some failed to exercise the self-control that the Apostle Paul commended, and instead put short-term personal gain or pleasure ahead of long-term benefits for both themselves and society as a whole.  In short, some people took advantage of a lot of people.

If there was anything in Thursday’s CNBC program that amazed me, it was when the various people involved in the scheme were asked if they assumed responsibility or felt any guilt.  Hardly anyone did!  Even Alan Greenspan, the legendary former Fed Chairman, made bold to say that once the dodgy mortgage train left the station, no one could have put on the brakes.  No one, he says — least of all himself — was either capable of, or responsible for, dealing with the problem before, or even after, it got out of hand.  And not one of the people interviewed for this program, as I recall, ever mentioned the word ethics.  It makes me wonder if ethics is even part of their vocabulary!

Greed certainly plays a role in economic behavior.  It always has and always will.  But greed has the power to bring an economy to its knees.  As Vanguard founder John Bogle states in his new book, Enough, “the rampant greed that threatens to overwhelm our financial and corporate world runs deeper than money.  Not knowing what enough is subverts our professional values.  It makes salespersons of those who should be fiduciaries of the investments entrusted to them.  It turns a system that should be built on trust into one with counting as its foundation.”  Then, echoing Paul writing to the Corinthians, Bogle says, “Worse, this confusion about enough leads us astray in our larger lives.  We chase after the false rabbits of success; we too often bow down at the altar of the transitory and finally meaningless and fail to cherish what is beyond calculation, indeed eternal.” (Bogle, Enough, p. 2)

In this regard Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish moral philosopher and father of modern economics, has something to say.  He is best known for The Wealth of Nations, his study of markets published in 1776.  However, in his 1759 work entitled The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith states that a person develops sympathy for others while seeking both self-interest and the approval of what Smith calls the impartial spectator — or what we might call conscience.  Smith writes that this impartial spectator…

calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration.  It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves.  It is this impartial spectator… who shows us the propriety of reining the greatest interests of our own, for the yet greater interests of others… in order to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves.  It is not the love of neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues.  It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, the love of what is honourable and noble, the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.  (Quoted in Bogle, Enough, p. 203)

I might quibble with Adam Smith about the role that love of neighbor or humankind plays in giving rise to sympathy for others.  However, on the whole I think Smith well describes how one’s inner spectator — one’s conscience, one’s personal ethics — can overcome mere selfishness and make us responsive to the needs of the wider community, because doing so is good for us as well as for the community.  Today we might say much the same thing when we speak of “doing well by doing good.”

St. Paul argues that the Christian must sacrifice his or her own rights in order to serve the good of others and of the community as a whole.  Paul is right on target.  Learning how to do this is a lifelong process.  Helping children develop a conscience — teaching our youth the important difference between right and wrong — has always been a primary responsibility of parents.  Home is where the most fundamental ethical lessons should be taught.  However, the Christian community has an important role to play in the formation of one’s impartial spectator, as Smith puts it.  The Church can be the voice — crying out in the wilderness of contemporary social and business life — which reminds us that however bright and gifted and resourceful we may be, we remain just one of many; and that if we take responsibility for what belongs to others, we must be trust-worthy.  In other words, the Church has the obligation, and a unique opportunity, to teach both children and adults that we owe it to God, to our society, and to ourselves to conduct our affairs in an ethical manner — to exercise self-control, build up Christian character, and seek a prize that endures throughout this life and beyond.

Therefore, as we prayed in today’s collect, let us recognize that without God we can do nothing good, and let us pray for God’s grace that we may please the Lord both in will and deed.  Amen.

The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings for Year B, Epiphany 6:  Old Testament — 2 Kings 5:1-14  |  Gradual — Psalm 30  |  Epistle — 1 Corinthians 9:24-27  |  Gospel — Mark 1:40-45

Collect for Epiphany 6:

O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, February 1, 2009 (Year B, Epiphany 4)

“…there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’” (Mark 1:23-25)

There are times when Jesus is frankly embarrassing.  Sometimes it’s what he says; sometimes it’s what he does.  For modern Christians, perhaps Jesus is at his most awkward when he performs an exorcism, driving an unclean spirit out of some “poor devil,” so to speak.  Most of us find the idea of demon possession a bit over the top.  If so, we may read this morning’s gospel account of an exorcism in the synagogue at Capernaum with either mild skepticism or outright disbelief.  Then we may quickly pass on to Jesus’ teachings about, say, loving one’s neighbor, which we assume, for no particular reason, to be less difficult.

We know that primitive peoples believed that the world was filled with all manner of malign spirits, and that these spirits were considered to be the cause of most of the evil a person might suffer.  That view is often found in the Old Testament, either directly or indirectly.  For example, in the Book of Job, Chapter 5, we read, “…misery does not come from the earth, nor does trouble sprout from the ground; but human beings are born to trouble just as sparks fly upward.” (Job 5:7)  That last phrase translates the Hebrew which more literally reads, “…and the sons of Resheph fly aloft.”  Resheph was the Canaanite god of plague and pestilence.  Is the author of Job here using a neat turn of phrase meaning “searing flames,” or does he suggest that Job’s troubles are caused by the offspring of this evil spirit named Resheph?

Again, references to demons are strewn through the psalms.  For example, in Psalm 91 God is described as our “refuge” and “stronghold” who keeps us safe from evil.  “You shall not be afraid of any terror by night,” says the Psalmist, “nor of the arrow that flies by day; / Of the plague that stalks in the darkness, nor of the arrow that flies by day.” (Ps. 91:5-6)  To the ancients both night and day had their distinctive demons.  Thus the men who escort the bride and groom to their wedding are bodyguards defending them against evil spirits who seek to do them harm, either before the ceremony or on the wedding night.  Disease and misfortune were attributed by the ancients to evil spirits who shot arrows at the unfortunate.  So, then, is the Psalmist naming specific evil spirits, or merely providing an allusion that his audience was sure to understand? 

The Old Testament belief in demons was carried over into the New Testament.  For example, St. Paul says in his Letter to the Ephesians that “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers [or principalities], against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12)  Clearly, Paul believes that malign spirits hold sway over this world, and that Christians are locked in mortal combat with the devil and his children.

That’s not a position many modern Christians, especially those of the more liberal, mainline denominations, find comfortable.  As products of a scientific age, we feel that we have escaped the simplistic, irrational categories of an earlier age and have embraced a more reasonable explanation of ill fortune, disease, and death.  What the ancients called “demonic possession” we now categorize as physical or mental illness.  Ill fortune is simply bad luck.  Disease is an unhealthy condition of the body or mind caused by some pathogen or trauma.  Death is the result of disruption of the normal processes of the body; it is not caused by demons.

This tendency to discount Jesus’ exorcisms, or all of Jesus’ miracles, for that matter, has been with us for well over two hundred years.  As you probably know, Thomas Jefferson was so deeply offended by the miracles of Jesus — which he considered a violation of the laws of nature — that he physically cut out all references to miracles and other supernatural phenomena in his own Bible. 

So what are you and I to make of this business of demon possession as we find it in the Bible?  One commentator suggests that we have three options.  First, we can “relegate the whole matter of demon-possession to the sphere of primitive thought and say that it was a primitive way of accounting for things in the days before man knew any more about men’s bodies and men’s minds.”  Or second, “We may accept the fact of demon-possession as being true in New Testament times and as being still true to-day.”  Or, third, if we accept the first position, “we have to explain the attitude and actions of Jesus.” (Barclay, The Gospel of Mark, Rev. Ed., p. 36)

I confess I lean toward the first alternative — to say that demonology is the way primitive people explained things for which we now have other, more scientific explanations.  But then what do I do with Jesus, who entered the synagogue at Capernaum and completely dumbfounded those present by curing a man “with an unclean spirit”?  I suppose we could say that Jesus himself believed in demons, just as other Jews of his time did.  Or we could say that Jesus knew better (as we do!), but elected to use the categories and assumptions that his culture handed him — in this case, to treat the man as if he were possessed, and to cure him by driving out the so-called unclean spirit.  The problem is, neither of these explanations of Jesus’ words and actions is satisfactory, for the first makes him impossibly quaint, and the latter makes him just as impossibly a liar.

However, there is a third alternative — and that is to say that I just don’t know exactly what is going on in this story of the exorcism at Capernaum.  I don’t know exactly what the man’s problem is, and I don’t know exactly how Jesus restores him to health.  We have the witness of the gospel to assure us that something positive happenes to this man as a result of his encounter with our Lord.  But the “what?” and “how?” of this encounter is a mystery.

In fact, I’ll go a step farther and say that the “what?” and “how?” of all of Jesus’ miracles, including his healing of people with various diseases disabilities, and possessions, is and will ever remain a mystery.  And for this we ought to be eternally grateful, because “what?” and “how?” are the least important questions we can raise about these great works performed by our Lord.  The really important question is not “what?” or “how?” but “why?”  Why did Jesus cure this man?

The answer, I believe, is that this healing, and all the other healings and miracles, are occasions for us to remember that there is far more to this world than our arts and sciences can show us.  That is to say, there is a spiritual dimension to this world, to human life, and to the universe “out there” that is beyond our ability to understand, but not beyond our ability to know.

I say this because I am not aware of any civilization which has arisen upon this earth which has not, at some point, developed some form of spiritual awareness or formal religion.  To me that means that you and I are “hardwired” (so to speak) to be aware of and responsive to the supernatural, that is, to the reality that lies beyond and behind the natural order.  Together with our ancient ancestors, we sense that overarching spiritual reality, even if we cannot see or explain what that is.  That Spirit is as real as this life we lead, and as close to us as our breath and thoughts.  We can deny that reality, of course; many do.  Many say that the material world is all there is.  But my own experience tells me otherwise.  There is about this world something that is more than the sum of its parts.

From my perspective, then, Jesus’ healing of the man possessed by an unclean spirit is intended to be a reminder that the spiritual reality beyond our world — the One we call God — has an enduring, indeed eternal, claim on us, on all our words and deeds, on our very lives.  Every now and again God makes bold to intrude on our world in order to remind us who’s in charge.  He did so most completely by giving us his Son.  As one of our eucharistic prayers puts it, God reminds us “that we… live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us….” (BCP p. 374)  You and I have been bought at a price — the life and death of our Lord.  Now the buyer — God the Father — expects something of us.

What God expects of us is to be… well, rather like Jesus.  Jesus saw people suffering and did something about it.  We are called to do likewise.  Jesus saw people hungry and fed them.  Jesus saw people being abused and defended them.  We are called to do likewise.  Jesus saw people being used by the powerful and spoke truth to power.  Jesus saw people being excluded simply because of who they were, and he invited them to join his table fellowship, which in his culture was a sign of greatest intimacy.  Jesus saw people seeking a deeper relationship with God and invited them to follow him.  All this is our job description as Christians.

If you’ve heard the phrase, “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable,” then you know exactly how Jesus operated.  All God expects of us is to do likewise.  That’s not too much to ask, is it?  People may think us strange.  They may even consider us demon possessed!  But that’s what God wants of us.   

“… Jesus rebuked him, saying ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’  And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.  They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this?  A new teaching — with authority!  He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’  At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.” (Mark 1:25-28)

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

Readings for Epiphany 4:  Old Testament — Deuteronomy 18:15-20  |  Gradual — Psalm 111  |  Epistle — 1 Corinthians 8:1-13  |  Gospel — Mark 1:21-28

Collect for Epiphany 4:

Almighty and everlasting God, you govern all things both in heaven and on earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of your people, and in our time grant us your peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.