St. John's Episcopal Church

Sermon for Sunday, August 23, 2009 (Year B, Proper 16)

 

Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them”… He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.  When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”… Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” (John 6:56, 59, 66)

 

People sometimes talk about certain teachings of Jesus as being “difficult” or “hard.”   The ones that come most readily to mind are the teachings about money.  

 

At Luke, chapter 18, for example, we find the story of the Rich Ruler who asks Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus cites the Ten Commandments, and the ruler says, “I have kept all these since my youth.”  Then Jesus springs a surprise.  “There is still one thing lacking.  Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  (Luke 18:18-22)  Hearing this, the ruler is very sad, for he is very rich (Luke 18:23) and what Rabbi Jesus asks is far more than this man expected.  This teaching is every bit as hard for us to swallow as it is for the guy in the story.  Does our Lord really expect us to sell our homes and furniture and automobiles, give up our jobs, and do his work 24/7?  We have responsibilities!  People depend on us!  And so we resolve this impasse by saying to ourselves, “Oh, Jesus means we should give up everything in a spiritual sense, not a material sense.”  But in truth there’s nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus is talking about “spiritual goods.”   

 

There are other hard teachings.  In chapter 5 of Matthew Jesus holds forth on several issues.  For example, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’… But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment….” (Matt. 5:21-22)  It’s a blanket statement; Jesus cites no unless-your-anger-is justified exception.  Yet who among us never feels anger?  And Jesus himself was sometimes angry, as when he cleansed the temple.  

 

Then a few verses later Jesus holds forth on divorce.  “It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’  But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matt. 5:31-32)  Again, this is a blanket statement.  Jesus seems to make no exception for unfaithfulness on the part of the husband, for abuse, for neglect of one’s children, or for any other defect in the marital relationship.  This teaching is so difficult, in fact, that it is rarely included in the Sunday lectionaries.  One reason is that what we have in Matthew can hardly be called a complete teaching on divorce and remarriage.  I, along with most Episcopal clergy, do not believe that Jesus would insist that one should stay in an abusive marriage, placing one’s well-being, and the well-being of one’s children, at risk.  Over many years the Church has come to recognize that divorce is sometimes the only responsible solution for a deeply defective relationship.  

 

Clergy in denominations which interpret scripture literally — clergy who may drive around in cars sporting bumper stickers declaring “God said it, that settles it, I believe it” — rarely preach on this passage either, or on Luke 16:18, where Jesus clearly says that remarriage is adultery, because they, too, recognize that taking the Bible literally can sometimes yield an unjust result.

 

However, the fact that Jesus’ teachings are sometimes difficult does not excuse us from the task of wrestling with those teachings.  By struggling with these hard sayings, we may see how we are called to do things we would rather not do if left to our own devices, and how we are called to become people we are not naturally inclined to be.  As Joshua instructed the tribes of Israel, we must choose whom we will serve.  That choosing can be hard, but it is also necessary.  The God who refuses to leave us be demands it.

 

A personal memory may serve to illustrate this persistent demand for change, for transformation in our relationship to God and to each other.  Back about 1954 my family took the train from Philadelphia to central Florida to spend Christmas with my grandparents.  Somewhere along the way, in Georgia as I recall, my father took me to the vestibule of our car so we could watch as the train pull into a small southern town.  We stopped just opposite the white clapboard train station, and I watched in fascination as the train crew scurried around and passengers detrained and boarded.  Then, looking at the station, I noticed three doors, each with a sign.  One sign read, “Men.”  The second, “Women.”  The third, “Colored.”  I knew about men’s and women’s restrooms, but this third door mystified me, so I asked my father what the sign meant.  He was silent for a time, and then, with obvious difficulty, he explained that in the South, white men and white women had their own restrooms, while black men and women had to use the same toilet.  That marked my first awareness of the practice of racial segregation.

 

In 1982, nearly 30 years later, I visited the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.  As I walked through an exhibit on race relations in the U.S., there, hanging on a wall along with other segregation era bric-a-brac, was a bathroom door, its white paint faded, and its sign reading, “Colored.”  I was pleased to see it there in “The Nation’s Attic.”  It is a vivid reminder that we are sometimes called to do things we don’t wish to do, and to become people we are not naturally inclined to be.

 

The difficult teaching featured in today’s gospel is about bread and wine.  Jesus’ says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.  Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me… the one who eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6:56-58)  Now, eating and drinking Jesus was not a concept I grew up with in the Presbyterian and Congregational churches.  In fact, I didn’t really encounter this idea until I attended my first Episcopal eucharist at All Saints, East Lansing in 1975.  Just before communion I said the Prayer of Humble Access, which is based on this same passage of scripture: “Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” (BCP p. 337)  I was taken aback.  Eat flesh?  Drink blood?  Oh, my.

 

In the earliest years of the Church, when Christians met in secret — often before dawn or after sundown on Sunday, since Sunday was a work day — rumors spread among the pagans that their Christian neighbors were engaging in horrific worship practices, such as killing babies and practicing cannibalism.  These rumors triggered early, sporadic persecution by those who feared that the gods would be offended by these outlandish followers of Jesus.  It would take the legalization of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine, and widespread conversion of pagans, to put these nasty rumors to rest.

 

In any case, it’s not hard to see why so many of our Lord’s disciples took offense at his teaching about eating his body and drinking his blood.  Remember, this was well before that Last Supper in the upper room, before Jesus’ death and resurrection, and before the Church began its weekly offering of Holy Communion in remembrance of our risen Lord.  No one was holding inquirer’s classes to explain to newcomers that this weekly feast is a spiritual meal by which Christ makes himself present to us in an especially potent way.  No one was writing engaging little pamphlets to explain how this sacred meal nourishes us for the life of faith.  

 

And, for that matter, no one was making it clear that every teaching of Jesus can be a hard saying when we try to live it out.  Flip open the gospels and take your pick: “Love your neighbor”… “Do unto others”… “Feed my sheep”… “Render unto Caesar”… “Forgive us our sins”… “Make disciples of all nations.”  They are all difficult!  Every last one of them!  

 

As Joshua said, we are called to choose whom we shall serve.  Sometimes those choices take us places we would not otherwise go, and demand that we become people we are not naturally inclined to be.  Having heard what he has to say, Jesus asks us, as he asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?”  In other words, are the problems too complicated, the challenges too great, the cost too high?  

 

If you are not sure, remember Paul’s counsel to the Corinthians: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength….” (1 Cor. 10:13)  Amen.

 

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

 

Readings for Year B, Proper 16:  Lesson — Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18  |  Gradual — Psalm 34:15-22  |  Epistle — Ephesians 6:10-20  | Gospel — John 6:56-69

 

Collect for Proper 16:

Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; 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, August 16, 2009 (The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, transferred)

 

“From this day all generations will call me blessed….” (Luke 1:48)

 

This morning we are taking a short vacation from our normal progress through the lectionary, and instead are reading lessons for the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, which falls on August 15.  I’ve taken the liberty of nudging that feast over one day, because we really don’t get much opportunity to talk about the Blessed Virgin except on the fourth Sunday of Advent — and then, because it’s almost Christmas, our minds are on other things.  So, a little attention to Mary on a summer Sunday is far less than her due.

 

Also, let me assure you that I almost always try to compose my sermons in my own words.  That’s not easy, because after decades reading commentaries on scripture, certain ideas and even certain phrases become so much a part of one’s mental furniture that giving credit where credit is due is impossible.  Nor, I think, is original thought always beneficial in the pulpit.  As Erv Brown, my Rector at Christ Church-Detroit, told me during my first year of ordained ministry, “All work and no plagiarism makes Jack a dull preacher.”  Every good preacher stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before.

 

With that in mind, I want to share with you a reflection by Dan Clendenin, who writes a “webzine” (or web-based magazine) called Journey with Jesus.  This commentary was composed in Advent 2006, but it seems very appropriate for today’s liturgy and, quite frankly, it expresses better than I could my own feelings about the Mother of our Lord and her role in our Christian faith.

When I was in Oxford a few years ago, [Clendenin begins] every evening I left my study carrel and walked down Woodstock Road to the city center and attended the Evensong services at Magdalen (pronounced “maudlin”) College. I loved so many things about those thirty minutes of worship — the quiet, the architecture, the history (Magdalen College was founded in 1448), the smell of the candles that lit the early darkness of October, the boys choir in robes, and the formal liturgy.  But one part of Evensong surprised me; every single night we sang Mary’s “Magnificat”… Why did the daily liturgy assign her such prominence?  Why was Mary so important?

 

In the small Presbyterian church where I grew up, every Sunday we recited the Apostles’ Creed [which states ] that Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary,” but in fact Mary played no role at all in my Christian identity.  Later I learned that Protestants question dogmas about Mary that were codified quite recently and… do not enjoy unequivocal Biblical support, like her perpetual virginity, her freedom from actual and original sin [that is the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, promulgated by Pope Pius IX in 1854], and the idea that she did not die but was taken directly to heaven [the doctrine of the Bodily Assumption, defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950).  We also get agitated about exalted language that sounds like she is a co-redeemer of humanity.  In popular devotion the cult of Mary can drift into excess and superstition.  

 

So, Protestants emphasize a caveat that both Catholics and Orthodox acknowledge, that Christians honor or venerate Mary (duleia) [pronounced “doo-lee-ah”] as the Mother of God, but we do not worship her (latreia) [pronounced “la-tree-ah”), which worship is due to God alone.  [The classic distinction in Greek is important.  Veneration, or duleia, is service due to one’s elder, such as a parent.  Worship, or latreia, is service due to the god.  Thus we honor Our Lady, but we worship only Our Father.]

 

Nevertheless, [Clendenin says] you might argue that no woman has influenced western history and culture more than Mary.  Her “Magnificat” in Luke 1:46–55 takes its name from the first word of the Latin text:

 

My soul glorifies the Lord
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
   of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
   for the Mighty One has done great things for me —
holy is his name.
   His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
   He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
   He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
   He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
   He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
   to Abraham and his descendants forever,
even as he said to our fathers.

 

Just how and why do we venerate Mary? [Clendenin asks]

 

Mary was a woman of exemplary faith.  She was a peasant girl from a working class neighborhood… in Nazareth, a village so insignificant that it is not mentioned in the Old Testament, in the [writings of the Jewish] historian Josephus… or in the Jewish Talmud.  “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” asked Nathanael [in the gospel of John] (John 1:46).  Her angelic encounter took place in an unknown, ordinary house, not the temple.  When the angel Gabriel foretold the birth of her son Jesus, Mary responded in words of faith that have echoed through the centuries: “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said.”  Her bold belief startled her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, who exclaimed “in a loud voice: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!  Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!” (Luke 1:38, 42, 45).

 

Catholics remind us of another “Marian” truth that is easy to overlook but nevertheless stupendous.  In some mysterious way the incarnation resulted not only from the work of God the Father but also from the will of the Mother Mary.  Numerous church fathers acknowledged Mary’s active cooperation in the history of salvation.  According to Thomas Aquinas (Summa, III:30), human redemption depended upon the consent of the pregnant teenager Mary.  She did not ask to bear the Son of God, nor was she compelled to do so.  She might have said no, or like Zechariah [she could have] responded to Gabriel’s staggering annunciation in disbelief.  But she did not shrink from God’s call on her life, and instead enriched all humanity by her willing participation and obedient submission.

 

Mary was also a woman of prophetic pronouncement.  Her “Magnificat” moves from the deeply personal to the explicitly political.  God, Mary proclaims, “has been mindful of the humble state of His servant. . . the Mighty One has done great things for me.”  This peasant girl who a few months later would bear the Son of God then praises God the Mighty One because He has “brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.  He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:48–49, 52–53).  I wonder what Herod or Tiberius thought when they heard her words.  The incarnation of the Son of God, Mary announced, meant the inversion of conventional wisdom.  Dethroning political power, plundering rich people, and redistributing food supplies signaled a new age and order.

 

Finally, [Clendenin writes] Eastern Orthodox believers emphasize that the son of Mary would be the Son of God, God made flesh, and so they honor her with the technical term theotokos (“bearer of God”)…  This term theotokos, bestowed upon Mary by church fathers since the third century, acknowledges her special role in redemption; she is nothing less than the “Mother of God.”  But when the term gained official status at the third ecumenical council of Ephesus in 431, the intent was to emphasize the full divinity of the Son more than the privileged status of his mother.  Mary did not give birth to a mere man… she bore a child who was fully divine.

 

(Dan Clendenin at:   http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20061218JJ.shtml  )

 

I think Dan Clendenin nicely covers all the bases.  Catholics and Orthodox certainly pay more attention to the Blessed Virgin than do most Protestants, and popular Catholic piety has sometimes accorded her greater status than careful theologians would allow.  Nevertheless, for both Protestants and Catholics, Mary is the proto-saint who, when God offered her the opportunity of making a unique and very risky contribution to the salvation of the word, said “yes” without hesitation.  By saying “yes” she became the “God-bearer.”  By saying “yes” she made the incarnation possible.  By saying “yes” she assured herself a life filled with personal difficulty, self-sacrifice, and sorrow, not least in seeing her son murdered on a cross.  And by saying “yes” she modeled for us and for all Christians a life of cooperation with the Divine Will, for the common good.  In her “yes” to God’s invitation, Mary proclaimed the greatness of the Lord.

Mary said “yes,” but too often the world says “no.”  Mary proclaimed a world turned upside down, but our world doesn’t like being inverted. 

 

Consider, for example, our current, somewhat raucous debate about health insurance reform.  For centuries Our Lady has been the Church’s preeminent exemplar of self-sacrifice.  But as we contemplate insurance reform, self-sacrifice doesn’t seem to be much in evidence.  At this stage, the main argument seems to be about keeping what we’ve got, even if what we’ve got isn’t working very well, and even if some have nothing at all.

 

Over the years I’ve worked with people who have serious health problems and need skilled medical care, but cannot get the care they need because they have no insurance.  I recall one parishioner at St. Columba some 15 years ago who suffered from diabetes.  Her blood sugar counts were astronomical.  When things got bad enough, she would go to the hospital and they would do their best to bring her counts under control.  When she was stabilized, they would send her home.  But lacking insurance, she had no way of getting the medications she needed, and before long she would be back at the hospital with the same problem.  More recently I had to deal with a person who was diagnosed with cancer, but absent insurance, she could not arrange for the treatment she so clearly needed.  How does one preach hope to a person in that kind of bind?

 

In recent days I’ve been especially irked by comments about “death boards” and “pulling the plug on grandma.”  I agree wholeheartedly that the government ought not to tell people what they should or should not do about end-of-life treatment.  The government’s intrusion in 2005 into the Terri Schiavo case makes it clear that state legislators and members of Congress and presidents should keep their noses out of family business.  And this is family business of the most difficult sort.  So often throughout my ministry I have counseled people who must make choices about end-of-life treatment for a parent, a spouse, or a child.  These are terrible decisions, often made in fear and trembling, but making them is one of the ways we demonstrate our love for the person whose life is at risk or ending.  Glib comments about “death boards” are insensitive and hurtful.

 

In the Magnificat — which has been the climactic canticle at Vespers since medieval times, and has been offered as an Evening Prayer canticle in every Anglican Prayer Book — Our Lady speaks of the world being turned upside down.  God “has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” (BCP p. 119)  This great reversal is one of the primary themes of Jesus’ teaching, as it was of the classical prophets of Israel before him.  The point is that God has a long-standing bias in favor of the poor, the cast-down, the sick, the captive, and the friendless.  To be on God’s side, one must be on the side of those in need.

 

What we should be doing today, as we wrestle with this very complicated and emotionally charged issue of health insurance reform, is to recognize that a little self-sacrifice is good for the soul.  We ought to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who has no health insurance, yet who faces the same health risks as you or I or any other American.  Can we, as Christians, say to that person, “This problem is just too complicated for Americans to figure out.”  Can we, as Christians, say to the uninsured, “I’ve got mine… your situation is not my concern”?  Or will we join with Our Lady in saying “yes” to God’s invitation, and bear the justice and compassion of Christ into this world, with all the trials and risks that entails?  Amen.

 

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

 

Readings for the Feast of St. Mary:  Lesson — Isaiah 61:10-11  |  Gradual — Psalm 34  |  Epistle — Galatians 4:4-7  |  Gospel — Luke 1:46-55

 

Collect for St. Mary the Virgin:

O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son:  Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, August 2, 2009 (Year B, Proper 13)

 

The gifts [Christ] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13)

 

As most of you know, God and a bank willing, I hope soon to be building a retirement home near Alpena.  Over the past 25 years, I’ve observed the nesting habits of people new to the north.  Many of the people on my little lake have until recently lived in places like Taylor, Dearborn, Sterling Heights, and Lansing, in suburban homes surrounded by carefully tended lawns.  These suburbanites come north looking for something different, something a bit less tame, and end up buying a lot on my lake.  There they build a summer cottage or retirement home where they can enjoy nature.  And then, perhaps out of habit or because their builder folds landscaping into the project, they cut down most of the trees so they can have a view of the lake, haul in several truckloads of topsoil, and plant a lawn that runs down the the lake’s edge.  The end result — except for the lake, of course — is a house and lot that looks rather like Taylor or Dearborn or Sterling Heights or Lansing.  

 

Apparently, many of my neighbors don’t realize that turf grass is not native to the northern coniferous forest of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, and that this kind of grass doesn’t grow well in the soil around my lake, soil which is officially classified as “Alpena very gravely sandy loam” (that’s “sand with a lot of rocks” to the uninitiated).  Some other type of vegetation — perhaps a groundcover native to this part of Michigan — would be more appropriate than a conventional lawn.  

 

But then, what’s a guy to do in the spring if he isn’t feeding his lawn large doses of fertilizer, most of which ends up in the lake, and then in the ground water?  And what’s a guy going to talk about over coffee when his buddies compare the horsepower and turning radii of their lawn tractors?  Boys must have their toys.  

 

Reflecting on all this, I’ve concluded that there’s something in the human psyche that loves a monoculture.

You know what a monoculture is.  Unless you’re an apartment or condo dweller, chances are you get out the lawn mower once a week and cut the monoculture around your house.  If you fail to do so, the neighbors will complain and the city fathers and mothers will cite you for violating their ordinance which requires that you keep your monoculture looking neat and tidy.

 

Again, if you dined on chicken or beef recently, you consumed the product of monocultural agriculture.  If you want to observe a monoculture, just look around at the nearest cornfield, wheat field, blueberry farm, or commercially grown forest.  

 

Monoculture is the practice of growing a single crop on a wide area of land.  Over the past century we have learned that the standardization inherent in monoculture allows a farmer to specialize in a single, genetically uniform crop; to efficiently plant, fertilize, and harvest that crop over hundreds of acres using specialized equipment; and to produce a much higher yield than old fashioned farming allows.  The same approach is used for efficient, mechanized production of chicken, beef, and other animal foods.  The benefits are obvious.  For the first time in human history, we produce far, far more food than we need.

 

There can be problems, of course.  Monoculture can lead to catastrophic crop failure if the crop everyone is planting becomes susceptible to a particular pathogen or insect.  For example, monoculture gave us the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-19th century, caused by “potato blight.”  It also set the stage for destruction of the French wine industry in the late-19th century when native grapevines were attacked by an imported aphid-like pest.  Today some Americans question the health consequences of engineered grains, factory-bred chicken, feed lot beef, and farm-raised salmon.

 

Nevertheless, something in the human psyche loves — simply loves — monoculture.  It seems to represent the fulfillment of the injunction in Genesis, when God tells the man and woman to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it….” (Gen. 2:28)  Monoculture has a sense of control and order about it which makes us feel secure.  We like to look around and see that we are doing what everyone else is doing, and doing it the same way.  By the same token, if we find one of our neighbors doing something odd, something unconventional — like surrounding his or her lakeside house not with turf grass but with wild bergamot, golden ragwort, and other native Michigan plants — we think that person odd, for they have violated the eleventh commandment: “Thou shalt not be different.”

 

As on the farm, so also in the vineyard we call the Church.  I think there is something in the hearts of many Christians which hungers for a uniformity of belief, a consistency of doctrine, and a regularity of practice which assures them that they hold the one, true faith.  They want to look around at the Lord’s vineyard and see everyone planting the same crop, harvesting that crop in the same way, and enjoying the same yield.  This “theological monoculture” gives these Christians a sense of control and stability in a rapidly changing world.  They need to know that they — meaning their denomination, or their congregation, or even their little group of like-minded parishioners — have got it right.

 

One of the great weaknesses of The Episcopal Church in the United States, and of some other provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion, is that we’ve never done this uniformity thing very well.  We Anglicans just like to disagree.  In part that results from our early history.  The English Reformation was never a clean break with the past, either in faith or practice.  Without really planning to, we evolved into a Church that is both Catholic and Reformed, and is composed of people who find it very difficult to agree about much of anything except that we like our Prayer Book.  For us, doctrine, discipline, and worship have all been the occasion for one or more of our Anglican food fights.  

 

Perhaps because we like to argue, we Anglicans have learned to be tolerant of diversity, finding in our disagreements a certain strength, a unity that runs deeper than mere tacit agreement about the nature of the Trinity, the validity of the Virgin Birth, or the interpretation of Holy Writ.  It is through this ongoing, sometimes heated exchange about issues of faith that we Anglicans have learned at least to see, if not necessarily to agree with, the other side of so many arguments.  This is one of the gifts we offer to the Universal Church.  Many would say, as I do, that without our tolerance for disagreement, the Episcopal Church would be just one more minor Christian denomination.

 

Unhappily, some Anglicans here in the U.S. and abroad wish to turn their backs on this long history of tolerance.  I would describe them as “theological monoculturalists,” people convinced that every Episcopalian should plant and harvest in the same way — or more precisely, their way.  They do “my way or the highway” theology.  Those who disagree with them are said to have turned their backs on the faith handed down from the apostles.

 

The problem with “theological monoculturalism” is that it so easily becomes a set of blinders which makes it impossible to see what new thing the Holy Spirit may be doing.  Slavery is a good example.  It is widely recognized that the Bible accepts slavery as a normal part of life, because the cultures which produced the biblical texts practiced slavery and considered it normal.  Today we regard the Bible’s attitude toward slavery as a quaint anachronism.  Yet it was only 150 years ago that good and faithful Episcopalians in the South used scripture to defend America’s peculiar institution as an expression of God’s will.  Indeed, I am told that when one Episcopal congregation in the South replaced the worn-out flooring in their sanctuary, they were shocked to find — long hidden from view, but still there below the back pews — the iron rod to which slaves had been shackled during Sunday worship.

 

We think of slavery as ancient history.  Actually, the last living American slaves passed on just a few decades ago.  Alfred Blackburn of Hamptonville, North Carolina, who died in 1951 at the age of 109, is one candidate for that honor; and Mary Walker of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who died in 1966 at about the age of 110, is another.  To be sure, we stand in closer proximity to our theological errors than we may care to acknowledge.  However, for our purposes this morning the point is that this issue troubled the Episcopal Church for generations.  It was only after long dispute that we all came to accept the truth into which the Holy Spirit was leading us.

 

When St. Paul tells the Ephesians that the Lord has endowed his Church with many gifts, all of which are intended to equip the saints for the work of ministry, let us hear Paul speaking about the important role which diversity plays in cultivating genuine unity in the Body of Christ.  Paul does not advocate a rigid uniformity of opinion.  He does not say that we are called to agree with each other about everything; or that we are called to be silent in the face of what we truly believe is in error.  Rather, he reminds the Ephesians — and he reminds us as well — that we are called to bear with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  It is this bearing with one another which brings real spiritual maturity and helps us grow into the full stature of Christ.  Amen.

 

— The Rev. John E. Laycock, Interim Pastor

 

Readings for Year B, Proper 13:  Lesson — Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15  |  Gradual — Psalm 78:23-29  |  Ephesians 4:1-16  |  John 6:24-35

 

Collect for Proper 13:

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.