Pentecost 7, Year A (2017)

Pentecost 7, Year A (2017)

Proper 11 :: Genesis 28: 10–19a; Psalm 139: 1–11, 22–23; Romans 8: 12–25 ; Matthew 13: 24–30, 36–43

This is the homily given by Fr. Gene Tucker at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 23, 2017.

“WHY NOT A PERFECT WORLD,
WHY NOT A PERFECT CHURCH?”

(Homily text:  Matthew 13: 24–30, 36–43)

Since we are in the season of the Sundays after Pentecost, we are making our way through Matthew’s gospel account, which is the gospel text which is assigned to most of the Sundays in Year A of our three-year lectionary cycle.

This morning, Matthew puts before us Jesus’ teaching about the nature of the kingdom of heaven, the Parable of the Weeds, or – as it was known in a previous time – the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Matthew provides us with a generous account of Jesus’ teaching, while Mark provides only a very brief summary of it (see Mark 4: 26–29).

This morning’s parable brings with it Jesus’ explicit explanation of its meaning and its application. In that sense, then, it is like the parable we heard last week, the Parable of the Sower. (At this point, it’s probably worth mentioning that it is relatively rare for the Lord to provide such an explicit explanation of His parables ... we are blessed to have such an explicit explanation!)

As is true with much of what Matthew imparts to us in his gospel account, this parable strikes us with its image of the world, the existence of evil, the enduring character of evil (until God’s judgment separates evil out, leaving only the good), and the place of the sons and daughters of the Son of Man in such a place which seems to be a complex mixture of good and bad: Matthew’s account often has a harsh and biting character.

I don’t know about you, but my heart’s deepest desire is for the Lord’s way to become known and to be followed by everyone. I yearn for the world’s perfection, and for the elimination of evil and all of its harmful effects on humankind. These desires are succinctly summarized in a phrase from Eucharistic Prayer B of our current Prayer Book….the phrase that comes to mind is a prayer that the Lord will “in the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ.” (See the Book of Common Prayer, 1979 edition, page 369.)

After all, the Lord has come. His way has become known through all the world. He has shown us the way to the Father. He has demonstrated, by His example of love in His death on the cross, the way of love, which conquers the ways of hate and evil. He has begun the conquering of evil and death in His rising to new life on Easter Sunday morning.

Then why can’t the world simply fall in line with the Lord’s teaching and His ways, which are superior to all other ways? Why can’t the world reach the perfection that Jesus sets before us? Why can’t the Church, for that matter, also attain perfection?

Jesus’ parable, set before us this morning, offers some insights into all this.

But we’re going to have to dig into the text to discover the nuances of what the Lord has to tell us about good and about evil, and about the ways in which the two find themselves side-by-side in the world.

Turning to the parable, the first and perhaps most notable detail in the Lord’s teaching has to do with the word which is translated as “weed.” The Greek, however, uses a particular word[1] to describe what sort of a weed the Lord has in mind: It is darnel, which the dictionary describes as a noxious, poisonous weed which resembles wheat in the early stages of its growth, but which can be distinguished easily from wheat once it matures.

With this bit of information in hand, we are ready to make some observations about the nature of good and the nature of evil as we find it in the world in which we live. I offer the following observations by topic.

The world is a complicated place:  As we consider what we know about the way wheat grows, and about the way darnel grows, we notice – from the Lord’s teaching – that it is very difficult to tell the difference between wheat and darnel, between good and evil, in the early stages of growth and development. No wonder the Lord tells the disciples that - should they want to go out and pluck up the weeds (darnel) - they will risk pulling up the good wheat at the same time. Why? Because the roots of both the wheat and the darnel are intertwined, one with another. The reality is that the good in the world is often in close, intertwined connection with evil. We, as sons and daughters of the Son of Man, cannot avoid contact with evil.

Knowing in part, but not completely:  A fine point in Jesus’ teaching has to do with the remark made by the servants, who seem to notice some evidence of the presence of weeds in the field. But, the Lord cautions them, reminding them that their knowledge of what is wheat and what is darnel is incomplete. So the lesson to be gained here is that our knowledge of what is actually evil and what is actually good is oftentimes imperfect, and is often based on partial knowledge of an given situation. The world (the field in Jesus’ teaching) is oftentimes anything but black-and-white in its clarity.

The ripened plant shows its true identity:  Jesus seems to caution His disciples (those first disciples who heard today’s teaching and all those down through the ages who have followed Him) not to rush to judgment about the difference between good and evil. The weeds (Greek: zizania) can be distinguished from wheat only when the plants produce the seed, which is the fruit of their growth. So the Lord seems advise us to be patient until such time as the true nature of things is known. Elsewhere, the Lord cautions us that a tree will be known by the fruit it produces (see Matthew 7: 15 – 20). So, too, here the Lord seems to indicate that – in the fullness of time – the nature of things will be known, although not always immediately. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m very impatient in wanting the Lord’s ways and the Lord’s will to be known and followed in the world.)

The world has value to God:  Notice how Jesus tells us that the world has a purpose. He says that God will, in God’s own good time, cleanse the world of the things which corrupt God’s good design in creating that world. Inexorably, God’s purposes are being worked out, until the time when God will intervene to bring the world into the likeness which we see in the Genesis creation account, that time and place which is characterized by the Garden of Eden. (At this point, it’s worth noting that God’s final purposes are never far from Matthew’s mind as he records Jesus’ teachings….peppered throughout Matthew’s account is the view that God is going to have the final say in the judgment on the Last Day.)

If the world has value to God, and if the sons and daughters of the Son of Man (one of Matthew’s favorite ways to describe Jesus) have a role to play in preserving the worth of the world (after all, what value does a wheat field have if there is no wheat in that field?), then what response should the sons and daughters of the Son of Man make to the circumstances of the world as it is, being composed of intertwined good and evil?

The Church is not the kingdom of heaven:  Notice how Jesus places His children (the sons and daughters of the Son of Man) in the kingdom of heaven, but He does not equate the kingdom with those children of His. They are differentiated in His parable. The kingdom is the entire world, all of what God has created. His disciples (sons and daughters) are placed in that world to increase its value, and to produce fruit which is worthy of the kingdom. (To bring this point home to our own situation, we might ask ourselves how often we think of St. John’s, Huntingdon, as being an outpost of the kingdom of heaven.”

The Church’s role in bringing about the kingdom of heaven:  Down through time, Jesus’ disciples, which make up the body of Christ which is generally equated with the Church, have responded to the presence and the power of evil in the world in three ways:

• Withdrawal from the world: In the fourth century, with adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and then with the collapse of that empire and the beginnings of what became known as the Dark Ages, Christian communities were established in which monks and nuns cloistered themselves off from the world. Some of the initial motivations for the establishment of the monasteries and convents stemmed from a strong reaction against the evil which seemed to predominate in the world. In succeeding years, other Christians would withdraw from the world in a number of different ways: Some would long for the kingdom of heaven to come in all its fullness, some even to the predicting of a specific time and place when the Lord Jesus would return to usher in His kingdom (notice that all such persons who have made those predictions were wrong!), while others would long for heaven to be known on earth (as the Lord’s Prayer states, “thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven”) to such an extent that the temporal affairs and concerns of the world were neglected. (I can’t resist saying that such persons are often “so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good!”)
• Passivity in the face of evil: Another response to evil that Christians have made - historically and in our own day – is to be passive in the face of evil. It’d be possible to draw such a conclusion from this morning’s parable. After all, the Lord makes it clear that, at the final judgment, all causes and presence of evil will be removed from the world. But until then, evil will be present. It’d be easy to simply accept the presence of evil, and to say, “Well, it’s the Lord’s business to sort all this out and to rid the world of the work of the evil one.” To a partial extent, such an observation is true, for it is the Lord’s role to make the final judgment. But the parable tells us that God’s people have a role to play in preserving the worth of the field, that is, the world. So, to the last observation we will make in this homily, we turn to this:
• Producing fruit which will guarantee the harvest: Healthy wheat produces seeds which will, in turn, make it possible for future growth and future harvests, to take place. The field, as we noted a moment ago, has value only so long as there is wheat in it. Otherwise, the field becomes a worthless place full of noxious weeds. So the Church – which is composed of the children of the Son of Man – has an important role to play in giving the world value. We are called to produce fruit for the kingdom. Put another way, we are called to counteract the presence and the fruit of evil. Essential in this process is the importance of day-in-and-day-out faithful living, just as wheat grows constantly to come to the place where it will produce a valuable crop. So, too, are we called to show our true character as children of God by the daily produce of our lives.

AMEN.

       

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[1]   The Greek word is zizania. None of the more modern English translations differentiate the Greek word from a generic sort of weed, although the Authorized (King James) Version uses the word “tares”, which does tend to identify the type of weed more specifically.

Pentecost 6, Year A (2017)

Proper 10 :: Isaiah 55: 10–13; Psalm 119: 105–112; Romans 8: 1–11; Matthew 13: 1–9, 18–23

This is the homily by Fr. Gene Tucker that was given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 16, 2017.

“WHICH SOIL AM I (NOW)?”

Homily text:  Matthew 13: 1–9, 18–23

This morning, we hear Jesus’ very familiar parable of the four soils. For the early Church, this must have been an extremely important part of the Lord’s teaching for Mark and Luke also record this parable.[1]

Jesus’ teaching, which outlines the various responses to the Good News He was appointed to bring, describes not only the reactions He received during His earthly ministry, but it also accurately describes the responses the Apostles would receive as they went out into the world, bringing the news of Jesus Christ with them.

The early congregation to whom Matthew may have been writing (many biblical scholars seem to accept the idea that Matthew was writing late in the first century to a Church which was located in what is now modern-day Syria, a congregation which was made up of both Jews and Gentiles) most likely valued Jesus’ teaching on this subject, for the responses these early Christians received from family members, community members, and others most likely mirrored what Jesus had said.

In approaching this text, many preachers tend to focus on the various responses to the Good News that people in every age make….it’s worth stating that people’s reactions don’t differ much as the ages roll along. Other preachers take up the theme of God’s generosity in spreading the seed of the Good News, scattering it even in places (and on people) where there is little hope of a positive outcome.

But this morning, let’s take another view of this text:  Let’s ask ourselves what our spiritual condition is at this very moment. For, I suspect that, if your life experience is anything like mine, I find myself in one of the four conditions Jesus outlines: 

• At times, I am like the hardened soil which cannot and will not receive the truth of God’s word.
  
• At other times, I tend to want to give up on God when things are going poorly or with difficulty.
  
• At still other times, the cares and occupations of daily life tend to crowd out the essential truths of God.
  
• And - though only by the overwhelming grace of God - the soil of my heart and mind offers a receptive and fruitful home for the implanted word of God.

Given this reality – and I believe it to be reality – what resources do we have to improve the soil condition of our hearts and minds?

Surely, one resource has to do with the power of the Holy Spirit, power which can remold and remake us into the productive disciples that God requires.

Another resource would have to be the power of prayer, and specifically, a prayer to God to overcome our limitations and our self-centeredness which tends to isolate us from God’s word implanted.

Still another resource is our wonderful Book of Common Prayer (1979 edition), which offers us prayers which are suitable for each of these situations.

Turning to the Book of Common Prayer, we note first the condition of the soil which cannot receive God’s word, thereby offering the evil one the opportunity to snatch the seed and carry it away. The prayer that comes to mind in this situation is found on the top of Page 280 in the Good Friday liturgy. Its text reads as follows:

Merciful God, creator of all the peoples of the earth and lover of souls: Have compassion on all who do not know you as you are revealed in your Son Jesus Christ; let your Gospel be preached with grace and power to those who have not heard it; turn the hearts of those who resist it; and bring home to your fold those who have gone astray; that there may be one flock under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Notice particularly that phrase which says, “turn the heart of those who resist it (the Gospel).”

Next, let’s consider the circumstances in which a person initially responses to the Good News, but then turns away from it when hardship arises. On Page 99, we find the Collect for Peace in the Office of Morning Prayer, which says:

O God, the author of peace and lover of concord, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the description that Jesus offers us, in which a person’s faith and ability to receive and hear God’s word is choked out by the cares and concerns of daily living. (I cannot resist saying that, in our contemporary society, this is an all-too-common situation.) Two prayers which may be helpful in such situations are the Collect for Grace in the Office of Morning Prayer, found on Page 100:

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being: We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit, that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you, but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And the Collect for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (unfortunately, not often heard because the season of Epiphany isn’t long enough to allow us to celebrate that Sunday) may be helpful, as well. Its text is found on Page 216:

Most loving Father, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Finally, of course, the Lord wants us to be fruitful, to be faithful stewards of the goodness and love which has been made known to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Three collects come to mind, in order to encourage us in our walk with God:

The Collect for the First Sunday after Christmas, found on Page 213:

Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; 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.

And also the Collect for Proper 17, found on Page 233:

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

And finally, a Collect # 68, After Worship, found on Page 834:

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that the words which we have heard this day with our outward ears, may, through thy grace, be so grafted inwardly in our hearts, that they may bring forth in us the fruit of good living, to the honor and praise of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

May God’s Holy Spirit dig into our hardened hearts, taking away all things that would prevent us from receiving God’s implanted word, that we may bear fruit suitable for harvest, some thirty-fold, some sixty-fold, and some a hundred-fold.

AMEN.

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[1]   For the parallel passages, see Mark 4: 1 – 9, 13 – 20 and Luke 8: 4 – 8, 11 – 15.

Pentecost 5, Year A (2017)

Proper 9 :: Zechariah 9: 9–12; Psalm 45: 11–18; Romans 7: 15–25a;  Matthew 11: 16–19, 25–30

This is the homily given by Fr. Gene Tucker at St. John’s in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, July 9, 2017.

“TUG OF WAR”

(Homily text:  Romans 7: 15–25a)

For many years during my childhood, I – like many children do – spent some of my summers at summer camp. One year, one of the recreational events for staff and campers was a tug of war. The contest took place on the edge of a small lake, where there was lots of sand. The campers and their staff were divided up into two teams, the rope was laid out, and a piece of cloth was tied to the middle of the rope, where it was laid out on a line that had been drawn in the sand. That would mark the beginning point of the contest.

Instead of asking the teams to take hold of the rope, and to be ready to begin the contest, the teams were told they had a few minutes (I can’t remember exactly how many) to get ready. Right away, both teams tried to find ways to improve their chances of winning. The other team (from mine) got down on their hands and knees and began to dig holes in the soft sand. When my team tried to do the same, we discovered that the sand where we were was much harder, and almost impossible to dig in. Immediately, I thought to myself, “No fair!” I was sure we were going to lose.

And, of course, when the two teams took up their positions on the rope, and the strip of cloth in the middle was lined up with the marker in the sand, the cloth on the rope slipped away from us and toward the other team, whose stronger and older members were at the back of the rope with their feet firmly planted in the holes they’d dug in the sand.

This scene from my youth is a good way to see the back-and-forth contest that St. Paul describes in our epistle reading from the Letter to the Romans, chapter seven.

Notice how he admits to us that he knows the good he ought to be doing, but finds himself doing exactly those things he knows he ought not to be doing. “Wretched man that I am!” he says in describing his predicament.

Paul is like that strip of cloth in a tug of war, finding himself being pulled first in one direction, then in the other. But, he says, the stronger team often seems to be the team that represents the “bad stuff” in life.

Paul’s candor in admitting that he is far from perfect can be a source of deep comfort to all who walk the path of life. Can we say, with Paul, that “if there’s hope for him, there’s hope for us, as well?” Yes, we can.

Oftentimes, we tend to think of the giants of the faith as those who have conquered all of life’s challenges. We may think that these saints are perfect – or nearly so – in every respect. We may think that the ups-and-downs of life are now far behind these holy ones. But the witness of Holy Scripture points us in an entirely different direction: The majority of the heroes we hold in such high regard are heroes in large measure because they are deeply flawed human beings in whom we see God at work, perfecting them, purifying them, so that they will reflect God’s holiness in the world.

As an example, let’s take a look at Paul’s life trajectory: For one thing, we notice that Paul was an accessory to murder, holding the cloaks of those who stoned the Deacon Stephen to death. (See the Book of Acts, chapter nine.) For another, we read a little further on in Acts that Paul was on his way to the city of Damascus to attest followers of Jesus, and to bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment.

So Paul has “clay feet”, as do many of the prominent persons in the Bible.

(I can’t resist saying that, if Paul were applying for ordination today, and if he were to sit in front of a Commission on Ministry and admit to his past, or if he were to admit that he knows all too well how to do “bad stuff”, that his application to be ordained would go nowhere. Not these days.)

Paul affirms a basic truth about human nature:  That we are sinners, fully-trained sinners, people who know how to do “bad stuff”, and who need no training whatsoever to be good at it.

St. Augustine, that hero of the faith who was Bishop in the north African city of Hippo in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, picks up Paul’s view of human nature, absent God’s intervention to point us human beings in a different direction. Augustine deals with the subject of what theologians now call Original Sin, taking the view that our sinfulness is so complete and so all-encompassing that our view of ourselves is so obscured by our condition that we cannot see ourselves clearly at all.

Augustine is forced to deal with this unpleasant reality because of the existence of an early heresy known as Pelagianism. This movement, which exerted a very powerful influence on the Church during Augustine’s lifetime, is named for its main proponent, a British monk named Pelagius.

Pelagius maintained that we human beings do not require God’s help in order to save ourselves. In other words, Pelaguis said that we human beings can “pull ourselves up by our own spiritual bootstraps”, no help needed from God.

Paul and Augustine are united in their refutation of Pelagius’ view of human nature.

Though we human beings are created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1: 26), and though we are endowed by God with “memory, reason and skill” (as our Eucharistic Prayer C in the Book of Common Prayer states), we are incapable, for all of those godly gifts, of improving ourselves.

There is a strain within Christianity that maintains that complete and total holiness is possible in this life. Some of those who hold this view are members of what is known as the Holiness Movement. But if we consider Paul’s honesty about our condition and our ability to commit sin, then we will have to reject such a view of our ability to overcome our sinful impulses. Holiness, it must be stated, always remains the goal of all who follow Jesus Christ. That is a very beneficial reminder that those who follow the Holiness Movement’s tenets provide for other Christians. But though this goal must always be in view, the reality is that we will never fully reach that goal in this life. And, just to be sure, we also ought to state that that any progress toward the holiness that God expects of us is entirely due to the Holy Spirit’s intervention in our lives, and intervention which overcomes our fallen nature to begin the work of creating within us the light of God which will drive away the darkness of our innermost selves.

So we are like that strip of cloth in the tug of way of my youth, which gets tugged first one way, then the other, as our old nature – which has not completely died out – tries to pull us in the direction of doing “bad stuff”. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit intervenes to counteract these impulses, drawing us out of our helpless condition, toward God.

Welcome to life’s struggle. It is a struggle that will follow us until we draw our last breath and until – by God’s grace alone – we come face-to-face with the God who created us and who loves us with an indescribable love.

No wonder Paul can affirm in today’s text that God’s way and God’s way can win out in us. No wonder that Paul affirms that – if we let Him – God will draw us, inexorably, to Him, delivering us from the bonds of those things that could separate us from Him.

With Paul, we can say, “Thanks be to God”.

AMEN.