A Vermont Wedding

I did a wedding last week for a young couple who lives in Massachusetts.  The bride was from Lexington.  She and her new husband attended the University of Vermont at the same time some years ago and then both received Master’s degrees from Columbia.  They only met later, though, while living and working in New York.  She wrote for the New York Times. He is a writer of children’s books.  They later moved to the Boston area to pursue another course, Teach for America in his case.  She plans to enter Harvard Divinity School in the fall.

 

I first knew the bride as a very engaged and inquisitive high school student at the Episcopal camp in Lexington.  She had lots of questions.  She still does.  And a lot of them, both then and now, have to do with faith.  And, both then and now, a lot of them have helped me understand my own faith better.  The Vermont wedding was such an occasion. 

She has good Episcopal instincts, even if she is more enamored of Buddhism at the moment than Christianity.  She worked with me to construct a service, in accordance with the rubrics of the Prayer Book, mind you, that was respectful of guests of many different faith traditions as well as those of none at all.  None of it was inconsistent with Christianity.  It just wasn’t always explicitly Christian.

The final blessing, however, was.  I suggested using the Nuptial Blessing from the Prayer Book.  It is quite beautiful in its realism about married life, and it is distinctly Christian, Eastern Orthodox in origin.  But the bride wanted to make one final change. 

She was not comfortable be with the line, “We give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.”  The way of the cross, she said, would not be understood by many of those present, especially her non-Christian friends.  It is admittedly a difficult concept. 

We worked on finding just the right language that would work.  Finally we came up with “sacrificial love” to get at the idea.  “We give you thanks for sending Jesus Christ  . . . to make the way of sacrificial love to be the way of life.”  And that, I think, hits the nail right on the head. 

The way of sacrificial love is indeed something I learned something about from marriage, the most life-giving experience of my life.  It is something I have learned a bit about from being a parent, from which I have found more life than I can say.  It is something I have learned from friendship, which has been a great blessing indeed.  It is something I have learned from being a pastor, as in helping a young couple figuring out life and faith find a way to make a traditional liturgy work for them with integrity (well, fairly traditional). 

I think that is what Jesus says in the Gospel for this week when he talks about the bread of life, another metaphor I think my young friends would have struggled with. Jesus said to the crowd, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (Jn. 6:36).  The bread of life is the way of sacrificial love.  Those who receive it and live it, lack for nothing that matters for life. 

In fact, the Jesus way, over and over, turns out to be the way of sacrificial love.  It is the way of life.  It is a mystery that faith sees.  My young friends had the faith, by whatever name, to see it.  And they found a way to invite others to see it in their own way, too.  And, of course, they gave the same gift to me.

Peace,

Holiness and Integrity

This week’s Old Testament lesson (2 Sam. 11:1-15) is the story we usually know as being about David and Bathsheba. It is really more about David and Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. And even then, I think I’ve been looking at this story a little wrongly. I’ve been thinking of it as being about David and Uriah in relation to Bathsheba. And that is partly true. I think I’m coming to see it as really being mostly about David and God. Well, mostly it’s about God.

You remember the story, of course. David, while walking on his roof, observes Bathsheba bathing. Uriah, who was a soldier, was away at the time fighting the king’s wars against the Ammonites. “So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her” (v.4). Soon Bathsheba sent word to David that she was pregnant.

When Uriah returned from the battlefield, David first directed him to return to his home and wife. David must have thought Uriah’s timely return to his wife would conceal the child’s true paternity.

Uriah, though, in a show of utter selflessness and honor refused to go to the comfort of his own house while the ark of God resides in a tent and while Uriah’s compatriots were away from home on the field of battle. David is not impressed with Uriah’s thorough decency. He resolved to have Uriah murdered instead.

The story is not so much about David and Bathsheba. Their dalliance merely sets up what is to come.

The story is not so much about David and Uriah, although the contrast between the two is striking.

The story is about David and God, and mainly it is about God’s response to David and God’s unshakable devotion to David. Or really, it is about God’s unshakable fidelity to the promises God has made to David, whether David deserves that or not. It is about God’s unshakable fidelity to God’s own integrity.

Now, to be sure, God will speak a severe judgment against David for David’s evil. That comes next week. But God does not retreat from God’s promise to David, either. That was last week. “Forever I will keep my steadfast love for David, and my covenant with him will stand firm. I will establish his line forever, and his throne as long as the heavens endure. . . . Once and for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David. His line shall continue forever, and his throne endure before me like the sun. It shall be established forever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies” (Ps. 89:28-29, 35-37).

In the end, the point is really not so much Bathsheba’s relationship with David or Uriah’s honor or David’s treachery. It is all about God’s holiness and not nearly so much what we do in response, good or bad. Our response matters, but God‘s integrity to God’s own word is the real point. Samuel is telling us something about God and not so much about Uriah, Bathsheba, or even David.

It is this: God’s holiness is in God’s integrity. So is ours. 

Peace, 

      

The Flag

It’s difficult, I think, for non-Southerners to understand why removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds in South Carolina could possibly be something that arouses such emotion to retain it.  Here’s the thing.  It’s difficult for me as a Southerner to understand, too.  It’s difficult because it requires me to come to terms with some things. 

 

When my son studied the Civil War in the eighth grade.  As the unit came to a close, all of the students wore Civil War costumes to school one day.  The boys were given the choice of coming as Union or Confederate soldiers.  And even though he lived in Atlanta and had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, my son chose the Union.  It was not the majority choice.  It made me very proud.

It made me very proud even if I had been brought up to believe in something called “Southern pride.”  It made me very proud even if I had been taught in my own childhood that the Confederate flag was a symbol of something noble about a “lost cause” rather than a symbol of racism.  Those are the phrases I’ve been surprised to hear brought out again over the last few weeks as if they made the Confederate flag defensible.  Of course, they don’t.  The flag went up over the South Carolina capitol in 1962 and made its appearance in the state flag of Georgia, my home, in 1956.  They were always a symbol of opposition to racial justice and not of some vague myth of something called Southern pride.  Happily, that symbol has been removed from both, and needs to be removed from the one state flag in which it remains. 

So why all the emotional reaction to what is so obviously right?  I think it’s because Southerners have a hard time coming to terms with the Civil War.  It’s amazing the things I’ve heard this week about the War (Southerners always capitalize this word when referring to the Civil War) and the South’s motivations for rebellion as the flag removal issue was debated.  Here’s the thing I think Southerners have to face.  While the causes of the war are complex and the reason people fought are many, there’s no getting around that the defense of slavery is simply indefensible.  Any way you cut it, slavery had a lot to do with it.  In fact, it’s pretty difficult to get around that that was the main reason for it, or at the very least, that without slavery, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened.

This is what makes it very difficult for us, some more so than others.  It’s difficult for me to conceive of my ancestors who fought for the South as monsters.  I don’t know whether or not they owned slaves, but they may have.  It would still be difficult for me to see them as monsters.  I didn’t know them, of course, but I knew the children they reared as my grandparents, who themselves had a more moderate approach to race (my grandfather referred to the Klan as “fools,” but it may have been for the attire).  And I learned a lot about how to live and love from these people. 

Here’s what I as a Southerner have come to realize.  Try as I once might have, it is impossible to justify my ancestors’ actions in the War, at least to the extent I know what those actions were.  They may have been fighting to preserve a dying economic system.  It was indefensible.  They may have just been fighting to protect their homes and owned no slaves at all.  It is just as indefensible.  They were undoubtedly culturally conditioned and maybe it’s wrong to judge them by the standards of a later day.  Still, though, there’s no defense.  After all, they were capable of moral thought and, although I’m sure there would have been a price to pay, could have dissented from the majority point of view, just like their descendent, my son.  That would have made them the real Southern heroes of the War. 

So that’s what I have to come to terms with.  Most of my Southern compatriots three generations back were conformists in a system of evil.  I’m going to hold onto the fact that they weren’t evil themselves, not because of Southern mythology but because I have personal evidence of the love they passed down in my family.  But it doesn’t mean I can defend their actions in any way, unless there were some I don’t know of back there who had the moral courage to stand up for right. 

I think this is what white Southerners have to come to terms with.  Getting rid of the flag is a good step.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that coming to terms with it evokes no small amount of emotion.
 

And, by the way, I hardly think Southerners are the only ones who have some things to come to terms with.  It’s just that the presenting issues for us, like flags, are less subtle and lend themselves less to denial.  That may the grace of being a Southerner today.

Peace,

Fear and Living Life

Fear is such a predominant theme in the Bible.  That is so, I think, because it is such a predominant theme in life and such a powerful motivation for us.  It is no wonder that the first words of angels are often “Do not be afraid.”  Both the Old Testament and the Gospel readings for this week deal with it.  “When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”  (1 Samuel 17:11)  And again, “[Jesus] said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’” (Mk. 4:40)

I have preached many sermons over the years about fear, all of them dealing on some level with my own.  It is a subject that would be hard to avoid.  I once preached what I’m sure was a bang-up sermon on this subject and the threat fear is to faith.  I think it had to do with the fact that human beings come with few natural fears, really only two—loud noises and falling (although I think there are differences of psychological opinion about this).  A member of the congregation, one I thought would wholeheartedly agree with what I had said, made an observation afterwards that has made me think about fear sermons more carefully ever since.  He reminded me that not all fears are irrational, and indeed, some contribute to survival, which would have to make them beneficial.  Fear, he argued, is not all bad.

I’ve struggled with that idea over the years.  I still do.  Here’s where I am now, though.

Fear, it seems to me, is neither inherently bad nor inherently good.  My parishioner is right.  Fear has its usefulness. 

But the issue isn’t the one he posed, whether fear is rational or not.  The issue is whether it gets in the way of living life to the fullest, living the lives we are called to live, living the lives we desire, in our heart of hearts, to live.  And when that happens, whether the fear is rational or not really is beside the point. 

Facing Goliath on the field of battle does not strike me as an irrational fear.  David did anyway.  To do otherwise would have interfered with the life David wanted to live.  A storm on the open sea doesn’t strike me as an irrational fear for people in a small boat.  The problem is that fear got in the way of the disciples’ relationship with Jesus, and that was the whole purpose of being in the boat to begin with.

Rational or not, the spiritual message is that a courageous life is a life more fully lived than a fearful one.  I suspect that is because it is a more fully human one.  The natural fears of human beings, after all, are few.  And faithful fears are fewer still if they exist at all.

Peace,

Kudzu and Mustard Seeds

About 130 years ago, someone in the United States got a bright idea, to import into our country a vine that had use both as a decorative ground cover, something like ivy, and also for controlling soil erosion, particularly in the South. The vine is known as kudzu, and it came to us from Japan.

It was not long before the kudzu, particularly when it was left unattended when used for erosion control, got out of control.In my home state of Georgia it literally covers everything. It overgrows telephone poles and trees. It grows incredibly quickly. It is a constant effort to keep it trimmed back along interstate highways. It is generally considered a terrible nuisance and people in Georgia rue that day that it was introduced to our state. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but most anyone I know would tell you that kudzu, was a terrible mistake.

And that it is why it is startling to me that Jesus said the kingdom of God is like another noxious botanical monster, the mustard plant. The mustard plant and kudzu have a lot in common. They are both considered weeds. They both grow rapidly. They are both considered by farmers to be damaging. They are both almost impossible to control.

And that is why it is so surprising to me that Jesus, going about the rural country of Galilee as he was, speaking to farmers and those who depended on the land to earn a living, seeking to proclaim the good news among those who would have more than a passing acquaintance with mustard plants and for whom mustard plants would have had a very negative connotation, would look precisely there for a way to describe the coming kingdom.

The kingdom, he said, “is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." What Jesus is saying is that the kingdom, mustard plants, and kudzu are very much alike. They start benignly and that grow uncontrollably until they take over everything around, in the case of kudu until it covers the telephone poles as if they weren’t there, and in the case of mustard plants, until they grow so large that the birds of the air make nests in their shade. That is what the kingdom of God is like, first and foremost, completely out of control.

Peace,