To Bet the Farm

“Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”  (Ps. 126:7)

I’ve been told, although I don’t know it to be true, that the every Palestinian spring is accompanied by an ancient ritual of planting the seed for that year’s crop. The seed saved from the previous year’s harvest is ceremoniously taken from where it has been stored for the winter to the weeping and wailing of the women of the family as the only thing standing between the family and starvation the next winter is gambled on the next harvest.  Then, months later, the ritual is reversed with the joyful ingathering of what the seeds have yielded placed in storage along with the seeds for the next year.  And then the cycle repeats.  It must have been so when the Psalm was first sung. 

Every harvest is preceded by risking of the seed left from the last one.  Only by going out weeping, carrying the seed, can there be a coming with joy, a shouldering of sheaves.  Every harvest, at least in the biblical economy, begins with risking everything.  It is where the expression “to bet the farm” comes from.  It is true with much of the world’s economy today.

It is not so true in what we call the developed world.  And I’m glad for that.  But I do think diversification that minimizes risk also makes something spiritual more difficult to experience.  For Americans, it is largely experienced elsewhere.  And isn’t that why world mission is such a priority?

Peace,

Shield the Joyous

There is a concluding prayer in Compline I have always loved.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.  Amen.  (BCP, p. 134)

I love the thought that the church is praying for those who work or watch or weep through the need as well as for those who sleep.  The sick, the weary, the dying, the suffering, and the afflicted are never far from the church’s care or God’s.

The last petition, to shield the joyous, has always seemed a bit strange to me.  At first glance it does not seem like the others, which are all some situation of need, sometimes great need.  Shielding the joyous seems different to me.  It has been something I’m not sure I have understood.  Until now.  Now I get it.

My tutor for the need to shield the joyous is our new puppy, a black Labrador Retriever named Georgia (Annie is fine, by the way, although at 14, slowing down).  Georgia is almost nine months old.  We’ve had her since March.  And for many of the days during these seven months, we have thought Georgia was a huge mistake.

As puppies will do, Georgia has unbridled energy and is being cared for by two people without it.  If we don’t make sure she gets the exercise she needs, we pay a high price. We take her to the dog run in the park for self-preservation and a break.

Georgia’s enthusiasm is boundless.  She runs around our living room as if it were her playground, jumping from floor to sofa to chair to floor and then running around behind them all.  Nothing makes her happier than to destroy a newspaper or magazine.  Our apartment looks like a hamster cage.  She has a fondness for Ginger’s clothes (fortunately, not mine so much, except undershirts).  She landed in the doghouse so to speak for eating Ginger’s glasses.  She finds playing keep away to be hilarious fun, taking something she shouldn’t have, often a shoe, and racing around the room while we try to take it back.  We’ve learned to erect barricades so we can trap her.  I may not have her energy, but I’m smarter than she is.  I think.

In all of her exuberance she also a tendency to get into more serious trouble.  It is not uncommon for me to have to pry something potentially harmful out of her mouth.  Somehow in all her bouncing off the walls she injured her ACL.  (The vet prescribed strict rest.  I know you’re kidding, I said.)

There was the day she pulled herself out of her collar while we were on vacation in North Carolina.  It took her a minute to realize what had happened, but when she did, she took advantage of her new-found freedom and ran straight for the road.

Fortunately it is a small town.  I flagged down oncoming traffic so that I could catch her.  People waited patiently in their cars while I chased her from one side of the road to the other.  Finally, I asked one of the drivers to open his back door.  Only then was I able to grab her as she made a break to the getaway car.  Puppies are fast.

No harm done, thanks be to God, but it makes shielding the joyous make sense to me.  Exuberant puppies know nothing of danger.  Excitement knows nothing of being guarded.  Joy does not shield itself.  It’s up to those who love the joyous to do that. 

So now the prayer to shield the joyous makes sense to me.  And the one about giving rest to the weary has fresh meaning, too.  All for the sake of love.  Amen.

Peace,

Loopholes and Compassion

I once preached what I thought was a really good sermon about marriage.  My basic point was that that commitment had ceased to be a value in our culture. 

 

So the very next Sunday I was again standing at the church door greeting my congregation.  I woman I thought a lot of came up to me, shook my hand as she always did, and said, “Father, I want you to know that I’ve been thinking a lot about your sermon last week.  And I’ve decided to divorce my husband.”  Now her husband may very well have needed divorcing.  I don’t really know.  Still, it was not exactly the result I was going for.

Divorce, to be sure, is sometimes a necessary evil.  It is sometimes something simply unavoidable.  It is sometimes something that is actually in the best interests of the people involved, particularly when there is abuse of some kind.  Over my years as a priest, I have found myself on occasion encouraging someone to take the necessary steps to protect herself and her children.  I have, on occasion, asked people to stop and both think and pray carefully about what they were doing, although I’ve never tried to tell someone what they should do when it comes to marriage and divorce. 

This week’s gospel reading is Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce.  It is often misunderstood, particularly in two ways.  For one thing, even Jesus does not say divorce is never permissible.  He characterizes it as regrettable and a concession to human hardness of heart.  What Jesus said is that remarriage after divorce is impermissible.  Nor did Jesus say that remarriage after divorce was permissible if one acknowledged fault in the failure of the first marriage.  He just said it was impermissible.  Period. 

Southerners have an expression for this.  This is the point at which Jesus has done gone from preachin’ and gone to meddlin’.   

Given how clearly Jesus spoke, it is amazing, is it not, that I have never heard a sermon preached evil of remarriage.  I’ve heard sermons preached about the evils of a lot of things and about a lot of sexual practices but not once about remarriage.  Remarriage is something we not only allow; we celebrate it. 

Generally speaking, we look at second marriages as a second chance at life and a second chance at love.  Second chances are generally something we think people ought to have.  People do stupid things sometimes.  They ought to have another chance.  People make mistakes.  They ought to have another chance.  People even sometimes end up divorced through no fault of their own.  They ought to have a second chance.  People get hurt by our human tendency to hardness of heart.  They ought to have a second chance.

And doesn’t this have something to do with why I’ve never heard a sermon against remarriage?  The explicit words of Jesus notwithstanding, followers of Jesus, precisely because they are trying to be followers of Jesus, have an immense capacity to seek compassion.  They have an immense capacity to seek mercy.  They have an immense capacity to seek forgiveness.   They have an immense capacity to seek love.  They take seriously that Jesus said, not to give just a second chance, but to give seventy times seven chances.  That is one of the things that makes me want to be a Christian.

The only thing that worries me is when our capacity to seek compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and love tends to be greater with respect to our own situations in life than with respect to someone else’s.  We have made an enormous exception to the words of Scripture that have a tendency to benefit ourselves.  I have a hard time seeing Jesus as having a problem with that.  The problem comes when we make an enormous exception to the words of Scripture to benefit ourselves, to give ourselves a loophole in the law, but refuse to do that for others.  And that, my friends, is something I do think Jesus has a problem with—a big problem.

Peace,

Praying for Parking Places

I once attended a conference on prayer.  I was invited by a very devout person, whom I have no doubt prayed a lot.  Mostly I think she prayed for me to fall off the Earth.  I often have that effect on the devout.  Still, it was an expectation of the job so I went.  I couldn’t have the bishop not appearing to be interested in prayer, and in fact, I actually am. 

I was surprised, though, to hear praying for parking places being extolled as an example of faithfulness.  I had never thought of praying for a parking place, although I have come to see the utility of it since moving to New York.  It seemed too trivial for God in the moment.

Now this part is wrong and it goes to something I learned as I reflected on that conference on prayer.  I think my spiritual director had to point out my error.  Nothing, of course,  is too trivial for God.  If God has counted the hairs of our heads (Mt. 10:30), nothing is beyond God’s caring.  But that doesn’t mean nothing is beyond God’s acting.

The problem with praying for parking places is not that it is beneath God’s dignity or not worth God’s time, even if it isn’t.  The problem is that it is selfish.  After all, the reason parking places are scarce is that there are a lot of people who need them.  Whereas I might want a convenient place at the grocery store, someone else might need a space close to the Urgent Care to take a sick child.  The person I’m praying against (that says it all, doesn’t it?) might need the space closer to the grocery story because she just had hip surgery.  Or someone else might need the space closer to the grocery story because he’s just had some devastating news and needs to get home to deal with it.  My prayer is trivial in the extreme by comparison, but the real problem is that it is selfish, that my wants are more important that someone’s else needs or even someone else’s wants. 

The Epistle of James speaks of the prayer of faith and the prayer of the righteous.  What distinguishes that sort of prayer from praying for parking places?

I think there are two things.  One is that the faithful prayer of the righteous is more often than not for others rather than for oneself.  “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.  The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).  The prayer of the righteous is prayer for the well-being of others.

Not all faithful prayer is for others, though.  Faithful prayer can be for oneself.  James mentions both those who suffer and those who are joyous.  The faithful prayer of those who suffer is about a need.  The faithful prayer for the cheerful is a song of praise.  (James 5:13)  That is also a need of a different kind.   Faithful prayer, at a minimum, is about what one needs and not what one wants. 

The difference between wants and needs is something many of us have a hard time getting, to be sure.  A lot of my time as a parent has been about trying to teach my children the difference between wants and needs.  I’m sure the same was true with my parents with respect to me.  I am quite inclined to get them mixed up to this day.  When it comes to prayer, though, praying for parking places is almost always about want.  There just isn’t much faith in it.  And if I happen to get the parking place of my dreams, I’m pretty sure that’s a matter of luck and not the sort of prayer James calls powerful and effective.

Peace,

Stumbling Block

I was walking back to the office from a lunch meeting.  The meeting had been productive as well as interesting.  It was a beautiful spring day, the kind that makes you grateful to be able to breathe in the air.  I was somewhere along Lexington Avenue, I think, at about 39th or 40th street.  I waited for the light to cross and as I got to the other side, I somehow missed the curb.  I wasn’t looking at my phone, just not paying attention that carefully; distracted, I think, by the beauty and satisfaction of the day.

I tried to catch my balance for three or four awkward steps as I must have done when a toddler.  Curiously, I remember the heaviness of each unbalanced step, my foot hitting the pavement hardly and my arms flailing in unknown directions, indeed just as I’ve seen toddlers do.  I’m not sure if my effort finally succumbed to gravity or I just gave up, but down I went, and found myself sprawled out on the sidewalk.  Fortunately, I was not hurt beyond a slightly scraped-up hand, bruised knee, and very bruised ego.  Even more fortunately, I did not take anyone down with me.

My instinct, indeed my most fervent desire, was to get up and act as if it hadn’t happened, avoid eye contact (this is New York after all), and continue on my way.  It was not to be.  Instead, I was immediately surrounded by several people asking if I were alright.  One was insistent on helping me up.

With great embarrassment I replied that I was fine and declined assistance.  The young man offering to help me up, however, was insistent.  He would not take no for answer despite several attempts on my part.  Providentially, sanity and humility returned, and I extended my hand up to his outstretched in my direction.  He pulled me up advising me to keep weight off the knee.  He and several of the others asked again if I were sure I was alright.  Did I want them to call anyone?  No, thank you, I replied.  Soon enough, but not as soon as I might have liked, they went on their way and I went on mine. 

St. Paul wrote, “[W]e proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1:23).  Stumbling blocks are now more than a figure of speech to me.  Mine was not so much the curb at 39th and Lex as it was my illusion of self-sufficiency and pride.  That goes in part to what the proclamation of Christ crucified is about.  Paul’s words that “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (v. 18) make more sense. 

In my very slight encounter with perishing, the idea of having to be helped to my feet was utter foolishness.  In the reality of my awkward vulnerability, though, it was actually a mild salvation by the power of God.  Even though I could have put myself back on my feet, admittedly with some effort, reaching for an outstretched hand allowed the love of God to be made real to me along with my need for it.  It allowed passersby to express concern and the concern to be received, whether I wanted to receive it or not.  It allowed me to appreciate what interdependence means, which is something that is a challenge for me and a concept I prefer to avoid.

Our need for each other has an awful lot to do with how God is experienced, even when we don’t want it to.

Peace,