Proper 24 A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp24_RCL.html
Today’s Gospel has been stretched in a hundred different ways.
Some have used it as some sort of parable for the separation of church and state. Pay your taxes when asked, let the government, whatever government, get what it asks for, obey the law, go to war if drafted. God and the things of God belong somewhere else than in this world, somewhere unearthly and “spiritual”, meaning misty and insubstantial and not affecting business as usual.
Others say that Jesus is setting a trap for those who tried to trap him. Everything belongs to God, and nothing really belongs to the emperor, no more than anything belongs to any man.
But I wonder if there is yet more depth to this parable. I wonder if the mystery that Jesus wants us to dive into is the mystery of “image.”
We are made in the image and likeness of God. The word Jesus uses is “ikon”, the same word used by Orthodox Christians for their sacred images “written” and displayed for veneration, “windows into heaven.”
Any sacred image, any “ikon”, is meant to remind us of the unspeakable glory of the image of God in all creation and in the human person.
If we saw one another as we truly are, I believe we would be blinded by the light of glory blazing forth from each one of us.
So, what image do you see in this coin, asks Jesus? Who has stamped his own image on this coin, this bit of creation? The emperor? Does he think that this coin reflects his glory?
And what are you doing with this coin? Are you using it to carry out the emperor’s business? Are you using it to serve the God who has no image, no name that we can speak? Are we stamping our own business, our own agenda, over business and commerce and especially on human lives, lives made in the image of God?
Do we stamp over the image of God in human lives with the image of indifference and violence and exploitation? The beginning of any Christian action in the world is deep awe of the image of God in the other. Do we allow that image of God to be stamped with cruel or indifferent images, images that say “national interest” or “border integrity” or any other slogan, on the hidden glory of the image of God on human lives?
Do we allow the image of God in ourselves, our true selves, to be stamped with imperial images? Do we allow the divine which is the image of God in ourselves to be stamped with anything, anything less than “property of the living God”? Do we allow denigration, discrimination, indifference, marginalization, racism, anxiety, interiorized abuse, materialism to obscure the divine image?
The Christian journey is to become fully who we most truly are. Christian living is living in awe and reverence of the divine image within ourselves and in all those around us.
A modern parable presents a man who asks an old monk, “How do I get over the habit of judging people?”
The monk replied, “When I was your age, I was wondering where would be the best place to go and pray. Well, I asked Jesus that question. His answer was ‘Why don’t you go into the heart of my Father?’ So I did. I went into the heart of the Father, and all these years that’s where I’ve prayed. Now I see everyone as my own child. How can I judge anyone?”*
So now, whose image is on this coin?
*from Tales Of A Magic Monastery, by Theophane the Monk. Crossroad Publishing Company, 1981.
archived musings and preachments
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Help!
Proper 23 A, October 12, 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp23_RCL.html
Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works…
Today’s brief Collect, composed for the first Prayer Book, tells us something vital about our relationship with God.
Annie Lamott would agree. She is a good writer who manages to put God on the best-seller list, not an easy thing to do these days. People love Annie’s style because it is at one and the same time wise and yet simple and accessible, speaking of ordinary life.
Annie is a recovering alcoholic and has experienced a great deal of pain and brokenness. She is very candid about this in an un-self pitying way. In her little book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Annie places “Help!” as the first and most essential of our prayers. Says Annie: “If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.” Our only possible response to these deep and terrible truths is “Help!” or “Lord have mercy”, or “Kyrie Eleison” if we wish to be traditional and sound mystical.
Often here we engage people deeply immersed in the dominant culture’s message. That message goes something like this: everything is OK and life is meant to be sweet and gentle, you are completely all right and in complete charge of your life and do not let anyone or anything tell you otherwise. In the NW we tend to take life easy, and if one has some money and some good fortune life is sweet. In addition, many who come to us have experienced some version of Christian formation, or deformation, that they wish to put behind them. So messages such as Annie’s are not greeted as good or welcome news. It sounds first and foremost like “negative theology”, because people hear only the broken and the not-in-charge part, an argument for shame.
But this is the deep truth of our lives and our existence. We learn it over again when the downsizing happens, or the doctor comes in with test results and closes the door before sitting down. We learn it when the child crashes and burns, or when the spouse no longer speaks to us, or the car appears out of nowhere impossibly close, right before that horrible noise, on what had been up til then an ordinary commute.
Annie’s words struck me at the end of this week, when the demands of my multi-tasking life—rector of a congregation in a process of re-birth, clinical chaplain in a hospice organization in the midst of change and growth, occasional hospital chaplain as well—became overwhelming. I arose exhausted yesterday wondering how I could continue to make it all work. The answer came: “You can’t.” Certainly not on my own.
An essential component of any Christian life, or of any ministry, is embracing the reality that only God can make things work, that we are wholly dependent on God. Funny how the most basic lesson must be learned and re-learned, a kind of repetitive Continuing Ed class that we need to take over and over again. Perhaps we learn this truth a little more deeply each time we take the class.
The Scriptures come alive when seen through the lens of our complete dependency on God. “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us”. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”. And that strange story of the man who had no wedding garment? It is said that in those days a king would hand out wedding garments to guests. All the undressed man had to do was to ask.
Ask, ask. Many of us are ashamed to do that, reluctant to admit our dependency, perhaps afraid to become some sort of spiritual Doug or Wendy Whiner. But all we can do is ask. In our lives, in our re-birthing parish as well—do we ask? Have we listened for the answer? Do we believe God responds to those who ask? Today’s Collect asks for God’s help, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp23_RCL.html
Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works…
Today’s brief Collect, composed for the first Prayer Book, tells us something vital about our relationship with God.
Annie Lamott would agree. She is a good writer who manages to put God on the best-seller list, not an easy thing to do these days. People love Annie’s style because it is at one and the same time wise and yet simple and accessible, speaking of ordinary life.
Annie is a recovering alcoholic and has experienced a great deal of pain and brokenness. She is very candid about this in an un-self pitying way. In her little book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, Annie places “Help!” as the first and most essential of our prayers. Says Annie: “If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.” Our only possible response to these deep and terrible truths is “Help!” or “Lord have mercy”, or “Kyrie Eleison” if we wish to be traditional and sound mystical.
Often here we engage people deeply immersed in the dominant culture’s message. That message goes something like this: everything is OK and life is meant to be sweet and gentle, you are completely all right and in complete charge of your life and do not let anyone or anything tell you otherwise. In the NW we tend to take life easy, and if one has some money and some good fortune life is sweet. In addition, many who come to us have experienced some version of Christian formation, or deformation, that they wish to put behind them. So messages such as Annie’s are not greeted as good or welcome news. It sounds first and foremost like “negative theology”, because people hear only the broken and the not-in-charge part, an argument for shame.
But this is the deep truth of our lives and our existence. We learn it over again when the downsizing happens, or the doctor comes in with test results and closes the door before sitting down. We learn it when the child crashes and burns, or when the spouse no longer speaks to us, or the car appears out of nowhere impossibly close, right before that horrible noise, on what had been up til then an ordinary commute.
Annie’s words struck me at the end of this week, when the demands of my multi-tasking life—rector of a congregation in a process of re-birth, clinical chaplain in a hospice organization in the midst of change and growth, occasional hospital chaplain as well—became overwhelming. I arose exhausted yesterday wondering how I could continue to make it all work. The answer came: “You can’t.” Certainly not on my own.
An essential component of any Christian life, or of any ministry, is embracing the reality that only God can make things work, that we are wholly dependent on God. Funny how the most basic lesson must be learned and re-learned, a kind of repetitive Continuing Ed class that we need to take over and over again. Perhaps we learn this truth a little more deeply each time we take the class.
The Scriptures come alive when seen through the lens of our complete dependency on God. “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us”. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God”. And that strange story of the man who had no wedding garment? It is said that in those days a king would hand out wedding garments to guests. All the undressed man had to do was to ask.
Ask, ask. Many of us are ashamed to do that, reluctant to admit our dependency, perhaps afraid to become some sort of spiritual Doug or Wendy Whiner. But all we can do is ask. In our lives, in our re-birthing parish as well—do we ask? Have we listened for the answer? Do we believe God responds to those who ask? Today’s Collect asks for God’s help, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end.
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