Above and Beyond

The challenge is not just to return good for good, but good for evil.

Epiphany 7a 2014 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.

I’m sure all of us have heard, or perhaps even said those words, “go the extra mile.” Churches will even talk about “extra-mile giving” to describe contributions that members make beyond their regular tithe or offering. The contrast is between actions seen as a duty, and those that are above and beyond the call of duty. The military will recognize such actions by awarding a medal or a commendation.

The problem is that the “extra” or “second mile” that Jesus talks about is not about doing better than good. He is not talking about doing good at all. In fact, he says that this is about how to deal with evildoers. Do not resist them, he says; if someone hits you on the right side of your face, let them hit you on the left as well; if they take you to court to sue you for your shirt, give them your jacket, too; if they force you to go one mile, march another mile for good measure. None of these are good things; these are nasty things done to you by nasty people — evildoers; and Jesus says that not only are you supposed to put up with it, but to welcome more of the same treatment. Most surprising of all, he continues by saying that you are to pray for these evildoers who persecute you, and to love your enemies. “Going the extra mile” is not meant by Jesus as a shorthand for generosity to those who deserve it. No, it is about acting like God.

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For God, Jesus assures us, makes the sun rise on the evil as well as the good. God sends sweet rain on the righteous, but on the unrighteous, too. If we are to show that we are children of God, we are challenged to behave like our Father in heaven, to act like God in this crazy way that God acts — when God rewards with good even those who are evil; to do good even to those who do not, by our understanding, or any by reasonable standard, deserve to be rewarded; to forgive those who trespass against us.

This is not an entirely new teaching, though Jesus puts it in terms that are considerably more blunt than they had been in the past. There have always been those who adopted the other point 9of view: the tit-for-tat of doing good in return for good done, a kind of reversal of the Golden Rule: not doing good as you would be done by, but doing good — or evil — as you are done by, a gracious act in return for a gracious act, a tit for a tat, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. There were always those — and there still are — who would talk about “the deserving poor” as if being fed when you are hungry or given something to drink when you are thirsty was something you had to qualify for.

In response to such people who thought that good treatment must be earned, the Lord spoke to Moses, charging him to tell the people that they were called to be like God — to be holy as God is holy. So when they reap the harvest, they are not to reap every last patch, or gather what falls by the side; they are not to strip every last grape from the vines, or pick up those that fall on their own — even though the grain and the grapes belong to them, they are to leave these portions of their own crops for others, for the poor; not because they deserve it, but because they are poor, and this is how God means to provide for them: to let the people be good as he is holy; to let some of that good filter through to them.

This may be hard for some to understand. They might complain that it is an unfair attempt to redistribute wealth, or combat income inequality by taxing those who have to give to those who do not, and who, moreover, do not deserve to be helped. Think of old Ebenezer Scrooge, who scoffs at the idea of giving a little so that the poor could have some food and drink and means of warmth at Christmas-time. “Why?” is his cold-hearted question. When told that some of them might die, he proudly shows his lack of care, “If they had be like to die they had best be quick about it and decrease the surplus population.”

And sad to say, the world is full of Scrooges to this day. There are plenty who want an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, to be rewarded and praised for doing what is really only a duty to one’s fellow human beings — not just those you like, not just your friends and your family, or those who pay you back, but even, as Jesus said, your enemies, and those who persecute you.

And my friends, I will admit that this doesn’t make sense. But it is how God acts; it is how God asks us to act: not just to do good when we are done good by, but to do good even when we are persecuted, punished, and put upon.

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I will end this reflection by telling you the story of an Irishman named Gordon Wilson. One day in November 1987, Wilson and his twenty-year-old daughter Marie were watching a parade on the streets of Enniskillen, in Northern Ireland. Just as a group of parading soldiers and police came by, a terrorist bomb went off, leveling the brick wall next to which Wilson and his daughter were standing, and the wall collapsed and buried them both under several feet of bricks. Wilson couldn’t move, but under the pressure of the bricks he felt someone take his hand. It was his daughter Marie. He could hear her muffled voice, “Is that you, Dad?” He answered, “Yes, Marie.” In the background he could hear distant sirens, and the sounds of people moaning or screaming. He asked, “Are you all right, Marie?” “Yes,” she said, but then she began to cry and moan, and the moan built towards a scream. He asked again if she was all right, and between sobs she kept assuring him that she was, and then she became more quiet. Finally, after a long silence, she said, “Daddy, I love you very much.” Those were the last words she spoke, as she sank into unconsciousness.

They and others injured by the terrorist attack were unearthed and taken to the hospital, where Marie died. Later that same day a reporter asked Wilson if he would consent to an interview. His injuries were relatively minor — just a broken arm and shoulder — so he agreed. After telling his story, the interviewer asked, clearly expecting and answer that he could really make use of, “How do you feel about the people who planted that bomb?”

Wilson surprised many when he said, “I bear them no ill will. I bear them no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back. I pray, I shall pray tonight and every night for God to forgive them.” Over the next months and years, people expressed amazement that he could forgive such a terrible act. But he explained, “I was hurt. I had lost my daughter. But I wasn’t angry. Her last words to me were words of love, and they put me on a plane of love. I received grace from God through those words, and through the strength of God’s love for me, to forgive.”

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Love... your enemies, Jesus said, and pray for those who persecute you. God willing, none of us will ever be asked to walk the extra mile that Gordon Wilson walked, a walk of forgiveness and an affirmation of life even in the face of death. He could have walked a very different path, he could have walked a way of anger and revenge. Instead he chose the path of love, a love that overflowed from his dying daughter’s hand, and brought him peace.

May we be so washed in the love of God that we too can learn to walk the extra mile, to turn the other cheek, and to forgive. In this may others see and know us to be children of a loving, forgiving God; for God forgave his enemies, though they nailed him to the cross. Such is the way of God, to turn the other cheek, to go the second mile. Let us strive to be perfect as he is perfect, holy as he is holy; to be like the one who is above and beyond all, to be like the one whom we worship, and follow him whom we adore, even Jesus Christ our Lord.

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Swearing Words

We cannot do good on our own, but God's credit can be applied to our expenses...

6th Epiphany A 2013 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
It is written in the Book Ecclesiasticus: If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of you own choice.

There is some significant tension between the language of today’s opening collect and that of the author of Ecclesiasticus, Joshua the son of Sira. For while that wise man, who wrote about two hundred years before the birth of Christ, portrays being good or bad as a simple matter of choice — in which one can always choose the good, and keep the commandments and act faithfully simply by choosing to do so — the collect today with which we began our worship acknowledges, a bit more humbly, and realistically, that “in our weakness we can do nothing good without” God’s help and grace.

In a case like this I am very glad to endorse the official Anglican position that the writings of Joshua ben Sira, the book of Ecclesiasticus, like all of the apocryphal or deuterocanonical books — which are part of the Bible for Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, but are treated separately by Anglicans and Lutherans, and completely ignored by most Protestants — that these apocryphal or deuterocanonical books can be read for instruction but not to “establish...doctrine” as the Sixth Article of Religion puts it. And if you’d like to look it up, it is on page 868 of the Book of Common Prayer.

It is helpful to have the church’s authority for this point of view. For even if it weren’t our own experience, even if it weren’t just common sense, you know that what Joshua ben Sira said is just not true. The idea that one can simply choose to be good, and always act faithfully as a matter of one’s own choice, conflicts with the teachings of Jesus and of Saint Paul, and those teachings form a part of our canonical and authoritative Scripture, not just for instruction, but for doctrine!

Towards the end of today’s Gospel reading Jesus takes on those who, like Joshua the son of Sira, put all the stress on us: ben Sira says, “Do not swear falsely, but carry out your vows” — as if vows could simply be carried out by the force of our own will alone, unaided by grace; as if you could just choose to be good and the action would follow the choice as the night the day. Jesus teaches in contrast (and in contradiction) that it is folly to swear in such a way. It is beyond our strength to rely on our own strength unaided, to take it into our head that we could do such a thing when we cannot even control a single hair on that head, to make it change from white to black!

Saint Paul even more readily admits his own weakness when he writes to the Romans, “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (7:18b-19) And in the epistle before us today he calls out the quibbles and quarrels of those Corinthians, accusing them of acting like infants — and anyone who has had to care for an infant knows that infants cannot always choose to do the good! It is said that Saint Augustine once pointed out that anyone who doubted the existence of original sin only needed to spend an hour or two with an infant to be convinced otherwise!

The sad truth, though, is that adults often act no better than spoiled, whining children; as Saint Paul says to the Corinthians, not ready for solid food, still on milk. If you don’t believe me, or Saint Paul, just turn the TV on to any of the 24-hour news stations; it’s like turning on a faucet that will pour forth a steady stream of infantile behavior, by supposedly grown people.

Saint Paul also points out — and here we return to the collect of the day — that the ultimate victory over such petty and infantile quarrels and quibbles and fleshly temptations of human inclination, infant or adult, do notcome from Paul, or Apollos, or from the Corinthians’ own inner virtue. They are God’s servants, working God’s field. Paul echoes the beautiful language of the 100th Psalm, though translating it a bit from sheep to agriculture: “Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” Just so the collect of the day appeals to God for the help of God’s grace, so that God can supply what is lacking to give us the strength — not our own strength but God’s strength at work in us — to keep God’s commandments.

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Now, you might well say, if it’s all about God and we can’t do any good on our own, and that any good we do is just God working in us and through us, is this trip really necessary? Let me say that’s a cynical thought, but it’s one I can understand — as I’m sure Joshua ben Sira would have understood too, and it’s a sentiment he would have stood by: God has given commandments and we are expected to do them under our own steam and by our own power, and if you do, in the end you will receive the reward for having done well.

There are whole religions built on this principle — but thankfully Christianity is not one of them, at least not in the way we Anglicans and Episcopalians understand it. We understand, on the contrary, and as the collect of the day says, echoing Saint Paul, that “in our weakness we can do nothing good without” God.

Still, you might say, Then if it is just God acting through us when we manage to do good, is God just pleasing himself through us? Are we just puppets? Let’s look at it another way; not as puppets, but as children. There is a charming TV commercial that shows a little boy standing with his chin just reaching the top of the jewelry counter in a fashionable store, pointing to an item he wants to get hismother for her birthday. The sales clerk nods and the little boy proudly empties his hand on the counter, revealing a crumpled dollar bill and a few coins. The clerk raises her eyebrows sympathetically and looks over the head of the child to see the boy’s father standing there behind him, discreetly waving his credit card. He and the clerk almost wink at each other — though no wink is needed.

This is what we are like and God is like when we do good. Our inclination is in the right direction, but our handful of change could never actually accomplish what God has willed for us — or what we have willed for ourselves or for each other. It is nowhere near enough to make the purchase we desire and need.

Yet God is with us, and the credit of God’s grace can cover any good towards which we set our minds and our hearts and our wills. On our own we could never accomplish the good intent that warms our hearts, but with God’s grace and support we can accomplish this — and anything good, to which we set our hearts. And God is pleased with our intent even though it is God who supplies us with the means to put that good intent into action — just as that little boy’s father and mother are and will be pleased even though he didn’t actually buy that bracelet with his own money.

There is an old saying, “It’s the thought that counts,” and in this case it is true, for it is the thought and choice to do good, when undertaken in prayer and in confidence in God’s grace, not our own strength, that we will receive timely help in putting that good will into good action, that, as the collects says, we may please God “both in will and deed.” God is pleased when we will to do good, and will give us the grace to do it.

After all, he paid a debt for us far greater than the cost of a bracelet, far more costly than the most precious jewel. Godin Christ paid for all our lives with his own life, and bought salvation for us at the cost of his own blood. If we swear by anything at all let it be this: Not to us, not to us, O Lord, but to your Name alone, be glory given, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.+

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Light and Peace

Light comes first, then peace...

SJF • Presentation 2013 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all the world to see; a light to enlighten the nations, and the glory of your people Israel.+

Today we celebrate the feast of the Presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, also known as the Purification, and in the old days Candlemas. It gained that last name because it was the day on which the priest blessed all of the candles that would be used in the church through the rest of the year.

But what about “Purification”? That name is related to an ancient custom — but one that is still with us, though in an altered form. Luke’s Gospel alludes to the ancient law, though he doesn’t go into the details.

I should say, “laws,” because two important Old Testament laws are involved here, involving the mother and the child. First, the purification of the mother: Under the Law of Moses, after giving birth a woman is considered ritually unclean for 40 days if she bears a boy, twice as long if it’s a girl. Now, as I reminded us on the feast of the Baptism of Jesus, ritual “uncleanness” is not about sin, it’s about purity, and has its roots in early efforts at public health. In this case, it is quite logical that a mother should have a period of time to recover from the stress of childbirth, and to bond with her child.

Those of you with long memories will recall that this custom, in terms of the church, is still with us, though it has changed in terminology — much as the name of the feast day itself. Do any of you remember the service called “The Churching of Women” also called “The Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth” in the old Prayer Book? That’s what it was called up until 1979, when the church decided to let the fathers join the mothers to give thanks as well, and to give thanks for adoption as well as birth, so they changed the name of the service to “Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child.” It’s in the Book of Common Prayer, page 439. So in today’s Gospel, we read of a tradition with ancient roots going back to the time of the desert wandering, but one whose branches reach right into our church this morning.

But note that the text says, “their purification,” and the law that Luke quotes is not the law from Leviticus about women and childbirth, and how long they have to wait before they are allowed to come to the Temple. Instead this is the law from Exodus about what is to happen regarding each firstborn male child. According to Exodus every such child belongs to God, and is to be redeemed by his parents in order to live. A boy who asks his father why this should be is, according to the Law of Moses, to be told, “The Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn males of the land of Egypt, human and animal. And so I sacrifice to the Lord every firstborn male animal, breaking its neck, but my firstborn son I redeem.” Does that answer your question!? Talk about a Biblical head-trip for a firstborn son! And being a firstborn son I take this very seriously!

My point in spelling all this out is that there is a huge amount of “back-story” in this quiet little incident that Luke records for us. There are literally more than a thousand years leading up to this moment, even before Simeon and Anna open their mouths to raise the pitch on what would normally have been the simple duty of every Jewish family. This little ritual is deeply tied up with ancient traditions of blood, of sacrifice and redemption, of slavery and freedom, of life and death.

As to life — well, we are shown two very long lives responding to the arrival of this couple with their child. Simeon had waited a long time to see a promised light, a light commemorated on this day by the blessing of candles. He and the prophet Anna both had haunted the Temple for years, hoping and hoping as each child was brought in and presented, according to the laws, hoping... These were two long lives lived in hope, yet their hopes were raised and their hopes were dashed time and again, as they looked upon each child brought into the Temple, looking for a sign, but receiving no sign, and perhaps sadly shaking their heads and saying, “No; not this one.”

And yet still they hoped. For Simeon had received a promise, the promise that he would live to see the light of the Messiah with his own eyes. And Anna — well who knows what she knew, or what she had been promised; all we know is that she trusted and she witnessed to the light when it came.

As come it did. Think for a moment of the release that both of these elderly people felt upon the realization of this divine promise, this revelation of a divine light. Think of how you feel after a long deferred task has finally been accomplished. There is such poignancy in Simeon’s song, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace”; such a sense of relief, like the feeling you get after you’ve done a particularly strenuous job that needed doing, perhaps for a long, long time. I’m sure we’ve all felt the kind of tired relief that comes after finally getting around to cleaning out that attic, or ripping up the old linoleum, or painting a room that has been crying out for it for years. You step back after having completed such a job, deeply tired, but also deeply, deeply satisfied. The work is done, and now you can rest.

This is the kind of peace that Simeon felt, though magnified many times over, as what he was waiting for (the revelation of the light of God) is ever so much more important than even the most important attic, floor, or room. This is the peace of completion, of culmination and rest. It reflects the peace and rest of God at the end of the sixth day of creation: All is complete, all is very good; it is sabbath-time; it is time to rest.

Such sabbath peace and sabbath rest are the opposite of lazy peace or rest. That is the kind of rest you get by avoiding the work: just letting the mishmash of odds and ends stay in the attic or basement, and periodically adding something more to the top of the pile; or making do with the scratched linoleum or getting an area rug to throw down on top of it; or just ignoring the peeling paint and mildew. That kind of lazy rest, that kind of lazy peace, is not the peace that follows light and knowledge and hard work; it is a false peace, the false rest of denial and darkness. True peace, true rest, always follows the light.

It has always been that way — and I mean always! In the beginning, God did not rest first, and then create the light as an afterthought, as if it were a night-light to sit on the bedside table for the sabbath. No, the light came first; the very first thing that God made was light, empowering and revealing the rest of creation itself, to light the way to that sabbath rest after that first week of time, after those six days of work were done, and the sabbath came. Light came first, then peace.

So too it was in the great form of blessing that God committed to his priests: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you... and give you peace. First light, then peace.

And so too it was with Simeon and Anna. It was in beholding the light of the Messiah, shining through that small child in Mary’s arms, that they knew they finally could rest; peace had come because the light had shone — light, then peace.

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So it is and so it has always been. Yet how often do we and the world seek the peace instead of the light? How often in giving thanks for the birth of a child do we forget and turn away from the long history of struggle that led to that child’s birth, keeping it in the shadows instead of bringing it to light.

Beloved ones, we dare not seek for God’s peace in the darkness of ignorance, in the darkness of concealment, but only in the light of his truth, light that reveals the long history that brings each moment to our lives. We will never find God’s sabbath peace if we turn our back on God’s light. For the light of God shines to be the glory of God’s people, to be the light to enlighten the nations, a light shining back over a thousand years to the Passover, to the Red Sea, the costly deliverance of a people whom God redeemed at the cost of many a firstborn Egyptian son. This is the light that reveals the truth of Messiah, God’s chosen one, God’s son, his firstborn, the one whose coming — so long in coming — reveals our innermost thoughts, lighting us up, lighting up our fears, our hopes, our dreams, our dreads. He is the one who is set to reveal us, to be the fall and the rise of many.

He is the light of the world, and he is our peace, a costly light, a costly peace. The light he brings, brings peace because it lights up all that past history of woe — of the slavery of the people in Egypt, of the death of those Egyptian firstborn and of the slaughter at the Red Sea — the cost of deliverance was mighty, and God insisted that forever more that cost would be, as Shakespeare says, rememberèd.And so God casts that light even upon and through his own beloved Son — this firstborn redeemed in this little ritual as Mary and Joseph and Anna and Simeon stand by, the redeemer of the world, who is the one who brings salvation and peace, who as the only-begotten son of God will also give life — his own life — as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, washing us in his innocent blood.

Without God’s light we stumble in restless darkness, terrified of the unknown, while lulling ourselves with the false assurance of putting our heads under the covers to save ourselves from the monsters. But with God, and walking in the light of Christ, looking upon his face — whether the face of a month-and-a-week-old child in his mother’s arms, or the wounded face crowned with thorns and battered and bruised by human hatred, or the shining face of the Risen Christ on Easter morning — looking upon the face of the only-begotten Son of God, we behold God’s light, in whom we find our sabbath rest, our completion, our culmination, our peace. To him who is the light and peace of the world, be all honor and glory, henceforth and for evermore.+

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