Daily Quiz, July 2014

Daily Quiz, July 31, 2014

Pope Francis is a member of a religious order founded by what saint?

a. Francis of Assisi
b. Benedict of Nursia
c. Ignatius Loyola 
d. Dominic 

Daily Quiz, July 30, 2014 

The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are addressed to a person?  What is the name of this person?

a. Philosophia
b. Theophilus
c.  Philotheos
d. Alphaeus


Daily Quiz, July 29, 2014

After Moses and Joshua, Israel in their conquered lands were governed by judges.  Which of the following was not a judge of Israel?

a. Eleazar
b. Deborah
c. Samuel
d. Ehud
e. Gideon
f.  Samson
g. Othniel

Daily Quiz, July 28, 2014

Henry Purcell an English musician is known for a musical piece often played as a wedding processional.  It is often called, "Purcell's Trumpet Voluntary."  What other musician should be credited for this piece?

a. J.S. Bach
b. G. F. Handel
c. Thomas Tallis
d. Jeremiah Clarke


Daily Quiz, July 27, 2014

What did Solomon ask from God before he ascended the throne?

a. strength to build the temple
b. wisdom
c. an understanding mind to govern
d. to live in a great palace

Daily Quiz, July 26, 2014  

In what writing can one find the record of Joachim and Anne, the parents of the Virgin Mary?

a. Gospel of Matthew
b. Gospel of Mark
c. Gospel of Luke
d. Gospel of James
e. Gospel of John



Daily Quiz, July 25, 2014

Who was the first Apostle Martyr of the Jesus Movement?

a.  James, brother of Jesus
b.  James, son of Alphaeus
c.  James, son of Zebedee
d.  James of Compostela
e.  c and d

Daily Quiz, July 24, 2014

Thomas à Kempis wrote what well-known devotional classic?

a. Pilgrim's Progress

b. The Cloud of Unknowing

c. The Interior Castle

d. The Imitation of Christ

Daily Quiz, July 23, 2014

Who was the High Priest when Jesus was brought to trial?

a. Annas
b. Zecariah 
c. Caiaphas
d. Hillel


Daily Quiz, July 22, 2014

What saint of the church has a new popularity recently because of a Dan Brown novel?

a. St. Peter
b. St. Swithin
c. St. Christopher
d. St. Mary Magdalene


Daily Quiz, July 21, 2014

Which of the following happened in the Garden of Gethsemane?

a. Jesus prayed before he was taken by Temple guards
b. The disciples of Jesus slept while Jesus prayed
c.  Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss
d.  Peter cut off the ear of a servant of the High Priest
e.  None of the above as recorded in Gospel of Luke
f.  All of the above

Daily Quiz, July 20, 2014

The battle of Jericho was won using an interesting "weapon" called a shofar.  What is a shofar? 

a.Spear 
b.Sword
c. Ram's horn
d. Ox goad



Daily Quiz, July 19, 2014

The Cappadocian Fathers who were brothers, Gregory, Basil, Peter and Naucratios had a very influential sister named

a. Junia
b. Monnica
c. Sophia
d. Macrina


Daily Quiz, July 18, 2014

Who was the bishop of the Chiapas and had the office of "Protector of the Indians?"

a.  Junípero Serra. 
b. Bartolomé de las Casas
c.  Francisco Gómez 
d.  Juan Crespí 


Daily Quiz, July 17, 2014

If George Washington is called the father of our country, who could be called the father of the Episcopal Church?

a. Henry VIII
b. Samuel Seabury
c. William White
d. Paul Revere

Daily Quiz, July 16, 2014

What biblical miracle is associated with Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha?

a. feeding great multitudes
b. providing water in the wilderness
c. parting of waters to be crossed
d. healing persons with leprosy


Daily Quiz, July 15, 2014

What historic event happened on July 14, 2014 in the Synod of the Church of England?

a. They elected the first woman bishop in the Church of England
b. They consecrated the first woman bishop in the Church of England
c.  They voted to admit women to the episcopate in the Church of England
d. They voted to allow male bishops to continue to serve parishes which would not receive women bishops due to conscience
e. c and d

Daily Quiz, July 14, 2014

Who was the prostitute in Jericho who hid the spies of Israel before they surrounded the city and conquered it?

a. Deliah
b. Rahab
c. Gomer
d. Naomi

Daily Quiz, July 13, 2014

Who was the first bishop of the Episcopal who was consecrated in the United States?

a. Samuel Seabury
b. William White
c. Thomas John Claggett
d. Samuel Provoost

Daily Quiz, July 12, 2014

Where did Moses die?

a. Mount Sinai
b. Mount Zion
c. Mount Nebo
d. Mount Horeb


Daily Quiz, July 11, 2014

What document predates St. Benedict's monastic Rule and is a likely source for the Benedictine Rule?

a. Cloud of Unknowing
b. The Rule of the Master 
c. The Sayings of St. Anthony
d. On the Divine Names

Daily Quiz, July 10, 2014

What saint is associated with Monte Cassino in southern Italy?

a. Dominic
b. Francis
c. Benedict
d. Ignatius Loyola


Daily Quiz, July 9, 2014

Who is believed to have founded Christianity in Britain?

a. Thomas the Apostle
b. St. Andrew
c. Joseph of Arimathea
d. St. George

Daily Quiz, July 8, 2014

In Anglican Church history, the Oxford Movement is associated with what popular piety designation?

a. Low Church
b. Broad Church
c. High Church
d. Evangelical


Daily Quiz, July 7, 2014

Transubstantiation, consubstantiation, receptionism, real presence are terms which pertain to a discussion of what topic?

a. The Trinity
b. Mode of Eucharistic Presence
c. Pneumatology 
d. Christology

Daily Quiz, July 6, 2014

Who was Moses' successor as leader of the Israelites?

a. Caleb
b. Aaron
c. Samuel
e. Joshua

Daily Quiz, July 5, 2014

Which American Book of Common Prayer first included propers for the liturgical observance of Independence Day?

a. 1789
b. 1979
c. 1928
d. 1892

Daily Quiz, July 4, 2014

Why did Independence Day did not become a liturgical observance included in the Book of Common Prayer of 1789?

a. It was regarded as too secular
b. The Fourth of July had not yet been named a National Day
c. It was tabled out of respect for the many "Tory" clergy who had been loyal to the Crown
d. Bishop Samuel Seabury intervened to keep the observance out

Daily Quiz, July 3, 2014

Who was the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1776 during the time of the American Revolution?

a. John Moore
b. Charles Manners-Sutton
c. Frederick Cornwallis
d. William Howley

Daily Quiz, July 2, 2014

Which prophet in the Hebrew Scriptures had a "talking donkey?"

a. Hosea
b. Joel
c. Jeremiah
d. Balaam

Daily Quiz, July 1, 2014

Which of the following were not written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose day of remembrance on our calendar of saints is July 1st?

a. "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
b. "The Minister's Wooing"
c. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"
d. "Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp"

How Was Jesus a Philosopher?

7 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 12, July 27, 2014

1 Kings 3:5-12 Psalm 119:129-136
Romans 8:26-39   Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Lectionary Link

    The word "philosophy" derives from the Greek language and is a word formed from two words.  It literally means "a friendship love of wisdom."  Making friends with wisdom.  The word philosophy expresses a way to characterize perhaps the chief goal of life, making friends with wisdom.  Making friends with wisdom is a process of life.  Wisdom is never attained because the friendship with wisdom is never finished.  The challenges of living always present to us the need for wisdom.  Wisdom is the loving and propitious application of our life information in practical actions and decisions in our lives and so we can never stop befriending wisdom and wisdom does not allow us to brag about what we thought was wise yesterday because the demands for wisdom today are varied and different.
  I think a chief facet of the ministry of Jesus was his role as a wisdom teacher.  Jesus was a multi-faceted sort of person and he understood that his verbal production had various application according to the context of the people to whom he spoke. Jesus spoke to lawyers, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Roman soldiers, Samaritan women, village women, fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, children, widows and because he had such a diverse audience, he understood that one kind of discourse did not fit every situation.  If the words of Jesus or anyone seem at times to be contradictory, it has to do with the wise understanding of how words are applied for many different kinds of circumstances for many different people.  Truly, when it comes to wise words, the cliche "one size does not fit all" is applicable and true.
  I believe that what Jesus proclaimed as the kingdom of heaven was all about learning to have a wise re-orientation in how we see life.  A wise re-orientation in life means we learn to see life differently than the common glaring opinion or public propaganda; it means we have put on a different kind of seeing lens through which we can see the world and because we see the world in a different way, we can make different decisions, decisions of faithful action.
  Jesus told the wisdom stories, call parables to encourage people to read their lives differently and come to faithful actions in face of some great challenges.
  The public propaganda of the time of Jesus was this: The kingdom was the Kingdom of the Caesar and so it was unthinkable for people to disregard the Caesar in their thinking.  But the situation of oppression gave rise to wishing that things could be otherwise and wishing that a king of one's own making could be in control of things.  And so there was the collective aspiration of the Jewish people for a new King David to return and give the people of Israel a more perfect king of their own.  Messianic expectations bring visualizations of something better for oppressed people.  Within this environment, the actual kingdom of the Caesar and the hopeful wishes for a new David, Jesus told his parables about the realm or kingdom of heaven.
  The parables of Jesus about this kingdom of heaven invited the people of his audience to see their world differently and come to faithful actions.  Faithful action did not mean resisting the Roman authorities; it did not mean latching on to some "super-hero" figure who would magically overthrow the kingdom of the Caesar.
  The wisdom parables of Jesus were an invitation to people to see their lives differently so that they would have wisdom to live within the specifics of their circumstances.
  What kind of seeing promotes a different kind of wise action to live with faith within the actual circumstances?
  Jesus said to take note of the small things in life, the things like the mustard seeds.  A few thrown here and there as insignificant seeds and suddenly one can see that they have taken over like weeds which control the entire environment.  This type of wisdom seeing reveals the counter-logic of the kingdom of heaven.  We like to write our histories from the perspectives of the heroes or the great publicly known figures.  Yes, you can know about Caesar and you can dream about a new King David magically to change everything but it is really the small and minute things which are more important.  The little things accumulate to form character and to form networks to be the very scaffold on which the great people of life are often but strutting problems for the majority of people.  I have been in enough places in this world to know that in neighborhoods of people there is such a desire for the common small things of life: safety, health, education, friendship for family and friends. The desire and the performance of small acts of safety and kindness is what preserves the life of people and not the public leaders strutting on the great stage.  Jesus had the wisdom to know that this world needs or tolerates the oft necessary evils of leadership of the few political leaders even while he also knew that these few would keep the people of the world perpetually divided and against each other even when most people are united in just wanting adequate safety, food, clothing, shelter, education for their families and neighbors.  The mustard seeds of the desires of people for safety, food, clothing, shelter, love, friendship, justice and care for each other are the small things which will preserve and save this world; it will not be the so called kings on the stage of public life.  If you can see this then you have the wise eyes of the kingdom of heaven.  If we are blessed to have wise political leadership, wise leader will tend to the importance of the small but basic needs in the lives of people.
  Jesus reiterated the mustard seed parable with the parable of the yeast.  Yeast or leaven and mustard seeds are negative metaphors.  He was comparing the kingdom of heaven to weeds and leaven and in Judaism leaven was a symbol of impurity.  Jesus was saying, "What you think is small and insignificant or even negative is what is important and sustaining in life.  So, don't be fooled by the public propaganda and public advertisement." We can be frightened into activity because of the Caesars in life. We cannot easily overthrow an evil Caesar anywhere, but we can do the next act of kindness in our very local situation.  The wisdom of the kingdom is this: Don't let global propaganda or angst hinder us from some very small local kind action.  It is through the performance and perpetuation of small kind acts that this world is preserved.
  In a pair of parable Jesus further goes on to equate the kingdom of heaven with another rather negative notion.  Insider trading.  In our time the SEC rather inconsistently prosecutes those who practice "insider trading."  Every person is tempted by the juiciness of insider trading.  I go to a garage sale of an elderly woman who has a box of vintage baseball cards for sale for but a few bucks.  I know the value of the baseball cards and she obviously doesn't.  My heart is beating with excitement that I happened upon this find even while I have the dilemma of possessing the knowledge of their worth.  This poor widow is sitting upon a goldmine that she does not know that she is unwittingly letting go of for a song.
  This is the kind of the moral dilemma of the kingdom of heaven.  It is like having a kind of knowledge about the way things are which not every person has.  The wisdom of the kingdom of heaven is open to everyone but not everyone has it.  If one can become converted to begin to see life differently to make faithful choices in one's given situation then one is drawn to commit one's entire life and life resources to the quest for this kind of wise seeing of the world.  Jesus was offering to his followers the seductive winsomeness of wisdom because with wisdom one honors the true freedom which is in this world even while one learns to execute faithful actions in each occasion.  What more could one want in this life?
   The last two parables of Jesus which we have read today provide us some insights about the practice of wise people and the process of wisdom.  With wisdom we are always sorting how what we regard to be the good and evil in the past.  We sort from our past how we let what has been good and what has been bad affect how we are going to act now.  In our wise judgments on the good and bad of the past, we make the past serve us in making a wise decision now.  A wise scribe has received a wisdom tradition but the words of wisdom written in past are not a strait-jacket hindering freedom and wise action now.  Many religious people in the time of Jesus regarded their tradition to be like a restricting strait-jacket and Jesus saw that this approach to religious faith had devastating consequences for most of the people of the countryside who were left out.  It had devastating consequences for the non-Jewish population who were regarded to be excluded from God's blessing and favor.
  The wise scribe uses the wisdom tradition of the past to inspire new syntheses, new combination which provides for creative and inventive new decisions to be made.  So St. Paul, in his wisdom, could honor his Judaic tradition even while he creatively and inventively accepted the Gentiles as those who could come to valid faith and wisdom from God.  Being a Gentile could not separate a person from the love of God in Christ.
  Jesus taught us that in our efforts to gain loving friendship with wisdom, we will be inventive and creative and open for the new to occur because the application of wisdom is always new.  Do not let the Scriptures or the good traditions of church history or our parish ever become strait-jackets to prohibit the freedom and creativity of new and faithful inventive response.
  You and I honor the past and we honor the wisdom process of Jesus Christ as we use our traditions to make wise and creative responses to the new challenges of our personal lives and our community life today.  Let the good news for us be today that we have fallen in love with wisdom, as Jesus did and with the wisdom of Jesus, we know that we have new wise choices to make each and every day of our lives.  Amen.

Sympathy for Weeds

6 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 11, July 20, 2014

Genesis 28:10-19a,  Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23

Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Lectionary Link

  Allow me to introduce myself, I'm a plant of stealth and distaste.  I was there when Adam and Eve were evicted from the perfect place.  Pleased to meet me you, hope you guessed my name. Being a pest is the nature of my game.

  With apologies to the Rolling Stones, you've guess my name.  My name is Weeds, and we are many.

  Today, we have read the well-known parable of the weeds and the wheat, or in good ol' proper English, The Parable of the Tares.  Now doesn't "Tares" sound more romantic than "Weeds?"

  Following the reporting style of the Gospel, we first have the parable of Jesus and then it is followed by an interpretation, given authority by being associated with the teacher.  One could see this as an example of teaching and learning.  A parable is told with many meaning possibilities and the first example of interpretation is given.  This is a pattern of teaching and learning. The wisdom teacher provided a story and then requires the students and disciples to project their meanings upon the allegory because we learn by continuing to seek to find meaning from the words of the people whom we respect to model excellence.

  And so we continue in this tradition of seeking meaning  in our efforts today.  Now some churches would like for you to believe that all of the meanings of the Bible are precisely fixed and final and so everyone should have the same meaning as prescribed by the religious authority of choice.

  The Bible is inspired because it encourages us by written example of practitioners of faith to work continually to come to applied meanings in our lives as individuals and as a gathered community.

  This parable of the weeds and wheat provides for us the occasion to come into many different meanings to give us insights about having faithful wisdom in the art of living today.

  One of the striking things about this parable is that it evokes the truth of how the great freedom of life means that the process of life is always a mixture of the values of human experience.

  Another striking thing about this parable is that like many parables it is perhaps wrongly labeled by many Bible scholars.  A label or title can give a pointing sign to get the wrong or incomplete message.  This parable is called the parable of the Weeds or Tares and the Wheat.  I think that it would better be called the Parable of the Patient God.

  We as people are mostly not patient for what we think is effective and immediate fix of things particularly if we have wealth and power. We often want quick resolution by intervention because something can seem so right and wrong in a precisely either/or type of way.  The majority of humanity the majority of time wants all of the issues of life served up to us in either/or answers for our convenience.

  If we really knew who all of the bad guys and the good guys were in Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan or Pakistan or anywhere, then we could just smart bomb the bad guys out of the way.  In Hiroshima, we did find the quick and catastrophic way to end the war, but not only weeds but lots of "wheat" was destroyed.  The strategic decision was made to sacrifice an entire field to stop the spread of war, we thought.  On the personal level one can know the terror of living with a person of rage who wants to correct someone or something with a sweeping fit of anger because the power of rage gives one the false sense of knowing precisely what is right.  There can be the false sense that an angry intervention can take out evil and establish good in one fell swoop.

  And then it is gotcha!  Because the anger that we used to correct the evil that we thought was so obvious ends up being as bad as what we thought we were trying to correct.

  The irony of Bible readers is that some many people today are possessed with apocalyptic fatalism because they believe the Bible to be a book which inspires such apocalyptic fatalism.  There is fatal wish that God would get really tired of all of the really, really, bad stuff in this world and just accomplish a final retribution where there would be a final sorting out and solving of the issues of what is good and bad in this world.

  There is always enough poverty and inequality and brutal oppression of people in our world that we would hope that God would act upon the world situation with the same clarity of what's right and wrong that we think we have.

  As it turns out God is a patient God.  And indeed the parable hints that there will be a sorting out and a resolution.  But the sorting out and the resolution is but a subsequent event of interpretation and re-interpretation of the conditions of God's garden of wheat and weeds.

   The world, each nation, each community and each one of us are made up of weeds and wheat.  In short, because of the truth of the process of freedom in this world we and life itself is a mixture of apparent blessing and curse.

  We should have great sympathy for weeds today.  Weeds really get a bad rap.  Weeds stand for plant life that rises up against God's perfect Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve were evicted.  In the biblical story the weeds entered the picture as the result of the curse of the sin of the Fall.  When Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden they had to deal with weeds.  One can see in this story the frustration of every farmer: "Why doesn't Nature fully cooperate with my efforts to grow crops?  These pesty weeds hinder success and just require more work."  The origin story of weeds is the attempt of ancient farmers to give meaning to their hard work.

  People who study weeds today have a different view; if it weren't for weeds the majority of the soil of the earth would be eroded by wind and water.  When forests are cut down, weeds and brambles set in to keep the soil in place.  So the weeds that we want to kill out in one place are of great value in another.

  I think that the wisdom of this parable can also be about the wisdom of both a mythical and an actual understanding of the last days.  The last day is the day when the wheat and the weed are sorted out.  For literal apocalyptic interpreters one could see this as some return to conditions of a heavenly life of where only goodness and innocence can be known, a state of robotic goodness.  We can become so frustrated with the contrast caused by knowing good and evil that we would wish away the possibility of life being one without any judgments or comparison.  I don't think anything is solved by simply removing the very conditions for judgment and comparison.  This is not real to life as we know it.

  What is real is the fact that  "now" is always the last day, or more correctly, it is always the latest days.  And in the last and latest day, we have the responsibility to sort out the weeds and the wheat growing in our gardens of life.

  We are never absolved from the task of making judgments and comparisons.  And we most often do so poorly because of the nature of the process of life and because of our limited views.  Some thing that once was considered to be a worthless weed can become a composted matter for a better and redemptive outcome.  Life is ironic; every intended and unintended event in life can have intended and unintended good and bad consequences.

  The poor hard working family who suffers can end up making life easier for their children who turn out to be wasteful and unproductive because their suffering parent did not want them to suffer in the same way.  That is the irony of the parable of weed and wheat; every intended and unintended event can have intended and unintended good and bad consequences.

  What is the Gospel insight for us today?  We need to have the patience of God.  The wrath and rage of men and women cannot work the righteousness of God.  And having that patience is very difficult in the face of some great ills in our world where we feel helpless.  Another insight for us today is that we live in the last day or the latest day and we cannot avoid but be interpreters of the now and the past.  We are not infallible interpreters of life and yet we cannot avoid designating things in our life and world as weeds or wheat.  We ask for the wisdom of love and justice in interpreting what is weeds or wheat in our world and we know that receiving the patience of God does not mean being passively accepting of things that seem to violate justice and love..  We get out our hoes and weed our patches and we fertilize the good that we see to promote the growth of that which we regard to be just, loving, kind, creative, artistic, humane and joyful.

  And we thank God for the last day, our latest day in the garden of God's world.  Amen.

Broadcast Seeding before Jethro Tull

5 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 10, July 13, 2014

Isaiah 55:10-13 Psalm 65: (1-8), 9-14
Romans 8:1-11  Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Lectionary Link

        Today, I would like for us to consider farming before Jethro Tull.  And what does Jethro Tull have to do with farming?  Jethro Tull is the rock band which produced Aqua Lung and stars the flautist, Ian Anderson.  But the rock band is named after Jethro Tull, a progressive farmer who in the early 18th century perfected the method of seed drilling.  This involved dropping seeds through tubes and planted in nice rows, easy to thin and cultivate.  The more ancient method of seeding was called "broadcast" seeding, throwing seeds to the winds and letting them fall where they may.

  If one tries to rationalize the business of farming then one wants to increase the odds of seeds germinating and coming to full fruition and being accessible to harvest at the right time.

   The parable of Jesus which we have read today is not about Jethro Tull farming; it is about broadcast seeding method.  Slinging the seeds to the wind, falling willy, nilly upon a hopeful place to germinate and grow.   One might even say, it is kind of hit or miss farming.  And what kind of actuarial genius is God if the divine one does "hit or miss" farming?

   This parable was generated and it maintained itself by being repeated and elaborated and then finally written down with a subsequent interpretation because the parable is honest to the mystery of success.  It really does not explain why particular success happens; it only highlights that the conditions of freedom make success a continuous process of nature.  This sort of explanation can be very disappointing, because we want actuarial certainty in the explanation of things.  We want guaranteed success in all of our ventures.  It is a universal and inspired question continually to be asking about the success of things and the failure of things.  We often have plenty of each in our trial and error lives and we want to develop theories of probabilities to increase the odds of success and decrease the odds of failure.

  I think that the common wisdom of life is what would be called "probability" living.  It means we learn from living the likelihood of the conditions that contribute to success or failure in our ventures of life.  And so we have to take into account the dynamic mixture of nature and nurture which comprise any situation in life.

  Jesus and his followers were those who had questions  about the success and failure of the Gospel Movement.  The implied questions that everyone was asking and the ones which we ask are:  Jesus how can we have success?  How can we be guaranteed success?  Or what are the reasons why some things are successful?  Why are things sometimes just "ninety day" wonders, reaching a faddish success only to fizzle out?  Why don’t the effects of the Gospel message endure in the lives of those who hear it?

  The parable of the Sower provides us with some insights about creative advance in our lives.  The first insight is that the Sower is the one who owns the planting field.  God owns all of creation and God wants to impart this knowledge to humanity, who for the most part has lost the meaning and knowledge of being owned by God.  God does not want to lord it over human beings; God wants to remind humanity that if they acknowledge being sons and daughters of God then their lives would be more successful, because the knowledge of God’s love, God’s grace and God’s forgiveness and God’s justice is the good news which can bring success into the lives of people.

  Now one could make a negative judgment upon the farming abilities of the sower?  Why would God be one to do indiscriminate broadcast seeding with such a wonderful message as the message of the kingdom of God?  This indiscriminate broadcast seeding method is represented in other Gospels sayings about the impartial nature of God.  God is like the sun which shines upon the just and the unjust.  God is like the rain which falls upon the good and the evil.  The broadcast seeding method as seen in the parable of the sower is an indication that the good news of God's kingdom of love is freely given to everyone.  The seed arrives into every human condition and it is a good seed, it is a hybrid seed.  The seed of the kingdom is about how we belong to God as God's sons and daughters.  It is about how God loves us and forgives us and invites to grow in grace, love and justice.

  This wonderful message falls into the conditions of life experience of many people.  And not everyone is ready to receive and understand the benefit of this wonderful message?  Why?  Because the message is not forced upon anyone.  It is but a freely offered persuasive lure given as an invitation to everyone to come to know God's love.

  The unevenness of the human conditions means that everyone is not able to even know how to receive good news into one’s life.  The uneven human condition of the souls of people in significant ways determines the success of how we are converted to the good things offered to us in life.

  The parable of the sower represents the fact that Jesus honored the freedom present in the success and failure of how things happen in life.  Sometimes we do not become open to growth or change unless we have suffered some crisis of loss or change.  The gates and doors of our perception have to be cleansed continually so that we can see and understand the new creative advance which is offered to us.

  The genius of the parable of the sower is not that it explains success or failure but that it acknowledges the mystery of success and failure because all things are subject to the freedom of the process of nature and nurture.  But included within the processes of nature and nurture is the freedom of our choice.  Each of us has significant freedom in the play of nature and nurture for the success of creative advance in our lives.

  So what is our response to the parable of the sower today?

  We ask God and each other to help us have insights about the condition of receptivity of our lives today for making creative advance toward more just and loving outcomes.  And as we understand our condition of receptivity for more good news, we also are challenged to use our freedom to act deliberately towards the next step of creative advance.

  The parable of the sower reveals to us that life is not just about nature or about nurture, it also includes our willingness to determine the things which we can through wise action.  And so we ask today for insights and discernment about the process of nature and nurture in our lives, but we also ask for strength to become deliberate agents of changes towards what we know is better for us, our families, our parish, our community and our world.

  The parable of the sower is valid illumination for us today because it acknowledges the mystery of the nature of life even as it encourages us to exercise deliberate freedom toward creative advance in our lives today.  May the words of Jesus give us encouragement in our continuous efforts to advance in the art of living today.  Amen.

Finding Rest, While Having Incredible Self-Agnosticism

4 Pentecost, a p 9, July 6, 2014

Zechariah 9:9-12 Psalm 145:8-15

Romans 7:15-25a Matt. 11:25-30

 Lectionary Link

  We have read the confession of St. Paul from his epistle to the Romans today.  And we usually assume that St. Paul is like a person who is sometimes wrong but never in doubt.  However, we have enough of the writings of St. Paul not to make him into a master of consistency; consistent and certain is with how we like to pigeon-hole him.  But this confident Paul also confesses to be an agnostic; not about God or Jesus but about himself and the motivations of his actions as they pertain to impulse control.  St. Paul was something of a hothead; he acted upon impulse.  He once set out to put to death the followers of Rabbi Jesus.  And you can see why Paul came to be baffled about the motivations behind his own action.  In a rather stark confession, St. Paul wrote: “I do not understand my own actions.”  Perhaps he was thinking, “Why did I stand by as a collaborator in the stoning to death of Stephen?”  “I do not understand my own actions.”

  In many ways life is all about understanding human behavior and actions.  We have the Law of Moses, the New Testament, lots of other Holy Books, we have Plato and Aristotle, countless numbers of saints, theologians, gurus, mystics and the psychoanalytic traditions of Freud and Jung.  We have endless number of self-help books, Dr. Phil and it is all about the agnosticism which we confess about the human motivations of human behavior.  “I do not understand my own actions.”

  St. Paul writes what I call the Twilight Zone passage: “do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do.”  Without significant stylistic variation St. Paul uses, as it appears in English translation, the word “do” seventeen times.  St. Paul is baffled about human behavior; he is baffled about his own behavior; he is baffled about why he has done the things which he has done.

  We, too, are always upon the quest to understand why we and other people do the things that we do.  And there is not one magical formula to understand the motivations for all action.  It requires wisdom to understand all of the differences which pertain to understanding human actions.

  The Gospel lesson which we've read today includes some words of Jesus.  It is sometimes difficult to read the Gospels because of the ways in which they are edited.  In this Gospel passage it is almost like the editor thought, “I’ve got all of these sayings associated with Jesus and I do not have any specific context for each of these sayings, but because I’ve inherited this collection of sayings of Jesus, I am just going to put them here.”  So as baffled readers we wonder how all of these sayings go together to form a coherent theme.  And we have to rely upon our intuition about universal meaning present in the language itself.

  What was the motivation of the actions of John the Baptist?  What was the motivation for the actions of Jesus of Nazareth and Son of Man, Son of the God the Father?  People had different opinions about the behaviors of John the Baptist and Jesus.  All holy people should behave in the same way.  All prophets should behave in the same way.  Well maybe not.  It did not matter how John or Jesus behaved because they had different callings and different styles of ministry and they both had people who disapproved of them.  John the Baptist was an ascetic; wore a camel hair tunic, ate locust and honey and would not be found in the company of notorious sinners.  John did not go to people; they came to him.  People came out to the wilderness to him to repent of their sins.  Jesus, as the Son of Man, did not have place to live but he hung out with almost anyone.  Jesus went out among people.  He was seen at meal and in discussion with Pharisees, Sadducees, fisher-folk,  tax-collectors,   common workers,  soldiers,  foreigners,  prostitutes and with people of bad reputations.  Jesus and John had different styles of ministry; the wisdom about their behaviors and ministry had to do with the results.  Through wisdom one can understand how difference does not necessarily mean conflict or opposition.  With wisdom we can understand differences and respect them.

  These sayings attributed to Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew are what influenced the Jesus Seminar to understand Jesus primarily as a Wisdom teacher.

  Wisdom involves the rather rhetorical and artful use of language to evoke new meanings.  The artful use of language can be shocking and it can confront every day logic with counter-logic.  How can an infant wisdom be equated with the wisdom and knowledge of an adult person?  Jesus was confronting the literal mind of people to shock them into a profounder insight.  “Return to the native joy and wonder of one’s infancy; be born again.  You’ve grown too weary with all of the adult protocols and adult knowledge to the point of losing your zest for life.”  Jesus was saying, “You who are wearied by all of the oppressions of adulthood; come to me for rest.  Get underneath all of that adult layer of memories which have made you forget the joy and wonder of your original birth.  Complement your weary adulthood with the rest of infant aspect of your personhood arising in you through the power of meditation.  Your native infant selfhood can levitate through all of the layers of your adult knowledge that has helped you squelched the original capacity of joy and wonder.  Come back to wonder; yes you still have to pull the difficult loads of adulthood but you are yoked with me, the Christ, who will help you to access rest for your souls even while you bear the burdens of adult life.”

  St. Paul characterized the adult life of sin as a body of death which made him feel wretched.  This perhaps is a metaphor from a method of torture; a prisoner had the body of a corpse tied to him and of course such a torture would drive a person mad.

  St. Paul needed the experience of the higher power of the Spirit of Christ to free him from this torturous experience of a “negative habit” relentlessly clinging to him.  The rest of soul which Christ promises to all is this experience of a higher power within us which does not take us out of life; rather it helps us to access a power and wonder of living to accompany and supplement our adult lives so full of so many things which can sometimes seem to be clinging burdens.

  Let us embrace the insights of wisdom about behaviors and ministry today.  St. Paul found an experience to help deliver him from a torturous state of being internally enslaved to a dreadful habit.  We too can know this interior liberating experience.    The words of Jesus invite us to have wisdom about our ministry today.  Each of us has different ministry and the effective outcomes of ministry is the wisdom of ministry, not the sameness in the style of ministry.  Accept your ministry from Christ; it will be different from the ministries of other people so you need not compare yourselves with others.

  Finally, access your infant aspect of personality, not by being infantile or childish, but by the rousing and powerful memory of the original freshness of coming to life into this world.  This is a place we can access and return to as a new birth.  And this new birth is a yoke that we can have with Christ as we pull the burdens of life.  Let us know how to pull the burdens of life together with Christ and not as tortured individuals.

  Let us hear the voice of Jesus say today: “Come unto me and rest, for my yoke is easy and my burdens are light.”  May Christ help us to find the easing of our burdens today.  Amen.