Readings for Tenth
Sunday after Pentecost:
Proverbs 9: 11--6, Ephesians 5: 15--20, St. John 6:53--59
August 17, 2003
The Rev. Nayan McNeill
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
In today's Scripture readings, we hear repeatedly about two concepts: wisdom and simplicity. They might seem initially to be unrelated, maybe even opposite. And yet when we listen carefully to what that passage in Proverbs tells us to do, when we take a close look at St. Paul's advice to the church in Ephesus, and when we hear Our Lordıs words in St. John's Gospel, we come to realize that these two concepts, within the framework of Christian theology, are closely allied.
In Proverbs, Wisdom (personified as a woman) prepares a feast and invites to her table the SIMPLE and those who have no sense. Those who enter and eat, will, she promises achieve INSIGHT and LIFE. What she serves is bread and wine.
Our Lord, in the passage from Johnıs Gospel offers very simple directions. Eat of the bread which is my body, and drink the wine which is my blood, and you will live forever. One must act with faith, with clarity, with simplicity to comply--and without too much analysis and erudition. But the rules are clear--and SIMPLE.
In Paulıs letter to the Ephesians, he lets the members of the church there know just what they must do to understand the will of God: They are to avoid the evil around them. (Ephesus, remember, was the center of the worship of Artemis, later in Roman times: Diana) Paul's followers are to act WISELY and come to know the Spirit by performing two SIMPLE acts. SIMPLE, not meaning EASY, but UNCOMPLICATED. They are to give thanks to God and they are to join together in the "singing of psalms, hymns, and songs of praise." I have just returned from the Church's General Convention in Minneapolis, and I can attest to the powerful experience of singing in a crowd of over 5,000 (and many of them knew the words to four or five verses without consulting the service bulletin.) There was truly a SIMPLE joy in the experience. I participated with people who knew these psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, BY HEART.
The experience of singing together and then sharing the bread and the wine of the Eucharist, the Thanksgiving, was exhilarating. This was not about disagreement or dissension. We didnıt VOTE. Together, liberal and conservative, old and young, men and women, laity and clergy and bishops--we all sang with our hearts, somehow knowing that in that simple activity we were closest to understanding, to being wise, to achieving insight, to knowing the will of God.
Many of us value periods of SIMPLICITY. We go off backpacking, grateful for the natural setting, making do with only a few pieces of equipment. We like the idea of not keeping a strict time schedule, of eating basic foods, of taking time to be instead of always doing, doing, doing. Or we like to get out into the garden, to dig in the dirt and plant flowers or squash or paving stones! These are often moments of clarity and peace.
Yet we feel these are the unusual moments. That REAL LIFE is somehow about complexity, about achievement, about information and data. Weıve spent years and dollars making our lives complicated. We've studied, weıve learned to analyze and synthesize, to calculate, and solve problems, work out formulas, and project which way the world will turn next.
Children were once seen to live simple lives, although now they seem to be as heavily scheduled as adults. The church even has lists of weekly meetings and activities. People want to DO THINGS.
Yet the path to God, as today's readings tell us, is to pare away the extraneous. To give thanks and to sing; to enter and be easy, to eat and drink the basic food of life. In that way can we come to know the will of God; in that way we can feast on the simplest elements.
Paul sets out one other thing that seems more difficult. Can he really mean it when he tells the Ephesians (and us) to give thanks at all times and for everything. Hear that? At all times and for everything!
We find it difficult to understand how we can be giving thanks all the time. We give thanks in church. ³Thanks be to God² we say repeatedly. And a lot of us "give thanks" before a meal--especially if it is a special occasion, of if the Rector is visiting!
Give thanks at all times, Paul tells us. If we are filled with the Spirit, he suggests, that will be our natural reaction to living, minute by minute. Then he goes on to say that we should give thanks for EVERYTHING. This should pull us up short. How is this possible? It is fairly easy to give thanks for a beautiful sunset, for a hug from a friend, for a reprieve from an unpleasant task. We give thanks for those we love, for awards and gifts. But everything?
Can we give thanks for our enemies? For those who wish us harm? Can we give thanks for pain, for disappointment, for the worm that eats our apple? Paul seems to be telling us yes. Some benefit can be ours if we do.We are trying here to understand THE WILL OF GOD. And the will of God is obviously not just what gives us pleasure or security or satisfaction. The will of God is not the same as the way we have the world figured out.
Because figuring out the world spins us right back to complexity, to wanting to make the rules, to focusing on ourselves and the input only of our own experience and reasoning. It's not that complicated, todayıs lessons remind us. Now are we at an impossible impasse? Are we being asked to give up the life weıve arranged for ourselves--or the life that we think weıve arranged for ourselves? I wish I had a simple answer.
We obviously can not give up everything to walk barefoot around Cupertino singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. We can, however, become more and more aware of our blessings. We can think hard about the things that happen to us and give thanks for what we learn. We can offer our blessings and thanks more frequently. We can find time to BE everyday, to listen IN OUR HEARTS to Godıs will for us. . . God wants us to be simple in our faith, wants us to be thankful and to express it. God wants us to love more and act as if we did. We are not being asked to give up thinking, but we are being asked to give up thinking in selfish ways.
The heart is always available, even when time seems not to be. We can leave some moments open every day that are not listed on the calendar or in the palm pilot. And we can open ourselves to the will of God. I donıt know just how you will do it. I don't know just how I will do it. But God knows how God will do it!
In the recent film "Winged Migration" which I'm sure many of you saw, remember that generation after generation of birds traveled through the unexplained wisdom of their breed so that they could arrive in the place where their lives could be renewed. They flew over oceans and fields and cities. They perhaps did not always know where they were (they obviously could not have named the country or city in OUR terms) but they knew what was important: they knew where they were going and why they were going. They knew their destinations.
T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets writes:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
when the last of earth left to discover
is that which was the beginning;
. . .
a condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
I'd like to end this homily with a story. I think it will help us understand the union of simplicity and wisdom. It comes from a book by Peter France called A Place of Healing for the Soul, about the Greek island of Patmos, where St. John is believed to have written The Book of Revelation.
France is a man who knows a great deal about the worldıs religions and has rejected them all as having nothing to offer him personally except intellectual information. He has met a monk on Patmos, and because he knows the monk has been a successful missionary in Africa, he asks him what he would say if he came to Peter France's tribe and wanted to convert the liberal humanist world of western Europe. This is a tribe, France reminds the Greek monk that knows a lot about Christianity, a lot about the attempts to prove the existence of God, a lot about the charming stories and legends of the Bible, but has determined that it has no need of these aids to living.
"If you came," I said, "as a missionary to my tribe today, what would you say to us?" I sat back, conscious of having put him on the spot. He looked at me with a smile and said simply: "I would not say anything to you. I would simply live with you. And I would love you."
AMEN
| Updated 8/23/03 |
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