Reflecting on St. Augustine

Embed from Getty Images

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Feast of St. Augustine, August 29, 2019 

Chapel of Our Lord, Episcopal Church Center

Psalm 87; Hebrews 12:22-29 ; John 14:6-15

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Today is the feast of St. Augustine. I have a complicated relationship with Augustine. Hopefully I am not the only one. I have deep respect for him and find much of his writing to be insightful and thought provoking. I also have some challenges with some of his doctrines. First the good stuff.

Even if you don’t know much about the details of the life of St. Augustine, you probably know much his thought. He is a foundational figure in Western Christianity. We owe him a debt for articulating well so many of the important beliefs and doctrines of our faith tradition. It is from Augustine that we get our understanding that a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. He so simply and beautifully articulates the truth of our experience, of our belief that when we gather around this table to share bread and wine there is more going on than baked wheat and fermented grape juice. There is something real, powerful, and meaningful happening here. God is present in a miraculous and tangible way. Along with that Augustine also articulates for us the belief that it is God in the Holy Spirit here that make the bread and the wine into the real presence of Christ. It is not about me as the priest. I am merely the conduit for God’s grace. 

This was particularly important in Augustine’s time, because there was a controversy with the Donatists about whether it was the holiness of people that made the Church holy or whether the Church was holy because it belonged to God. Thankfully, Augustine’s view one out. Neither the holiness of the Church nor the validity of the sacraments depends on us. What a relief. It is not up to us alone. God shows up here in our worship no matter what kind of day we are having. If we are on top of our game and getting everything right, God is here. If we have failed five times before breakfast and really wishing we could just start over, God is here. It is not up to us or how well we are doing at living up to our goals as a follower of Jesus today. 

Augustine’s willingness to own the frailty of being human is one of the things I so appreciate about him. He is aware of how small we humans are in the grand scheme of things and how big God is. There is comfort in that. As Augustine writes at the beginning of his autobiography, Confessions: our hearts are restless until them come to rest in God. We cannot do it all on our own. We will be restless until we put our trust and faith in God. We will be restless until we rest in God. As it says in one of the prayers in the Compline service in the BCP, which asks that “we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this world may rest in your eternal changelessness.” [p. 133]

In his book, Confessions, Augustine tells a story of his teenage years in which he and a group of friends snuck into an orchard and stole a bunch of pears. They stole more than they could possibly eat, not because they were good pears, but simply for the joy of thieving. While most of us probably do not relate to the joy of actually stealing something, we can certainly relate to the way in which we can give into the temptation to do something we know we should not, just because it feels good. Just one more way Augustine owns up to the frailty and challenges of being human. 

My difficulties with Augustine come in the fact that at times he took the frailty of humanity too far. Augustine is known for a strong doctrine of original sin, the belief that we are born sinful. And it is a doctrine which the Church embraced for centuries until the Reformation. This doctrine taken to its extreme ends up promoting a negative view of our bodies, particularly female bodies, and of human intimacy. 

Since Augustine had such a willingness to own up to the reality of human frailty, I am hoping we can chalk that problematic theology about sex and our bodies to his humanity without tossing out all the good stuff in his theology. 

Ultimately, I hope Augustine’s emphasis on the enormity of God, of God’s goodness, God’s grace and the fact that God’s presence and God’s love are with us no matter how virtuous or successful a day we are having. I hope that is the message that you carry with you from our celebration of Augustine today. God’s grace is present in our lives, and we don’t have to do anything to earn it. Thanks be to God. AMEN. 

Saint Dominic, Joy, and Grace

Embed from Getty Images

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of Our Lord, Episcopal Church Center 

Feast of St. Dominic, August 8, 2019

Psalm 96:1-7; Romans 10:13-17; John 7:16-18

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

One of my dearest friends, Minlib, who is really more than a friend (he is like another brother), is a Dominican Friar. We first met as PhD students many years ago, and he fast became a member of my family. So when I saw that I would be preaching on the feast day of his order’s founder, I wrote him a note asking if he had any particular insights for me. 

He told me that Dominic was as a joyful friar and a preacher of grace. That made me smile and warmed my heart. It probably helps that all these centuries later joy and grace are still embodied in the Dominican order. My dear Minlib certainly does. And there seems to be something of the Holy Spirit in having Dominic’s feast this week. Joy and grace. We are certainly in need of those at the present moment. Now it could certainly be said that joy and grace are always a good idea. AND I think we need them especially right now. We need them. Our world needs them. Joy and grace seem to be utterly missing from our news headlines and from our collective, societal discourse.

We need a little more Dominic in our lives. We need his spirit in the public square. Now, it could be easy to protest this since we cannot all be Dominic. We are not likely to give up all we have, commit ourselves to poverty and celibacy and found an order of friars. So while we may not all become preachers and friars, we certainly can embody his characteristics of joy and share his message of grace.

As I shared yesterday, I struggle with the judgment passages in our Scriptures, and so I am always grateful for a reminder that God’s grace abounds. One way to live out the reality of grace is to be more gentle with ourselves. No doubt we could all benefit from sharing God’s grace inside our own hearts. But if we are to follow in Dominic’s footsteps and to “preach” grace with our lives, then we also need to share that grace with others. We need to view others and the world through the lens of grace. This doesn’t have to mean letting go of high standards or accountability. It just means that when we find ourselves jumping to judgment or making assumptions about someone else’s motivations, we pause and reflect. We ask ourselves how it is that we might find more grace in this particular moment.

I have no doubt that joy and grace are inextricably linked. When we have more grace for ourselves and for each other, then there will also be more joy in our hearts. I also firmly believe, in fact it is part of what keeps me going, keeps me hopeful, even when the news headlines make me feel like crumpling into a puddle of tears and giving up. I believe that as each of us strives to live our lives with a little more grace, to bring a little more joy into the world, I believe it matters. I believe our actions matter. I believe how we live our lives matters. I believe that together, little by little, we can make the world a more graceful and joyful place. AMEN.

Reflections on Judgment

Embed from Getty Images

Rev. Molly F. James, PhD

Chapel of Our Lord, Episcopal Church Center 

August 7, 2018: John Mason Neale

Psalm 106:1-5; 2 Chronicles 20:20-21; Matthew 13:44-52

May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard, and may that point us to the Living Word who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

“So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Lines like these make me nervous. On multiple fronts, first there is the global front. Particularly in the wake of the horrific events of the weekend, it is tempting to latch on to judgment texts like these as a vehicle for our pain and anger. We can use them to condemn the perpetrators. . . But if we do that we are joining in the cycle of hate and violence that is a part of why mass shootings seem to be such a regular occurrence.

Then there is the personal front, if I weren’t standing up here reading those lines, I’d be squirming in my seat. I consider myself a recovering perfectionist. I take my mistakes, my errors, my sins very seriously - a bit too seriously most of the time, and so passages like this make me nervous. And I don’t find them helpful because they feed my perfectionist tendencies . . . after reading a passage like this my perfectionist self can say “See! It does matter how you behave! Watch out, you better bear good fruit or else!” NOT HELPFUL! I am quite capable of giving myself a good guilt trip without adding on the fear of the eternal flames of hell.

I have often struggled with the theme of judgment and punishment that are present in our Scriptures. It is tempting to put our Gospel aside and focus on the mercy and steadfast love that are more prominent in our other readings today or to just focus on the life story of John Mason Neale whose life we remember today, and his example of good works in founding the order of St. Margaret. But the questions of judgment and punishment are right there in the Gospel, and I believe in facing my fears, so I can’t just let them slide by. 

Shortly after 9/11 I read a book of essays by Eugene Kennedy* that helped me think about these passages of judgment differently. As you likely remember there was lots of talk of judgment in the days and weeks following 9-11 - who was to blame? Who was now burning in hell for their sins? Not all that different than some of the rhetoric we are hearing today as well. But Kennedy says that we have got it all wrong if we think it is all a dichotomy, that there are simply good people and evil people, or as it says in some of our other texts on judgment, the wheat and the chaff or the fruitful and unfruitful trees. 

Kennedy writes of those who died on 9-11 (and I think this could apply equally to all those who have been victims of mass shootings in recent years): “Their voices, taken from phone calls and emails and the recollections of friends, blend now into one message, one voice like a canyon echo coming back to us out of the ruins: ‘I love you,’ said in a thousand ways is the true harvest of these good people’s lives. The good grain so overflowed that it covered over the patches of human stubble in their lives . . . They defined themselves and what life and faith are all about in the commitment to the relationships in their lives.”  When we look at all those people from all sorts of walks a life - a real cross section of humanity - who perished on 9/11 or in all the mass shootings, we should see the good - the overwhelming good in them, for as Kennedy goes on to say, that is what ultimately matters to God.  Kennedy writes, “What is good and bad in us grows together. On judgment day, God harvests only what is good in us, for that is what is eternal, and ignores the weeds that belong to time.” 

Reading these words lifts a weight from my shoulders. They comfort me because they reminded me that God can see the big picture - and God pays much more attention to the times we get it right - the times we lived a life of love - than to the times we messed up. They also give me a much more hopeful picture of Judgment Day. I have always struggled with the idea that God sends people to hell as a punishment. The image Kennedy offers fits more with the understanding of judgment that I have developed over the years, with thanks to theologians like Julian of Norwich, C.S. Lewis, and Rowan Williams. While there may be a moment of reckoning, a moment of cleansing when we come face to face to with God at the end of our lives, we need not fear it. God is not some arbitrary judge. God is the God we know and love. God is loving and merciful - ALWAYS. Hell is not eternal damnation for our sins; hell is a choice we make. God is always reaching out to us, always offering mercy and forgiveness. Always willing to pay more attention to the good that is in us. And God has given us free will, so we have the option to accept that mercy or to reject it. If we choose to turn our back on God, then we will know hell, for hell is the only place where God is not. 

So, today as we are invited to reflect on our lives, it can be tempting to start tallying up all the times we have done something harmful or foolish. But, perhaps, that is not how it is meant to be. What if, like John Mason Neale, we focus on how we can do good to help others? What if we try to see ourselves as God sees us: as beloved children who are capable of generous acts of love. What would it look like to have those be the defining acts of our lives?

AMEN.

*Eugene Kennedy. 9-11:Meditations at the Center of the World. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002), 32-3.