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Year B, Proper 21, October 1^st, 2006
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Psalm 19; James 4:7- 5:6; St. Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church
The Reverend George F. Woodward III

PRAGMATIC:  Concerned with practice rather than theory.

PRAGMATISM:  The theory that actions and beliefs must be judged by their practical results. 

God, I think, is something of a pragmatist.  We certainly find Jesus speaking in a pragmatic way in the Gospel of St. Mark today.  His disciples are deeply displeased because someone has been casting out demons in Christ’s Name, and with apparent good success.  We hate that, don’t we, when we are usurped, and the usurper succeeds!  The man is not one of the band of disciples, and so they try to put a stop to his actions.  The man isn’t properly ordained or duly licensed.  He is an imposter, a fraud, and the disciples want him exposed as such.  But Jesus is unperturbed.  Don’t stop the fellow, He tells them.  Anyone doing good in Jesus’ Name serves the cause!  Indeed, anyone who so much as gives a cup of water to the thirsty in Christ’s Name will have a reward. 

Christ’s attention is fixed on those in need; on the demon possessed, the thirsty, on “the little ones” of the world.  Serve them.  And if your hand gets in the way, or your foot causes you to stumble, or your eye distracts you from this cause, better to get rid of these things than to lose your focus.  You are here to serve and to meet needs in My Name, He tells His disciples, not to worry about proper credentials. 

Why is it so difficult for Christians to focus on Christ’s work, and why is it so easy for us to become distracted from practice by matters of theory?  Theory, in the Christian context, is the stuff of doctrine and dogma.  Doctrine and dogma are important.  It matters how we think about things, and ideas do have consequences.  But I think Christ knew how easy it would be for us to shift our attention to doctrine and the division that often ensues in pursuit of right doctrine and right dogma and to thereby forget the focus to which we have been called.  I think He knew that whenever we prefer theory to practice, we make ourselves stumbling blocks for the “mikroi,” the “little ones.” 

Tribalism runs so deep in the human condition, that instinct to determine who is like us, and who is not, who is “in” our group, and who is “out.”  We categorize by gender and race, by language and culture, by religion and nationality, and by the clothes we wear.  It is a natural human tendency to gather the clan and resist the outsider, and from that tendency comes racism, class pride, heretic hunting, much war and much terrorism and much that mars our common pilgrimage.  Jesus did not want His Name to become another excuse for base behavior. 

Of course, Christ’s Name has become an excuse for base behavior, and we must assume that whenever that is so we are issued a rebuke as strong as that given to the disciples in St. Mark’s Gospels.

Those of you who are following the web-links provided in Edmund’s Notes, or who are by other means following events in the Anglican Communion, know that this week Archbishop Akinola, who has made himself the nemesis of the American Church, issued another broadside in the name of Christ and the Global South.  He has said that the Global South will not accept our newly and duly elected Primate Katherine Jefferts Schori at any meeting of the Anglican Primates, and will not allow her to be seated in those meetings.

 The Archbishop of Nigeria has done all he can to pronounce excommunication on the American Church, but our Lord would probably tell us not to mind too much what Archbishop Akinola is up to, and he would probably tell Archbishop Akinola not to worry so much about Bishop Katherine Jefferts-Schori. The antidote to doctrinal fights is a focus on service to the least of these, the little ones, on the work we’ve been given to do, rather than the division we so instinctually create. 

I took a hike this week on one of my favorite trails up to the old site of the Echo Mountain Lodge.  After Argentina it’s either hike more often or buy a new wardrobe, so I’m trying to hit the trail as often as I can!  There are a great many trails in the San Gabriel Mountains, but all of them go up.  You can get yourself all the way up to Mount Wilson if you have the time and are fit enough.  But you have to take a trail.  If you tried to blaze your own way up to the top of those mountains you’d get tangled up in mesquite and briars and wouldn’t make it to the first rise. 

Picking the Episcopal Church is like picking one of the trails up to the top of the San Gabriel Mountains, I think.  Not all those trails are equally well maintained, some are more challenging than others, some hug the shady side of the mountains.  There are some distinctives about the Episcopalian path.  We refer constantly to God’s first revelation to humankind, the revelation that came to human beings in the form of Reason.  No Church has advocated for the marriage of Faith and Reason as we have, and it is a linkage that has long been present in Christianity, which was the point Pope Benedict rather ham-fistedly tried to make in Regensburg, Germany earlier this month.  Clement of Alexandria, writing of the Church in the third century, said: “Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason.  For indeed it is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason.”

Our profound commitment to a reasonable Faith affects our doctrine.  We have faithfully reasoned our way to things like the admission of women into Holy Orders, and now, to the first woman Primate in Anglicanism.  Those uncomfortable with the marriage of Faith and Reason are increasingly leaving our trail in preference for fundamentalist paths through the mountains.  We see that phenomenon in many world religions, and we see it recently also in Anglicanism.  Maybe they will get to the mountain top, and maybe not.  But I think they often confuse a longing for the way things once were with the Faith of Christ. 

Nostalgia is not the same thing as faithfulness.  Nostalgia seeks comfort in the familiar and well-understood.  The Hebrews in the Book of Numbers were nostalgic.  They remembered their meat and fish and cucumbers, their leeks, onions and garlic and all the good things of Egypt.  They forgot the bitterness of slavery that had been theirs.  They forgot that God was calling them to new and better things, and to a higher purpose. 

Even when it was clear they were not returning to Egypt, they hankered for things as they once had been with the tribe, the in-group.  When Eldad and Medad prophesied outside of the tent, there was a hew and an outcry.  The people were not satisfied with God’s manna, and they didn’t care for God’s new prophets.  They were nostalgic, rather than faithful. 

We want to be faithful, not nostalgic, here at St. Edmund’s.  We want to continue to affirm the marriage between Faith and Reason, and to remind one another that God often speaks through the Eldads and Medads of the world…those who aren’t quite in the right tent.  We want a pragmatic religion, concerned with practice perhaps a bit more than theory, and we want to stay focused on those things which are most important, and surely on those in need; on the “little ones” of the world. 

As I headed out for my hike on the Echo Mountain Trail the other day, I noticed a sign that said the care and maintenance of that trail had been undertaken by the Sanblin Family.  I thought about that off and on all the way up the mountain, how this family I didn’t know had provided a trail along which I could hike and pray and with any luck shed a few pounds, and I said a prayer of thanks for that family.

And, this Stewardship Season, I’d like to thank all of you for maintaining the trail up the spiritual mountain here at St. Edmund’s.  There are other trails out there, but none with our particular vista; not so many rooted so deeply in the ancient Church, yet so fully embracing of Reason.  Not so many with a woman Primate or with such a strong commitment to the ministry of the laity.  Here, folk can find Christ and follow Him without checking their brains at the door, find their prejudices challenged and their hopes confirmed.  It is a good trail and keeps us focused on those things Christ has called us to and runs through enough shade that we’re rested and ready when the grade turns steep again.  Bless each one of you for this good path up the mountain that we’re on.  My prayer for you this day is found in the second stanza of “God of the Prophets,” our Recessional Hymn (#359), that, as Moses prayed, all God’s people might prophesy:  “Anoint them prophets!  Teach them Thine intent: to human need their quickened hearts awake; fill them with power, their lips make eloquent, for righteousness that shall all evil break.”  Amen.  GFW+

 

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