Moss

Gospel Reading: Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)

Decatur Island is a mossy place. Actually everything's pretty mossy out here in Seattle (that's where I am right now for some continuing education). You know about the famous Pacific Northwest drizzle. Moss is no surprise in a place like this.

I was admiring the moss as we were hiking in the woods of Decatur Island, out in the San Juans. It came in all shades of green. It clung to stones, tree trunks, and anything else that sat still long enough in the Decatur damp. Some mosses looked like tiny ferns. Others like a thin, short fur. Some moss was nothing but a faint hint of color, as if sprayed weakly from a near-empty can.

The presence of all this lovely moss made perfect sense, until my uncle bothered me with a few strange facts: The average annual rainfall in Seattle is about 37 inches, 11 inches less than Little Rock. And on Decatur Island, it's about 20. Go figure.

The lush fauna of the wet Northwest gets by on not much water by taking it a little at a time.

I heard last week's gospel read at Christ Church, Seattle soon after our return from the island. With that strange, ceremonious shaking of foot dust that Jesus recommends, he makes it clear that Seattle wasn't where the disciples were to find these inhospitable houses. Dust accumulates only indoors here.

But in telling his friends to head off without proper provisions for their journey, he sent them off depending on the hospitality of the people they would meet. And walking on Decatur island was a reminder to me that the sustaining kindness we depend upon need not be much if it comes often.
This harsh gospel reading serves as a reminder to me that our lives are caught up and held up in a great web of hospitality. And sometimes we need to be reminded of our dependence upon the goodness and gifts of others. The small, regular sustaining gifts of the people around us.

The small gifts of simple meals or rooms swept free of the day's dust. Small gifts of a look in the eye, or a well chosen word. We don't need such things in torrents. We need them just a little at a time, but often. Taken individually they don't amount to much. Even taken together their quantity may seem small. But drop by daily drop the fullness and health of our lives depends upon those hundreds of nearly invisible hospitable acts. From friend, stranger, child, spouse, neighbor. Whatever is green and growing in us is sustained by the hospitality of these others.

Jesus told the disciples to be harsh in their judgment of the inhospitable and he told them God would too. But he was talking to people from whom he was removing all illusions of self-sufficiency. Taking no gold, no copper for their purses was surely for the disciple's formation, not for the judgment of those hypothetical unworthy houses.

The disciples, like us, needed to see that their lives are like moss. They depend on the goodness of others. Not great bursts of philanthropy. But on the simple sustaining acts that are all around us. Our lives just need a little hospitality. But they need it all the time.

Inquisition

Gospel reading: Matthew 7.21-29
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)

With a new Indiana Jones movie just released, I'm reflecting on power differentials. I haven't seen the show. But I have a good idea of what to expect: constantly shifting power differentials.

I'm pretty sure there will be chases in tight quarters - crypts or caves or maybe even spaceships I hear. And Indy will be at the weak end of a power differential. Whether it's a giant boulder or a ball of flames that's barreling towards him, his only hope will be to get out of the way. And if we've paid full price for a ticket, he'd better have to crawl through something wet or writhing or sticky or creeping or preferably all of the above to get free.

But the film's most satisfying moments will be when our hero reverses a power differential between people - namely between Dr. Jones and one of the villains du jour. We love it when a band of evildoers with scimitars or revolvers find themselves on the wrong end of Indy's whip.

Each Indiana Jones movie reminds us that power differentials are thrilling, and that we really wouldn't want a world free of them even if such a thing were imaginable. Life is a constant exchange of power. The physicists and the psychologists and the comic book writers all agree that this is so.

But there is a problem with the world as we know it, power being distributed as it is. And the problem isn't that the bad guys have power too. The problem, Kathleen Norris says, is that inquisition is a lurking possibility in every conversation, increasing as the differential in power grows.

She puts it this way: "Inquisition...is an attutude of mind, a type of questioning that resists true conversation, which like the word 'conversation,' at its root means to turn, or to turn around. The inquisitor has answers in hand and does not wish to change them." With her definition, inquisition becomes a present reality and temptation for the likes of me, and not limited to the infamous persecutions by Christians in the middle ages.

Because there is an almost primal (or perhaps a literally primal) satisfaction in reversing or relishing in a power differential, inquisition is a possibility in every conversation. You know an inquisition is being held when your response holds no sway in a conversation. The questioner wants to know nothing more than what side you're on. This is the interpersonal equivalent of that giant boulder rolling in one direction through the cave, crushing everything in its path. Indy knows quite well that his opinion or pushback won't matter a whit. So he gets out of the way. Ever been in a conversation or relationship like that?

The most famous chapter in The Brothers Karamazov is called The Grand Inquisitor. Ivan, one of the novel's main characters, tells a story or a parable perhaps about an appearance of Christ in Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. The Grand Inquisitor recognizes Christ immediately by the miracles he performs. And tells him, "Thou must not meddle for the time, at least."

The Inquisitor's job is to try people for heresy. And he tells Christ himself that he "mayest not take from men the freedom which Thou didst exalt when Thou wast on earth." Faith depends on freedom. And any miracles would smother the freedom to disbelieve. So Christ himself must be stopped, in the Inquisitor's eyes.

A power differential. And the penetrating question (Dostoevsky himself is said not to have resolved the questions this chapter raises) of the parable has to do with how much of God's absolute power God withholds in order for us to be free. That's a big, old, unanswerable question. But if such difference matters in our relationship to God, how much more must it matter in our relationships with one another.

Of course the differences can't be eliminated and we wouldn't want them to be. (There would be no more Indiana Jones movies.) But what we do with the power we have, even in a single conversation matters. In our exchanges do we hold out the possibility that we might be changed by a response? Or is our opinion something of a fireball raging through a crypt? You can throw your pail of damp ideas back at it, but the impact will be negligible.

In our gospel Sunday Jesus said that not everyone who calls him "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven, even though they did "deeds of power" in his name. Only those who hear his words and act on them will enter. This is a troubling passage, but isn't it about our freedom and the exercise of power? We can appropriate our power - even religious or spiritual power - in life giving or in abusive ways. We've got some freedom. And whether we chose inquisition or conversation is up to us.

I guess the appeal of Indiana Jones depends on our desire that a proper give and take be returned to the exchange of power in our world. And the good news is that our work is really the same as that of Indiana Jones. We have to figure out how to put the power we have - whether whip, mind, or tongue - to bring things back into balance. And to do this we have to always put ourselves forward, open to the possibility that we will be changed, knowing that the last thing our world needs right now is another inquisitor.