Tending the garden

Malachi 3:19-20
Psalm 98:5-9
2 Thess 3:7-12
Luke 21:5-19

"They Will Put Some of You to Death"

"You will be hated by all because of my Name."
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We expect discussions of the "last things" or the "end times" to verge into impenetrable or bizarre tissues of apocalyptic vision and allegory. But this morning we are given concrete details to contemplate including concrete rubble and ruin. We see burnt stubble as well as roots and branches reduced to charcoal. We envision the Temple on Mt. Zion toppled and demolished into piles of stones. We countenance earthquakes, famine, and plagues.

The first-century people hearing these words would understand them to signify "the Day of the Lord," which as we hear in several quarters of the Holy Scriptures is to be dreaded. For God, the Holy One, is perfect in His justice. He is all-seeing and all-knowing. We do not enter His court of law understanding that certain offenses will be ruled out or that certain secret things will remain safely hidden. God's justice is perfect and true, as true as the fearful symmetry of divine geometry with no ambiguity or shades of gray.

Those of us who live in rural areas understand this geometry very well. If we are working in a field or an orchard, we understand that the health of all living things in our care requires us to uproot diseased and dying plants or to prune fruit trees and vines. In fact, their vigorous health depends upon our unflinching judgment and action.

Those of us who continue the annual practice of spring cleaning understand that if something is broken or compromised or is no longer useful, that it must go. In a world made of wood, a helper holding a chair or a kitchen implement asking "Keep it?" would often hear in reply, "That's firewood!" Indeed, seventeenth and eighteenth-century villages across what is now America practiced the annual custom of building a bonfire on the town common, where the old was ritually (and literally) burned each year, and new wooden spoons or bowls were distributed to each household ringing in the new. In that atmosphere of the new and the fresh, little sentimentality was wasted on old keepsakes that had become dusty clutter. The outlook among all was on a "fresh start" and a "new dawn." As our reading from Malachi affirms, "there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays."

God's justice is rightly to be feared, but we know that the Cross is the perfect intersection of justice and mercy. The Cross is the true compass planted in the navel of the world orienting all men and women and guiding all of them to Heaven. For in the eyes of God nothing He has made is beyond repair. All might be mended, and an infinite sentimentality is poured out upon all people who desire His love and redemption. In today's Gospel reading, Jesus reminds us that He alone might be trusted in this fearful passage through perfect justice on the one hand and infinite mercy on the other. And, especially, He warns, we must beware of imposters.

Mysteriously, God asks us to strive. Yes, He will help us, but He sets a great value on our struggles. Jesus tells us this morning that we will be seized, persecuted, and handed over by our brothers and sisters, our mothers and our fathers. Yet, He never leaves us helpless, not finally. We are given wisdom when we need it, and we always receive reference points, even landmarks to guide our way through the hopeless fog and smoking battlefields of our world.

At the present moment, the world is dominated by two great forces. To one side is Islam, which is the perfect image of justice but without mercy. Sharia law stands at the heart of Islam, regulating all aspects of life, and the sunnah, or exempla, of the Prophet Mohammed describe a career of conquest and imperial ambition. This law requires that a thief have his offending hand cut off, that a woman having sex outside-of-marriage be stoned to death, that a man criticizing the Faith be decaptitated.

To the other side is Political Correctness and the new "Progressivism," which is the perfect image of mercy but without justice. It is compassion run amok without any moral code to anchor it. Indeed, morality itself is deemed a form of oppression and "the artifact of a superstitious past that now is well behind us," recalling the words of an editor of Scientific American who was interviewed on National Public Radio. In this world sanctions must be crafted for every group that is imagined to be "vulnerable." And those who disagree with any dispensation handed out are subject to fine or imprisonment, for reasonable query and conversation are apt to be labeled a hate crime. As the late Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago has said, "I will die in my bed. My successor will die in prison. And his successor will die a red martyr."

These are the imposing earthworks and landmarks that now surround us in the twenty-first century. The most common name selected for a boy in England today is Mohammed, for England, to quote former Prime Minister Tony Blair, has become by and large a Muslim country. Here in the U.S. the culture of "radical compassion" riots violently in the streets because an election did not go their way, and voters for the hated Donald Trump are pulled out of their cars and beaten by mobs. The culture of mercy rules with an unforgiving fist; and the culture of justice demands a compassion of us that none dare to refuse. Do these ring true? Each of us living a Christian life is granted the liberty and prerogative to decide.

Where does all this leave us? What are we to do? Here at the Hermitage, we have banished radio and television. We find that we are very busy tending our fruit trees and produce fields all for the care of the poor. We say our prayers each morning and each night. And we offer decent affection and respect to the people around us however much we may not agree with them. In Hawaii, this is known as aloha. We do not condemn individuals, for each is of infinite value in the eyes of our Lord. We offer hospitality to one and all and continue to care for the outcast, the alien, and the sick and dying.

May I leave you with a thought? All through seminary and in serving the Church, I have met many idealists. They truly looked out on the world with compassion and wanted to help. Many of them became paralyzed by the sheer size of the problems around them to the point that they could no longer do the things that depended on them each day. Some left the ministry feeling disillusioned. Some went to other Communions seeking greener pastures. But most continued in the work they had begun. Over time, many of them learned that the main thing was to tend their own gardens, to care for their own parishes or communities. Slowly, they saw that this work made a difference, that healthy plants came up with vigor, that weeds could be kept under control, so to speak -- that a general atmosphere of health returned to the people they cared for and ultimately to themselves. Yes, it is tempting from time to time to stand up and look out across the vast fields and to see whole gardens overgrown with voracious weeds or even wildfires breaking out in other sectors. But the main thing is for each of us to do the work that God has given us to walk in and to do it faithfully and well. For our Lord's Kingdom is not of this world. The Kingdom of Heaven comes from within, and the love we bear each other, ordered by God's justice and tempered with His endless mercy is life. Eternal life. Amen.