u/MagusFool

EDIT: You can't edit the subject on Reddit. But I used the wrong term. "Ur-Text" means the earliest definitive text. But I only meant the definitive part. Totalizing. Synthesizing. I guess "Thesis" might have been a better choice?

All you have to do is read these lyrics and you'll know everything worth knowing about punk. It's basically the Lotus Sutra, the Magna Carta, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, The fuckin' Apostles Creed of punk.

We want a band that plays loud and hard every night That doesn't care how many people are counted at the door That would travel one million miles and ask for nothing more Than a plate of food and a place to rest

They'd strike chords that cut like a knife It would mean so much more than t-shirts or a ticket stub They'd stop at nothing short of a massacre And everyone would leave with the memory That there was no place else in the world And this was where they always belonged

We would dance like no one was watching With one fist in the air Our arena just basements and bookstores across an underground America With this fire we could light

Just gimme a scene where the music is free And the beer is not the life of the party There's no need to shit talk or impress 'Cause honesty and emotion are not looked down upon

And every promise that's made and bragged Is meant if not kept We'd do it all because we have to, not because we know why Beyond a gender, race, and class, we could find what really holds us back

Let's make everybody sing That they are the beginning and ending of everything And we all are stronger Than everything they taught us that we should fear

At the encouragement of my church, I have begun to dip my toes into writing and delivering original homilies for morning prayer when we don't have a priest (we are searching for a new one right now, and only have supply priests every other Sunday).

Yesterday I delivered my second one and it went over really well, so I thought I'd share it online. I'd be open to constructive critique, or if I've made any grave theological or exetetic errors, I definitely want to know!

Proper 11A

Readings: Genesis 28:10-19a Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23 Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Jacob was in a pretty bad place when he was gifted by God with a vision.

He had just stolen his brother’s birthright. And to add insult to injury, he stole his brother's blessing as well! He cheated, he deceived his father. His very name, means “gripping at the heel” was a euphemism in the Hebrew language for lying, cheating, supplanting. The euphemism still exists in our language today as “pulling your leg”.

He was sleeping out in the wilderness, on the run from his brother who understandably wanted to kill him. He was using a rock as a pillow, he was not camping with adequate gear. This was a miserable situation, and he deserved every moment of agony and fear that he was going through. And God appears to him.

God says he is blessed and his innumerable descendants will spread across the whole world, and that the reverberations of his contact with God would be extended to all people. Not just his family. All families.

Jacob didn’t deserve this. He got to see the great ladder with the Angels ascending and descending in their Divine work. And God was there, not in heaven at the top of the ladder, but standing next to him. He didn’t earn this.

And it’s not like God doesn’t know all the bad stuff about Jacob. God knows everything about Jacob. Like the psalmist said, “Lord, you have searched me out and known me… You discern my THOUGHTS from afar!”

Now, I’ve never had a day as bad as Jacob was having. I’ve never slept out in the wilderness with my head on a rock, in fear that my brother might find me and kill me. I’ve never done anything quite so dramatically BAD as Jacob. But I’ve had bad days. I’ve messed up. I’ve metaphorically been there. And I’ve certainly catastrophized my lesser wrongs and consequences to FEEL as mythic and epic as the story of Jacob.

We don’t have to wait until we’ve become good enough for God. God is already among us, at our sides. Their blessing is being spread across the earth by the unworthy.

Later on Jacob will get another name: Israel. The one who wrestles with or struggles against God. This is after he has a wrestling match with God, and wins, and demands a blessing, and he gets it.

Jacob doesn’t seem to learn very many lessons in his life. It continues to be one struggle after another. One mistake after the next. And yet, he is blessed.

We don’t have to wait until we are better, we don’t have to purify ourselves to meet God. God will meet us on our worst day. When we are tossing in turning in bed in terror over the consequences of our own actions.

The psalmist today asks where he can go that God will not be found? In heaven, in the grave, in foreign lands, out at sea. In darkness. But darkness is light to God.

When Jacob wakes from his dream he says “Surely the the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!” and he uses his rock pillow as an altar. He anoints it with oil. He makes it sacred.

But God is in every place. Every place is the “house of God”. Revelation, such as Jacob's vision merely shows us what was unseen. Sanctification is just deciding to treat a something as what it always was: Full of the Lord’s presence.

In Jesus parable today, the weeds and the wheat are growing in the same ground. Their roots are too tangled to even separate them before harvest. The sacred amidst the profane.

Perhaps even within one person. Surely Jacob had both weeds and wheat within. And they would be comingled together his whole life until he was harvested by God. We might imagine all that deceit and impulsivity was thrown out into the fire when he was eventually raised up to God after his death.

We can hope, at least. We don’t get to see that day. When all the weeds planted by the enemy, all the causes of evil are thrown into the fire, and the fruits of all God’s goodness in this world are harvested by the angels. When, as Paul suggested in Romans that creation itself will be set free from the bondage it was subjected to by sin.

But we hope. We have faith. That things are going to get better when the time is right. We groan, as the whole world groans. And we can see the natural world groaning for relief right now as the summers get hotter, and species go extinct and it’s all our fault. It is the consequences of our collective sin baring down on us.

We can try to run from it. We can agonize and suffer, toss and turn in our sleep, and hopefully, we can dream of God. Hopefully, we can be open to see the vision of the connection between heaven and earth. The ascending and descending angels, bringing down the will of God and gathering up the fruits from the fields when harvest is ready. Of God standing right beside us, here on the ground.

Maybe we can wake from that dream, and even in our brokenness and our unworthiness and our litany of mistakes and misdeeds, we can say “Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place!” and we can sanctify this space. We don’t need to be a priest, or a sage, or to reach some level of improvement before we can anoint the miserable rock we were sleeping on and recognize the holiness of the space we are in.

I hope I’m not getting too abstract. Jacob would call that bit of wilderness where he was sleeping “Bethel”, the house of God. He would, as promised, return there. Start a household there. He would do good things, and bad things. His land would grow wheat and weeds.

Whatever suffering we experience won’t even be worth comparing to the coming glory. That’s what Paul wrote. Not even worth comparing. And we hope for what we have not seen. Because how can you hope for something you have seen?

How can you have faith in something you just “know”. I know I’m standing at a podium, I know it’s made of wood, because I can see it. I cannot have faith in this podium. It’s just there. I know I’m going to go get some coffee after morning prayer, because I’ve already done it innumerable times. I can’t hope for it, because I know it.

Certainty is the enemy of faith and hope. Two of the three greatest Christian virtues. Destroyed by certainty. I think there’s a lot of people out there today feeling a little too certain about things that ought to be a matter of faith. And it’s no wonder, then, that the ones who think they are so certain tend to act in ways very much at odds with Christian virtue. They don’t display faith or hope, or the greatest Christian virtue of love.

Certainty crowds out love, too. It drives out humility, which is a prerequisite for love. How can we know anyone else intimately if we don’t have humility? How can we meet another person as an equal, open to hearing their perspective if we feel sure that we have all the answers? We can’t. They can’t. That was always the people Jesus kept butting heads with. The knowers. The certain. Lacking humility, lacking faith, hope, or love.

The psalmist said such knowledge as God has is “too wonderful for me. It is so high that I cannot attain it.”

And maybe that’s something Jacob had. He knew he was messed up. He knew he wasn’t the smartest of men. He knew he wasn’t the strongest, either. He knew he didn’t have the answers. And that is what made him open to see God’s vision. That was the wheat in his soul growing among all the weeds.

So discard certainty. Accept your own shortcomings. And hope.