Sermons from Saint John’s

I’m sure that many of us have had the kind of friends who always cancel plans at the last minute; or the kinds of friends who lean on you for support, but disappear when you need them. Or the kinds of friends who say they don’t want any french fries, and then reach over to eat your french fries—right? But have you ever had the kind of friends who, when you’re all in a wedding party together, and the groom is running super late coming from those final Evans family photos after the ceremony, and your phone is running out of battery, and you ask to borrow your friend’s charger, they say no—except you really need your phone because the bride specifically asked you to post photos #HappilyEvansAfter and so you go to CVS and while you and half the other bridesmaids are trying to find a charger that actually works with your phone, everyone else gets in the limo to the reception and leaves you behind? Anyone have friends like that?

There’s a beautiful children’s book by Doris Stickney called Water Bugs & Dragonflies that tells the story of a little colony of water bugs who lived below the surface of quiet pond. They lived a busy life, scurrying around in the mud, doing whatever water bugs do. And one day, they noticed that one of them had disappeared. They looked up just in time to see her climbing up the stalk of a lily that hung down into the water. They waited for her to return, but she never did. The other bugs missed their friend, and they wondered where she’d gone, but they had no way of knowing. One of them came up with an idea: the next bug to climb up the stalk would come back to tell the others what was going on. The very next day, that same bug began to climb the lily stalk. When she reached the top, she was tired, and she flopped down on the lily pad on her back to rest. When she looked up, she was amazed. She’d never seen the sky before. She’d never smelled the air before. She’d never felt the warm sun on her wings before—in fact, she’d never known she had wings, but now they were unfurling underneath her. She lifted her wings, and tried a flap or two, and before she knew it, she was flying through the air. She had transformed from a water bug into a dragonfly!

There’s a great talk from 2011 by a computer programmer named Rich Hickey with the title “Simple Made Easy.” The core idea is that although we often use these words interchangeably, “simple” and “easy” mean different things. Something is simple when it does or means or consists of exactly one thing. The opposite of “simple” is “complex”; complex things are made from simple things woven together in a way that can be hard to disentangle. Something is easy, on the other hand, when it’s familiar or close at hand; when we can just do it without much effort. The opposite of “easy” is “hard.” And these two categories can be combined in any combination. We can probably all imagine things that are simple and easy (a vegetable peeler) and things that are complex and difficult (rocket science, brain surgery). But the other two combinations are possible as well. Rich Hickey’s point about programming is that in our effort to make things easy, we often make them more complex, and then suffer the consequences. A good non-programming example of this would be taco seasoning, which combines cumin and oregano and pepper, garlic powder and chili powder and also a bunch of salt. It’s easy to use, but the complexity has a cost: you can’t tweak the flavor profile, or add more spices relative to the salt. If you want spicier tacos, they end up saltier; if you want something milder, it turns out bland. Now, both Rich Hickey and tacos are entirely irrelevant to the rest of this sermon, except insofar as the Two Great Commandments that Jesus names in our Gospel reading today fall into that fourth category of things: they’re very simple, but they’re not at all easy.

Imagine yourself in Boston in 1771. The Boston Massacre has happened. The Tea Party is yet to come. Imagine that you’re down on the Common, hanging out with a crowd of people listening to a popular preacher who’s visiting from out of town. Suddenly a group of local Tories arrive, parishioners of the Old North Church, along with a couple of British regulars in their famous red coats. And they ask the preacher, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth …” (Matt. 22:16) Tell us then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to King George III? If he says “no,” they’re going to put him under arrest: that’s sedition. And if he says “yes” in front of this crowd—well, he’ll be lucky if all they do is throw him in the Harbor as a Tea Party of One. If you’re trying to undermine a rival who you see as a threat, this kind of trap isn’t half bad. That’s more or less the situation Jesus is in, in today’s gospel.

You know, I can’t help but think that this all would’ve turned out differently if the ancient Israelites had only had smartphones. In our reading from Exodus last Sunday, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, including the second one: “You shall not make for yourself an idol.” (Exodus 20:4) And this Sunday, we read about the people doing exactly that: making and worshiping a golden calf. This is typical, in a way. When someone tries to tell us what to do—even God—we often respond by pushing back. So perhaps this is a theological account of a common tendency: No sooner do we hear the law than we begin to break it.

On Tuesday, The New York Times ran a fascinating story about a series of meetings between Christopher Olah, one of the cofounders of the AI company Anthropic, and religious leaders of different faiths, from all around the world. “The discussions served two purposes,” the Times reports: “to broach the possibility of AI consciousness, a controversial idea that Anthropic’s leaders had been unusually open to; and to learn how Anthropic—which could be valued at $2 trillion—might apply centuries of human moral wisdom to its models, as rapidly as possible. If the models themselves could be made to choose goodness, Mr. Olah reasoned, the world would be more safe.” Believing that his company had created a thinking machine with superhuman intelligence, which can already be used by humans for good or evil and which he believed may even be a conscious moral agent capable of doing good and evil on its own, Chris Olah reached out to the religious leaders of the world to learn: how can we make it choose goodness? There’s a kind of innocence about this question that fascinates me.

During the first week of my first college semester, I walked into my freshman seminar and met a guy named Phil. Phil was a really nice guy; also, he’d soon come to shatter my dearest hopes and dreams. That first day, after we’d all introduced ourselves, I turned to Phil and asked, “Are you a runner, Phil?” Now, I already knew Phil was a runner. He was a local legend; a kid from the next town over who’d won the D1 state championship in cross country our senior year in a literal photo finish. (2nd place was from Charlestown, I’m sorry to say.) Anyway, Phil was running for the college cross country team, and NCAA rules said that they could only have organized practices 6 days a week. So Phil and I started running together on that 7th day, and I soon discovered that he was just in a totally different league. Phil’s casual run with Greg on his day off was one of my most challenging workouts of the week. I’d loved running in high school; I was running with a track club at the time, in hopes of one day walking on to the college team. I soon discovered I just didn’t have what it takes. Thanks, Phil. Have you ever had a moment like this, when you met someone who shared a passion for something you held dear, but was just way better at it than you were? Or a moment when you finally reached some new phase in your life you’d always dreamed of, and suddenly realized you had no idea what you were doing?

The landowner in today’s parable behaves more or less like you’d expect an ancient vineyard-owner to behave, at first. He sets out early in the morning, so that he doesn’t lose any of the precious daylight hours. He hires day laborers who are standing in the marketplace, because he needs extra help at harvest time. And he makes a deal to pay them the typical daily wage. A few hours later, he goes back to the market. He hires more workers and sends them to work as well, and he tells them he’ll pay them whatever’s fair. And then he comes back again at noon and three o’clock, and he does the same thing. Now, this is kind of odd.

On December 16, 1956, a young woman made American cultural history with a nothing but a football, a helmet, and a dream. In the eyes of the world, her job that day was simply to hold the ball for a kicker. And she did. As the kicker ran forward at full speed, she carefully held the ball in place; as his leg swung back, she remained focused on the plan; and then, as the kicker’s foot flew forward, she pulled the ball away, and—WHOMP. History was made. For the first time ever, Lucy van Pelt had pulled the ball away from the swinging foot of a gullible young kicker named Charlie Brown. In the Peanuts comic strip every subsequent autumn from 1956 to 1998, Lucy played that trick again. As the years passed, and Charlie Brown grew neither older nor wiser, Lucy repeated the same football gag, with endless variations. Every year, she had a new explanation for why this year would be different. “You’re truly amazing!” she says to Charlie one year, as he pumps himself up to try again. “You talk the talk and you walk the walk!” Run run run run aaaaaah! “But you don’t kick the kick.” Lord, if my friend pulls the football away when I try to kick it, how many times should I forgive? As many as seven times? Not seven times, I tell you, Charlie Brown, but seventy-seven times.

When Alice and I were married, one of my mother’s oldest friends gave us a wedding gift: a binder full of some of her family’s favorite recipes, with plenty of empty plastic page protectors for us to add our own. I’ve put a few recipes in there over the years, but I have to admit I’m not good at keeping up with it; in part because, try as I might, I can never seem to keep a printer working for more than a couple months at a time. Anyway, as a result, I often find myself cooking from recipes that I found online. In other words, I often find myself doing something with which you may be familiar: scrolling through what appears to be the entire story of the recipe author’s life, marriage, and culinary education, until I finally arrive at the recipe itself. I’ve never really understood this phenomenon. I don’t need to know about your first date. I just want to know how much baking powder these waffles need. I think people sometimes make the mistake of reading the Bible as if it’s a recipe blog.