“Risky Business”

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter  18 May 2025
Episcopal Parish of All Saints - Ashmont, Dorchester, Massachusetts
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Interim Rector

“What God has called clean, you must not call unclean." Acts 11:9b

My hunch is, it’s a question few — if any — of us have ever thought about. But it’s the kind of question that bugs the heck out of rogue economist Steven Leavitt: Given the choices — a gun or a swimming pool — which is more dangerous?

Well, let’s see. Take the parents of eight-year-old Molly, Leavitt suggests. Molly’s two best friends (Amy and Imani) each live nearby. Molly’s parents know that Amy’s parents keep a gun in their house. So they forbid Molly to play there.

They do let Molly spend a lot of time at Imani’s house. It has a swimming pool in the backyard.

The parents think — in terms of answering the question “How can we keep Molly safe?” — it’s a smart choice: guns vs swimming pool. The gun is more dangerous. It’s a no-brainer.

Until … until you run the numbers. According to the data, the parents’ choice isn’t smart at all. That’s because, in a given year, there’s one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. In a country with 6 million pools, this means that — tragically — roughly 550 children under the age of 10 drown each year.

What about guns? What’s the data on that score? In a country with an estimated 300 million guns, every year, one child is killed by a gun for every million-plus guns. And, no argument, that’s tragic, too.

Now, it comes as no surprise: I’m a proponent of stringent gun control. But focusing on our case study, the point for Molly’s parents is that the likelihood of death by a swimming pool (1 in 11,000) vs death by gun (1 in a million-plus) isn’t even close. Molly is roughly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming pool accident at Imani’s house than in gunplay at Amy’s.

As risk consultant Peter Sandman says, “The basic reality is, the risks that scare people … and the risks that kill people are very different.”

To make good choices, then, the challenge is getting the right information.

And that’s Leavitt’s argument. According to the conventional wisdom, because the world is riddled with obfuscation, complications, and downright deceit, it’s pretty impossible to get to the bottom of anything.

But the conventional wisdom is wrong, according to Leavitt. The world isn’t impenetrable and unknowable at all … if you ask the right questions … if you learn a new way of looking … if you learn to see through all the clutter.

And this is certainly Peter’s experience.

When we first encounter Peter this morning in our reading from Acts, what question does he think the people in his circle should be asking? He thinks it’s “How are you going to keep the Church pure?”

That’s because before his vision — the one about the massive sheet coming down from heaven bursting-at-the-seams with all sorts of goodies forbidden to Jewish people — like the rest of the leaders of the fledgling Church, Peter thinks that the Church is an exclusive club: only Jewish people who choose to follow Jesus need apply.

But that intensely narrow focus hits a speed bump when Gentiles (non-Jews) start getting the mind-boggling idea that Jesus got the whole God-humanity, humanity-God, love-love-love thing right. They choose to follow Jesus, too!

This triggers migraines … because the Jewish Christians ask: “Is a Gentile Christian even a thing?” And, if so, the Jewish Christians fear — “fear” being the operative word here — they’ll get bumped off their “God made us Number One” pedestal.

So, their response is a variation on Replacement Theory: fear of your own group’s extinction or eclipse by another group. Scratch the surface today of just about any charge that dark-skinned people are “invading” our country, and you’ll find Replacement Theory. Or, “How are we going to keep the country white?”

Only, remember, the first Christians are asking: “How are we going to keep the Church pure?” Their answer? “Keep out those unclean Gentiles!”

Peter agrees with the purists … until … until God whacks him up one side of the head with that vision and subsequent data:

The vision makes mincemeat of the conventional wisdom with God’s unequivocal message: “What God has made clean you must not call unclean!”

That’s God’s progressive starting point for “church” … for this parish … for everything.

Score? Purists: 0 … Progressives: 1

And then God whacks Peter up the other side of the head when Peter runs the numbers … and hears with his own ears … and sees with his own eyes real, lived experience: that the very same Spirit that has filled the Jewish discoverers of Jesus now fills the Gentile seekers as well.

Read: “If it quacks like a duck, chances are!”

Score: Purists: 0   Progressives: 2

This is revolutionary.

As revolutionary, in its day, as ordaining in The Episcopal Church people of color … and then women … and then gay and lesbian people … and then transgender persons.

As revolutionary, in its day, as marrying in church a mixed-race couple … a same-sex couple!

Meaning: As Peter learned, the question “How are you going to keep the Church pure?” It’s the wrong question! … because reality always intrudes. And, as headlines from reliable media show, reality is always a problem for purists.

That’s because the Holy Spirit sometimes shows up in the form of reality!

As 19th-century hymn-writer (and sometime Anglo-Catholic priest) Frederick William Faber observed:

    We make God’s love too narrow
    by false limits of our own,
    and we magnify God’s strictness
    with a zeal God will not own.

When confronting new realities, then, as Church, as parish: What’s the risk? What are we afraid of? Whom are we afraid of — invaders, usurpers, infidels?

Or just new — let’s say, different — persons different from us moving into whatever we call neighborhood.

The point? God has made them … God has made them … God has made us all! … clean.

Amen.

“Unjust Desserts”

Homily for the Third Sunday in Lent  23 March 2025
Episcopal Parish of All Saints - Ashmont, Dorchester, Massachusetts
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Interim Rector

“The Lord has not dealt with us according to our sins.” Psalm 103:10

A visit to the morgue. Our guides? The Simpsons’ astronomically wealthy Montgomery Burns and his personal assistant, Smithers.

Wandering among the cadavers, Mr. Burns oozes, “Ah, nothing lifts my spirits like shopping. Let’s see, Smithers. I’ll take his liver … a case of Adam’s apples … and that motorcyclist’s mustache.”

“Oh,” Smithers gushes, “the money you’ve contributed to anti-helmet laws has really paid off, sir.”

“Well,” Mr. Burns sniffs, “young people are my future.”

A body parts shopping spree. Funny? Yes. Far-fetched? Not if you’ve ever spoken to futurist Paul Saffo.

Saffo, who bills himself as a “technology forecaster,” believes that in the future, the super-rich — rich enough to grow their own replacement organs — may evolve into a separate species altogether from the rest of us.

With a future like that out-of-reach for the likes of you and me, you have to ask, “Is life fair?” Or, more to the point (because … church!), “Is God fair?”

That’s the question critics put to Jesus as they file late-breaking news about a bloody massacre: True to form, Roman Governor Pontius Pilate has slaughtered key political opponents of his ― a cabal of Galilean rebels ― as they were worshiping in the Temple. “Their own blood mingled with the blood of their sacrifices!” the critics charge. “Jesus, do you think this sacrilege is right?”

Of course, it’s a trap. They’re trying to get Jesus to come down on the side of the rebels vs. the Roman occupiers, trying to get Jesus to say,“It was wrong for the Romans to do that.” An answer like that would put Jesus squarely in the sights of the authorities.

But, Jesus deflects by reframing the question, basically asking, “What do you think is fair?”

That is, Jesus challenges a view of justice wildly popular in his time and, sadly, still alive-and-kicking in ours. It’s called “retributive justice.” It goes like this: “Bad things don’t happen to good people. If the Galilean rebels met up with tragedy ― if they were massacred — even by the perfidious Romans — they must have done something morally reprehensible to deserve it.”

Or updated to just about any natural disaster you can imagine: Hurricanes? Tornadoes? Earthquake and fire? To the conspiracy du jour set, they’re God’s punishment for letting trans persons use the bathrooms of their gender choice. Yep, if you’re not keen on science, you can always blame the LGBTQs when your house slips into the ocean.

Now, if that’s your take on justice, you have to conclude two things (for sure) about God: God makes bad things happen to bad people … only! And good things happen to good people … only! Why? Because God is keeping score.

But, Jesus counters, “That ... just … isn’t … true. Because if fairness — justice — is a matter of getting what you deserve, what about people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Take those 18 people killed when the Tower of Siloam collapsed awhile back.” (It must have been a horrific disaster.) “Can you honestly say,” Jesus presses, “each of them did something bad to deserve that kind of death? ... because, in one way or another, you’re all guilty of something ... and you’re all still standing. Pure survival isn’t a measure of how good you are!”

That’s because, Jesus points out, God has nothing to do with the arbitrary nature of life, a take Jesus files elsewhere under Meteorology 101. “Rain? Sun? Good people? Bad people? Weather — just like being in the wrong place at the wrong time — happens. ‘Stuff’ happens.”

And in one stroke, Jesus sounds the death knell of retributive justice.

But what does he replace it with?

For that, we have to look beyond this episode to the trajectory of Jesus’ ministry, which echoes the question raised by the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require? Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.”

Put another way, Jesus frames justice as fair treatment. To the delight of Good News-loving and Good News-needing people everywhere, it’s the “equity” part of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). Meaning: It’s not about what we deserve as good or bad people, but what we and each of our neighbors are owed as persons created in God’s image.

So, if you’re down on diversity, equity, and inclusion — especially equity — Jesus would like a word.

Now, if you take away retributive justice — an eye-for-an-eye — does that mean fair treatment is soft on crime? Does that mean people aren’t held accountable? No. Fair treatment means also providing, in criminal situations, redress to the victim … because, what is the victim owed? Redress, justice.

It also means preventing a perp from victimizing others — by incarceration, if need be — because all those others out in the community — the rest of us — are owed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So, the way Jesus lives it, in God’s book, everyone is owed fair treatment … from playground to mall … from church to City Hall ... border to border ... sea to sea. That’s God’s agenda. And consequently, the agenda Jesus gives us to complete.

For example …

Are we treating everyone fairly when we give whopping tax cuts to multi-billionaires and robber barons, while struggling families and seniors face the prospect of life-endangering cuts to Social Security and Medicaid?

Are we treating everyone fairly when some of our neighbors’ votes get counted … while others’ don’t?

Are we treating everyone fairly when ours is the only industrialized nation in the world without a system of affordable universal healthcare? I mean, FWIW Jesus provided healthcare free of charge.

Are we treating everyone fairly when some of our immigrant neighbors are arrested, jailed, and deported without benefit of due process?

Bottomline: If God’s justice requires treating everyone fairly, given the dire straits so many of our neighbors find themselves in, it means this Lent and beyond, expanding our sense and our practice of fairness.

If that’s the case — and it is — as followers of Jesus, the burden is now upon each of us to be all the more fair ... all the more kind ... all the more just ... just like Jesus.

Amen. 

“Heading for Trouble”

Homily for the Second Sunday in Lent  16 March 2025

Episcopal Parish of All Saints - Ashmont, Dorchester, Massachusetts

The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Interim Rector

Some Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

Tricky situation: Eyewitnesses to injustice lack the nerve to speak up. What are the consequences?

Take this photo:

A sunny spring morning 1942 — a Sunday morning — on Eutérpestraat in Amsterdam, an area populated mostly by Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

Marching down the center of the street, 36 people — 36 Jews — dressed in everyday hats and coats, head in the direction of the headquarters of the SD, the Nazi Security Police.

On their left, in front of the group, a German solider armed with what appears to be a machine gun.

But there are others on Eutérpestraat this morning heading in the same direction: A cluster of five people. And then, behind them, a well-dressed couple calmly strolling to church. One or two turn their heads in the direction of their neighbors in the middle of the street.

NYT photo critic Errol Morris asks, “It all looks so neat and orderly. Do those people on the sidewalk know what’s happening?”

Yes. At least that’s what sociologist Diane Wolf suggests. In Beyond Anne Frank, she writes:

Holland did quite well on the Nazi report card: Even Holocaust architect Adolph Eichmann is reported to have said, “It was a pleasure to do business with them.”

“A pleasure to do business with them.” That’s what people who have an interest in exterminating Jesus might say about the Pharisees. Is it so hard to imagine the High Priest Caiaphas and his colleagues or Herod Antipas (who provided a Final Solution to the John the Baptist problem) saying of Jesus’ most vocal critics, the Pharisees, “It was a pleasure to do business with them”?

And yet, who leaks news about a credible plot against Jesus as he heads from Galilee to his date with destiny in Jerusalem? A group of Pharisees — Pharisees! — the people we love to loathe. The “whitèd-sepulcher” Pharisees.

And yet they have the moral edge over those people on the sidewalk on Eutérpestraat, because at least these Pharisees — against all the odds we’ve come to expect — act. They warn Jesus: “Get away from here. Herod wants to kill you.”

That moral edge. What is it? Courage. The virtue of courage. In the face of what they perceive to be a gross injustice, these unlikeliest of whistleblowers have the courage to speak up — at great personal risk — to save the life of a fellow human being from Herod’s political killing machine.

But what exactly is courage?

Courage is the virtue we exercise when we’re in a jam — or see our neighbor in a jam — and we have to make a gut-choice. Courage is doing what you have to do. Doing what what we have to do.

It’s like Jesus saying, as he takes in the Pharisees’ credible warning, “I must be on my way. I have to be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed here, outside of Jerusalem.”

But Jesus’ intent to move on beyond Herod’s grasp doesn’t diminish the Pharisees’ courage in raising the alarm.

That’s because courage is a cause-and-effect virtue. It’s a response to a threat. A situation (a cause) triggers courage (the effect).

For instance: Did any of the Pharisees wake up that morning and say, “You know, today I’m going to be courageous”? I doubt it!

But the Law for them looms large, and they get wind of a threat to a person the Law defines as their neighbor. Result? They make a gut choice to push Jesus out of harm’s way.

I think, then, we should give these Pharisees credit as they stood on the sidewalk watching Jesus headed for imminent extermination. I think we should give them credit for jumping off the sidewalk and body-blocking Jesus: “Herod wants to kill you. Run!”

So, if these Pharisees — unlike those calm churchgoers on Amsterdam’s Eutérpestraat — model for us the virtue of courage, what would they tell us about how we get it? How do we learn to do what we have to do?

Preparedness. We can’t do what we have to do if we don’t know who we are. We can’t do what we have to do if we don’t have core values and deeply-held convictions. They’re what courageous people access in threatening situations: in spontaneous emergencies ― when, say, a mother rushes into a burning building to save her children … and in long-term threatening situations, like the real-and-present danger of authoritarianism — Fascism — in this country.

¿An example of acting on core values? Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — a few years back, when he urged the Senate Armed Services Committee to dismantle the homophobic policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” when repeal looked like a pipe dream.

As Admiral Mullen tweeted after his testimony: “Allowing [gay people] to serve openly [in our Armed Forces] is the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do.” That is the vocabulary of courage. Like those Pharisees … prepped to stand up ... to resist ... to do the right thing. And eager to help each of us up our “courage” game this Lent by challenging us to answer what may be life-or-death questions ... or basic questions of Christian backbone and human decency. Questions like:

§  What work does each of us have to do — now — to prepare ourselves to act with courage ― in a split-second, in an emergency ― when a neighbor’s safety is clearly in jeopardy?

§  What work do we have to do — now — to prepare ourselves to act with courage in less high-risk situations, like standing up to bullies or ill-informed or just plain bigoted people who, in our presence or on social media, make racist, sexist, or homophobic comments?

§  Who are people at risk God calls us to be in active, hands-on solidarity with (let’s say, immigrants and pro-democracy resistors)?

§  Baseline: Do we know who we are? Do we know what we have to do? What, for each of us, is the “right” thing that reflects the hard truth: silence, appeasement, and denial are not options. They are not the mind of Christ.

Yes, hard questions. But as unlikely as it seems, our neighbors the Pharisees show us how to exercise courage, because they made a choice to be personally responsible for the life of their neighbor Jesus.

And perhaps Jesus, as he goes on his way, might be heard to say, “Those Pharisees? You know, it was a pleasure to do business with them!”

Amen.