The Keynote Address

Alabama Convention 2005

The Very Rev. Harry H. Pritchett, Jr.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Sadducees and the Pharisees. Perhaps, it’s because I see a lot of each of these religious/political parties warring inside myself. But more than that, I have come to see them as parabolic mirrors of the bitter arguments – the ecclesiastical culture wars (if you will) that are presently ripping the church apart and making us so downright mean to each other. And even though it may be arrogant on my part, I believe this Pharisaic and Sadducian behavior must grieve the heart of God.

Who were these political religious parties in the time of Jesus? What angered them so much about Jesus? Why did they despise each other and then refocus a joint animosity on doing away with Jesus? Could it have been that Jesus refused to accept that either party had an exclusive corner on the truth? Well, I’m certainly not sure, but I want to play with and tease that possibility in this address today.

We hear in the gospels much more about the Pharisees than the Sadducees. The Pharisees are major player in the religious, social, political atmosphere surrounding Jesus. And they come to be synonymous with theological tricksters with clever scriptural arguments who are out to get Jesus in any way they can, ultimately resorting to the terrorist tactics of crucifixion on a trumped up charge.

Because the gospel writers despise the Pharisees so much, they generally get a lot of bad press – particularly from preachers. But when you explore the real history, the Pharisees develop from probably the most progressive, intellectual, well educated ethical folks of the day – much as Episcopalians (at least when I was growing up in Alabama) considered ourselves. Unfortunately, the Pharisees gradually became convinced that their own way of seeing God and interpreting scripture and regarding life in general was the only way. It’s sort of like my grandmother used to say that she believed eventually everyone who got to heaven had to become an Episcopalian. Gradually the Pharisees became rigid and litigious legalists! And underneath everything about the Pharisees was a sort of self-important lugubriousness that was threatened to the core by Jesus’ joy and humor and freedom, and even his hankering for a good party every now and then with questionable characters.

And yet the Pharisees were the religious/political party who began with a commendable social ethic – (you have to give it to them) – but who ultimately came to put principles above people and religious correctness above personal compassion.

Now, if the Pharisees were the doctrinaire liberals, the Sadducees were the aristocratic and churchy conservatives. They valued the tradition in what I believe is a good and necessary way, they knew where they came from, but they, too, eventually came to worship the old ways, the former days, to the point of backing into the future with their eyes closed.

They, too, came to claim their part of the truth as the only truth. The old ways were good ways – the new ways were bad ways – so much so that even what they called these new fangled prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and the wisdom writers like Job and Ecclesiastes, and the hymn writers like the psalmists were excluded from Holy Scripture. Those were just some new reflections of secular humanism. Only the first five books of Moses – the Torah – had validity as being the true revelation of Yahweh God, the God of our fathers. And you see, talk about “resurrection” for example, was a new interpretation – just a product of modern thought – not in the ancient tradition of that “old time religion”. Resurrection was simply not biblical!

I realize that to some degree, I am making caricatures of both of these parties. But I take it that you get the point.

Now I want to come to the substance of this talk – and that is: what are some implied learning’s that we might glean from understanding the Pharisees and the Sadducees? I want to suggest three. And they are quite naturally colored by my own prejudicial reflections. I offer them to you this day then, not as conceptual declarations, but as believe-in hunches – hunches that I think are necessary as we move into this 21^st century with all the implications inherent in it.

The first hunch then is this: people matter more than religion. That seems so simple, but the history of the church and the world shows it is not. The Pharisaic and Sadducean religious movements both developed out of concerns for people and democratic justice and the common good. But gradually they evolved into movements that put their own convictions and principals above the relationship with and care of people. Right belief came to replace right relationships. Now of course, social justice and religious purity and traditional values are extremely important to understanding our identity and our place in the world. But if they come to be enforced with the crusaders sword or an excluding apartheid or airliner missiles crashing into buildings, they become demonic. It occurs to me that the seeds of violence are grown in the perversion of what was once people-directed concerns. And so in our human attempt to justify our own behavior and our own understanding of truth, we crucify Christ again, and like the Pharisees and Sadducees we do it allegedly for the good of the general welfare.

Now, I have to learn this over and over again. One such occasion was in New York a couple of years ago, on a gleaming fall afternoon, I rushed out of a meeting at Columbia University – where we were arguing about whether the chaplaincy there would be ecumenical, interfaith, or Episcopalian. I was almost late for a dental appointment. Waving my arms like a scarecrow in the wind, I desperately tried to hail a cab. None appeared. Finally one hesitated and stopped. I opened the back door, and the driver leaned over and pointing toward a dark beautiful young lady sitting in the front seat, said, “Where you going, Father”? I replied “64^th and 2^nd.” “O.K., but do you mind if my wife rides with us? We’re coming home from school.” “Sure,” I said and settled down in my coveted solitude of the back seat and wondered who these mid-Eastern looking folks were and it was just close enough to 9/11 to make me a little edgy.

The silence did not last long. With my inquiry about school, a conversation ensued. It seemed these two young folks were getting computer science degrees at City College up on Amsterdam. I remember that he said hesitantly that they were from Iraq, because my stomach tightened when he did. They had been in New York for several years for schooling and hoped to stay. They had been married two years and she was very pregnant with their first child. They were Muslims and lived in a one-room apartment in Queens. He had taken customers to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine many times and had been inside on one occasion.

When I told him I was the Dean, he inquired if this was like an Imam, and I said, “Well, sort of” and he was very impressed. “The Imam of Big John’s”, he smiled.

We arrived at my destination where he insisted we stop right in front of the building. When I attempted to pay him, he shook his head to my amazement and said, “Use this fare and this $20 bill for the work of your Cathedral with the poor.” I thanked him graciously.

And then he went on. “Father – would you do us a favor?”

By this time, I am almost out the door and definitely late to the dentist. “Sure,” I said, “What is it?” Thinking to myself, in New York there are always strings attached to generosity.

And then he said something I will never forget, “Imam – Father – will you bless our new baby and my wife and me?”

I was somewhat stunned by his request, but it halted me in my steps. He leaned over opening the front door where his pregnant wife was sitting as though my blessing could not pass through the metal of the car.

So here we are – an old white-haired American Christian priest with a raised hand of blessings and prayers, bending toward the open front seat of a yellow cab in the middle of Manhattan where two young Muslims held hands and bowed their heads.

Well, I swear in that moment everything seemed transfigured, and the boundary between present and future, time and eternity, us and them, culture and roles disappears – mysteriously melting away.

It was a moment for me that was initiated by the open faith of two young Muslims who simply were human and afraid like me, and desired, as do I, the blessing of Almighty God.

Yes, people matter more than religion.

And now a second implied learning or hunch from observing the Pharisees and Sadducees: Narrowness and rigidity are never signs of faith, but signs of fear. Openness and humility characterize the faith of Jesus, but not that of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

This is a lesson as well, that I have to learn again and again. I was honored on several occasions to meet with the Dalai Lama, highly regarded around the world as a man of faith. On all of these occasions I was struck with his winsomeness, the twinkle in his eye, the humility in his presence, the open hopefulness of his demeanor, in spite of his life which included numerous rejections, much suffering, as well as some regal admiration by his followers which could have led him into an arrogant self-righteousness. It occurred to me once, in a rather paradoxical and surprising way that maybe he reflected what Jesus, the man, might have been like.

On one occasion we planned at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine an event to welcome the Dalai to New York. Thousands of his Buddhist followers, Christian admirers, and just plain curious observers gathered at the Cathedral.

We planned a simple liturgy, if you would even call it that. We would process from the rear with a verger leading, then me as the host Dean, then Mayor Giuliani as the host Mayor, and then our guest, the Dalai Lama – no bells or whistles and even no music – a silent welcome by the thousands. On all these big events at the Cathedral I never quite got over my nervousness and fussiness about how they would go. And quite frankly, the Sadducees part of me was leery of all these Buddhists anyway! At the back of the Nave, preparing to begin, I suddenly was aware of a touch behind me. The Dalai Lama had moved forward, grabbed the Mayor’s hand, and was reaching toward mine. And without a word, but a large smile and a surprise from me, he held both our hands. So, get this picture, here we were, the Mayor of New York on one side, the Dean of the Cathedral on the other, the Dalai Lama – whom everyone had some to see in the first place – in the middle, holding hands as we moved down the two football fields splendor of the Cathedral Nave. I can still see in my mind the three of us with smiles heading toward the great stained glass window of Christ in a gleaming red robe above the high altar with his hands outstretched in welcome – we seemed like three six year olds dancing off to a picnic. The Sadducees and the Pharisees would have had a fit. If they could, they would have jailed all three of us.

Yes, thanks to the Dalai, I learned again that faithfulness is really about openness and humility. Fear is about rigidity and narrowness. This is true, I believe, whether it is in the caves of Afghanistan or in the bosom of American capitalism or in the halls of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church.

And one final hunch: As our experience of Christian Community deepens, we tend to broaden our understanding of the nature of the creation itself. We lean toward affirming that we are one.

I think I first tasted community in its most elementary way when at 12 years old, I went to Camp McDowell. The experiences there over the next decade were formative in my growing understanding of what it means to be together in loving, confronting, and growth producing ways. And I came to see that as essential to human life – which, of course, at the time, meant my personal life. But which later on in a broader, more abstract level, I realized was how we humans were created to be in the first place.

You could say those experiences of community were the beginning of my conversion, if I dare to call it that. Yes, for me it really was the beginning of profound changes in my assumptions, my basic conscious and unconscious understandings, which after all is what conversions are.

Surely God was present – cajoling, revealing the power of community, it’s grace and joy – and the essential nature of the creation itself – in a little immature community of “Kumbaya”, and in singing “Follow the Gleam” around the final campfire as we watched our floating candles drift down and forward in Clear Creek into the dark unknown of the future.

I graduated from Seminary in 1964 – where again I had experienced more mature community, hard work and stretching side-by-side, where the ‘thinking side’ of me was challenged, teased to life, formed, stimulated – and I tasted the power of intense community dialogue.

And you know what was going on in Alabama at that time and everywhere else, in those days of social upheaval during the civil rights movement. That is when St. Luke’s parish in Mountainbrook truly nurtured me to new life. And, of course, that moment too, was really about expanding community. It, too – on some fundamental level – was about what the creation of God is – how did God intends us to live together, from the beginning, as interconnected human beings – regardless of our skins’ color or our economic status.

In 1981 I connected with All Saints’, Atlanta. And it was, in many ways the institutional love of my life. But from the guy who froze to death in the Dempsey Dumpster outside the church which resulted in opening the doors and installation of a shelter - from the advent of crack on the streets, and the necessity to do something about helping people to free themselves of that demon and to live again, and in seeing the development of something that later became the interfaith Mid-Town Assistance Center from the brides’ room, of all places, in that church – from all these things and more, an expanding understanding of the created community was developing to include and identify with the poor, the downtrodden, the addicted. And the most surprising thing was that the parish grew from 800 to over 3000 souls.

Later on the AIDS plague hit, and new definitions of community were not far behind. Gay men with AIDS were dropping like a marching band being fired on by a snipers rifle – all around us, beside us, in us – we were all in that ragtag band.

And our definitions of community stretched further and further. The impact of that period has forever shaped me, and in surprising ways, though I have basically kept the church’s prohibitions against formal blessings, I have been blessed over and over again by gay men and lesbians. Never will I be the same.

When Ed Browning announced on being elected Presiding Bishop that “there will be no outcasts in the church”, I cheered. And later than night in the quiet dark of my bed thought, “there are no outcasts in God’s world”. And further still, “there are no outcasts in God’s creation, the whole universe”.

Another quick picture, from the Cathedral in New York. Often it is called the ‘green’ cathedral because of our commitment to environmental and ecological issues. So it’s not so bewildering that my vision got extended further from there.

It was my first St. Francis Day and Blessing of the Animals. Now, this is a mammoth production! Two or three hundred young singers from all over the country, three dance companies from the Cathedral, costumes, flags, drums, orchestra, and of course, the exhilarating music of Paul Winters’ Earth Mass, which incorporates the songs of whales and wolves and dogs and monkeys and the earth shattering roar of a lion at the end of the Sanctus. It’s as if the whole creation is saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” It’s an incredible liturgy with literally hundreds of volunteers to make it happen. The flowers alone – particularly the thousands of sunflowers – simply light up the place. Well, lots of planning, lots of “show-biz”, lots of ecclesiastical glitz! That year, lots of added headaches with secret service folks everywhere because Vice President Al Gore was preaching.

Frankly as the Eucharist was ending – 3000 or more having taken communion, accompanied by their dogs and cats and goldfish and snakes – I was glad it was almost over. I could breath easily again. However, the procession of the animals for blessing comes last. There is a hallowed silence – amazingly even the dogs are quiet – as the great Cathedral brass doors are opened slowly, and the rays of the sunlight come bounding in.

And there, silhouetted against the luminous sun, stood the elephant to lead the procession. I know it sounds rather spectacularly tacky – The Pharisee in me had expected that I would feel that way – just too much and too cute! But I want to tell you, I caught my breath in surprise. Tears filled my eyes – stunning! The procession began. All the leaders, hundreds of them in red cassocks. Flowers on all the animals – slowly moved down the 200 yards toward the altar in total silence. Eagles, two white stallions, camels, llama, leopards and lizards, snakes and cows and chickens and pigs and ponies – and every kind of bird in the universe. And bees and earth worms – and even a jar of algae, and even a rock from the moon…all of these and all of us humans of every color, age, background and social standing. Movie stars and bishops and folks from our shelter – all gathered around the table – the holy table of the heart of the Universe – and the truth was laid bare. We are really one – many, for sure, but fundamentally one through the Holy Creator!

God’s creation is really one large community and everything is related to everything else.

Paul’s infatuation in 1 Corinthians 12 with the metaphor of the body being one with many members took on new meaning. Paul says the foot can’t say to the eye, I have no need of you. Or the eye to the ear, I have no need of you. The body is one, all are needed for the wholeness of the body. That Biblical image I believe is expanded in our present social and historical context.

And so now for our time, I believe Paul’s body metaphor is not only for the church community – it is not only for us humans – it is the whole created order of God – the universal community.

And we are it. And nothing, no person, no creature, is expendable. We can’t pick and choose – I have no need of you – or you. No! All are one. That’s the way we were created to be. Forever entangled, related – many, but one – unique and different, but ultimately defined by the beating heart of the Universe!

A final story – a moment – a point of turning. It was a cold, clear Christmas Eve in 1968. All the frenetic preparations of St. Thomas Parish, Huntsville, were pretty much done. Cedar garlands, poinsettias, profuse holly all arranged in the sanctuary, new gleaming white candles, silver, polished by hard working Altar Guild hands ‘til it almost looked like glass. We were ready – all was in place for the festival of Incarnation.

And then…suddenly, though of course, not really very suddenly – came the news: the astronauts in Apollo 8 were preparing to go behind the moon – into the cosmic darkness – not able even to glimpse this fragile earth, our island home. Everything in Huntsville stopped. These were our friends, sent on our rockets, in our space craft. The members of our congregation had contributed to the design of all the little pieces – the screws and bolts – the excruciatingly planned explosions, the gear to steer. And all the complicated paraphernalia with names only understood by them – the scientists, the technologists, the engineers – dreaming, sweating, “back-to-the-drawing-board” experimenting. And now it was all working. And they were elated and scared – and proud and edgy. And all those feelings were buzzing around in their souls, and the soul of that parish, like bees in a honeycomb.

And then…with a collective sigh so palatable, I imagined it being heard around the world – Apollo 8 came back into the light. A remarkable thing happened. Those Apollo 8 astronauts said a prayer broadcast around the universe and read the story of our creation from the book of Genesis: “In the beginning…God created…”. So…we all wept in awe with holy tears.

And we could all see the image – our collective self portrait – the family picture of us – our community – this little blue marble – as the astronauts called it – the earth, shimmering in the darkness – one dot – among many – in the dark vastness of the universe – one little blue marble – it was us.

At St. Thomas, we quickly added the astronauts’ prayer to the Christmas collect and changed the Old Testament lesson to the Genesis story. It was a liturgy of power and meaning that night in 1968. With the picture of the vulnerable little earth – “In the beginning, God created”. And the picture of this vulnerable baby Jesus in a manger – “In the beginning, was the Word…and the Word became flesh…”

Yes – yes – yes. As our experience of Christian community deepens we tend to broaden our understanding of the creation itself. Through the grace of God and by the grace of God, we are one.

And so, then my brother and sisters, all of us Pharisees and Sadducees need to just stop it! I need and we need to turn toward the model of our Lord and Savior. To affirm that people matter and that our truth is always limited by our humanness; Jesus acted with faith and not fear and therefore with hope and humility and openness about life. Through the Word becoming flesh we dare to glimpse into the heart of the creation itself which beats for us and for all people and things everywhere. Our humility, fragility, and dependency unite us to each other and to that Beating Heart. Thanks be to God!

Amen.