Tenth  Sunday  After  Pentecost

         In high school I studied Latin for three years or four years. Then in the monastery as novices we studied the Rule of St. Benedict in Latin.  And almost all of our communal prayers were in Latin.   In seminary a couple of our classes were actually taught in spoken Latin, and when the teacher asked you a question, you had to answer in Latin.
         Unlike my brother Hilary, I never became expert  in Latin — I knew just enough to get by. On the other hand, I have always been attracted to certain Latin maxims. For example:
Ne quid nimis  =  nothing in excess
Moderamini  =  be moderate
Virtus in medio stat  =  virtue stands in the middle
         However, when I think about these maxims, a red flag goes up. Am I attracted to them because they have some ethical value, some wisdom? Or is it simply because of my personality type? I am decidedly risk averse. A few times in my life I have had to take some big risks; but day to day, I don’t like riskiness. And that goes with being a worrywart about making mistakes.  So it’s very convenient  for me to say: I want to be moderate and not go too far in either direction. That’s why the red flag.
         Now, there is something to be said for moderation. Every day we hear about people who are too far to the right or too far to the left; and they end up by saying and doing really stupid things. Furthermore, I can’t count the number of discussions I have heard in which the final conclusion, to which all or almost all agree, is that we need to balance this with that. Balance – isn’t that another word for moderation.
         Finding a balance is not necessarily complicated or painful. For example, two months ago I woke to find myself covered with red spots that itched something awful. So I called the office of my dermatologist and explained that I was going crazy with itching; and the nurse set up an emergency appointment for the following day.  She easily balanced my needs with the doctor’s need to keep to a schedule.
         Also, I have been reading this book MAKING A GOOD BRAIN GREAT by Dr. Daniel Amen, who is a neuroscientist. He has studied over 30,000 specialized images of brains, images called SPECT, which stands for single photon emission computed tomography. You don’t really need to know that . Anyway, there are eight major parts of the brain; and these images can reveal for each of those parts whether it is over active, under active, or in the normal mid range of activity. And guess what: if some part of your brain is over active  or under active, you are in trouble. For example, a person with ADD will show under activity in the prefrontal cortex,  among other things.  Your brain needs to be moderately active in all of its various parts.
         On the other hand, if  you look in Nelson’s Concordance of the bible for the term MODERATION, you will find no entries. Now I am sure that if you look in the parts of the bible called wisdom literature, you will find statements about moderation, but the bible seems to be more concerned about something else. For example in today’s reading from Isaiah, we heard these words:
         I am the first and I am the last; there is no God except me.
That kind of blunt declaration is not unusual. In Psalm 81 Yahweh is quoted as saying:
         You shall have no strange gods, shall worship no alien god,
         I, Yahweh, am your God.
When it comes to God, there is no moderation, no balancing this against that, no middle way. There is one God only, and that is an absolute.
         And that brings me to a story that I never understood until very recently. You have probably heard the story. A frog is sitting by the side of a stream. A scorpion comes along and says that he wants to go to the other side of the stream, but he can’t swim, and would the frog carry him across on his back. The frog says “Sure,” and they start off. Half way across the scorpion stings the frog. The frog says: “Now we are both going to die: why did you do that.” And the scorpion says: “Because I could.” I never could understand the scorpion’s answer, until I recently reread St. Augustine’s Confessions. You may remember that he talks at great length about a teenage outing when he and some friends sneaked into someone’s orchard and stole some peaches. He wonders at great length why he did that, when he had peaches at home that were much better; and after they left the orchard, they threw the peaches away. He finally decides: I did it because I could; and he goes on to say that that act was a darkened image of God’s omnipotence. In other words, his action made him feel momentarily godlike. He should have remembered Ps. 81: I, Yahweh, am your God. I am not God; you are not God;  and we  should never act so as to pretend that we are God.
         Another absolute is in the psalm that we heard today, Psalm  139. We heard these words:
         You understand my thoughts from afar … you know every detail of my          conduct …
Let’s face it: we often try to hide our weaknesses from others and indeed from ourselves; but we can’t hide them from God. God’s knowledge of us and love for us are absolute – no moderation there. God knows us completely, and yet loves us completely. No wonder that we speak of AMAZING GRACE.  God is amazing.
         So there are balancing acts and there are absolutes. But that’s not the end of the story. In this book [Dance in Steps of Change] the authors say: “Tension is the thesis of this book.” In other words, some balancing acts – like that of my dermatologist’s nurse – are relatively painless. However, some are painful; and that’s when we start using the word TENSION.
         Here’s an example. John and David say: “ … the church is a structure which exists to enable its members to engage in mission: to be able and ready to meet the neighbor’s needs.” [p. 17]  Question: am I able and ready to meet my neighbor’s needs?  I struggle with that. Since Barbara works fulltime and does lots of civic volunteering, I spend much of my time managing our household and maintaining the fabric of our house. Periodically I feel guilty that I am not devoting enough time to meeting my neighbor’s needs. But that’s a never ending  struggle that probably all of us share. It’s a tension that we just have to live with.
         Finally, as St. Paul once said: “There are three things that will endure …”
[1 Cor 13:13] Except that I am not talking about faith, hope and charity. I am talking about balancing acts that are painless, balancing acts that are painful, and absolutes. And the greatest of these is absolutes. And in my mind the greatest of the absolutes is trust in God. As St. Augustine says to God in his Confessions: “I sighed and you heard me; I was storm tossed and you held the tiller; I was going on the broad path of this world and you did not forsake me.” [Book 6, Ch. 5] Amen.

Dunstan Hayden
July 20, 2008