Words of the Mouth and Meditations of the Heart

Sermon for Pentecost IV, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY Text: Mark 4:26-34 The last sentence of this morning’s Gospel reading makes a point about Jesus’ parables, where Mark describes how Jesus uses them to illustrate a teaching, but then he explains his teachings to his disciples privately, in direct terms. Christian scriptures are not the only holy writings to include this way of teaching spirituality. Zen Buddhism does something similar using koans (Ko-ahns). Koans are short stories whose illustrations are sometimes plain, sometimes contradictory or paradoxical, and they are meant to be meditated on and understood spiritually. I’ll give two examples that are fairly straightforward. One day Banzan was walking through a market. He overheard a customer say to the butcher, “Give me the best piece of meat you have.” “Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. “You can not find any piece of meat that is not the best.” At these words, Ba

Article for the St. Paul's Episcopal Church parish newsletter, May 31, 2024 Toward the end of my senior year in college, a shanty town made of cast off cardboard, pallets, and parts of tents appeared in Dunn Meadow, the large field in front of the Student Union at Indiana University. Prior to the shanty town’s appearance, students and some faculty had been pressuring the University to sell off its investments in companies that were in apartheid South Africa, or did business in the country. The University administration said that it would not for various reasons, and the student protesters increased their presence until in April, 1986, the shanty town appeared. There were more rallies and teach-ins against apartheid and the administration’s refusal to divest, and the shanty town was inhabited throughout the summer. When the 1987 academic year began, the returning students showed little interest, and with fall rains the spot became a mudhole. In November, the shanty town was taken do