Showing items filed under “The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin”

Saints and Sinners

The best moves I made when I was rector were often just keeping from messing things up. My parish had several special traditions, many of them quirky; all I needed to do was to keep them going. Here’s one.
    At the end of the school year—which in the great state of New York comes around Father’s Day—we had a parish picnic following the morning’s Eucharist. A softball game was part of the festivities. There were two teams, the Saints and the Sinners. But here’s the catch: you didn’t know which team you were on until the game was over. The winning team, whichever team it was, were the Saints.
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    It seems theologically correct. In the long run the saints are the winners. Jesus as much as says so, when he affirms that “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” They get comforted. They “inherit the earth” which is quite a different matter from inheriting the wind. Their deepest longings are for righteousness, and those longings will be satisfied. Mercy will be shown to them. They will see God face to face. Their efforts at making peace will reveal that they are God’s children. The kingdom of heaven really is theirs.
    In the game of life, in the end, the saints are the winners.
    Vice versa, the sinners are the losers. They end up without comfort, without their longings satisfied (because they longed for things that do not satisfy), without mercy, without vision, without peace. They end up “without”—i.e., outside—the kingdom of heaven.
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    And yet, although theologically correct, it is a truth difficult to see. I just read (and would recommend) a short novel, recently translated from the Japanese: Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami. It features a boy and a girl in middle school who are bullied without mercy. I recommend it because, although it takes a strong stomach to read about the bullying, it also shows a remarkable friendship grow between them, while raising questions easily translatable into Christian thought. Should one fight back or turn the other cheek—for instance.
    In the center of the book, the boy confronts one of his tormentors. They have a difficult conversation. The tormentor turns out to be completely amoral. Asked why he beats up on him, the tormentor basically says why not. He denies he has a conscience or a sense of right and wrong, denies that there is anything in the world except people doing what they want to do and can do. The reason he is a bully is just that he can be a bully. And, turning the tables, he says that the reason the boy gets bullied is because he lets it happen.
    The boy resists this conclusion—and it’s complicated, but just barely he manages not to fall into wickedness. Or so I judge, as a reader of the book who believes there really are sins and awful deeds in the world, and there really are souls that can be lost. Nonetheless, when Jesus says “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness,” he is saying something that is hardly obvious to many people.
    Only at the end will it become clear.
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    Out & About. The next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar is set for 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 28. We will discuss Lewis Carroll’sAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
    On the Web: The Stead Center has published another essay by me on fear, this one occasioned by crippling acts of weather, such as last February’s deep freeze. People were blaming everyone—except God. That strikes me as odd. https://www.steadcenter.com/instead/fear-and-anger/

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Enjoy Your Forgiveness

 I walked to the gym, and afterwards went to a coffee shop to recover and read. Then I walked home. When more than an hour after leaving the gym I got to the gate of my apartment complex and pulled out my keys from my gym shorts, I found: they were not my keys.
    At once I got in my car and drove back to the gym. I thought of the worry—if not more—that someone had gone through. I was practicing speeches in my head, trying to explain how I had taken the wrong keys. I had “excuses”: they were similar to mine; I was stressed; and so forth. I realized that if the owner had incurred expenses I should pay them. I also realized that with a bit more thought, a bit more attentiveness to things outside of me, I might well have never picked up his keys.
    When I arrived and told the desk clerk that I had left with someone else’s keys, the owner, who was nearby, jumped up with happy face and raised hands. “I knew someone would come back with them!” he said. I tried to say some of my prepared speech, but he heard nothing of it. He was glad just to have the keys.
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    Thus something came home to me, personally, something that I often teach: namely, that we find the meaning of our lives in the narrative of the Bible. Which story was I living? In part, it was the parable of the prodigal son.
    Like the prodigal, I realized I had done wrong and turned around to go back. On the way I went through what I would say, as does the prodigal: “I will say to my father, I have sinned against thee and against heaven and am no longer worthy to be called thy son; treat me as one of thy hired servants.” And like the father in the story, the man cut off my words and simply thanked me for coming back.
    There is that awful feeling: I had done something that I could not fix. I had no way to give him back that (assuredly long) hour or two of his life, no way to erase the worry he must have gone through. I deserved something that did not happen. What did happen was grace.
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    It’s good to live in the biblical story, good to see grace arise in one’s life. A friend of mine is a rector of a parish back east; he likes to say, “Enjoy your forgiveness!”
    We might not like the fact that we need forgiveness, but it is indeed a joy to have it.
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    Out & About.  This Sunday, October 31, I am to preach at the 10:30 a.m. service at St. Matthias Church in Athens, Texas.
    The next “Good Books & Good Talk” seminar is set for 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 28. We will discuss Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
    On the Web: As a Christian ethicist I have an ongoing interest in the effects of technology on our humanity. On the New Atlantis website is a new article that I found interesting: “How to Fix Social Media.” The author says we’ve seen these problems before, and we can handle them: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/how-to-fix-social-media

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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