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The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Those of us who have come to live here on Cape Cod have a wonderful expression to explain our attachment to this place. We say: we have gotten the sand between our toes. Whether this first happened to us when we were children, or as adults, the experience of sand beneath our feet is like no other we have in life. It is elemental, it is sensual, and it connects and grounds us to something beyond time and space. For this is where we live. On a spit of sand thrust out into the open North Atlantic. Approximately 10,000 years ago, when the most recent ice age receded, what was left was the top layer of the earth’s surface that had been swept up and deposited against the continental shelf. We live on sand, literally. Silica crystals and organic matter. The residue of hundred’s of millions of years’ erosion. Beneath our feet, are the remains of mountains as high as the Himalayas, and the crushed dust of trillions of coral reefs and mollusk colonies which blanketed the sea beds eons ago. The sand between our toes, because it so ancient and mysterious, is sacred. We have always known this as a species. Buddhists have a tradition of creating sand paintings, mandalas which symbolically represent the whole cosmos. Through these elaborate designs, those who meditate on them are able to access progressively deeper levels of their unconsciousness, ultimately experiencing a mystical sense of oneness with the unity of the universe. Sand is sacred, but human beings have a great proclivity to make it profane. As silicon, sand is the most common element on earth, after oxygen. And as such, it represents the earth itself, and to this earth we become attached. We come to believe that this silicon is ours to possess, ours to exploit, ours to consume, ours to destroy. In the words of our collect this morning, we become anxious about earthly things. We see the visible things around us as passing away, and we cleave to them for dear life. There was a local story this summer that illustrates this well. In Nantucket, violent winter storms had swept away the beaches on an exclusive end of Scionsett. In response, 25 million was raised in private parties to dredge new sand to replenish the homeowners frontage. Nothing impeded their decision. Not the fact that the dredging itself would permanently ruin fishing grounds. Not the fact that one future storm would sweep away all the transplanted sand again. Our anxiety about earthly things is perennial and it is profound. And it makes amnesic. It makes us forget that sand is but dust. And we are but dust. And to dust we shall return. This, I believe, is what underlies the meaning of Jesus’ words we hear from the Gospel of Luke today: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Now the Greek word for wealth is mammon, and this word has its Semetic origin in the word for money, or property, or profit. The word mammon only appears on the lips of Jesus in the New Testament, and refers to everything that we own, or come to possess, or consider our property in life. Jesus, you see, had no illusions about the human condition. He knew none of us is perfect. He knew that each of us has a divided heart. He knew that all of us have, as it were, a dishonest steward part of us who is torn between the things that are passing away and the things that shall endure. He knew of our attachment to this world, and he knew of our deep desire for the heavenly realm. He knew, also, how readily the things we possess come to possess us, and how we are owned by things we own. You cannot serve two masters, he said. For in truth, nothing we possess is ours to possess, nothing we own is our property. The first value, the only value of earthly things is meant for the glory of God. If we have been faithful with our mammon, with your wealth, Jesus said, we will be entrusted with true riches. In order to do this, Jesus said, our hearts must be pure and undivided. For we cannot serve God and mammon. One of my favorite writers, the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote 150years ago: “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” And to will one thing, to be pure in heart, Jesus said, is to be blessed, for the pure of heart will surely see God. This next month, here at St. Mary’s, we begin a stewardship program, and this year we are wiping the slate clean and starting over. This year, we are being asked to look into our hearts to see what is there. We are being invited into a spiritual exercise, as it were, of self-examination. We are being asked to make a choice. And the question, it seems to me, in the light of this Gospel is, are we choosing to be content with a divided heart, or are we seeking a greater purity in our lives and purposes? Strange as it may seem, I can think of no better way to begin this process than for us to reflect on the sand between our toes. I can think of no better symbol to guide us in this spiritual exercise than the beautiful windows that surround us, and which we dedicate to God’s glory today. For in essence, they, too, are sand. They are the creation of the alchemy between sand, heat, and pigment. Through them, the exquisite light of Cape Cod shimmers in shades of red, blue, and yellow. And in this light, we can see that all is one. The ones we love and see no longer, in whose memory these windows have been given, they are in the light. We, who are here today, and those who are absent, are in the light. All of it, the sand and sea and sky, the beauty, the color, the pain and joy and loss, all of it is held in the light. And all of it is meant to be pure, all of it meant to be one, all of it, every bit of it, is meant for the glory of the One from whom all blessing flow.
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