“Mass Hysteria — Cats and Dogs, Living Together!”

Welcome back to the Capon Corner, where we treat ourselves to a fresh hearing of Jesus through the voice of Robert Farrar Capon, that former Episcopal priest and bishop, writer, theologian, and culinarian; underknown and underappreciated, for reasons that will become readily apparent upon reading him. The scope of his gospel is, for most, quite frankly, too large. It’s a thing I tend to forget having now spent so much time under him but of which I’m reminded now and again, especially when I recommend him to others, particularly my fellow pastor friends.

It was just two years ago, around this time, that old family and ministry friends of ours stopped through to visit us in our cozy little North Carolina mountain town, a little worn from the weathering a congregation can too often dish out. The conversation turned to a sermon series he’d just wrapped up — and for which he’d caught some flack — whereupon I, of course, couldn’t help but mention Capon and his interpretation of the parable he’d just preached. “Who is this Capon guy?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of him.” “Yeah,” I replied, “few have; or if they have, they keep it to themselves.” Having piqued his curiosity with that, he promptly asked for a title. I obligingly gave him Kingdom, Grace, Judgment — Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus, from which I plan to devote the first several of this series.

If there’s one thing religion cannot abide, it’s “paradox.” We like clean lines and measurable outcomes. Metrics are the thing these days. Who’s in, who’s out. That’s what we want to know, and our denominational overseers above all. As for “grace”? It depends on whom it goes to. And as for “judgment”? Well, that too. Pastors feel it all most acutely; my friend promptly ordered himself a copy. A couple of years later (as in, just a few weeks ago), when they returned on a through visit, I couldn’t help but smile as he recounted to me in our kitchen — a little covertly, as if the Big Brother of his denominational ear had somehow bugged our home — that he “enjoyed Capon’s illustrations” and even “used a few of them in his sermons,” but he “was afraid he sounded like he might be a Universalist” and so “never credited his name,” as if he were Voldemort himself! But in one instance, at a pastors’ conference, he said he’d gotten into a conversation with a fellow pastor with whom he sensed “common peril” and to whom he recounted his pleasure at reading Capon. Sure enough, that guy took his pleasure at his word and ordered a copy for himself! And not long after, upon meeting my friend at the next denominational gathering, he said upon greeting him, “Hey, aren’t you that Capon guy?!” “Nooo!” my friend said. “You can’t say that here!”

This is not an uncommon occurrence, as I’ve come to find. While attending a beloved annual conference of ours a couple of years back — which shall remain unnamed — among whom there are a host of closet Capon fans, the director mentioned that they were taking ideas for conference themes for subsequent years. In the dinner line I suggested to him the writings of Capon. To which he replied, “I’m trying to keep my job.” I laughed aloud. I get it. Quoting Capon from the pulpit in my most recent ministry stint led to it being my last ministry stint in my then denomination. Some of my parishioners gushed at hearing him; others, eh not so much. I’ll share the excerpt here with you someday. But for today, I want to take a look at what Capon calls “Jesus at his parabolic best.”

But before we do, and in the event that you’re joining this column late, just a quick word on parables, particularly as Jesus utilizes them …

Speaking in comparisons and teaching by means of stories are … two of the oldest instructional techniques in the world. And in the hands of almost all instructors except Jesus, a relatively straightforward business …With Jesus however … in resorting to parabolic discourse … [his] point was that any understanding of the kingdom his hearers could come up with would be a misunderstanding […]

From Jesus’ point of view, the sooner their misguided minds had the props knocked out from under them, the better. After all their yammer about how God should or shouldn’t run his own operation, getting them just to stand there with their eyes popped and their mouths shut would be a giant step forward. (Parables, p. 5, 7)

So, on to Jesus’ parable of “the Publican and the Pharisee,” as it’s commonly known — the scriptures having no subheadings and titles in their original form, after all. Luke 18:9–14. I trust you can find it in your Bible or on your device, a familiar tale to you, I’ll wager. Two men go up to temple to pray, one a publican, a tax-collector, and the other a Pharisee. Familiar enough? But right out the gates Capon warns us against our usual prejudices of familiarity; this tax collector is not your local neighborhood H&R Block employee or even some dreaded stiff-collared suit from the IRS; it’s far worse than that.

 [This] tax-farmer … is the worst kind of crook: a legal one, a big operator, mafia-style enforcer working for the Roman government on a nifty franchise that lets him collect — from his fellow Jews, mind you, from the people whom the Romans might have trouble finding, but whose whereabouts he knows and whose language he speaks — all the money that he can bleed out of them, provided only he pays the authorities an agreed upon flat fee. He has been living for years on the cream he has skimmed off their milk money … a fat cat who drives a stretch limo, drinks nothing but Chivas Regal [I had to GPT that one myself, it’s expensive Scotch whiskey], and never shows up at a party without at least two $500-a-night call girls in tow. (p. 338)

That’s more like it. Having effectively benched the image likely pushed on you by decades of all-too-obliging preachers who happily pass this tax collector off as a poor and humble victim of an oppressive system but who really means well in his heart (which is, after all, what really counts) and who manages by sermon’s end, in all his humility, to show up this Pharisee in all his pomposity, Capon promptly ushers the villainous teacher of the law onto the stage. “Forget,” Capon urges,

the prejudice that Jesus’ frequently stinging remarks about Pharisees have formed in your mind. Give this particular Pharisee all the credit you can. He is, after all, a good man. To begin with, he is not a crook … not a womanizer. He takes nothing he hasn’t honestly earned, gives everyone he knows fair and full measure, he is faithful to his wife, patient with his children, steadfast for his friends … and he is not only good; he is religious. And not hypocritically religious, either. His outward uprightness is matched by an inward discipline. He fasts twice a week and puts his money where his mouth is: ten percent off the top for God. If you know where to find a dozen or two such upstanding citizens, I know several parishes that will accept delivery of them, no questions asked … best of all, this Pharisee thanks God for his happy state […]

Jesus shows [him] in the very act of giving God the glory! … Maybe the reason he went up to the temple to pray was that, earlier in the week he slipped a little and thought of his righteousness as his own doing … and thought “that’s terrible … I must set my values straight by thanking God.” But what does Jesus tell you about this good man — about this entirely acceptable candidate for the vestry (or elder board, for the Baptists and Presbyterians among us) of your parish? He tells you that not only is he in bad shape, but that he is in worse shape than a tax-farmer who is as rotten as they come and who just waltzes into the temple and does nothing more than say as much. In short, Jesus tells you an unacceptable parable. (p. 338–9)

The only reason we think the parable acceptable is because Jesus tells us to! “For,” Capon goes on,

you would — I know I would — gladly accept the Pharisee’s pledge card and welcome him to our midst. But would you accept me for long if I had my hand in the church till to the tune of a Cadillac and a couple of flashy whores? Would you (would the diocesan authorities) think it was quite enough for me to come into church on a Sunday, stare at the tips of my shoes, and say, “God be merciful to me a sinner?” Would the bishop write me a letter commending my imitation of the parable and praising me for preaching not only in word but in deed? Jesus, to be sure, says that God would; I myself have some doubts about you and the bishop. (p. 339)

That’s because, as Capon reminds throughout the book, we are inveterate law lovers and moralists whose hope is naturally located not in a God who forgives sin and raises the dead in their sins and trespasses, but instead in a God of the books who is faithful above all things to squaring the accounts. And if we do somehow manage to set that God-of-the-accounts aside, it’s typically only for a moment, only for as long as it takes to wedge our foot in the door of salvation. For no sooner do we cross the threshold do we find ourselves right back in the posture of the law, pledging to God our solemn vows to do better. “To help you be as clear as possible about your feelings,” Capon asks us that we

imagine taking our publican back to the temple one week later. And have him go back there with nothing in his life reformed; walk him in this week as he walked in last — after seven full days of skimming, wenching, and high-priced Scotch. Put him through the same routine: eyes down, breast smitten, God be merciful and all that. Now then. I trust you see that on the basis of the parable as told, God will not mend his divine ways any more than the publican did his wicked ones. He will do this week exactly what he did last: God, in short, will send him down to his house justified. The question in this … exercise is, do you like that? And the answer, of course, is that you do not. You gag on the unfairness of it. The rat is getting off free. (p. 343)

And then comes the stinger of it: “Why are you so bent on destroying the story by sending the publican back for his second visit with the Pharisee’s speech in his pocket?” I don’t know, and what’s more is, I don’t know how Capon knows!

The first thing to get off the table is the notion that this parable is simply a lesson in the virtue of humility. It is not. It is an instruction in the futility of religion … the folly of the proposition that there is anything at all you can do to put [or keep] yourself right with God … it is a warning to drop all religious stances — and all moral and ethical ones too … an exhortation to move on to faith in a God who raises the dead. (p.338)

The problem with us, of course, is that we’re all too alive; the old Adam and Eve in us, that is. That spirit which prefers a god of bookkeeping and law to the God who actually is; a God who is, was, and will always be Spirit and Life itself and who will quarter no law keeping if we will have anything to do with him. The New Testament Greeks had a name for that law-insistent spirit, the sarx; translated most unfortunately as “the flesh” in most of our English translations. And that sarx spirit does not die easy; it doesn’t really die at all, not at least until we do fully and finally. That sarx is, to be sure, drowned in our baptisms with Jesus in his death and resurrection, but that Old Adam is, as Luther said, “a damned strong swimmer,” ever lobbying us to put him back in the lineup.

Being of this spirit, we are very much like a man who walks into a casino, slaps a Confederate $50 on the table, and asks the dealer to cash him in only to find God the dealer refuses to push us any chips. Our money isn’t any good here, it turns out; the house offers no exchange rate on our antiquated currency. None of the things we bank on so instinctively in our sarx-ridden state will let us play at the table of God; not to begin with, at no point along the way, and certainly not at the finish. It is grace and grace only, “from faith, to faith.” The only way the righteoussed can live is by faith, says St. Paul. There’s no living by works, because works have no life to give.

And I know the havoc being wreaked on you by your troubled mind, because the same havoc is being wreaked on me by mine. The mere contemplation of the consequences of such reckless grace — can you fathom the chaos, man?! Paul gives voice to the internal dissonance of it all, “Shall we sin more then, that grace might abound!” The question did not escape Jesus. His answer; it’s wheat and tares growing up together. Or if you prefer Dr. Venkman’s “cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria, of biblical proportions.” And not just “out there” but right in here, the sinner and the saint inhabiting our very own bodies, until death do us part.

And yet, he has not given us any other way. Sunday after Sunday he bids we come with the only speech in our pocket we can honestly utter — and not as some kind of exchange or transaction, mind you, but as the only means by which he can pry our dead hands open wide enough to lay in them the forgiveness that Jesus is always, by the Spirit, trying to thrust into them, which is “ours, simply — and only — for the believing, no money down and no questions asked.” It is the publican’s speech, “God have mercy on me, a sinner.”