"Troilus and Cressida: Reaping What You Sow": Part 1 in The Gospel According to Shakespeare

In celebration of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the Longmont Theatre Company Taste of Shakespeare's summer seasons.

I am not a Shakespeare expert. I taught HS English for several years, so I do have a decent familiarity with the famous plays.  And I watched my son and his classmates perform many scenes over the years at the Denver Public Schools Shakespeare Festival. I have attended school productions of Shakespeare plays, including a wonderful all-female Hamlet version a few years ago at Denver School of the Arts. I have been to some public performances of Shakespearean plays at the Denver Center and others. I even have a favorite Shakespearean play: Macbeth.  But I am not an expert in the nuances and rich fullness of this master playwright's works. And I won't claim to be. Even so, I thought it might be fun to tie the July Sermon series to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's plays for this year... along with one from the Longmont Theatre Company's Taste of Shakespeare 

Don't expect to learn too much about the plays... or for me to give away the endings... but do expect to glean some of what the gospel of Luke and the apostle Paul have to share with us about human nature and our tendency to falter and fall, and also to survive and soar and how that aligns with some of the brilliant words of William Shakespeare, master of knowing how to speak stark truth through poetry and prose.  Let's give it a go...

This week's play is Troilus and Cressida... and the scripture reading is from Galatians 6:1-16

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted...Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. --from Galatians 6

One part of this play that is described as a tragedy, comedy and history all in one is the relationship between Troilus and Cressida... a love affair that goes somewhat sideways when Cressida is given to the Greeks as part of an exchange to the Greeks from the Trojans, who are embroiled in a war.  It seems that, as tragic as this sounds, it doesn't take long until Cressida is beginning a relationship with Diomedes, which Troilus unfortunately hears and sees her doing firsthand:

Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee
But with my heart the other eye doth see.
Ah, poor our sex! this fault in us I find,
The error of our eye directs our mind:

--Cressida, from Act V, Scene II, Troilus and Cressida

The apostle Paul tells the Galatians that if anyone among them is detected in a transgression, seek restoration. The Holy Spirit resides within us and gives us the power to avoid temptation, deception, and the like.  Galatians 6 says that we reap what we sow... therefore corruption reaps corruption and goodness reaps goodness.

How do comedy, tragedy, and history align in our own lives? How have we been tempted to stray from our alliances and loyalties?  How have we seen people offered up as no more than commodities in conversation and in relationship in our communities and in the world?  

Independence Day weekend is a good time to reflect on these intersections.  And a good time to reflect on reaping what we sow and learning to not grow weary in doing what is right.

Thoughts? Questions? Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or comment on the link below.

Mission Possible: Fruit of the Spirit

Fruit of the Spirit window, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland 


Galatians 5:13-16, 22-25

  From Galatians 5--You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only don’t let this freedom be an opportunity to indulge your selfish impulses, but serve each other through love…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against things like this.

The scripture this week might seem to be a little more mission IMPOSSIBLE than possible, but our founding father of Methodism sees it differently. 

In a sermon called "On Zeal," John Wesley describes how the whole practice of Christian discipleship leading to sanctification works.  He says at the center is love... which radiates out to our holy tempers (like the fruit of the spirit). We practice love in works of mercy to others (love your neighbor) and nurture love with works of piety (hearing and reading the Word, public and private prayer, communion, fasting, abstinence, etc).  The outermost circle is the Church universal which, in gathering together to praise and worship God, provokes us to love.  Wesley suggests that if we don't continuously work on these tempers, we succumb to the passions of the flesh (hatred, bitterness, bigotry, pride, anger, idolatry, persecution, etc), which are basically anything not joined with and directed by love.

I go through all this to remind us that the core of our denominational faith, at least in the eyes of it's accidental founder, is love.  We may see signs in our own denomination and others of succumbing to hatred, bigotry, persecution and the like, but that is not who we are, or what we were founded on.  

Love first.  Love at the center. Love at the heart.  This leads to all the other fruit of the Spirit. And ultimately, as Paul suggests in the letter to the Galatians, this leads to freedom.  Freedom is love. Love is freedom.  Anything that is not wrapped in love is binding us in slavery instead of freedom.  And love is the only key with which we can unlock the chains that bind our hearts.

I am not generally a single issue thinker. I see connections everywhere to everything, good and bad and in between.  I think, though, to survive in the current climate of polarization and unrest, to make the mission of serving Christ POSSIBLE, I might need to become a single issue thinker for a while.  To concentrate fully and singularly on LOVE.  Love of self, love of neighbor, love of other, love of the whole world. 

Lin Manuel Miranda, winner of the Tony for writing this year's best musical Hamilton, said it best in his acceptance speech, 

"We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger

We rise and fall and light from dying embers,

Remembrances that hope and love last longer.
And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love,

cannot be killed or swept aside..."

How do you create love in the world?  Why is it so hard to just LOVE?

Email me at peverhart@niwotumc.org or click on the comment link below.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.