Friday, October 14, 2022

More than Skin Deep: Fr. Daron Vroon, the first 10 years

With the retirement of our Rector at the end of this year, our associate rector Fr. Daron Vroon will soon be moving on to another church, so I take this occasion to appreciate his work at St. James, Marietta these past ten years.

Fr. Daron's Sermons: More than Skin Deep
Two of Sunday's readings concerned leprosy, giving me a good opportunity to show how Fr. Daron so often relates the texts to each other, to the capital "C" Church, and to our individual lives.

First, Fr. Daron explained how the name "leprosy," what doctors now call Hansen's Disease, was in Biblical times a catch-all term for any skin disease. Hansen's Disease is a bacterial infection, easily treated today. Untreated, the disease causes nerve damage and can result in the loss of extremities. Though it is not spread by casual contact, it was thought to be contagious.

Then Fr. Daron explained how leprosy was, for Biblical writers, an image of sin. A person with Hansen's Disease appears to be decomposing, a walking corpse. As infected persons were isolated by custom and law, the disease also broke up family and community. "We often think of 'sin' as 'breaking a rule,'" Fr. Daron said, but sin is more like this disease: it causes the decay of an individual's soul and the disintegration of relationships.

Then, in the specifics of the stories from II Kings 5 and Luke 17, Fr. Daron observed parallels. In the curing of the leprosy, there are no hocus-pocus and magic gestures (as Fr. Daron demonstrated at the lectern). When Elisha cures the Syrian general Na'aman, Elisha doesn't even come out to see him, much to the powerful man's indignation. Jesus doesn't touch the ten lepers, or even say "you're cured now," but only sends them to the priests to show themselves.

Neither do the cures require heroics from the infected people, though risk is involved. Na'aman's angry response shows injured pride and the humiliation he fears if, after he strips and bathes in this modest stream before all his subordinates, nothing happens. Fr. Daron pointed out that the ten would be stoned to death for entering the temple with leprosy. Na'aman and the ten had to act on faith.

Here's where Fr. Daron did his magic: He found the sacraments of our communal worship in these stories. Na'aman's bath in the same river where Jesus was baptized foreshadows our baptism; lepers' presenting themselves to the priests is like us when we make our public confession in church. Then, observing how one leper came running back to Jesus to give thanks, Fr. Daron pulled the rabbit out of his hat: the Greek word for "thanks" is the root of our "Eucharist."

Fr Daron: The Long View
He's a wonky guy by nature, a techie before entering the priesthood. That shows in his analysis of scripture, and also his dispassionate approach to problems. In many committee meetings with him, I've been grateful for his calm and his knack for raising fair questions about contentious issues without seeming contentious.

We'll miss his family, too. For decades prior to Fr. Daron and his wife Julie joining St. James, we had not seen a priest with small children. We've watched little Isaac grow up, way up past six feet. While his dad is at work in the chancel, Isaac helps his mom take care of his much younger brothers James and Charlie in the balcony, in the aisles, in the narthex, and, at least one time, out the open door and into the street. Isaac has learned patience, as I noticed last week, as Isaac silently coached another child, our littlest acolyte, who carried the book for the Gospel reading. After, Isaac gave the little guy a fist bump for a job well done.

Julie Vroon plays an important role as a priest's wife. I admire how she keeps conversations going with questions that come from paying close attention to people she may not know well. When I've encountered her searching for wayward sons in remote hallways before the service, she has kept her sense of humor. She also kept the boys in line during services livestreamed from the Vroon home at the depth of the pandemic.

Fr. Daron suggested at the end of one sermon that we Episcopalians miss out on something important if we're not opening our prayer books every day to services offered us for worship at home. He promised that the liturgy and prayers there, if read as a daily habit, would have a correcting and sustaining effect on us. After some difficult years, including two of pandemic teaching, and another couple of years in retirement, I can attest that he was right. (I wrote a poem about it. See At 63 on my poetry blog First Verse.)

Fr. Daron's first sermons for us were scholarly, erudite, and, well, dry. But, boy, did he improve! From my vantage point in the choir behind him, I've enjoyed how he hops like a boxer on the balls of his feet when his sermon is coming up on a surprising conclusion or etymology. I wrote a good overview of Fr. Daron's singular talent for Flipping our Perspective (06/2018).

Fr. Daron did it again after I posted this appreciation on my blog. He flipped our common understanding of Jesus and the Pharisees, that they were too strict and Jesus did away with the old Jewish laws (02/12/2023).

[Photo collage: 2008 with Julie and little Isaac; pandemic Easter from the Vroon living room; Isaac and middle brother James, little Charlie watching Dad]

Here are links to other reflections on his sermons that I've posted to this blog:

Fr. Daron Vroon

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