Focusing on the positive is "choosing life"

Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014 (6th Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Matthew 5:21-37).

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor. After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish.

Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.

Like the Israelites, we too have a real choice as to whether we will love and obey God or not, whether we will choose life or whether we will choose death. We too are free to choose disobedience, even if it leads to our destruction. We only need to take a brief look at the evening news to find plenty of examples of how often people choose destructive behaviors over life-giving ones. And truth be told, there are probably plenty of examples a lot closer to home than the evening news.

Within our own lives and choices, we can all find examples of times when we chose to break our own religious covenant – the vows we made at our baptism – and the negative consequences that resulted. The times we turned a blind eye to someone in need, the times we spoke harshly to our spouse or children, the times we neglected to spend time with God in prayer and worship, the times we knowingly participated in unjust social systems simply because it was easier than challenging the status quo – in all of these times, we broke the covenant we made at our baptism to be regular in prayer and worship, to share our faith with others, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace among all people and to respect the dignity of every human being. [1]

Each time we break one of these vows, we are, in however small a way, choosing death instead of life. Although we may not feel like we are making a conscious choice to disobey our baptismal covenant in those moments, we could have chosen to behave differently. We could have chosen to see the person in need rather than walking past them. We could have chosen to hold our tongue when we felt negativity and harsh words rising up. We could have chosen to get up and come to worship even when we felt like sleeping in. We could have chosen to challenge the policies and programs in our communities that perpetuate social inequalities and injustices. We do have the ability to be conscious and intentional about our actions, and to make choices that are life-giving rather than destructive.

But lest we think “choosing life” is a matter of simply doing the right things, Jesus’s teachings in today’s Gospel passage (Matthew 5:21-37) from the Sermon on the Mount remind us that obeying the letter of the law is not enough – we must embody the spirit behind the law in our thoughts and attitudes. It is not enough just to refrain from killing someone, Jesus says, because nurturing anger and ill will towards someone can be a kind of “death” as well, both for the other person and for us. Focusing only on our outward actions neglects to take seriously how powerful our thoughts really are. This is why so many religious traditions teach that it is important to purify one’s mind as well as one’s actions.

What we dwell on mentally has an enormous impact on our emotional and even physical well-being. We have the choice between life and death not only in our actions, but in our mindset. If we choose to focus on the negative all the time, we are essentially choosing death. If we choose to focus on the positive, we are choosing life. This is why the Apostle Paul offered the following advice in his letter to the church at Philippi: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). To a church dealing with disagreements and conflict amongst themselves, Paul urges them to focus on the positive. Find some common ground. Emphasize what they can agree on. In doing so, they “choose life” for their community, because we all know how destructive it can be to only focus on conflicts, disagreements, and things that divide us.

And this holds true not just within the church, but in broader contexts as well. If we can focus on the positive, on the things we share in common, on the ways we can get along with one another, we can choose life rather than death not just for the church, but for the world.

Eboo Patel (center) in the midst of an interfaith dialogue.
Image from Inside Islam, http://insideislam.wisc.edu

One of our current Sunday School classes for adults at 10 a.m. is called “Embracing Interfaith Cooperation.” The class is based on a series of videos of talks and interfaith group discussions led by Eboo Patel, founder of an organization called the Interfaith Youth Core in Chicago. The Interfaith Youth Core strives to hold up the stories of interfaith cooperation throughout the history of our various religious traditions, and to train college students to become the next generation of interfaith leaders. They seek to educate people about the fact that the dominant assumption that people of different religions have always fought and will always fight is simply not true. Although our history textbooks and the evening news tend to tell us the story of the “clash of civilizations” and the inevitability of religious strife, Eboo and the Interfaith Youth Core remind us that there is actually a long history of interfaith cooperation in our respective religious histories that is often unknown to the general public.

Tonight at our Nourish program, we will welcome some of our Muslim neighbors in Williamson County to St. Paul’s for dinner and conversation. Because today’s dialogue is a Christian-Muslim one, let me highlight a few stories of interfaith cooperation between Christians and Muslims from our shared histories.

We are all familiar with the storyline that tells us that Christians and Muslims can’t get along, that we must fight and compete with one another about religious claims and political views. But as far back as the 8th century in what is now Iraq, Christians and Muslims were engaging in peaceful dialogue and debate in the courts of a Muslim caliph named Harun al-Rashid, who intentionally invited people of many religious faiths to his court to participate in an exchange of ideas that would broaden the minds of all involved. [2]

An icon of St. Francis greeting Sultan Malik al-Kamil.

In the 13th century, in the middle of the Crusades, St. Francis of Assisi met with the Egyptian sultan, Malik al-Kamil. Although Francis’s initial aim was to stop the wars over the Holy Land by converting the sultan to Christianity, when he actually met and spoke with the sultan, he discovered a devout man of God in whom he recognized something holy. The sultan likewise acknowledged Francis as a holy man, despite their disagreements on matters of religious doctrine. Francis came away from the encounter with at least some respect for Islam, and instructed his followers to live at peace with their Muslim neighbors. [3]

And closer to our own day, despite the news we hear in the U.S. about Christians being oppressed and mistreated in majority-Muslim countries, friendships and support between Christians and Muslims continues to go on at the grassroots level. During the political uprising in Egypt in 2011, hundreds of Christians joined hands to create a human chain to protect their Muslim neighbors as they prayed in Cairo. [4] And after an Anglican church was bombed in Pakistan last year, hundreds of Muslims joined hands to form a human chain around the church to protect their Christian neighbors as they returned for mass the next week. [5] The images of these two events (see below) went viral on Facebook and other social media sites, showing the power of the people to lift up positive stories to counteract the dominant narrative of conflict. These powerful displays of solidarity show that it is possible for us to choose life rather than death, to choose cooperation rather than competition and conflict.

Christians protecting Muslims at prayer in Cairo, 2011 (image from the U.K.'s Daily Mail)

Muslims surrounding church to protect their Christian neighbors in Pakistan, 2013 (image from Huffington Post)

Some might say that focusing on the positive is a form of living in denial, that if we only look at what we have in common, we miss the importance of our very real differences, that if we ignore our points of disagreement, we sweep things under the rug and don’t get a realistic view of the complexity of our relationships, whether we’re dealing with family dynamics, church conflicts, or interfaith dialogue. This is certainly a valid critique; if we deny that we have any differences at all, we do ignore the reality of our uniqueness as individuals and the particularities of our various traditions. But given the extent to which our culture encourages us to focus on conflict, it is important that we remind ourselves that conflict is not the only storyline out there.

And so, we keep lifting up the positive, we keep looking for common ground – not to ignore our differences or particularities, but in order that we might choose life rather than death, that we might choose peaceful encounters and life-giving friendships rather than fear, suspicion, and violence.

“I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Participants in the interfaith scripture study circle between St. Paul's, the Islamic Center of Williamson County, and the Nashville Gurdwara (Sikh community). The group met once a month for three months, January-March, to study common topics in our sacred texts (the Bible, the Qur'an and the Guru Granth Sahib).

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Footnotes:

[1] See the Baptismal Covenant, p. 304 in the Book of Common Prayer

[2] See the introduction to Zachary Karabell, Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Conflict and Cooperation. Vintage Books, 2008.

[3] The Saint and the Sultan, Paul Moses. Online information at http://www.saintandthesultan.com/about.html
Hoke, Wendy A. “St. Francis and the Sultan: Lessons for Today.” Catholic Universe Bulletin, 31 October 2006. Accessed online at http://www.catholic.org/diocese/diocese_story.php?id=21816 10 February 2014.

[4] “Images of solidarity as Christians join hands to protect Muslims as they pray during Cairo protests,” The Daily Mail (UK), 3 February 2011, accessed online at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353330/Egypt-protests-Christians-join-hands-protect-Muslims-pray-Cairo-protests.html 10 February 2014.

[5] “Pakistani Muslims Form Human Chain to Protect Christians During Mass,” Huffington Post, 8 October 2013, reprinted from The Express Tribune. Accessed online at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/muslims-form-human-chain-pakistan_n_4057381.html 10 February 2014.