Sermon delivered Sunday, June 14, 2015, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN
3 Pentecost, Proper 6, Year B (1 Samuel 15:34-16:13)
What does it mean to be "chosen" by God?
In the Hebrew scripture for today, we heard the story of God choosing David to replace Saul as king of Israel. God tells Samuel he has chosen one of Jesse’s sons to be the next king, so Samuel goes to visit Jesse and find the chosen one. One by one, Jesse’s sons come before Samuel, but Samuel hears from God that none of these are the chosen one. He finally finds out that there is one more son that no one has thought to bring in, since he is young and is out tending the sheep. When this youngest son, David, comes before Samuel, he knows instantly that this is the one God has chosen as the next leader of Israel.
I don’t know about you, but in today’s day and age, I think many people tend to be skeptical about people or communities who claim to be “chosen by God.” If that person is the chosen one, who is everyone else? The non-chosen ones? The rejected ones? The not-good-enough ones? Language about being “chosen” can easily lead people to believe they are superior to others, to take being “chosen” as an indication that they are better than those who are not chosen, that David was somehow better than his brothers, for example, because God chose him rather than any of them.
That’s certainly one way of interpreting what it means to be “chosen by God” – that we are the special ones, that we are superior to others, that God loves us more than God loves everyone else – and certainly there is scriptural precedent for holding such a perspective. But I prefer another narrative in scripture that reminds us that we are ALL people of God, that God’s temple is a house of prayer for ALL nations, not just the Israelites, that “God shows no partiality, but in every nation those who fear him and do what is right are acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35), that we are ALL chosen by God; it’s just that we are not all chosen to do the same thing. Claiming to be "chosen by God" only becomes a problem when we believe that the thing God has chosen us to do is better than the things God has chosen other people to do.
My grandfather, who was not a church-going man himself, used to say, "What a good thing it is that God made us all different -- that's what makes the world go 'round." Or, as the letter to the Ephesians puts it:
"[E]ach of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. (Ephesians 4:7, 11-13)
Paul’s metaphor about the church as the body of Christ emphasizes how essential diversity is within the community. We need all parts of the body to function effectively. If we all tried to do the same things, not much would get done. Just because David’s brothers were not chosen to be king did not mean that God did not have a plan for their lives, or that God valued them less than God valued their brother.
Each of us has particular gifts that God has given us to use for the building up of the body of Christ. No one gift is better than any of the others. Even this passage from Ephesians is quite limiting, since it talks about people being called to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers -- but God also chooses people to be health care workers and architects and BBQ or English tea volunteers and vestry members and gardeners and finance committee members. What role has God chosen you to play in building up the body of Christ? Where do your gifts lie in serving God and bringing others to the knowledge and love of God? (As an aside, if you’re not quite sure of the answer to that question, I invite you to consider joining our next group of Faith Leaders, which will begin in the fall. Faith Leaders is an eight-month-long program for adults that meets weekly and helps people discern what their gifts are and how God is calling them to use their gifts in the world.)
In my own experience of discerning my call to the priesthood, I have come to believe that at any given time, God is calling us to a particular path that will bring us to a place of abundant blessing if we choose to follow it. I believe God will still be with us and work good in our lives even if we do not choose that path, but I do believe that we will find more fulfillment and abundant blessings if we do follow the tug of God’s call, however impractical it may seem.
In late college and the beginning of graduate school, I planned to pursue a career in journalism. I knew I loved studying religion, and I was also a good writer, so I thought I would combine these two things and become a religion reporter for a newspaper. My experiences in the world of journalism were all rewarding in some sense, but while I was writing articles and copy editing newspaper pages, I couldn't shake the sense that there was something else that I should be doing. From the first time I began to read the Bible in earnest in late high school, I had been struck by Jesus's injunction to reach out to the poor. Passages from Scripture like, "If you love me, feed my sheep" (John 21:15-17), and "whatever you did to the least of these, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40), would ring in my head as I walked past homeless people begging for change on the streets.
Finally, I listened to the call and began to volunteer with an outdoor church for the homeless in Cambridge, Massachusetts, similar to the Church in the Yard here in Nashville. You’ve heard me mention this ministry in sermons before. Although I had no idea what to say or do as I interacted with the people on the streets and I felt completely unqualified and incompetent to do that ministry, it certainly brought me much closer to God than journalism ever had. After I wrote some reflections about my experiences with the Outdoor Church, some of my mentors suggested that I might consider ordained ministry. Although every practical bone in my body told me it was time to get a "real job" and start making money to pay off my educational debt, I felt drawn to devote intentional time to discern whether or not I was called to ordained ministry. So, I decided to take a year to reflect and pray through one of the Episcopal Service Corps internship, designed to help young adults in their 20s and early 30s discern their vocational call. Although I wanted to stay in the northeast, in Boston or New York, it turned out that the place God had for me was in Omaha, Nebraska. I could have turned down the opportunity because Omaha was not where I wanted to be, but I’m so glad I didn’t, because it became obvious to me once I arrived and met the wonderful people there who supported me in my discernment that I had found the place of deep blessing that God had for me at that time.
Listening to God's call is not often easy or practical, in my experience. But when God chooses us to do something, we actually have very little choice in the matter. From comparing notes with others in the field of ordained ministry, I have heard countless stories of people who have denied their calling for many years, pursuing another career, until finally they were able to accept and begin to live into that place of deep blessing to which God had been calling them all their lives. Like Jonah, we are finally unable to run from our calling, however scared we might be to accept it.
Accepting that we are chosen by God can be difficult, especially since we often mistakenly think that we cannot be chosen unless we are of a certain level of righteousness and holiness. But the only thing we have to do to disabuse ourselves of that notion is to return to the study of scripture. None of the people chosen by God in scripture were perfect. Think about David, who we read about today. The “spirit of the Lord was mightily upon David,” and yet he still wound up committing adultery and having the husband of his lover killed in battle so he could have her for himself. Not exactly model behavior. But he was still chosen by God to do the role he was called to do.
One of my favorite quotes about our reluctance to accept that we are chosen by God is often attributed to Nelson Mandela, but was actually written by Marianne Williamson, an author and minister in the Unity Church. She writes,
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
I believe this is what happens when we begin to follow the path that God has prepared for us -- we are brought face to face with our belovedness and are liberated from our fear. God begins to pry open our hearts to accept God's love and to offer it to others. It may not always be the path we would have expected to take, and it may not be the path that others would have us take -- but it is the path God calls us to nonetheless. And it is an invitation to a place of great blessing.
My prayer is that each of you would find that path, that place of great blessing, in your own lives, and in doing so you would find yourselves face to face with a God who loves you and who chooses you - every day and every hour - to represent God's love to the world.
The Lord has chosen YOU. So, "let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works, and glorify God in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Sunday, June 7, 2015
But all the cool kids are doing it!
Sermon delivered Sunday, June 7, 2015, at The Gathering (alternative Eucharist) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. 2 Pentecost, Proper 5, Year B (1 Samuel 8:4-20, Mark 3:20-35)
I’m sure at some point in our lives, most of us have experienced some version of this conversation:
Child: “Hey Mom, this guy Jason invited me to a party this weekend. Can I go?”
Parent: “Um, isn’t Jason the one who has those huge parties at his house when his parents aren’t even home? The ones where the neighbors called the cops last year? I don’t THINK so. Some parents might allow that kind of stuff, but not while you’re under my roof you won’t go to a party like that.”
Child: “But all the cool kids are doing it!”
Parent: “If the cool kids all jumped off a bridge, would you?”
How many of you have ever had a conversation like this, whether you were playing the role of the child or the parent?
Well, in some ways that conversation is what’s going on in our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today. The people of Israel ask Samuel to appoint them a king so they can be like everyone else. “Come on, Samuel, all the cool kids are doing it,” right? You heard the story in the first reading, but here’s a little refresher for you:
Elder 1: “Hey Samuel, you’ve done a pretty good job of leading Israel as prophet and judge, but you’re getting old, and actually, we really kinda question your judgment in appointing your sons as the next judges.”
Elder 2: “Yeah, I mean, we love you and everything, but let’s just say that the apple seems to have fallen pretty far from the tree. Your sons have been engaged in some questionable and corrupt behavior.”
Elder 3: “So we’ve got an idea – why don’t you appoint a king to rule over us? Then we could be like all the other nations!”
Samuel: “Um, I don’t THINK so. There’s a reason God never intended for you to have a king. You’re supposed to be different from all the other nations. God is your king!”
Elders: “But we want to be like everyone else!”
Samuel: “Ok, but if I appoint a king over you, he’s going to take the best of your stuff and send your children to war.”
Elders: “We don’t care! All the cool kids are doing it!”
The biblical stories and Jewish and Christian lore glorify the Israelite monarchy so much that it’s easy to forget that God never intended for Israel to have kings in the first place. The early history of the Israelites in the biblical texts emphasizes quite often that the people did not have a king, by God’s design, because this was to remind them that God was their king. Instead, they were governed by a series of “judges,” who were charismatic leaders raised up by God to deal with issues as they arose among the people and to serve as mediator between God and the people. Their scope of influence was broader than the way we understand the term “judge” in the modern American legal system; these leaders would often also lead the people into battle and work to preserve the physical security of the people as well as mediate disputes. But their power was still much more limited than a king’s would have been.
Israel was governed by a series of judges for about 125 years, from after Joshua conquered the land of Canaan until the establishment of the monarchy that we hear about in today’s reading. When the people of Israel asked for a king, they were asking for a much more structured, centralized form of government, with a large amount of power concentrated in the hands of one person. The reason Samuel was upset that they made this request was not only that they were rejecting one of the things that made them distinctive from the surrounding peoples, but because in doing so, they were also implicitly rejecting God. By asking for a human ruler instead, the people were indicating that God was no longer good enough in God’s governance of them. They thought they had a better idea. And they got that idea from looking around at what everyone else was doing.
We human beings are so susceptible to this, aren’t we? Though much has changed since the time of Samuel and Saul, one thing that hasn’t changed much is human nature, especially this tendency to compare ourselves to others and to want to be like everyone else. Whether it’s adults trying to “keep up with the Joneses” or teenagers wanting to be “like the cool kids,” most of us seem to have an innate desire to belong, to be seen as “one of the group.” It is hard to stand out and be different, and yet that is often what following God requires us to do.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus serves as a perfect contrast to the elders in the first reading. Jesus acts in ways that make him stand out as different from those around him, but unlike the elders in our first reading, he is not insecure about this difference. When people start saying he’s crazy and demon-possessed, he doesn’t let this shame him into acting more “normal.” He doesn’t say, “Oh my goodness, people think I’m crazy; I’d better change my behavior so I can fit in and be like the cool kids!” Instead, he defends himself against the accusations of demon-possession and stands firm in his identity. He knows who he is and what he is called to do and he doesn’t let what everyone else thinks about him influence him or affect him.
Not only does he reject society’s pressure to act like everyone else, in this passage he also redefines what it means to belong. When his mother and brother and sisters come looking for him, presumably to try to “restrain him,” as the beginning of the passage tells us, he doesn’t respond to their anxiety or their attempts to control his actions. Instead, he looks around at those gathered with him, those have left everything to follow him, those who are not held captive by a need to do only what is societally acceptable, and says, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” He redefines what it means to belong. In the kind of community God wants us to create, we find our sense of belonging not by trying to be like everyone else, or doing what all the cool kids are doing, but by following God.
So now it’s your turn. You all are the sermon illustrations today! I want to know what your experiences are with feeling a need to do what everyone else is doing, and what your experiences are with finding your sense of belonging from following God rather than from trying to be like everyone else.
At this point during the worship service, people were handed a piece of paper with these two questions to respond to. They were given the opportunity to respond by posting on Facebook, writing in a journal, or creating some kind of artistic, visual response, and were invited to bring their responses forward to post on a cork board at the front of the room. If you're reading this sermon online only, you're invited to participate in this process by responding to these questions in the comments section below or on Facebook (if you're reading it there.):
Take a few moments to reflect on a time in your life when you wanted to do something in order to be like someone else. It could be a story from any age or stage in your life. When have you wanted to do something just to “fit in” or because you saw someone else doing it and wanted to be like them? What did you want to do?
Then, reflect on a time in your life when you did what you knew God was calling you to do, even if it made you different from everyone else. Have you experienced what it means to find your sense of belonging by following God’s will rather than by trying to be like everyone else? What did you do? What gave you the strength and courage to do what God was calling you to do?
At the end of the time of response, I concluded the sermon with this:
Thank you all for sharing your stories with us and for being living sermon illustrations today. Take time to stop and look more closely at the board after you come up and receive communion, and go on the St. Paul’s Facebook page later and read others’ stories. As you receive the gift of others stories and responses, “hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people” through the scriptures and through your own lives.
I’m sure at some point in our lives, most of us have experienced some version of this conversation:
Child: “Hey Mom, this guy Jason invited me to a party this weekend. Can I go?”
Parent: “Um, isn’t Jason the one who has those huge parties at his house when his parents aren’t even home? The ones where the neighbors called the cops last year? I don’t THINK so. Some parents might allow that kind of stuff, but not while you’re under my roof you won’t go to a party like that.”
Child: “But all the cool kids are doing it!”
Parent: “If the cool kids all jumped off a bridge, would you?”
How many of you have ever had a conversation like this, whether you were playing the role of the child or the parent?
Well, in some ways that conversation is what’s going on in our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today. The people of Israel ask Samuel to appoint them a king so they can be like everyone else. “Come on, Samuel, all the cool kids are doing it,” right? You heard the story in the first reading, but here’s a little refresher for you:
Elder 1: “Hey Samuel, you’ve done a pretty good job of leading Israel as prophet and judge, but you’re getting old, and actually, we really kinda question your judgment in appointing your sons as the next judges.”
Elder 2: “Yeah, I mean, we love you and everything, but let’s just say that the apple seems to have fallen pretty far from the tree. Your sons have been engaged in some questionable and corrupt behavior.”
Elder 3: “So we’ve got an idea – why don’t you appoint a king to rule over us? Then we could be like all the other nations!”
Samuel: “Um, I don’t THINK so. There’s a reason God never intended for you to have a king. You’re supposed to be different from all the other nations. God is your king!”
Elders: “But we want to be like everyone else!”
Samuel: “Ok, but if I appoint a king over you, he’s going to take the best of your stuff and send your children to war.”
Elders: “We don’t care! All the cool kids are doing it!”
The biblical stories and Jewish and Christian lore glorify the Israelite monarchy so much that it’s easy to forget that God never intended for Israel to have kings in the first place. The early history of the Israelites in the biblical texts emphasizes quite often that the people did not have a king, by God’s design, because this was to remind them that God was their king. Instead, they were governed by a series of “judges,” who were charismatic leaders raised up by God to deal with issues as they arose among the people and to serve as mediator between God and the people. Their scope of influence was broader than the way we understand the term “judge” in the modern American legal system; these leaders would often also lead the people into battle and work to preserve the physical security of the people as well as mediate disputes. But their power was still much more limited than a king’s would have been.
Israel was governed by a series of judges for about 125 years, from after Joshua conquered the land of Canaan until the establishment of the monarchy that we hear about in today’s reading. When the people of Israel asked for a king, they were asking for a much more structured, centralized form of government, with a large amount of power concentrated in the hands of one person. The reason Samuel was upset that they made this request was not only that they were rejecting one of the things that made them distinctive from the surrounding peoples, but because in doing so, they were also implicitly rejecting God. By asking for a human ruler instead, the people were indicating that God was no longer good enough in God’s governance of them. They thought they had a better idea. And they got that idea from looking around at what everyone else was doing.
We human beings are so susceptible to this, aren’t we? Though much has changed since the time of Samuel and Saul, one thing that hasn’t changed much is human nature, especially this tendency to compare ourselves to others and to want to be like everyone else. Whether it’s adults trying to “keep up with the Joneses” or teenagers wanting to be “like the cool kids,” most of us seem to have an innate desire to belong, to be seen as “one of the group.” It is hard to stand out and be different, and yet that is often what following God requires us to do.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus serves as a perfect contrast to the elders in the first reading. Jesus acts in ways that make him stand out as different from those around him, but unlike the elders in our first reading, he is not insecure about this difference. When people start saying he’s crazy and demon-possessed, he doesn’t let this shame him into acting more “normal.” He doesn’t say, “Oh my goodness, people think I’m crazy; I’d better change my behavior so I can fit in and be like the cool kids!” Instead, he defends himself against the accusations of demon-possession and stands firm in his identity. He knows who he is and what he is called to do and he doesn’t let what everyone else thinks about him influence him or affect him.
Not only does he reject society’s pressure to act like everyone else, in this passage he also redefines what it means to belong. When his mother and brother and sisters come looking for him, presumably to try to “restrain him,” as the beginning of the passage tells us, he doesn’t respond to their anxiety or their attempts to control his actions. Instead, he looks around at those gathered with him, those have left everything to follow him, those who are not held captive by a need to do only what is societally acceptable, and says, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” He redefines what it means to belong. In the kind of community God wants us to create, we find our sense of belonging not by trying to be like everyone else, or doing what all the cool kids are doing, but by following God.
So now it’s your turn. You all are the sermon illustrations today! I want to know what your experiences are with feeling a need to do what everyone else is doing, and what your experiences are with finding your sense of belonging from following God rather than from trying to be like everyone else.
At this point during the worship service, people were handed a piece of paper with these two questions to respond to. They were given the opportunity to respond by posting on Facebook, writing in a journal, or creating some kind of artistic, visual response, and were invited to bring their responses forward to post on a cork board at the front of the room. If you're reading this sermon online only, you're invited to participate in this process by responding to these questions in the comments section below or on Facebook (if you're reading it there.):
Take a few moments to reflect on a time in your life when you wanted to do something in order to be like someone else. It could be a story from any age or stage in your life. When have you wanted to do something just to “fit in” or because you saw someone else doing it and wanted to be like them? What did you want to do?
Then, reflect on a time in your life when you did what you knew God was calling you to do, even if it made you different from everyone else. Have you experienced what it means to find your sense of belonging by following God’s will rather than by trying to be like everyone else? What did you do? What gave you the strength and courage to do what God was calling you to do?
At the end of the time of response, I concluded the sermon with this:
Thank you all for sharing your stories with us and for being living sermon illustrations today. Take time to stop and look more closely at the board after you come up and receive communion, and go on the St. Paul’s Facebook page later and read others’ stories. As you receive the gift of others stories and responses, “hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people” through the scriptures and through your own lives.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
The Trinity: An unexplainable, intellectual headache
Sermon delivered Sunday, May 31, 2015 (Trinity Sunday, Year B) at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Isaiah 6:1-8, Psalm 29, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17).
Today is Trinity Sunday, one of the seven major feast days of the church year. It is the only major feast day dedicated to a doctrine or an idea or concept rather than an event in the life of Jesus or the church, and as such, I have to warn you that today’s sermon, by nature, is bound to be a bit abstract.
I also have to warn you that it may make your brain hurt. This is a hazard of any serious theological exploration, since theology is an attempt to explain and understand God, which is by definition an impossible task, since God is always beyond human understanding. I don’t know about you, but as I bump up against the limits of my capacity to conceptualize abstract and unseen realities, my brain always starts to hurt a bit. It’s too bad none of the drug companies have yet developed a pill for alleviating intellectual headaches!
The Trinity is notoriously difficult to understand and explain. It always comes up in interfaith dialogue, since one of the things that non-Christians are most puzzled about when looking at Christianity from the outside is how the largest faith in the world manages to not be able to do simple math. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God, but there is only one God? 1 + 1 + 1 = 1? It appears that the church as a whole never made it out of first grade! When Jews or Muslims or Sikhs ask Christians to explain the Trinity, they’re likely to get an uncomfortable smile and a laugh from their Christian conversation partner. Some Christians get touchy when asked this question by a non-Christian, since they believe the non-Christian may be asking them this question order to trip them up and make them look stupid, to “debunk” their faith, so to speak. In our desire to make our faith appear intellectually respectable, we’re afraid to let out the secret that none of us really understands the Trinity.
But this confusion and consternation about the Trinity goes back to the earliest days of the church. In the first few centuries after Jesus’s death, his followers argued, debated, and even fought violently over how to reconcile a belief that Jesus was divine with the traditional monotheism, that is, belief in one God, that was foundational to the Jewish faith out of which Christianity arose. The testimony of the texts that the community was beginning to regard as authoritative and sacred and would come to be defined as Christian scripture (the texts now in our New Testament) supported identifying both the person of Jesus and the Holy Spirit that descended upon his followers at Pentecost as Lord and God. But how could Jesus and the Spirit both be God, and what was their relationship to the God of Israel, as Jews had understood him before the coming of Jesus? In defining the doctrine of the Trinity, the church attempted to make sense of these mind-boggling questions.
The understanding the church came to affirm in the Nicene Creed in the year 325 AD, clarified later in the Council of Chalcedon and the Athanasian Creed, in the 5th and 6th centuries, respectively, is that there is one God, but that one God consists of three “persons” that are co-eternal and co-equal. They all have the same attributes and qualities and are equally worthy of devotion and worship – and all three are “fully God” in and of themselves – but yet these three “persons” are still separate and distinguishable from one other. Thus, the Father is God, the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, but the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Spirit. All three persons of the Trinity are God, but none of the persons is the same as any of the others, and they are still one God, not three.
I told you this was going to make your brain hurt.
In an attempt to alleviate this intellectual headache, well-meaning people throughout the ages have crafted various analogies to try to explain the Trinity. Unfortunately, none of them actually illustrate the “orthodox” doctrine of the Trinity – the “official” view the church eventually upheld as true doctrine – but one of the heresies – a way of understanding the Trinity that the church ultimately came to reject. You’ve probably heard some of these analogies; in fact, you may even use one of them to make sense of the Trinity in your own mind. If so, I apologize, but I’m about to burst your bubble.
Let’s take this one: the Trinity is like water – just as the molecular formula H20 can be in a solid, liquid, or gaseous state (as ice, water, or steam), but still be H20 no matter which state it is in, so God is still God no matter whether in the form of Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.
Or what about this one: the Trinity is like the way we have multiple identities in our relationship with the world. So, I am a daughter and a wife and a friend – but I am still Tracy, no matter which relationship someone primarily knows me in. In the same way, God is always God, whether he is in relationship with us as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.
Those sound great, don’t they? And they make sense. But the problem is that they’re heresies. They illustrate not an orthodox view of the Trinity, but modalism, an ancient heresy condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. Modalism holds that there is one God who has different “modes of being” – that God can appear or relate to us as Father, as Son, and as Holy Spirit, but ultimately it is the same God, just appearing in different forms. This makes a lot of logical sense and clearly affirms the oneness of God. In fact, you’ll hear many modern Hindus talk this way about how they understand their many gods being various manifestations of the one universal God, simply appearing in different forms. But the church rejected this understanding of God. Instead, it upheld a belief in something much more illogical. It said that while the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God, the Father is NOT the Son and the Son is NOT the Spirit – they are each distinct entities separate from one another, not God manifesting himself to us in different ways.
Ok, so what about this one? The Trinity is like a stream of light. There are three components – the light’s source, the beam of light, and the spot produced when the beam hits an object. The Father is the source, Jesus is the beam of light that connects God to the object (us), and the spot is the Holy Spirit that lives in us when the light hits us.
Ah, much more deep and complex than the first two analogies, huh? But sorry – another heresy! This time we’re dealing with Arianism, a heresy condemned at the Council of Nicaea and named after Arius, one of its major proponents. This view holds that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are creations of the Father – that there was a point in time where there was only God the Father, and later God created the Son and the Holy Spirit. Again, this makes a lot of logical sense and affirms the oneness of God – that there was an original creator God in pure oneness, and these other divine beings “emanated” from that one creator God. But the church rejected this understanding of God, too, and instead affirmed something much more illogical – that the Son and the Spirit were both “co-eternal” with the Father – that is, that they both have always existed, since before time began. This is why the Nicene Creed makes such a big deal out of Jesus being “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father” – although I’m still not entirely clear on how being “begotten” is different from being “made,” but clearly they were trying to make a distinction there to show that Jesus was not created – he always existed and was involved in the very creation of the world – and thus the Creed emphasizes, “through him all things were made.”
Ok, one more, just for fun. How about this one? The Trinity is like 3-in-1 shampoo. (I’m not making this stuff up, people. This is actually an analogy that has been used to try to explain the Trinity!) The 3-in-1 shampoo comes out of the bottle onto your hand as one liquid, but it is simultaneously shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. In a similar way, the Trinity is one God (like the liquid) but it is simultaneously Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
There! That’s a better explanation, right? Because we’re affirming that God is all three things at once, not merely taking on different forms or modes of being. But nope – heresy again! This time, it’s the heresy of tritheism – the belief in three gods. If you really think it through, the 3-in-1 shampoo is not actually one substance, it is three substances combined in one bottle. Each of the substances are unique and separate – shampoo, conditioner, and body wash – they are three separate things, not the same in substance or essence or being – the Greek word here is “ousia” – and the Council of Nicaea affirmed that the Son and the Spirit are “homoousia” – of the same essence – made of the same “stuff” – as the Father.
So – what are we left with? A whole lot of dense theological language that seems to make no sense, with no real helpful analogies to explain it. And perhaps that’s as it should be. I think it’s no accident that the church consistently chose the explanation that made the least logical sense as they were trying to name and define God. It is as if they intentionally built into their definition of God a limit on human pride. For when we think we understand God, when we are sure we know exactly how God works and exactly what God’s nature is, we have essentially put God in a box. We have limited God, which by definition makes God no longer God.
To me, the fact that there are no good analogies for the Trinity is an affirmation of the fact that God is ultimately beyond our understanding, and we can’t neatly define God by way of a cute little metaphor like 3-in-1 shampoo. The Trinity is a mind puzzle, a theological conundrum that will keep us thinking and wondering for years to come. If theologians haven’t nailed it down in over 2,000 years, I’m pretty confident in saying you and I won’t be successful in making any real sense of it either. And for me, every time I bump up against the limits of my human capacity to understand, and my brain begins to hurt, it reminds me that God is so much more than I can ever begin to imagine. It stirs in me a sense of awe and wonder that drives me to my knees in worship.
So perhaps we have discovered an antidote for the intellectual headache after all – we can stop our brains from hurting so much by embracing mystery in worship and adoration. In that spirit, I’d like to invite you into a time of worship and contemplation during the period of silence that always follows our sermons. Let go of the hard work of trying to understand the Trinity and simply be still and rest in the presence of God.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
"I have other sheep that are not of this fold:" Sharing Christ through interfaith dialogue
Our lectionary for today presents us with two of the most frequently cited passages on the topic of Christianity’s relationship to other religions. From Acts 4: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12) and from John 10: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also” (John 10:16). In the volumes that have been written about how Christians should approach people who follow other religious paths, these two passages inevitably come up. The Acts passage is cited by those who believe we should convert all non-Christians to Christianity, and the passage from John is cited by those who believe Jesus might already have a relationship with people of other religions without their explicit conversion to Christianity.
In the academic study of religion, there is an entire discipline called “theologies of religion,” which has to do with how people make theological sense of the fact of religious diversity. What does the existence of other religions say about my religion? What is God’s relationship with people who follow a different religious path than I do? Is it possible for people of other religions to be “saved” without following my religion?
Classically, scholars have grouped the way people answer these questions into three basic categories: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Allow me to briefly define these terms before we return to examining the scripture at hand.
Exclusivist theology holds that there is only one true religion, and that everyone must convert to that religion in order to be “saved.”
Inclusivist theology holds that salvation comes through one particular religion, but acknowledges that people who follow other religions may achieve salvation without converting to that religion. How is this possible? Well, inclusivists generally understand any saving power of God at work in the world to be part of their religious framework, whether or not people acknowledge and name it as such. Thus, an inclusivist Christian would say that salvation always comes through Jesus Christ, but that Jesus may save Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus through their own religious metaphors and understandings.
Pluralist theology holds that there is only one truth, but that all religions are equally valid ways to access that truth. The analogy is often given of one mountain with many paths on it, but all of which ultimately lead to the same spot on the summit. Thus, no matter which path you follow, you will reach the same end.
Returning to our scriptures at hand, the passage from Acts is clearly of the exclusivist perspective: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The passage from John sounds like it might be pluralist: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also” (John 10:16) -- as pluralist theologians often cite this passage, but we have to go on to read the rest of the passage in context. The entire verse says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” So while Jesus is bringing in these “other sheep,” they are still listening to him and following him, ultimately coming to be part of the “one flock” that is the church, which makes this passage inclusivist, not pluralist. Although much ink has been spilled over who exactly the “other sheep” are in this parable, if they are taken to refer to people of other faiths, we still must acknowledge that in this vision, those people of other faiths ultimately come to follow Jesus.
Given my interest in and passion for interfaith dialogue, you might have guessed that I have devoted quite a bit of time to pondering these passages, and others like them elsewhere in the Bible. In my study, I have come to the conclusion that I do not believe it is possible to argue for a pluralist theology with scriptural support. While there might be certain aspects of a pluralist theology that appeal to me, and while there are Christian theologians who hold a pluralist theology of religions, I think that if we are going to remain faithful to the New Testament, the furthest we can go in our theological openness to other faiths is an inclusivist perspective like that expressed in John 10: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). People of other faiths may be part of Jesus’s “other sheep,” but they will ultimately come to be part of the “one flock” under the “one shepherd” – whether that happens explicitly in this lifetime or not.
Christians often see a tension between evangelism and interfaith dialogue – arguing that the moratorium on proselytizing often required as a “ground rule” of interfaith dialogue conflicts with our call to proclaim the Gospel to others. But I’m not convinced that there has to be a conflict between the two. As a Christian, our goal should always be to share our love of Jesus with others, whether through evangelism or interfaith dialogue. If someone is interested in learning about Christianity and feels drawn to follow Jesus, I am delighted to invite them to learn more about the faith and will encourage them to unite themselves with Christ in baptism. It has been one of the highlights of my ministry to accompany an adult catechumen, Sharmila Patel, on her journey of faith this year and watch her become a Christian through baptism at the bishop’s visit last week. But I also believe we can authentically and powerfully share Christ with people of other religions even if they do not decide to become a Christian and be baptized.
An example of this from my own experience is my relationship with my friend and colleague Valarie Kaur, who is a follower of the Sikh religion and a nationally-known interfaith leader and speaker. You may remember that I have mentioned her in sermons before; she and I have had a long and complex interfaith friendship that has stretched us both to grow spiritually.
In 2007, I was doing an internship with a parish in Nebraska as part of my year of discernment for the priesthood, and Valarie participated in an interfaith Stations of the Cross project I presented as the Lenten series for that year. Based on a similar project organized in the Church of England a few years prior, my interfaith Stations of the Cross project invited people of different religions to take one of the classic Stations of the Cross and reflect on it through the lens of their own faith. So, for instance, a Muslim participant made a connection between Jesus’s death on the cross and the execution of one of the martyrs of his own faith.
Valarie was the Sikh participant in the project, and she took the first station, “Jesus is Condemned to Die.” In it, she reflected on the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man shot and killed in Arizona just four days after 9/11 by a man who thought he was a terrorist because of the turban and beard he wore as part of his Sikh faith. Participants were encouraged to write a meditation generic enough that it could be read as describing either the event from the non-Christian faith or the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. This is what Valarie wrote for the first station, “Jesus is Condemned to Die”:
“They were afraid of the ones they could not understand. They reached for their weapons and marched in the streets. ‘You are the enemy,’ they said to the man with light in his eyes. His face shone with God, but they could not see the divine in him. They could only see strangeness. The man was condemned, but he accepted God’s will and turned to God and said, ‘God, I am ready for you to use me in whatever way you wish.’ There was blood on the ground when he died, and the ones who knew him gathered at his grave and wept. The women and men took comfort and sang in the streets, ‘He died so that others would not,’ and the echo tried to confirm it: ‘He died so that others would not.’”
Everything about this meditation – the condemned man accepting God’s will, those who knew him seeing greater meaning in his death – was a description of the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 21st century Indian-American Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona, but the similarities between this story and the condemnation and death of a 1st century Jewish Palestinian man we Christians call our Lord and Savior were striking, to me and to the congregation who participated in the study – and to Valarie herself. She wrote this reflection on what the experience of participating in the project was like for her:
“As a 26-year old Sikh American who had many childhood encounters where friends and teachers tried to convert me to Christianity, I did not feel that Christian theology spoke to the heart of my own experience - until I wrote this reflection. I discovered that the themes of suffering, sacrifice, and service defined not only the Christian story but the human story - and the way I understand my own life experience.”
The Sunday after that Wednesday night program, Valarie attended church with me for the first time. Although I’d been to Sikh services with her before, she’d always somehow respectfully declined my invitations to attend church, perhaps because she had a negative taste in her mouth for Christianity after her childhood experiences with Christians telling her she was going to hell. But this time she agreed, and she chose to come forward and receive communion during the service. As we pulled out of the parking lot after church, she grabbed my arm and said to me with tears in her eyes, “Tracy, now I understand why you want to be a priest.” She later told me that her experiences at my parish in Nebraska that week were some of the most powerful experiences of spiritual belonging she’d ever felt, something she never expected to find in a community of Christians.
My more evangelical brothers and sisters might say that because Valarie has not become a Christian, I have not effectively “shared Christ” with her. But to me, the experience we had that winter in Nebraska was one of the most powerful and effective ways I have ever “shared Christ” with anyone. An intentionally interfaith encounter more effectively communicated the story of Christ to someone who is not a Christian than any overt attempts to convert her ever did. So as a good Anglican, taking into account reason as well as scripture and tradition in formulating my theology, I have come to identify as an inclusivist in terms of my theology of religions. When I read today’s Gospel passage, I believe deeply that Valarie and others like her are included in those “other sheep” that also belong to Jesus.
In the academic study of religion, there is an entire discipline called “theologies of religion,” which has to do with how people make theological sense of the fact of religious diversity. What does the existence of other religions say about my religion? What is God’s relationship with people who follow a different religious path than I do? Is it possible for people of other religions to be “saved” without following my religion?
Classically, scholars have grouped the way people answer these questions into three basic categories: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Allow me to briefly define these terms before we return to examining the scripture at hand.
Exclusivist theology holds that there is only one true religion, and that everyone must convert to that religion in order to be “saved.”
Inclusivist theology holds that salvation comes through one particular religion, but acknowledges that people who follow other religions may achieve salvation without converting to that religion. How is this possible? Well, inclusivists generally understand any saving power of God at work in the world to be part of their religious framework, whether or not people acknowledge and name it as such. Thus, an inclusivist Christian would say that salvation always comes through Jesus Christ, but that Jesus may save Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus through their own religious metaphors and understandings.
Pluralist theology holds that there is only one truth, but that all religions are equally valid ways to access that truth. The analogy is often given of one mountain with many paths on it, but all of which ultimately lead to the same spot on the summit. Thus, no matter which path you follow, you will reach the same end.
Returning to our scriptures at hand, the passage from Acts is clearly of the exclusivist perspective: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The passage from John sounds like it might be pluralist: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also” (John 10:16) -- as pluralist theologians often cite this passage, but we have to go on to read the rest of the passage in context. The entire verse says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” So while Jesus is bringing in these “other sheep,” they are still listening to him and following him, ultimately coming to be part of the “one flock” that is the church, which makes this passage inclusivist, not pluralist. Although much ink has been spilled over who exactly the “other sheep” are in this parable, if they are taken to refer to people of other faiths, we still must acknowledge that in this vision, those people of other faiths ultimately come to follow Jesus.
Given my interest in and passion for interfaith dialogue, you might have guessed that I have devoted quite a bit of time to pondering these passages, and others like them elsewhere in the Bible. In my study, I have come to the conclusion that I do not believe it is possible to argue for a pluralist theology with scriptural support. While there might be certain aspects of a pluralist theology that appeal to me, and while there are Christian theologians who hold a pluralist theology of religions, I think that if we are going to remain faithful to the New Testament, the furthest we can go in our theological openness to other faiths is an inclusivist perspective like that expressed in John 10: “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (John 10:16). People of other faiths may be part of Jesus’s “other sheep,” but they will ultimately come to be part of the “one flock” under the “one shepherd” – whether that happens explicitly in this lifetime or not.
Christians often see a tension between evangelism and interfaith dialogue – arguing that the moratorium on proselytizing often required as a “ground rule” of interfaith dialogue conflicts with our call to proclaim the Gospel to others. But I’m not convinced that there has to be a conflict between the two. As a Christian, our goal should always be to share our love of Jesus with others, whether through evangelism or interfaith dialogue. If someone is interested in learning about Christianity and feels drawn to follow Jesus, I am delighted to invite them to learn more about the faith and will encourage them to unite themselves with Christ in baptism. It has been one of the highlights of my ministry to accompany an adult catechumen, Sharmila Patel, on her journey of faith this year and watch her become a Christian through baptism at the bishop’s visit last week. But I also believe we can authentically and powerfully share Christ with people of other religions even if they do not decide to become a Christian and be baptized.
An example of this from my own experience is my relationship with my friend and colleague Valarie Kaur, who is a follower of the Sikh religion and a nationally-known interfaith leader and speaker. You may remember that I have mentioned her in sermons before; she and I have had a long and complex interfaith friendship that has stretched us both to grow spiritually.
In 2007, I was doing an internship with a parish in Nebraska as part of my year of discernment for the priesthood, and Valarie participated in an interfaith Stations of the Cross project I presented as the Lenten series for that year. Based on a similar project organized in the Church of England a few years prior, my interfaith Stations of the Cross project invited people of different religions to take one of the classic Stations of the Cross and reflect on it through the lens of their own faith. So, for instance, a Muslim participant made a connection between Jesus’s death on the cross and the execution of one of the martyrs of his own faith.
Valarie was the Sikh participant in the project, and she took the first station, “Jesus is Condemned to Die.” In it, she reflected on the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man shot and killed in Arizona just four days after 9/11 by a man who thought he was a terrorist because of the turban and beard he wore as part of his Sikh faith. Participants were encouraged to write a meditation generic enough that it could be read as describing either the event from the non-Christian faith or the story of Jesus’s crucifixion. This is what Valarie wrote for the first station, “Jesus is Condemned to Die”:
“They were afraid of the ones they could not understand. They reached for their weapons and marched in the streets. ‘You are the enemy,’ they said to the man with light in his eyes. His face shone with God, but they could not see the divine in him. They could only see strangeness. The man was condemned, but he accepted God’s will and turned to God and said, ‘God, I am ready for you to use me in whatever way you wish.’ There was blood on the ground when he died, and the ones who knew him gathered at his grave and wept. The women and men took comfort and sang in the streets, ‘He died so that others would not,’ and the echo tried to confirm it: ‘He died so that others would not.’”
Everything about this meditation – the condemned man accepting God’s will, those who knew him seeing greater meaning in his death – was a description of the death of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 21st century Indian-American Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona, but the similarities between this story and the condemnation and death of a 1st century Jewish Palestinian man we Christians call our Lord and Savior were striking, to me and to the congregation who participated in the study – and to Valarie herself. She wrote this reflection on what the experience of participating in the project was like for her:
“As a 26-year old Sikh American who had many childhood encounters where friends and teachers tried to convert me to Christianity, I did not feel that Christian theology spoke to the heart of my own experience - until I wrote this reflection. I discovered that the themes of suffering, sacrifice, and service defined not only the Christian story but the human story - and the way I understand my own life experience.”
The Sunday after that Wednesday night program, Valarie attended church with me for the first time. Although I’d been to Sikh services with her before, she’d always somehow respectfully declined my invitations to attend church, perhaps because she had a negative taste in her mouth for Christianity after her childhood experiences with Christians telling her she was going to hell. But this time she agreed, and she chose to come forward and receive communion during the service. As we pulled out of the parking lot after church, she grabbed my arm and said to me with tears in her eyes, “Tracy, now I understand why you want to be a priest.” She later told me that her experiences at my parish in Nebraska that week were some of the most powerful experiences of spiritual belonging she’d ever felt, something she never expected to find in a community of Christians.
My more evangelical brothers and sisters might say that because Valarie has not become a Christian, I have not effectively “shared Christ” with her. But to me, the experience we had that winter in Nebraska was one of the most powerful and effective ways I have ever “shared Christ” with anyone. An intentionally interfaith encounter more effectively communicated the story of Christ to someone who is not a Christian than any overt attempts to convert her ever did. So as a good Anglican, taking into account reason as well as scripture and tradition in formulating my theology, I have come to identify as an inclusivist in terms of my theology of religions. When I read today’s Gospel passage, I believe deeply that Valarie and others like her are included in those “other sheep” that also belong to Jesus.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Be angry, but do not sin -- a reflection on the "heart-anger" of Jesus and the prophets
Sermon delivered Sunday, March 8, 2015 (3rd Sunday in Lent, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Exodus 20:1-17, Ps. 19, 1 Cor. 1:18-25, John 2:13-22).
“Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:15, NRSV).
The story of Jesus “cleansing the temple,” as today’s Gospel passage is often called, gives us glimpse of a side of Jesus that can make us uncomfortable: his anger. Popular images of Jesus tend to picture him as quiet and serene, holding soft, fluffy lambs or cradling children, or sitting in a field of lilies like the image we have in this stained glass window up front here. You don’t see many stained glass windows showing an image of Jesus chasing people and animals with a whip! Even a quick Google search for images of “angry Jesus” pulled up thousands of images where Jesus looks only mildly miffed, or perhaps not even angry at all, but simply serious. This picture (see image at right) was the only picture I could find of a depiction of Jesus where his face showed something recognizable as actual anger.
Why this reluctance to acknowledge that Jesus got angry sometimes? Well, for one thing, we generally do not think of anger as a good thing. The church has historically named anger as one of the seven deadly sins, and if we claim that Jesus lived among us as “one without sin,” then if anger is a sin, surely Jesus could never have ever gotten angry. This story makes us uncomfortable because it’s embarrassing when the Son of God suddenly starts acting like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum, so our strategy for dealing with it has generally been to either avoid talking about it and try to distract the masses with other, nicer stories about Jesus: “Look over here! Jesus said to love the little children and let them come unto me!” – or to spiritualize the story by saying that Jesus wasn’t really mad when he did this, that it was a purely symbolic action to show that his death would do away with the system of animal sacrifice or that his message was really about our need to cleanse the “temple” of our bodies and purify our thoughts and intentions in worship rather than an instance of him losing his temper.
But to the discerning reader, none of these responses to the story seem to hold much water. It seems pretty clear that this is a story about an angry Jesus, and besides that, we have all those images of an angry God in the Hebrew Bible to deal with as well. Anger is not a concept foreign to God, at least not as the Judeo-Christian tradition has understood God throughout the centuries. So have we simply projected human thoughts and feelings like anger onto God, or is anger actually an attribute of God?
And if anger is an attribute of God, how did it become labeled as a sin for humanity? Is there a way to be angry as a human being and not be sinful? It is interesting that we read this story of Jesus’s anger during the season of Lent, a season when we are encouraged to name and acknowledge our sins and repent of them. If we have been doing that this Lent, anger has probably appeared many times on our list of sins as we reflect on our lives, and we’re probably trying to think of ways to not be angry or to let go of our anger. But perhaps this story about Jesus’s anger offers us another approach to our anger, an approach that seeks not to repress or deny it, but to redeem it, to direct it toward holy purposes.
If we examine scriptural perspectives on anger, the Bible does not say unequivocally that all anger is sinful. Certainly, it gives many warnings about the close connection between anger and sin, especially in the wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Proverbs 29:11 (NIV) says, “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control,” and Ecclesiastes 7:9 (NIV) says, “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” The New Testament epistles warn against the dangers of anger as well: James writes that we should be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (James 1:19-20, NIV), and the author of Colossians instructs the people to “rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips” (Colossians 3:8, NIV). Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that love is “not easily angered” (1 Corinthians 13:5), and Jesus himself warns against anger when he says in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:21). So how do we square this teaching of Jesus with his actions in today’s Gospel passage? All four Gospels record the incident in the temple, so we can’t say that the author of Matthew’s Gospel was unaware of it as he simultaneously recorded Jesus’s words about not being angry in the Sermon on the Mount. So how can both be an accurate representation of Jesus’s teachings and actions, of the message he taught and embodied?
Perhaps the key lies in a distinction implied in a passage from Ephesians where the author is instructing the community on proper Christian behavior. In chapter 4, verses 26-27, he writes, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” The wording of this instruction indicates that although the author sees a close connection between anger and sin, he still believes it is possible to be angry but not sin. And I find it interesting that the 10 Commandments, which we heard in our first reading for today, do NOT include a prohibition against anger per se. Despite the fact that Jesus says in his commentary on the 10 Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister is liable for judgment, there is not a commandment that says, “Thou shalt not be angry.” I believe Jesus’s point in his rhetorical intensifying of the commandments is not to say “thou shalt not be angry,” which really would not be humanly possible or realistic, but to remind us that we should purify our inner thoughts as well as our outward actions. His point is that even if we refrain from killing, if we are seething with hateful thoughts toward our neighbor, we are still doing a kind of violence toward them.
Robert Masters, a psychologist in Vancouver, Canada, has written about the distinctions between different kinds of anger and the debate about whether openly expressing anger is a good or a bad thing psychologically. While secular psychological literature tends to teach that it is better to control anger than to openly express it, he points out that religious literature includes examples of anger that can be used for good, the kind of “anger without sin” that we have been considering. He calls this kind of anger “heart-anger,” which he defines as anger that is rooted not in a selfish sense of wrongs done to me, but in a deep concern for others and what is right for society as a whole. Heart-anger, he writes, is a kind of “wrathful compassion – a potent, often fiery caring” [1]. He specifically uses the example of Jesus cleansing the temple as an illustration of heart-anger, and also puts the anger of the Hebrew prophets in this category, as well as the anger of various Eastern sages at their disciples [2].
This heart-anger, however, is not simply a raging against the injustices of the world. It is not exactly what we mean when we talk about “righteous anger,” which too often seems to be “self-righteous anger” rather than anything truly sacred. People have rightly observed that those who fight injustice out of a sense of deep anger often wind up in a miserable state of mind, constantly angry people who seem to have no peace and whose life is centered around the very thing they are fighting against. Thus, an anti-war protester’s life is all about war, and their techniques, however different, often mirror the very behaviors they say they want to eliminate in others. Heart-anger, as Masters describes it, is a highly advanced mental and emotional state that requires much intentional spiritual discipline to cultivate. Those who express heart-anger have the ability to completely and fully control their anger, but they make the conscious choice to express it openly and fully because “sometimes what is needed in order to awaken others is a shock” [3]. Heart-anger is a spiritual anger, and spiritual anger always has the objective of stimulating repentance and thus contributing to the spiritual growth of the person [4]. It is not unlike what we might call “tough love,” doing something we know will appear hurtful to another person because we know it is ultimately for their own good, like Annie Sullivan imposing strict disciplinary measures on the deaf and blind Helen Keller to help her crack the code of sign language pressed into her palm to open her world to the gift of communication with others [5]. Masters writes that heart-anger is “pure compassion in action” [6]. Building on the paradoxes expressed in our epistle reading for today from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, we might add that just as “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25), so God’s anger is more compassionate than human compassion.
Given the close connection between anger and sin, however, we should be careful about using the concept of heart-anger to justify and sanctify our all-too-often unholy expressions of anger. We should not fool ourselves into thinking we are expressing heart-anger when what we are actually doing is venting unrefined, destructive anger. Masters says that the goal of the expression of heart-anger is always healing and intimacy [7], and that expressing heart-anger requires a high degree of self-awareness, which is cultivated in an ongoing spiritual practice like meditation or contemplative prayer that allows us to examine our anger and be aware of the root cause and nature of it before we begin to give expression to it [8].
The good news, however, is that it is possible to cultivate anger without sin. So when we feel our tempers flare, we can take a deep breath, think about whether our anger is rooted in selfish or unselfish concerns, and pray that we can direct our anger toward spiritual use, like Jesus in the temple or the prophets calling the people to repentance. We can turn to Jesus and pray that our once-angry human Savior would activate in us the anger redeemed through his incarnation, an anger that is pure compassion in action.
[1] Robert Augustus Masters, “Compassionate Wrath: Transpersonal Approaches to Anger,” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2000 (Vol. 31, No. 1), 34.
[2] Ibid., 39.
[3] Ibid., 42.
[4] Ibid., 43 (quoting Tibetan spiritual master Marpa).
[5] Helen Keller example given in Jim McGuiggan, Celebrating the Wrath of God: Reflections on the Agony and the Ecstacy of His Relentless Love, (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press, 2001), 69.
[6] Masters, 48.
[7] Ibid., 44.
[8] Ibid.
“Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:15, NRSV).
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| "Angry Jesus" by Manuel Guzman |
Why this reluctance to acknowledge that Jesus got angry sometimes? Well, for one thing, we generally do not think of anger as a good thing. The church has historically named anger as one of the seven deadly sins, and if we claim that Jesus lived among us as “one without sin,” then if anger is a sin, surely Jesus could never have ever gotten angry. This story makes us uncomfortable because it’s embarrassing when the Son of God suddenly starts acting like a two-year-old having a temper tantrum, so our strategy for dealing with it has generally been to either avoid talking about it and try to distract the masses with other, nicer stories about Jesus: “Look over here! Jesus said to love the little children and let them come unto me!” – or to spiritualize the story by saying that Jesus wasn’t really mad when he did this, that it was a purely symbolic action to show that his death would do away with the system of animal sacrifice or that his message was really about our need to cleanse the “temple” of our bodies and purify our thoughts and intentions in worship rather than an instance of him losing his temper.
But to the discerning reader, none of these responses to the story seem to hold much water. It seems pretty clear that this is a story about an angry Jesus, and besides that, we have all those images of an angry God in the Hebrew Bible to deal with as well. Anger is not a concept foreign to God, at least not as the Judeo-Christian tradition has understood God throughout the centuries. So have we simply projected human thoughts and feelings like anger onto God, or is anger actually an attribute of God?
And if anger is an attribute of God, how did it become labeled as a sin for humanity? Is there a way to be angry as a human being and not be sinful? It is interesting that we read this story of Jesus’s anger during the season of Lent, a season when we are encouraged to name and acknowledge our sins and repent of them. If we have been doing that this Lent, anger has probably appeared many times on our list of sins as we reflect on our lives, and we’re probably trying to think of ways to not be angry or to let go of our anger. But perhaps this story about Jesus’s anger offers us another approach to our anger, an approach that seeks not to repress or deny it, but to redeem it, to direct it toward holy purposes.
If we examine scriptural perspectives on anger, the Bible does not say unequivocally that all anger is sinful. Certainly, it gives many warnings about the close connection between anger and sin, especially in the wisdom literature like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Proverbs 29:11 (NIV) says, “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control,” and Ecclesiastes 7:9 (NIV) says, “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” The New Testament epistles warn against the dangers of anger as well: James writes that we should be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (James 1:19-20, NIV), and the author of Colossians instructs the people to “rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips” (Colossians 3:8, NIV). Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that love is “not easily angered” (1 Corinthians 13:5), and Jesus himself warns against anger when he says in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Matthew 5:21). So how do we square this teaching of Jesus with his actions in today’s Gospel passage? All four Gospels record the incident in the temple, so we can’t say that the author of Matthew’s Gospel was unaware of it as he simultaneously recorded Jesus’s words about not being angry in the Sermon on the Mount. So how can both be an accurate representation of Jesus’s teachings and actions, of the message he taught and embodied?
Perhaps the key lies in a distinction implied in a passage from Ephesians where the author is instructing the community on proper Christian behavior. In chapter 4, verses 26-27, he writes, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” The wording of this instruction indicates that although the author sees a close connection between anger and sin, he still believes it is possible to be angry but not sin. And I find it interesting that the 10 Commandments, which we heard in our first reading for today, do NOT include a prohibition against anger per se. Despite the fact that Jesus says in his commentary on the 10 Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister is liable for judgment, there is not a commandment that says, “Thou shalt not be angry.” I believe Jesus’s point in his rhetorical intensifying of the commandments is not to say “thou shalt not be angry,” which really would not be humanly possible or realistic, but to remind us that we should purify our inner thoughts as well as our outward actions. His point is that even if we refrain from killing, if we are seething with hateful thoughts toward our neighbor, we are still doing a kind of violence toward them.
Robert Masters, a psychologist in Vancouver, Canada, has written about the distinctions between different kinds of anger and the debate about whether openly expressing anger is a good or a bad thing psychologically. While secular psychological literature tends to teach that it is better to control anger than to openly express it, he points out that religious literature includes examples of anger that can be used for good, the kind of “anger without sin” that we have been considering. He calls this kind of anger “heart-anger,” which he defines as anger that is rooted not in a selfish sense of wrongs done to me, but in a deep concern for others and what is right for society as a whole. Heart-anger, he writes, is a kind of “wrathful compassion – a potent, often fiery caring” [1]. He specifically uses the example of Jesus cleansing the temple as an illustration of heart-anger, and also puts the anger of the Hebrew prophets in this category, as well as the anger of various Eastern sages at their disciples [2].
This heart-anger, however, is not simply a raging against the injustices of the world. It is not exactly what we mean when we talk about “righteous anger,” which too often seems to be “self-righteous anger” rather than anything truly sacred. People have rightly observed that those who fight injustice out of a sense of deep anger often wind up in a miserable state of mind, constantly angry people who seem to have no peace and whose life is centered around the very thing they are fighting against. Thus, an anti-war protester’s life is all about war, and their techniques, however different, often mirror the very behaviors they say they want to eliminate in others. Heart-anger, as Masters describes it, is a highly advanced mental and emotional state that requires much intentional spiritual discipline to cultivate. Those who express heart-anger have the ability to completely and fully control their anger, but they make the conscious choice to express it openly and fully because “sometimes what is needed in order to awaken others is a shock” [3]. Heart-anger is a spiritual anger, and spiritual anger always has the objective of stimulating repentance and thus contributing to the spiritual growth of the person [4]. It is not unlike what we might call “tough love,” doing something we know will appear hurtful to another person because we know it is ultimately for their own good, like Annie Sullivan imposing strict disciplinary measures on the deaf and blind Helen Keller to help her crack the code of sign language pressed into her palm to open her world to the gift of communication with others [5]. Masters writes that heart-anger is “pure compassion in action” [6]. Building on the paradoxes expressed in our epistle reading for today from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, we might add that just as “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25), so God’s anger is more compassionate than human compassion.
Given the close connection between anger and sin, however, we should be careful about using the concept of heart-anger to justify and sanctify our all-too-often unholy expressions of anger. We should not fool ourselves into thinking we are expressing heart-anger when what we are actually doing is venting unrefined, destructive anger. Masters says that the goal of the expression of heart-anger is always healing and intimacy [7], and that expressing heart-anger requires a high degree of self-awareness, which is cultivated in an ongoing spiritual practice like meditation or contemplative prayer that allows us to examine our anger and be aware of the root cause and nature of it before we begin to give expression to it [8].
The good news, however, is that it is possible to cultivate anger without sin. So when we feel our tempers flare, we can take a deep breath, think about whether our anger is rooted in selfish or unselfish concerns, and pray that we can direct our anger toward spiritual use, like Jesus in the temple or the prophets calling the people to repentance. We can turn to Jesus and pray that our once-angry human Savior would activate in us the anger redeemed through his incarnation, an anger that is pure compassion in action.
[1] Robert Augustus Masters, “Compassionate Wrath: Transpersonal Approaches to Anger,” The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2000 (Vol. 31, No. 1), 34.
[2] Ibid., 39.
[3] Ibid., 42.
[4] Ibid., 43 (quoting Tibetan spiritual master Marpa).
[5] Helen Keller example given in Jim McGuiggan, Celebrating the Wrath of God: Reflections on the Agony and the Ecstacy of His Relentless Love, (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook Press, 2001), 69.
[6] Masters, 48.
[7] Ibid., 44.
[8] Ibid.
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Placing love of neighbor above personal freedom
Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015 (4th Sunday After the Epiphany, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
In our second reading today, the apostle Paul is advising the church at Corinth about whether or not Christians should eat food sacrificed at the temples of other gods.
This was an issue of some controversy to the church in Corinth, a Greek city composed mostly of Gentiles who worshipped the traditional Greek deities like Zeus and Hera. When Gentiles became Christians, they were taught to stop worshipping those Greek deities and to worship only the Jewish God, who Christians believed had become incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ. One of the ways they had worshipped at the Greek temples was to eat the meat that had been sacrificed to those gods, so many of the new converts were abstaining from that meat after they became Christian.
But some Christians insisted that it was ok to continue to eat the meat that had been sacrificed in the Greek temples because the Greek gods did not exist anyway, so eating meat that had been sacrificed to them was harmless. It was probably an inconvenient hassle in that society to avoid meat sacrificed at the Greek temples, since much of the meat sold in the public market would have come from that source. Rather than having to go to great lengths to avoid it, some members of the church reasoned that it was not actually a problem to eat it after all.
Paul writes to address this conflict and to advise the community on how to stay in relationship with one another despite their disagreements. Although Paul agrees in principle with those who insist that it is harmless to eat the meat from the Greek temples, he calls them to abstain from doing so if it causes harm to their fellow Christians’ faith. He encourages them to be willing to inconvenience themselves by voluntarily giving up a behavior that is harmless to them for the sake of their neighbors, to give love of neighbor a higher priority than the exercise of personal freedom.
Earlier in this first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, there is a summary of this point in chapter 6, verse 12: “All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Although we may have the freedom in Christ to know that we will be forgiven of our sins no matter what we do, the command for us to love our neighbor as ourselves demands that we consider how our actions will affect other people, and limit our freedom accordingly.
This tension between personal freedom and responsibility to the common good comes up in secular terms in our discussions of the right to free speech. In general, though we pride ourselves on “freedom of speech” in this country, the courts have generally upheld the idea that that does NOT give one the right to yell “FIRE” in a crowded theater if there is not in fact a fire. It may be technically permissible to do so, but it is not beneficial to the common good and safety of those gathered to create a situation where people would panic and perhaps hurt one another in their haste to leave the theater. Thus, even though it is permissible for Christians to eat the meat sacrificed to the Greek gods, it may not be beneficial to the greater community of the church for them to do so.
Paul refers to those who are likely to be led astray by seeing other Christians eat meat in the Greek temples as “weaker” Christians, and although this term carries with it a judgment call about who is “right” and “wrong” in this argument, his point is that in order to most fully reflect God’s love, we must always consider the weakest or most vulnerable members among us and how our actions will affect them. There is a well-known saying that the greatness of a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members, and that is certainly true about the body of Christ. Paul encourages us to always be aware of the lowest common denominator, of the most inclusive course of action possible to keep the most people together at the table.
This call to inclusivity and awareness of our most vulnerable members may mean that we are asked to voluntarily give up something we enjoy doing or to change our behavior in a way that perhaps we would prefer not to do, out of consideration for others. B.W. Johnson, a late 19th century Church of Christ pastor and professor, said this in his commentary on this passage from 1 Corinthians:
“The Christian principle, the rule of love, is, ‘If eating meat, or going to the theatre, or going to a ball, or attending the fair, or drinking wine or beer, causeth my brother to offend, I will not do these things while the world standeth.”
Now, we may think that sounds like an extreme statement, and in general, we in the Episcopal Church tend to pride ourselves on the fact that we allow and even celebrate many things that other Christian communities frown upon – whether that be going to a ball, or attending the fair, or drinking wine or beer. But sometimes, the emphasis we place on the freedom we have in our actions in this church can take such a priority that we can forget to consider the effects of our actions on others. We can sometimes act in accordance with the secular principle of celebrating our right to do whatever we want rather than in accordance with the Christian principle of placing love of neighbor and our responsibility to the community above our own wants and desires.
To put a little flesh on this concept with a specific example, I would suggest that one of the areas where this plays out in the Episcopal Church is in our attitude toward the use of alcohol. Now, I know this can be a touchy subject, but I assure you that it is probably a fairly good parallel to how touchy the subject of eating food from the Greek temples would have been to our brothers and sisters in the first century A.D., so let’s think about it carefully for a little bit.
Many of us appreciate the fact that the Episcopal Church is not as “uptight” as some other denominations in its approach to alcohol. In fact, that accepting view of alcohol use is even part of the reason some of us chose this church as adults. We appreciate the fact that this is a place where having a glass of wine is not looked upon as a sin. We know that even in those denominations where drinking is forbidden, members often do so in secret and feel shamed about it, so we reason that if people are going to drink, at least in our church it can be done in the open and without shame, and thus hopefully in a more moderate and healthy manner. But in certain contexts in the Episcopal Church, from church functions to seminary parties, I have seen drinking taken to excess, and this kind of behavior laughed about and even encouraged. We all know the jokes about alcohol and the Episcopal Church – whether it’s the reference to us as “Whisky-palians” or the joke that “wherever there are four Episcopalians, there’s a fifth.” I’ve laughed at these jokes as much as the next person, but when I take a step back and really think about it, I find this levity toward excessive drinking to be somewhat disturbing in light of the issue Paul raises in today’s passage from 1 Corinthians. Are we causing our brothers and sisters to stumble by our attitudes in this area? How are we caring for our most vulnerable members, those in our midst who struggle with addiction to alcohol?
Certainly people with addictions are ultimately responsible for making their own choices to abstain, but remember what Paul said to the church at Corinth. “If food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.” I doubt Paul became a vegetarian for the rest of his life as a result of this issue, but even so, his rhetorical point should give us pause. If alcohol is a cause of our brother or sister’s falling, should we not consider more carefully how we approach it within our Christian community together? Heaven forbid that the church should be the place where someone is led to a relapse of their addiction, but it could happen.
People who don’t currently have problems with alcohol may resent this call to restraint or consideration, protesting that it is unnecessary for them, but if we are to take the Scripture seriously, this passage encourages us to be willing to limit our freedoms based on love of neighbor, to be willing to alter our behavior in ways that may be unnecessary for us in order to more fully include and welcome our brothers and sisters in Christ.
I’m not suggesting that we all give up drinking, necessarily, but that we be more intentional and aware of the effects drinking can have on others, and of the way we talk about and present our drinking in the church. And it’s not my intention to unfairly pick on alcohol – there are certainly many other topics we could consider from this perspective. Interfaith dialogue is one of them. For some Christians, seeing Christian leaders participate in prayer and worship with people of other faiths can be a stumbling block to their faith, and this is certainly an area where one could call me to be more considerate and careful toward others as I engage in interfaith work in the church. So this sermon is not intended to be a moralistic condemnation of all alcohol consumption, but simply a call for us to be more thoughtful and considerate of the effects of our actions on others in all areas of our lives.
During this season of Epiphany, we are called to consider the ways in which Christ was made known in his day – the historical events and miracles that revealed his identity as the Son of God – and also to consider the ways Christ is made known today through our lives and witness. At the end of the service, we pray in the Epiphany blessing that Christ the Son of God may be manifest in you, that your lives may be a light to the world. During the rest of this season, take time to examine some of your actions and choices in light of how they affect those around you. Ask yourself, “What does this action manifest in my life? Does it make Christ more fully known to those around me?” Even if the behavior is something you think is harmless, consider whether it might make your neighbor stumble in their faith, and if that is a possibility, think twice before you do it.
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
In our second reading today, the apostle Paul is advising the church at Corinth about whether or not Christians should eat food sacrificed at the temples of other gods.
This was an issue of some controversy to the church in Corinth, a Greek city composed mostly of Gentiles who worshipped the traditional Greek deities like Zeus and Hera. When Gentiles became Christians, they were taught to stop worshipping those Greek deities and to worship only the Jewish God, who Christians believed had become incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ. One of the ways they had worshipped at the Greek temples was to eat the meat that had been sacrificed to those gods, so many of the new converts were abstaining from that meat after they became Christian.
But some Christians insisted that it was ok to continue to eat the meat that had been sacrificed in the Greek temples because the Greek gods did not exist anyway, so eating meat that had been sacrificed to them was harmless. It was probably an inconvenient hassle in that society to avoid meat sacrificed at the Greek temples, since much of the meat sold in the public market would have come from that source. Rather than having to go to great lengths to avoid it, some members of the church reasoned that it was not actually a problem to eat it after all.
Paul writes to address this conflict and to advise the community on how to stay in relationship with one another despite their disagreements. Although Paul agrees in principle with those who insist that it is harmless to eat the meat from the Greek temples, he calls them to abstain from doing so if it causes harm to their fellow Christians’ faith. He encourages them to be willing to inconvenience themselves by voluntarily giving up a behavior that is harmless to them for the sake of their neighbors, to give love of neighbor a higher priority than the exercise of personal freedom.
Earlier in this first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, there is a summary of this point in chapter 6, verse 12: “All things are permissible, but not all things are beneficial” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Although we may have the freedom in Christ to know that we will be forgiven of our sins no matter what we do, the command for us to love our neighbor as ourselves demands that we consider how our actions will affect other people, and limit our freedom accordingly.
This tension between personal freedom and responsibility to the common good comes up in secular terms in our discussions of the right to free speech. In general, though we pride ourselves on “freedom of speech” in this country, the courts have generally upheld the idea that that does NOT give one the right to yell “FIRE” in a crowded theater if there is not in fact a fire. It may be technically permissible to do so, but it is not beneficial to the common good and safety of those gathered to create a situation where people would panic and perhaps hurt one another in their haste to leave the theater. Thus, even though it is permissible for Christians to eat the meat sacrificed to the Greek gods, it may not be beneficial to the greater community of the church for them to do so.
Paul refers to those who are likely to be led astray by seeing other Christians eat meat in the Greek temples as “weaker” Christians, and although this term carries with it a judgment call about who is “right” and “wrong” in this argument, his point is that in order to most fully reflect God’s love, we must always consider the weakest or most vulnerable members among us and how our actions will affect them. There is a well-known saying that the greatness of a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable members, and that is certainly true about the body of Christ. Paul encourages us to always be aware of the lowest common denominator, of the most inclusive course of action possible to keep the most people together at the table.
This call to inclusivity and awareness of our most vulnerable members may mean that we are asked to voluntarily give up something we enjoy doing or to change our behavior in a way that perhaps we would prefer not to do, out of consideration for others. B.W. Johnson, a late 19th century Church of Christ pastor and professor, said this in his commentary on this passage from 1 Corinthians:
“The Christian principle, the rule of love, is, ‘If eating meat, or going to the theatre, or going to a ball, or attending the fair, or drinking wine or beer, causeth my brother to offend, I will not do these things while the world standeth.”
Now, we may think that sounds like an extreme statement, and in general, we in the Episcopal Church tend to pride ourselves on the fact that we allow and even celebrate many things that other Christian communities frown upon – whether that be going to a ball, or attending the fair, or drinking wine or beer. But sometimes, the emphasis we place on the freedom we have in our actions in this church can take such a priority that we can forget to consider the effects of our actions on others. We can sometimes act in accordance with the secular principle of celebrating our right to do whatever we want rather than in accordance with the Christian principle of placing love of neighbor and our responsibility to the community above our own wants and desires.
To put a little flesh on this concept with a specific example, I would suggest that one of the areas where this plays out in the Episcopal Church is in our attitude toward the use of alcohol. Now, I know this can be a touchy subject, but I assure you that it is probably a fairly good parallel to how touchy the subject of eating food from the Greek temples would have been to our brothers and sisters in the first century A.D., so let’s think about it carefully for a little bit.
Many of us appreciate the fact that the Episcopal Church is not as “uptight” as some other denominations in its approach to alcohol. In fact, that accepting view of alcohol use is even part of the reason some of us chose this church as adults. We appreciate the fact that this is a place where having a glass of wine is not looked upon as a sin. We know that even in those denominations where drinking is forbidden, members often do so in secret and feel shamed about it, so we reason that if people are going to drink, at least in our church it can be done in the open and without shame, and thus hopefully in a more moderate and healthy manner. But in certain contexts in the Episcopal Church, from church functions to seminary parties, I have seen drinking taken to excess, and this kind of behavior laughed about and even encouraged. We all know the jokes about alcohol and the Episcopal Church – whether it’s the reference to us as “Whisky-palians” or the joke that “wherever there are four Episcopalians, there’s a fifth.” I’ve laughed at these jokes as much as the next person, but when I take a step back and really think about it, I find this levity toward excessive drinking to be somewhat disturbing in light of the issue Paul raises in today’s passage from 1 Corinthians. Are we causing our brothers and sisters to stumble by our attitudes in this area? How are we caring for our most vulnerable members, those in our midst who struggle with addiction to alcohol?
Certainly people with addictions are ultimately responsible for making their own choices to abstain, but remember what Paul said to the church at Corinth. “If food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.” I doubt Paul became a vegetarian for the rest of his life as a result of this issue, but even so, his rhetorical point should give us pause. If alcohol is a cause of our brother or sister’s falling, should we not consider more carefully how we approach it within our Christian community together? Heaven forbid that the church should be the place where someone is led to a relapse of their addiction, but it could happen.
People who don’t currently have problems with alcohol may resent this call to restraint or consideration, protesting that it is unnecessary for them, but if we are to take the Scripture seriously, this passage encourages us to be willing to limit our freedoms based on love of neighbor, to be willing to alter our behavior in ways that may be unnecessary for us in order to more fully include and welcome our brothers and sisters in Christ.
I’m not suggesting that we all give up drinking, necessarily, but that we be more intentional and aware of the effects drinking can have on others, and of the way we talk about and present our drinking in the church. And it’s not my intention to unfairly pick on alcohol – there are certainly many other topics we could consider from this perspective. Interfaith dialogue is one of them. For some Christians, seeing Christian leaders participate in prayer and worship with people of other faiths can be a stumbling block to their faith, and this is certainly an area where one could call me to be more considerate and careful toward others as I engage in interfaith work in the church. So this sermon is not intended to be a moralistic condemnation of all alcohol consumption, but simply a call for us to be more thoughtful and considerate of the effects of our actions on others in all areas of our lives.
During this season of Epiphany, we are called to consider the ways in which Christ was made known in his day – the historical events and miracles that revealed his identity as the Son of God – and also to consider the ways Christ is made known today through our lives and witness. At the end of the service, we pray in the Epiphany blessing that Christ the Son of God may be manifest in you, that your lives may be a light to the world. During the rest of this season, take time to examine some of your actions and choices in light of how they affect those around you. Ask yourself, “What does this action manifest in my life? Does it make Christ more fully known to those around me?” Even if the behavior is something you think is harmless, consider whether it might make your neighbor stumble in their faith, and if that is a possibility, think twice before you do it.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Longing for the Second Coming
Sermon delivered Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014 (1 Advent, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37).
Our Gospel passage from Mark today is one of those “end times” passages, talking about the sun and moon being darkened, and stars falling from heaven, and “the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and although our culture is jumping quickly from Thanksgiving into the Christmas season, we’re not there yet in the church calendar.
Although we have a tendency to think of the season of Advent as just a prelude to Christmas, Advent actually has an additional theme, a theme about end times. In fact, the last few Sundays after Pentecost and the first few Sundays of Advent are the only place in our lectionary where we specifically focus on the “end times,” the final judgment of the world, but so often it gets glossed over in the rush to Christmas. So today, let’s take a moment to reflect on that “end times” theme.
The reason we think about the end times during Advent is because Advent is not just about the first coming of Christ in his birth in a manger in Bethlehem, but about his Second Coming to judge the world at the end of time. The word “Advent” means “coming,” and if Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem was his first Advent, his return to judge the world at will be his second Advent. As we anticipate our celebration of that first Advent during this season, we also watch and wait for the Second Advent.
In a sense, this anticipation of Christ’s Second Coming reflects the core of the Christian experience as we currently know it. Every week in the Creed and the Eucharistic prayer, we assert that we are waiting for Christ’s coming again – not just during Advent, but throughout the church year. Every day of our lives as Christians, we live in an “in between” time – after Christ’s first coming in Bethlehem, but before his return at the end of time. Some theologians speak about this in between time with the phrase “already but not yet.”
As Christians, we believe that Christ has already redeemed the world and delivered us from the power of sin and death, but we do not yet see that redemption clearly in the world around us. We can see the transformative power of Christ at work in the lives of individual believers, but we still feel the effects of sin in our lives, and the world continues to worship many things other than God, including money, power, and human achievements. To the skeptic, Jesus’s life and death seems not to have changed much in the world. If Jesus has redeemed the world, why is it still so broken?
The Christian answer to that question lies in the “already but not yet.” The world is still broken because we live an in between time. We do not yet know the fulfillment of Christ’s redemptive work for all creation, which will be completed when he comes again.
What will that look like when it happens? In our current state, we can only imagine. Jesus gave us some clues in the parables he told while he was here on earth: we know that the kingdom to come will have something to do with turning the current state of affairs upside down – with exalting the humble and humbling the exalted, with making the last to be first and the first to be last. We know that Christ the King whom we await to be our judge is a king who rules in an unconventional manner – by becoming completely vulnerable in the form of a child. And despite the passages about throwing certain people into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, we also know that the Christ who will come to be our judge is the same Christ who taught us to forgive not seven, but seventy-seven times, and who practiced the ultimate act of forgiveness on the cross when he prayed for his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So often, when we think about the “end times” or the Second Coming, we tend to think of Hollywood movie images of the end of the world: death, destruction, asteroids, chaos. And somehow in this midst of this scary picture, the Jesus who taught us the way of love and forgiveness morphs into a harsh, cruel judge, someone of whom we need to be afraid. Despite all the scriptural predictions of stars falling and wars and famines and the like, we should remember that the Christ who will return is the same Christ we have known from the Scriptures and from our own relationships with him, someone who is a comforter and lover of our souls. When he comes again, Jesus will come not to bring death and destruction, but to save us from it.
The anthem that the choir will sing at the 11:00 service today is a beautiful illustration of the Second Coming as something to be longed for, not feared, of a Christ who comes to comfort us, not to destroy us. (Since you won’t get to hear it today, I highly recommend that you look up a version of it on the internet and listen to it when you get home. The piece is called “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come,” and is written by the composer Paul Manz.) The piece has a haunting and plaintive quality to it, and expresses a depth of longing difficult to put into the spoken word. It is based on a text from the book of Revelation that speaks about the Second Coming, in a vision that tells us that when Christ comes again, “there will be no more night,” and those gathered at the throne of God “will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light” (Revelation 22:7).
What makes this piece even more powerful and poignant is the fact that the composer wrote it when his three-year-old son was deathly ill and he and his wife feared they would lose him. In the midst of that great anguish, Paul Manz composed this brilliant, beautiful piece expressing praise and glory to God, and expressing a deep longing for Christ to come again. We know that Christ will return someday, but the piece pleads, “e’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come” – please, God, come quickly, come quickly to deliver us from the pain and sorrow and despair of this world. You can imagine the composer sitting at his son’s bedside and pleading for Christ to come to him and to his son, to come and bring his redeeming work to fulfillment, to grant us a world where “death will be no more, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4).
As this particular story goes, the composer’s son survived his illness, despite the fact that doctors had given up on him. But we all know of similar stories that do not have a happy ending, and for all of them, and for all of us in our brokenness this Advent, we plead for Jesus to “quickly come,” to come not to bring destruction, but to deliver us from it. From that perspective, the Second Coming becomes not some abstract matter of doctrine, but a very real longing and desire for this life. Please, God, deliver us. Come to us. Help us.
This Advent, amidst all the busy preparations for Christmas, I invite you to take time to reflect on that Second Coming, to imagine a world where all the promises of the Christmas carols would finally be fulfilled, a world where the Prince of Peace would truly reign. As we live in that in between time of the “already but not yet,” we long all the more expectantly for that fulfillment of the promise. And even in our moments of sorrow this season, no matter what our personal grief or struggles, we can reflect on the hope of the Second Coming and pray with the words of our anthem today,
E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come
And night shall be no more
They need no light nor lamp nor sun
For Christ will be their All!
Our Gospel passage from Mark today is one of those “end times” passages, talking about the sun and moon being darkened, and stars falling from heaven, and “the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
It’s the first Sunday of Advent, and although our culture is jumping quickly from Thanksgiving into the Christmas season, we’re not there yet in the church calendar.
Although we have a tendency to think of the season of Advent as just a prelude to Christmas, Advent actually has an additional theme, a theme about end times. In fact, the last few Sundays after Pentecost and the first few Sundays of Advent are the only place in our lectionary where we specifically focus on the “end times,” the final judgment of the world, but so often it gets glossed over in the rush to Christmas. So today, let’s take a moment to reflect on that “end times” theme.
The reason we think about the end times during Advent is because Advent is not just about the first coming of Christ in his birth in a manger in Bethlehem, but about his Second Coming to judge the world at the end of time. The word “Advent” means “coming,” and if Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem was his first Advent, his return to judge the world at will be his second Advent. As we anticipate our celebration of that first Advent during this season, we also watch and wait for the Second Advent.
In a sense, this anticipation of Christ’s Second Coming reflects the core of the Christian experience as we currently know it. Every week in the Creed and the Eucharistic prayer, we assert that we are waiting for Christ’s coming again – not just during Advent, but throughout the church year. Every day of our lives as Christians, we live in an “in between” time – after Christ’s first coming in Bethlehem, but before his return at the end of time. Some theologians speak about this in between time with the phrase “already but not yet.”
As Christians, we believe that Christ has already redeemed the world and delivered us from the power of sin and death, but we do not yet see that redemption clearly in the world around us. We can see the transformative power of Christ at work in the lives of individual believers, but we still feel the effects of sin in our lives, and the world continues to worship many things other than God, including money, power, and human achievements. To the skeptic, Jesus’s life and death seems not to have changed much in the world. If Jesus has redeemed the world, why is it still so broken?
The Christian answer to that question lies in the “already but not yet.” The world is still broken because we live an in between time. We do not yet know the fulfillment of Christ’s redemptive work for all creation, which will be completed when he comes again.
What will that look like when it happens? In our current state, we can only imagine. Jesus gave us some clues in the parables he told while he was here on earth: we know that the kingdom to come will have something to do with turning the current state of affairs upside down – with exalting the humble and humbling the exalted, with making the last to be first and the first to be last. We know that Christ the King whom we await to be our judge is a king who rules in an unconventional manner – by becoming completely vulnerable in the form of a child. And despite the passages about throwing certain people into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, we also know that the Christ who will come to be our judge is the same Christ who taught us to forgive not seven, but seventy-seven times, and who practiced the ultimate act of forgiveness on the cross when he prayed for his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
So often, when we think about the “end times” or the Second Coming, we tend to think of Hollywood movie images of the end of the world: death, destruction, asteroids, chaos. And somehow in this midst of this scary picture, the Jesus who taught us the way of love and forgiveness morphs into a harsh, cruel judge, someone of whom we need to be afraid. Despite all the scriptural predictions of stars falling and wars and famines and the like, we should remember that the Christ who will return is the same Christ we have known from the Scriptures and from our own relationships with him, someone who is a comforter and lover of our souls. When he comes again, Jesus will come not to bring death and destruction, but to save us from it.
The anthem that the choir will sing at the 11:00 service today is a beautiful illustration of the Second Coming as something to be longed for, not feared, of a Christ who comes to comfort us, not to destroy us. (Since you won’t get to hear it today, I highly recommend that you look up a version of it on the internet and listen to it when you get home. The piece is called “E’en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come,” and is written by the composer Paul Manz.) The piece has a haunting and plaintive quality to it, and expresses a depth of longing difficult to put into the spoken word. It is based on a text from the book of Revelation that speaks about the Second Coming, in a vision that tells us that when Christ comes again, “there will be no more night,” and those gathered at the throne of God “will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light” (Revelation 22:7).
What makes this piece even more powerful and poignant is the fact that the composer wrote it when his three-year-old son was deathly ill and he and his wife feared they would lose him. In the midst of that great anguish, Paul Manz composed this brilliant, beautiful piece expressing praise and glory to God, and expressing a deep longing for Christ to come again. We know that Christ will return someday, but the piece pleads, “e’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come” – please, God, come quickly, come quickly to deliver us from the pain and sorrow and despair of this world. You can imagine the composer sitting at his son’s bedside and pleading for Christ to come to him and to his son, to come and bring his redeeming work to fulfillment, to grant us a world where “death will be no more, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4).
As this particular story goes, the composer’s son survived his illness, despite the fact that doctors had given up on him. But we all know of similar stories that do not have a happy ending, and for all of them, and for all of us in our brokenness this Advent, we plead for Jesus to “quickly come,” to come not to bring destruction, but to deliver us from it. From that perspective, the Second Coming becomes not some abstract matter of doctrine, but a very real longing and desire for this life. Please, God, deliver us. Come to us. Help us.
This Advent, amidst all the busy preparations for Christmas, I invite you to take time to reflect on that Second Coming, to imagine a world where all the promises of the Christmas carols would finally be fulfilled, a world where the Prince of Peace would truly reign. As we live in that in between time of the “already but not yet,” we long all the more expectantly for that fulfillment of the promise. And even in our moments of sorrow this season, no matter what our personal grief or struggles, we can reflect on the hope of the Second Coming and pray with the words of our anthem today,
E’en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come
And night shall be no more
They need no light nor lamp nor sun
For Christ will be their All!
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Complaining: a sign of lack of trust in God
Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 (15th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 20), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
(Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16)
There’s a lot of complaining going on in today’s readings. The Israelites complain to Moses, saying that it would have been better to have stayed in slavery in Egypt than to come out into the desert to die of hunger. The workers in the parable complain against the landowner for paying the same wage to those who have worked all day as to those who have worked only an hour. In both cases the people complain because they feel that something that has happened is not right, that things are not as they should be.
It’s easy to relate to that sentiment, isn’t it? For many of us, complaining is not exactly a foreign concept. There is plenty in the world to complain about, plenty of things that don’t seem to be as they should be, whether big or small. As a child, one of the first phrases we learn to protest the way things are is the age-old complaint, “That’s not FAIR!” Whether it’s the fact that our sister or brother got to do something we weren’t allowed to do, or the fact that our piece of cake wasn’t quite as big as everyone else’s, our innate sense of justice cries out in protest, “That’s not FAIR!”
And in some ways, that’s what we keep saying throughout our lives. Although the complaints may be over larger and more complex issues, ultimately what we continue to express is that same visceral pushback that we feel when something just isn’t right. Whether it’s the fact that some people in the world grow up with far more access to education, clean water, and healthcare than others, or the fact that some of us, not just in parables but in real life, are paid less than our colleagues for the same or more work, all our work for social justice in the world is in some sense an expression of that earliest protest: “That’s not FAIR!”
You can hear it in both of these stories from today’s readings, that age-old protest and complaint. It’s not FAIR that we’re now hungry in the desert while the Egyptians are still eating their fill around the fleshpots. It’s not FAIR that those who were hired last and worked only one hour were paid the same as those who were hired first and worked all day. That’s not right. It’s not FAIR!
But in both cases, the message of the passage is that things actually are as they should be, even if people do not realize it, because God is in control. We are asked to trust that God will provide and that God is just, even when all the evidence around us seems to suggest the contrary.
The Israelites are asked to trust that God will provide food, even when they see no way that they will be able to find food in the desert. God does indeed provide food, in the form of manna, the “bread from heaven” that falls upon the camp each night. God specifically instructs them only to collect what they can eat for one day – asking them to go against every instinct for self-preservation and not to store up extra for the future, but trust that God will provide them each day with their “daily bread,” with enough to sustain them until the next day. This part of the story is not in our passage for today, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that the Israelites don’t do very well following the instructions. They do attempt to collect more than they can eat so they can guarantee that they will have enough for the next day – but all the extra they gather spoils and rots overnight. The experience of receiving the manna was designed to teach them that they were utterly dependent on God for their sustenance, that they could not guarantee their survival by “taking matters into their own hands,” but only by leaving them in God’s.
That’s a hard enough lesson to learn, but we have yet another lesson about trust in the Gospel reading. The workers are asked to trust God’s wisdom and judgment in paying those hired last the same as those hired first. But it’s important to remember that this parable is not really about workers in a field and the wages they are paid. Jesus says this story is a metaphor for the “kingdom of heaven” – so this is not a story about fairness in wages on earth, but about fairness in God’s judgment about who will be rewarded in heaven. According to this parable, all who have worked in God’s vineyard will receive the same reward, no matter what amount of “good work” we have done in this life. Despite our initial protests at this story being “not fair,” this parable is actually the ultimate expression of fairness, in that everyone receives exactly the same thing.
This is a common theme in Jesus’s parables about what the kingdom of heaven will be like – there will be an equality among all people that we do not see in our earthly interactions with one another. In order to achieve that equality, in many cases there will need to be a reversal of the earthly circumstances, so that “the last will be first and the first will be last” – to level the playing field, so to speak. The very fact that this upsets us, that we are worried about being cheated out of what is “owed” to us shows that we haven’t yet understood the meaning of God’s grace. None of us is “owed” anything; it is all purely a gift of grace. And God doesn’t play favorites in heaven. Jesus did not say, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms – but some of you will get bigger and better rooms than the others!” No, he simply said that there are many rooms, and he goes to prepare a place for us – for each one of us – no preferential treatment for anyone. It is said that death is the great equalizer, and according to Jesus, so is the kingdom of heaven.
In both these stories, the people’s complaining is evidence of their inability to trust God’s sovereignty, to trust that maybe, just maybe, God knows how to run the world better than they do. As Moses tells the people, “Your complaining is not against us, but against the Lord.”
All too often we fall into the mistaken view that we can and should run the world ourselves – that we know what is best for us and for those around us. But the scriptures are constantly reminding us that we are actually not great judges of what is best for us, and we’re not the best at running the world, either. We’re too focused on measuring and assessing who is “deserving” of a reward or punishment, too focused on our own sense of entitlement and pride to be able to see what Jesus is trying to show us about God’s mercy and grace. In Jesus’s parables, it is often those we think are the least likely to make it into the kingdom who are there – showing us what poor judges we can be about who’s in and who’s out. There is a saying that “you know you have made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.” Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of heaven challenge our assumptions and push us to acknowledge that God’s mercy is often wider than we’d like. “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the landowner asks the workers in the parable, and we must constantly ask ourselves that question as we consider God’s generosity toward others.
Of course, we can hope that once we actually make it to the kingdom of heaven, we won’t be concerned about earthly things like who “deserves” to be there and who really “earned” it and who didn’t, but instead will be overcome with love in the presence of God. Hopefully, the kingdom of heaven will take us to an entirely different plane of existence, where those things that once mattered to us in the earthly realm will fall away.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with fairness and justice here on this earth. But given what a large and seemingly insurmountable task it is to pursue those goals in this broken world, it is important to remember where our hope lies – not in the promises of justice or fairness in this world, but in the promise of God’s grace and love for us, both in this world and in the next.
Our collect for today reminds us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly,” and to “hold fast to those things that shall endure.” If we can let go of “earthly things” like our constant measuring and comparing ourselves to each other, if we can let go of the earthly concern with “getting what we deserve,” or even helping others get what they deserve, we can open ourselves to see the things that will endure: like the eternal love of God that is equally available to each one of us. When we place our focus there, the anxiety about earthly things begins to fade away and we are more at peace – more able to trust God’s guidance, and less likely to complain.
(Exodus 16:2-15, Matthew 20:1-16)
There’s a lot of complaining going on in today’s readings. The Israelites complain to Moses, saying that it would have been better to have stayed in slavery in Egypt than to come out into the desert to die of hunger. The workers in the parable complain against the landowner for paying the same wage to those who have worked all day as to those who have worked only an hour. In both cases the people complain because they feel that something that has happened is not right, that things are not as they should be.
It’s easy to relate to that sentiment, isn’t it? For many of us, complaining is not exactly a foreign concept. There is plenty in the world to complain about, plenty of things that don’t seem to be as they should be, whether big or small. As a child, one of the first phrases we learn to protest the way things are is the age-old complaint, “That’s not FAIR!” Whether it’s the fact that our sister or brother got to do something we weren’t allowed to do, or the fact that our piece of cake wasn’t quite as big as everyone else’s, our innate sense of justice cries out in protest, “That’s not FAIR!”
And in some ways, that’s what we keep saying throughout our lives. Although the complaints may be over larger and more complex issues, ultimately what we continue to express is that same visceral pushback that we feel when something just isn’t right. Whether it’s the fact that some people in the world grow up with far more access to education, clean water, and healthcare than others, or the fact that some of us, not just in parables but in real life, are paid less than our colleagues for the same or more work, all our work for social justice in the world is in some sense an expression of that earliest protest: “That’s not FAIR!”
You can hear it in both of these stories from today’s readings, that age-old protest and complaint. It’s not FAIR that we’re now hungry in the desert while the Egyptians are still eating their fill around the fleshpots. It’s not FAIR that those who were hired last and worked only one hour were paid the same as those who were hired first and worked all day. That’s not right. It’s not FAIR!
But in both cases, the message of the passage is that things actually are as they should be, even if people do not realize it, because God is in control. We are asked to trust that God will provide and that God is just, even when all the evidence around us seems to suggest the contrary.
The Israelites are asked to trust that God will provide food, even when they see no way that they will be able to find food in the desert. God does indeed provide food, in the form of manna, the “bread from heaven” that falls upon the camp each night. God specifically instructs them only to collect what they can eat for one day – asking them to go against every instinct for self-preservation and not to store up extra for the future, but trust that God will provide them each day with their “daily bread,” with enough to sustain them until the next day. This part of the story is not in our passage for today, but I’m sure it’s no surprise that the Israelites don’t do very well following the instructions. They do attempt to collect more than they can eat so they can guarantee that they will have enough for the next day – but all the extra they gather spoils and rots overnight. The experience of receiving the manna was designed to teach them that they were utterly dependent on God for their sustenance, that they could not guarantee their survival by “taking matters into their own hands,” but only by leaving them in God’s.
That’s a hard enough lesson to learn, but we have yet another lesson about trust in the Gospel reading. The workers are asked to trust God’s wisdom and judgment in paying those hired last the same as those hired first. But it’s important to remember that this parable is not really about workers in a field and the wages they are paid. Jesus says this story is a metaphor for the “kingdom of heaven” – so this is not a story about fairness in wages on earth, but about fairness in God’s judgment about who will be rewarded in heaven. According to this parable, all who have worked in God’s vineyard will receive the same reward, no matter what amount of “good work” we have done in this life. Despite our initial protests at this story being “not fair,” this parable is actually the ultimate expression of fairness, in that everyone receives exactly the same thing.
This is a common theme in Jesus’s parables about what the kingdom of heaven will be like – there will be an equality among all people that we do not see in our earthly interactions with one another. In order to achieve that equality, in many cases there will need to be a reversal of the earthly circumstances, so that “the last will be first and the first will be last” – to level the playing field, so to speak. The very fact that this upsets us, that we are worried about being cheated out of what is “owed” to us shows that we haven’t yet understood the meaning of God’s grace. None of us is “owed” anything; it is all purely a gift of grace. And God doesn’t play favorites in heaven. Jesus did not say, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms – but some of you will get bigger and better rooms than the others!” No, he simply said that there are many rooms, and he goes to prepare a place for us – for each one of us – no preferential treatment for anyone. It is said that death is the great equalizer, and according to Jesus, so is the kingdom of heaven.
In both these stories, the people’s complaining is evidence of their inability to trust God’s sovereignty, to trust that maybe, just maybe, God knows how to run the world better than they do. As Moses tells the people, “Your complaining is not against us, but against the Lord.”
All too often we fall into the mistaken view that we can and should run the world ourselves – that we know what is best for us and for those around us. But the scriptures are constantly reminding us that we are actually not great judges of what is best for us, and we’re not the best at running the world, either. We’re too focused on measuring and assessing who is “deserving” of a reward or punishment, too focused on our own sense of entitlement and pride to be able to see what Jesus is trying to show us about God’s mercy and grace. In Jesus’s parables, it is often those we think are the least likely to make it into the kingdom who are there – showing us what poor judges we can be about who’s in and who’s out. There is a saying that “you know you have made God in your own image when God hates all the same people you do.” Jesus’s teachings on the kingdom of heaven challenge our assumptions and push us to acknowledge that God’s mercy is often wider than we’d like. “Are you jealous because I am generous?” the landowner asks the workers in the parable, and we must constantly ask ourselves that question as we consider God’s generosity toward others.
Of course, we can hope that once we actually make it to the kingdom of heaven, we won’t be concerned about earthly things like who “deserves” to be there and who really “earned” it and who didn’t, but instead will be overcome with love in the presence of God. Hopefully, the kingdom of heaven will take us to an entirely different plane of existence, where those things that once mattered to us in the earthly realm will fall away.
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with fairness and justice here on this earth. But given what a large and seemingly insurmountable task it is to pursue those goals in this broken world, it is important to remember where our hope lies – not in the promises of justice or fairness in this world, but in the promise of God’s grace and love for us, both in this world and in the next.
Our collect for today reminds us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly,” and to “hold fast to those things that shall endure.” If we can let go of “earthly things” like our constant measuring and comparing ourselves to each other, if we can let go of the earthly concern with “getting what we deserve,” or even helping others get what they deserve, we can open ourselves to see the things that will endure: like the eternal love of God that is equally available to each one of us. When we place our focus there, the anxiety about earthly things begins to fade away and we are more at peace – more able to trust God’s guidance, and less likely to complain.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Conflict in the church: treat them like an outsider?
Sermon delivered Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014 (13th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 18), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Matthew 18:15-20).
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus addresses one of those subjects nobody wants to talk about in church: conflict.
Many of us tend to think there should be no conflict in church, because if we were being “good Christian people” we wouldn’t disagree or argue with one another. But that simply isn’t true. Relationship therapists will tell you that in any relationship with any depth, conflict is bound to arise at some point. The problem in a relationship is not the presence of conflict, but how conflict is handled when it does arise.
Jesus outlines a very reasonable process for addressing conflict in this passage from Matthew chapter 18: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone,” he says. The first step is to approach the person directly and privately, and almost all conflict can be addressed effectively at this level. Where we often get into trouble is when we avoid this step of talking directly to the person we are at odds with and instead start talking about that person to other people in unhelpful ways. If we approach the person directly and privately, in a spirit of respect and compassion, we can often address the issue right there and come to some kind of reconciliation between us.
But, in cases where that reconciliation is not forthcoming after a one-on-one encounter, the next step in the process Jesus outlines is to take along one or two other people with you to speak to that person. The reason he gives for this is so there will be a witness to your conversation, but a third party can also be a helpful mediator, especially if the person is trained to do such work. Often a third party can help broker peace between two people in conflict.
But if that doesn’t work either, the third step Jesus outlines is to take the issue to “the church.” It’s not entirely clear what “the church” means here, but most probably it means the local parish, not the entire denomination at large or the entire Christian community around the world! This step implies an appeal to the authorities – someone with the ability to issue judgment in the case, to make a decision about the matter; this is not an invitation to air your dirty laundry in front of the whole community at coffee hour!
If that step doesn’t work and the person still continues in the offensive behavior, Jesus says to “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” This phrase can be somewhat confusing, since in many places in the Gospels Jesus welcomes tax collectors and Gentiles to his community. But in this context, Jesus is probably using a phrase that would easily be recognized by his first century Jewish audience as meaning “outsider,” one who is not part of the fold. What Jesus probably means here is if the person has refused all attempts at reconciliation as outlined in this process, eventually you must come to a point where you treat that person as an outsider rather than as a brother. Hold them at arm’s length, in other words, because that person has violated a trust between you. This distancing is a way of ensuring that you don’t continue to get hurt, and to ensure that the offender doesn’t continue to hurt other people.
This process has much wisdom in it, but like anything else, it can be abused. As we attempt to follow Jesus’s teachings in this matter, we must be careful not to take this “formula” and make it the standard in all things rather than love. The Apostle Paul reminds us in our reading from Romans today that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” and “love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Romans 13:8, 10). We must be careful that in seeking to address a conflict or confront someone about unethical behavior that we do not wind up doing wrong to that person, that we do not allow ourselves to become prideful judges whose focus is on exclusion and punishment rather than reconciliation and love.
I’m sure many of us know of situations where churches have taken the instructions in Matthew 18 to an extreme – where they have made it a practice to publicly humiliate anyone who is seen as a “sinner” in their midst, who are so concerned with purifying their ranks that they seem to forget that God also calls us to be merciful. The film Chocolat is a good example of a community who has taken the instruction to confront and condemn sin to an extreme.
If you haven’t seen this film, it came out in the year 2000 and was nominated for several Oscars. The plot centers on a woman named Vienne who moves to a small French Catholic village and opens a chocolate shop in the middle of Lent. Vienne is not Christian; she follows various spiritual practices of some of her ancestors from Latin America, so the fact that it is the middle of Lent means nothing to her and she proceeds to begin making delicious, sumptuous treats that of course none of the villagers are supposed to eat during the Lenten fast.
The mayor of the town, who essentially runs not only the town, but also the local parish church, is outraged. Not only does Vienne attempt to sell chocolate during Lent, she also associates with the so-called “river rats,” the gypsies that travel through town on the river. He stirs up opposition against Vienne and begins a campaign to “boycott immorality” designed to drive the gypsies and Vienne out of town.
Although he never references this passage from Matthew about dealing with sin and conflict in the church, it’s clear that the mayor thinks he is doing God’s work in treating these people like outsiders. He eventually whips himself into such a frenzy over Vienne’s presence in town that he is convinced that God is telling him to literally destroy Vienne’s shop. On Easter eve, he breaks in to her store with a knife and attacks all the chocolate statues in her front window.
On Easter morning, the new priest in town, a young man who has thus far been a puppet for the mayor, even allowing the mayor to write his sermons, finally has to come into his own. The mayor didn’t get a chance to finish the Easter sermon because he was so busy with his anti-chocolate crusade, so Pere Henri delivers his first real message, and breaks the ice of judgmentalism and exclusion in favor of a more open and inclusive approach. After citing the example of Jesus’s life and his tolerance and kindness to others, he ends his short homily by saying: “Listen, here's what I think. I think we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do; by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”
After the service, the whole town goes out for a huge Easter feast, with the desserts provided by – guess who – the local “pagan” owner of the chocolate shop.
I cite the example of this story because it raises an important question for us as we strive to live together as the body of Christ, as we try both to live out the example of Jesus’s welcome of outsiders and also attempt to deal with conflict and sin within the church. As much as some within the church would like to think that matters of sin and judgment are clear-cut and simple, there will always be questions among us about what exactly constitutes a sin that requires the use of this process Jesus outlines in Matthew 18. Exactly how sinful does someone have to be before we make the decision to treat them as an outsider rather than a brother? As we consider our response to that question, will we err on the side of judgment or on the side of mercy? Will we measure goodness by what we resist and who we exclude, or will we measure goodness by what we embrace and who we include?
If we look at the picture of Jesus’s life and teachings as a whole and do not allow this one passage to become the lens through which we read the Gospels, we will find a picture of abounding love and mercy, not a strict calculation that leads to expulsion in four easy steps. Immediately following this passage about dealing with conflict that ends with an instruction to treat the offender as an outsider, Jesus tells Peter that if another member of the church sins against him, he should forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22) – a figure meant to express a large, generous approach to forgiveness rather than a literal calculation of the number of times one should forgive. By that standard, our forgiveness should be boundless – so that even the Gentiles and tax collectors – even those we see as outsiders because they are not part of our group and those within our group who we have come to see as outsiders because of their sin – are still within the reach of God’s all-embracing love. As much as it is humanly possible, we should seek to model that love for others, knowing that even when someone has broken the bond of trust between us because of their sin, God’s forgiveness is still just as available to them as it is to us.
The God who we know through the person of Jesus Christ reminds us that above all, God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13, Micah 6:6). The God we know in Christ forgave the woman caught in adultery, saying “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). The God we know in Christ told Peter to forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22). So although there may be extreme cases where we must make the decision to hold someone at arm’s length and treat them as an outsider because of their refusal to engage in reconciliation, even then we must remember how Jesus treated outsiders overall: he loved them and invited them to the table. May we always do the same.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus addresses one of those subjects nobody wants to talk about in church: conflict.
Many of us tend to think there should be no conflict in church, because if we were being “good Christian people” we wouldn’t disagree or argue with one another. But that simply isn’t true. Relationship therapists will tell you that in any relationship with any depth, conflict is bound to arise at some point. The problem in a relationship is not the presence of conflict, but how conflict is handled when it does arise.
Jesus outlines a very reasonable process for addressing conflict in this passage from Matthew chapter 18: “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone,” he says. The first step is to approach the person directly and privately, and almost all conflict can be addressed effectively at this level. Where we often get into trouble is when we avoid this step of talking directly to the person we are at odds with and instead start talking about that person to other people in unhelpful ways. If we approach the person directly and privately, in a spirit of respect and compassion, we can often address the issue right there and come to some kind of reconciliation between us.
But, in cases where that reconciliation is not forthcoming after a one-on-one encounter, the next step in the process Jesus outlines is to take along one or two other people with you to speak to that person. The reason he gives for this is so there will be a witness to your conversation, but a third party can also be a helpful mediator, especially if the person is trained to do such work. Often a third party can help broker peace between two people in conflict.
But if that doesn’t work either, the third step Jesus outlines is to take the issue to “the church.” It’s not entirely clear what “the church” means here, but most probably it means the local parish, not the entire denomination at large or the entire Christian community around the world! This step implies an appeal to the authorities – someone with the ability to issue judgment in the case, to make a decision about the matter; this is not an invitation to air your dirty laundry in front of the whole community at coffee hour!
If that step doesn’t work and the person still continues in the offensive behavior, Jesus says to “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” This phrase can be somewhat confusing, since in many places in the Gospels Jesus welcomes tax collectors and Gentiles to his community. But in this context, Jesus is probably using a phrase that would easily be recognized by his first century Jewish audience as meaning “outsider,” one who is not part of the fold. What Jesus probably means here is if the person has refused all attempts at reconciliation as outlined in this process, eventually you must come to a point where you treat that person as an outsider rather than as a brother. Hold them at arm’s length, in other words, because that person has violated a trust between you. This distancing is a way of ensuring that you don’t continue to get hurt, and to ensure that the offender doesn’t continue to hurt other people.
This process has much wisdom in it, but like anything else, it can be abused. As we attempt to follow Jesus’s teachings in this matter, we must be careful not to take this “formula” and make it the standard in all things rather than love. The Apostle Paul reminds us in our reading from Romans today that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” and “love does no wrong to a neighbor” (Romans 13:8, 10). We must be careful that in seeking to address a conflict or confront someone about unethical behavior that we do not wind up doing wrong to that person, that we do not allow ourselves to become prideful judges whose focus is on exclusion and punishment rather than reconciliation and love.
I’m sure many of us know of situations where churches have taken the instructions in Matthew 18 to an extreme – where they have made it a practice to publicly humiliate anyone who is seen as a “sinner” in their midst, who are so concerned with purifying their ranks that they seem to forget that God also calls us to be merciful. The film Chocolat is a good example of a community who has taken the instruction to confront and condemn sin to an extreme.
If you haven’t seen this film, it came out in the year 2000 and was nominated for several Oscars. The plot centers on a woman named Vienne who moves to a small French Catholic village and opens a chocolate shop in the middle of Lent. Vienne is not Christian; she follows various spiritual practices of some of her ancestors from Latin America, so the fact that it is the middle of Lent means nothing to her and she proceeds to begin making delicious, sumptuous treats that of course none of the villagers are supposed to eat during the Lenten fast.
The mayor of the town, who essentially runs not only the town, but also the local parish church, is outraged. Not only does Vienne attempt to sell chocolate during Lent, she also associates with the so-called “river rats,” the gypsies that travel through town on the river. He stirs up opposition against Vienne and begins a campaign to “boycott immorality” designed to drive the gypsies and Vienne out of town.
Although he never references this passage from Matthew about dealing with sin and conflict in the church, it’s clear that the mayor thinks he is doing God’s work in treating these people like outsiders. He eventually whips himself into such a frenzy over Vienne’s presence in town that he is convinced that God is telling him to literally destroy Vienne’s shop. On Easter eve, he breaks in to her store with a knife and attacks all the chocolate statues in her front window.
On Easter morning, the new priest in town, a young man who has thus far been a puppet for the mayor, even allowing the mayor to write his sermons, finally has to come into his own. The mayor didn’t get a chance to finish the Easter sermon because he was so busy with his anti-chocolate crusade, so Pere Henri delivers his first real message, and breaks the ice of judgmentalism and exclusion in favor of a more open and inclusive approach. After citing the example of Jesus’s life and his tolerance and kindness to others, he ends his short homily by saying: “Listen, here's what I think. I think we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do; by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.”
After the service, the whole town goes out for a huge Easter feast, with the desserts provided by – guess who – the local “pagan” owner of the chocolate shop.
I cite the example of this story because it raises an important question for us as we strive to live together as the body of Christ, as we try both to live out the example of Jesus’s welcome of outsiders and also attempt to deal with conflict and sin within the church. As much as some within the church would like to think that matters of sin and judgment are clear-cut and simple, there will always be questions among us about what exactly constitutes a sin that requires the use of this process Jesus outlines in Matthew 18. Exactly how sinful does someone have to be before we make the decision to treat them as an outsider rather than a brother? As we consider our response to that question, will we err on the side of judgment or on the side of mercy? Will we measure goodness by what we resist and who we exclude, or will we measure goodness by what we embrace and who we include?
If we look at the picture of Jesus’s life and teachings as a whole and do not allow this one passage to become the lens through which we read the Gospels, we will find a picture of abounding love and mercy, not a strict calculation that leads to expulsion in four easy steps. Immediately following this passage about dealing with conflict that ends with an instruction to treat the offender as an outsider, Jesus tells Peter that if another member of the church sins against him, he should forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22) – a figure meant to express a large, generous approach to forgiveness rather than a literal calculation of the number of times one should forgive. By that standard, our forgiveness should be boundless – so that even the Gentiles and tax collectors – even those we see as outsiders because they are not part of our group and those within our group who we have come to see as outsiders because of their sin – are still within the reach of God’s all-embracing love. As much as it is humanly possible, we should seek to model that love for others, knowing that even when someone has broken the bond of trust between us because of their sin, God’s forgiveness is still just as available to them as it is to us.
The God who we know through the person of Jesus Christ reminds us that above all, God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Matthew 9:13, Micah 6:6). The God we know in Christ forgave the woman caught in adultery, saying “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). The God we know in Christ told Peter to forgive not just seven, but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21-22). So although there may be extreme cases where we must make the decision to hold someone at arm’s length and treat them as an outsider because of their refusal to engage in reconciliation, even then we must remember how Jesus treated outsiders overall: he loved them and invited them to the table. May we always do the same.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Walking on water: Overcoming fear to do things we didn't think we could do
Sermon delivered Sunday, August 10, 2014 (9 Pentecost, Year A, Proper 14), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN. (Text: Matthew 14:22-33)
Today’s Gospel reading about Jesus walking on water is one of the most famous stories in scripture. There are countless representations of it in art, and it has made its way into our everyday language as an idiomatic expression for being idolized or worshipped: “His fans think he can walk on water!” We often read this passage as a story about Jesus’s divinity, but today I’m going to suggest we look at it from another perspective: as a story about Peter, and by extension, all of us, and our life of faith.
Although we tend to think of Jesus’s ability to walk on water as one of the “proofs” that he was God, we forget that, according to Matthew’s account, Peter was also able to walk on water, however short-lived his journey out of the boat was. If this is true, then walking on water must not be something only God can do, since Peter clearly was not God. Perhaps this was Jesus’s way of showing the disciples what amazing things they would be capable of doing if they could let go of fear and be completely and totally focused on God.
Notice what happens to Peter. He is able to walk on the water after Jesus calls him, but when he notices the strong wind and becomes frightened, he starts to sink. It is his fear, and the distraction from his focus that that fear causes, that thwarts his attempt to walk on water.
I can imagine a bit of what Peter might have felt in that moment, and I bet you can too. If you have ever learned to ride a bike or helped a child learn to ride a bike, you know how much of that initial inability to balance is psychological, how much fear plays into the constant falls and skinned knees.
I remember how terrified I was when the training wheels first came off my bike when I was a child. The first time I got on a bike without training wheels, I put my feet up on the pedals and promptly fell over sideways. After slamming into the concrete, I was wary about getting back in the saddle again, so my father quickly intervened and assured me that he would hold on to the back of my seat while I pedaled, to keep me upright and balanced. He did so, and knowing that my dad was behind me, holding on to me so that I couldn’t fall, I pedaled happily around the driveway for some time, enjoying myself and feeling safe, until suddenly I noticed my dad was on the other side of the driveway! And he wasn’t holding on to me anymore! My parents beamed with pride – “Look, you’re doing it!” they cried – and then of course, I promptly fell over again.
As soon as I realized I wasn’t being held, as soon as I realized what I was actually doing, the fear returned. It distracted me from my focus, and I fell. More recently, I’ve experienced this dynamic in my practice of yoga. As I’ve begun to work on some of the balancing poses, trying to perch my body on top of my forearms or do a headstand, I’ve found that fear is the biggest obstacle, more so than physical strength. When the teacher instructs us to lean forward into the pose, it’s difficult to do so when that feels like it’s going to make you fall flat on your face – but if I listen and do what they say, I find that they’re right – the balance point is there, just a bit farther forward than feels comfortable. Just this week I was working on a headstand in class, and had the teacher spot me – and once I realized she wasn’t holding on to me anymore, that I was actually there, hanging out in a headstand, I started to fall. It was like being a child learning to ride that bike all over again – “Look, I’m doing it – um, wait a minute – help!!”
I’m sure many of you know the feeling of that moment – that moment where you realize you’re doing something you didn’t think you could do, without the support you thought you had, and the realization of that shakes you – the fear returns, it makes you lose your focus, and suddenly you fall. I can imagine that that feeling is what Peter felt in that moment where he suddenly realized, “Look! I’m walking on water here in the middle of a storm…. um, wait a minute, HELP!”
Fear is the ultimate issue here, whether learning to ride a bike or to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. In the Gospel story, it wasn’t just Peter who was afraid, but all the disciples in the boat. The text says they were “terrified” and “cried out in fear,” and of course it is fear that causes Peter to slip. Jesus’s response to Peter, after rescuing him, is, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” The doubt he’s referring to is not about intellectual questions, but about a lack of focus and trust, about allowing fear to take over. His question to Peter is not, “Why did you have questions about what you believe,” but “Why did you allow your fear to be stronger than your trust in me?” Jesus had just said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid,” and almost universally throughout the scriptures, the message from heavenly beings when they first appear to humans is, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear.” The divine messengers first tell us not to be afraid because God knows we cannot do anything until we are able to overcome our fear.
In our life of faith, we are constantly learning to walk on water – to do what seems impossible to us, to let go of fear and step out in trust. We are learning to do things that are counter to what our natural inclinations might be, counter to how we might do things if we relied solely on our own thought processes and reasoning: love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, if someone takes from you your coat, give him your cloak also – all these teachings of Jesus can seem just as difficult as walking on water, and require just as much trust. And sometimes, when we begin to live our lives the Gospel way, we get scared – we suddenly look back and realize we’re doing something that we didn’t think we could do, or something that seems crazy to us. “What did I just do? I just gave up an opportunity to get revenge on someone who hurt me? What if they hurt me again?” We feel vulnerable, and we get scared, and we start to sink. But the good news is that Jesus is always there, ready to catch us, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And as he catches us, he reminds us of where our focus ought to be: on him. It was when Peter was completely and totally focused on Jesus that he was able to step out onto the stormy waters and not be overtaken by them. We too must have that kind of focus on Jesus, so that we can overcome the fear that would prevent us from living Gospel lives.
If we can let go of fear and turn our complete focus on Jesus, we too can prevail over the stormy waters. And as we step out of the boat, we will look over and see the Father beaming with pride and saying, “Look! You’re doing it!” And this time, maybe we won’t fall.
Today’s Gospel reading about Jesus walking on water is one of the most famous stories in scripture. There are countless representations of it in art, and it has made its way into our everyday language as an idiomatic expression for being idolized or worshipped: “His fans think he can walk on water!” We often read this passage as a story about Jesus’s divinity, but today I’m going to suggest we look at it from another perspective: as a story about Peter, and by extension, all of us, and our life of faith.
Although we tend to think of Jesus’s ability to walk on water as one of the “proofs” that he was God, we forget that, according to Matthew’s account, Peter was also able to walk on water, however short-lived his journey out of the boat was. If this is true, then walking on water must not be something only God can do, since Peter clearly was not God. Perhaps this was Jesus’s way of showing the disciples what amazing things they would be capable of doing if they could let go of fear and be completely and totally focused on God.
Notice what happens to Peter. He is able to walk on the water after Jesus calls him, but when he notices the strong wind and becomes frightened, he starts to sink. It is his fear, and the distraction from his focus that that fear causes, that thwarts his attempt to walk on water.
I can imagine a bit of what Peter might have felt in that moment, and I bet you can too. If you have ever learned to ride a bike or helped a child learn to ride a bike, you know how much of that initial inability to balance is psychological, how much fear plays into the constant falls and skinned knees.
I remember how terrified I was when the training wheels first came off my bike when I was a child. The first time I got on a bike without training wheels, I put my feet up on the pedals and promptly fell over sideways. After slamming into the concrete, I was wary about getting back in the saddle again, so my father quickly intervened and assured me that he would hold on to the back of my seat while I pedaled, to keep me upright and balanced. He did so, and knowing that my dad was behind me, holding on to me so that I couldn’t fall, I pedaled happily around the driveway for some time, enjoying myself and feeling safe, until suddenly I noticed my dad was on the other side of the driveway! And he wasn’t holding on to me anymore! My parents beamed with pride – “Look, you’re doing it!” they cried – and then of course, I promptly fell over again.
As soon as I realized I wasn’t being held, as soon as I realized what I was actually doing, the fear returned. It distracted me from my focus, and I fell. More recently, I’ve experienced this dynamic in my practice of yoga. As I’ve begun to work on some of the balancing poses, trying to perch my body on top of my forearms or do a headstand, I’ve found that fear is the biggest obstacle, more so than physical strength. When the teacher instructs us to lean forward into the pose, it’s difficult to do so when that feels like it’s going to make you fall flat on your face – but if I listen and do what they say, I find that they’re right – the balance point is there, just a bit farther forward than feels comfortable. Just this week I was working on a headstand in class, and had the teacher spot me – and once I realized she wasn’t holding on to me anymore, that I was actually there, hanging out in a headstand, I started to fall. It was like being a child learning to ride that bike all over again – “Look, I’m doing it – um, wait a minute – help!!”
I’m sure many of you know the feeling of that moment – that moment where you realize you’re doing something you didn’t think you could do, without the support you thought you had, and the realization of that shakes you – the fear returns, it makes you lose your focus, and suddenly you fall. I can imagine that that feeling is what Peter felt in that moment where he suddenly realized, “Look! I’m walking on water here in the middle of a storm…. um, wait a minute, HELP!”
Fear is the ultimate issue here, whether learning to ride a bike or to live as a follower of Jesus Christ. In the Gospel story, it wasn’t just Peter who was afraid, but all the disciples in the boat. The text says they were “terrified” and “cried out in fear,” and of course it is fear that causes Peter to slip. Jesus’s response to Peter, after rescuing him, is, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” The doubt he’s referring to is not about intellectual questions, but about a lack of focus and trust, about allowing fear to take over. His question to Peter is not, “Why did you have questions about what you believe,” but “Why did you allow your fear to be stronger than your trust in me?” Jesus had just said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid,” and almost universally throughout the scriptures, the message from heavenly beings when they first appear to humans is, “Do not be afraid. Do not fear.” The divine messengers first tell us not to be afraid because God knows we cannot do anything until we are able to overcome our fear.
In our life of faith, we are constantly learning to walk on water – to do what seems impossible to us, to let go of fear and step out in trust. We are learning to do things that are counter to what our natural inclinations might be, counter to how we might do things if we relied solely on our own thought processes and reasoning: love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, if someone takes from you your coat, give him your cloak also – all these teachings of Jesus can seem just as difficult as walking on water, and require just as much trust. And sometimes, when we begin to live our lives the Gospel way, we get scared – we suddenly look back and realize we’re doing something that we didn’t think we could do, or something that seems crazy to us. “What did I just do? I just gave up an opportunity to get revenge on someone who hurt me? What if they hurt me again?” We feel vulnerable, and we get scared, and we start to sink. But the good news is that Jesus is always there, ready to catch us, saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And as he catches us, he reminds us of where our focus ought to be: on him. It was when Peter was completely and totally focused on Jesus that he was able to step out onto the stormy waters and not be overtaken by them. We too must have that kind of focus on Jesus, so that we can overcome the fear that would prevent us from living Gospel lives.
If we can let go of fear and turn our complete focus on Jesus, we too can prevail over the stormy waters. And as we step out of the boat, we will look over and see the Father beaming with pride and saying, “Look! You’re doing it!” And this time, maybe we won’t fall.
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