Loving your neighbor -- and your enemy: some practical steps

Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017 (Seventh Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part seven of a seven-week series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Matthew 5:38-48, Baptismal Covenant Question #4

In this final week of our preaching series on baptism, we consider the fourth question in the Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”

Our readings today invite us to consider what it means to love our neighbor, a common instruction in both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures. Our passage from Leviticus includes this instruction:

“You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin… You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19:17-18)

Jesus takes this even a step further in our Gospel passage for the day:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?... And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?” (Matthew 5:43-48)

For much of my life, I would hear passages like these and throw my hands up with exasperation.

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge?”
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”
“Be perfect, as God is perfect?”

Yeah, right!! Thanks a lot, God. There you go again, setting your standards so impossibly high that we could never reach them.

And then, in my study of world religions in college and graduate school, I discovered lovingkindness meditation, which comes out of the Buddhist tradition. For me, a lightbulb went on when I encountered this ancient practice. Jesus taught us to love our enemies, but he didn’t teach us HOW – at least, not in the records that were preserved and passed down to us. Just saying, “Love your enemies” without giving any practical instructions as to how to do that, especially since it is so contrary to the instincts of human nature, was, for me, not helpful at all. Reading and hearing these biblical passages did nothing for me except frustrate me and induce feelings of guilt and shame over how poorly I did at trying to follow these instructions. But when I discovered lovingkindness meditation, I felt like FINALLY, here was a set of practices that gave me tools to actually change my behavior and follow the teachings of Jesus more closely.

Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama, has noted the similarities between the teachings of Jesus and the Buddha on loving one’s enemies, but he points out that Jesus was only able to teach for about three years before he was crucified. The Buddha, on the other hand,

“had to slave away [teaching] for 46 years after his enlightenment,” Thurman says. “So he had time to provide more practical methodologies to underlie these sort of high moral-sounding slogans like ‘love your enemy.’” [1]  

Discovering those “practical methodologies” has been an incredible blessing to me, and I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned with you all, in the hopes that it will be useful to you, too, as you strive to “love your neighbor as yourself” and “seek and serve Christ in ALL persons,” even your enemies.

At its most basic, lovingkindness meditation is the act of sending goodwill and well-wishes into the world. It involves repeating a certain set of phrases silently during meditation that express a wish for the person, people, or beings you are directing these wishes toward to be free from danger, to have mental and physical happiness, and to be content and at peace in the world.

The word translated into English as “lovingkindness” is the Pali word metta. (Pali is the language in which most of the Buddhist scriptures are written, a language that originated in ancient India.) Sharon Salzburg, a prominent American Buddhist teacher, writes about how metta differs from what Americans normally think of when we use the word “love:”

“In our culture, when we talk about love, we usually mean either passion or sentimentality,” she says. “It is crucial to distinguish metta from both of these states. Passion is enmeshed with feelings of desire, of wanting, or of owning and possessing. Passion gets entangled with needing things to be a certain way, with having our expectations met… By contrast, the spirit of metta is unconditional: open and unobstructed… When we practice metta, we open continuously to the truth of our actual experience, changing our relationship to life. Metta – the sense of love that is not bound to desire, that does not have to pretend things are other than the way they are – overcomes the illusion of separateness… and all of the states that accompany this fundamental error of separateness – fear, alienation, loneliness, and despair – all of the feelings of fragmentation. In place of these, the genuine realization of connectedness brings unification, confidence, and safety.” [2]

It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word hesed, often translated as “lovingkindness” in English, also refers to this kind of unconditional love, the kind of love God offers to humankind. It is this kind of love that Jesus commands us to have for our enemies. Not passion or desire or sentimentality, not a feeling of liking or being drawn toward them, but that kind of unconditional acceptance of what is, a love that sees all things and accepts them as they are. This kind of love recognizes the common humanity of all people and genuinely seeks the happiness of all, rather than nurturing resentments and wishing ill upon those who have harmed us.

In traditional Buddhist lovingkindness practice, the meditator moves through a series of six categories of beings in a set order. One begins by directing metta -- lovingkindness, well-wishes -- towards oneself, then moves on to a benefactor or mentor, someone who has supported you in your life or work in such a way that feeling gratitude toward this person and wishing him or her well is easy. Then, you consider a beloved friend, then a neutral person, then an enemy, and finally, all beings.

There is a wisdom to the order of this structure. First, we have to be able to love ourselves before we can truly love others, which is why metta starts with a focus on self. And finally, we can only say we love all people when we have been able to send love toward our enemies, toward those we find it most difficult to love.

You may see different translations or expressions of the metta phrases, but they all convey those basic sentiments: that the person you are focusing on be free from danger, be mentally and physically well, and have ease of well-being – be content and at peace in the world. The set of phrases I use that express these wishes is:

May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.

Ideally, you would spend a good deal of time with each category before moving on to the next one, but for the purposes of illustration today, I want to focus on just the “friend” and the “enemy” categories, to show you how this works and how you might use this practice to help work with the feelings of anger or pain that may come up for you when you think about a “difficult person” or enemy in your life.

So now I’m going to walk you through a guided metta meditation.

Take a moment to find a comfortable sitting position. Ideally, you’d sit with your spine straight, so that the air can flow unobstructed in and out of your lungs. Close your eyes and take a deep breath in, hold it for a moment, and exhale all the way out. Then let your breathing return to normal, and just watch it as it settles in to a regular rhythm.

Traditionally we always start by directing metta toward ourselves, but since that can be somewhat of a complex practice in and of itself, today we’ll start by focusing on a good friend, someone it is easy for you to love, someone you naturally wish well. It is best to pick someone who is not a family member, and not a romantic partner, since we want to generate a feeling of pure, unattached love and goodwill, not love that is mixed up with feelings of desire, whether that be sexual desire or a sense of needing that person’s approval or attention. Think of a friend with whom you have a relatively uncomplicated, positive relationship, and bring up an image of that person in your mind.

Now say these phrases silently, directing them toward that friend:

May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.

Now shift your attention toward someone it is difficult for you to love. You might think of this person as your enemy, or it just might be someone who you find difficult or annoying, someone you do not naturally feel positively toward. As you work with this practice, it is best to start with someone with whom the dislike or difficulty is relatively mild. Don’t start by trying to love the person who has caused you more pain than anyone else in the world! (Over time you can gradually work yourself up toward being able to direct goodwill toward that person, but for now, pick someone you just mildly dislike.)

Think of that difficult person or enemy in your mind, and then direct the metta phrases toward them:

May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.

Notice if your interior landscape changes when you send positive wishes toward this difficult person. Do you feel areas of tightness loosening? Do you feel a relaxation or sense of relief?

If not, if you still find yourself angry and tight and clenched toward your difficult person, try playing with different visualizations to help you feel some sense of kindness and compassion toward them. You might imagine that person as a baby, as an innocent child. Or you might think of them in another situation where they are vulnerable or in pain – gravely ill, or on their deathbed – although be careful not to nurture any feelings of vengefulness or celebration at imagining this person suffering – that is not the point. The point is to open a door for you to connect with them, to see in their shared suffering your common humanity.

Sharon Salzburg says “you should allow yourself to be creative, daring, even humorous, in imagining situations where you can more readily feel kindness toward a difficult person.” One of Sharon’s students chose a difficult person who was extremely talkative and annoying, and it helped her send lovingkindness to that person if she imaged her sitting bound and gagged in a chair. Another student could only send lovingkindness toward his difficult person if he imagined him locked up in jail. Take some time to think of images or visualizations that would help you feel compassion toward this difficult person, situations that would soften your heart toward them.

Now with that image in mind, direct the metta phrases toward your difficult person again:

May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.

Notice if anything changes in your body as you sit with that image of your difficult person as you repeat these phrases.

May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.

Go ahead and open your eyes.

Now, if that was difficult, or if you didn’t feel or see any immediate changes in your feelings or attitude toward this person, it’s important to remember that it’s called spiritual practice for a reason! It takes practice! It doesn’t always happen overnight. It’s important to go easy on yourself, to not set expectations too high in terms of what the results of the practice will be. Ideally, you’d spend 30 minutes in silent meditation each day, working with this or any other meditation techniques. People do this for a lifetime and are still working at it, so don’t expect to be the perfect example of “loving your neighbor” after only trying this a few times.

When Jesus says, “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he doesn’t mean you should never make any mistakes. The Greek word translated as “perfect” is teleios, which doesn’t mean “without flaws or mistakes,” but “complete, whole, having reached its end, full-grown, or mature.” Jesus is calling us to be mature Christians, to be grown-up Christians, to put the effort in to work on our faith and develop it over time. That means not being content to stay in that frustrated, exasperated state – “yeah, right, Jesus, how can I ever live up to what you’re asking of me!” – but to actively search for tools and techniques to help you work toward making those commandments a reality. Maybe lovingkindness meditation will help you as it has helped me, maybe not. But in any case, we’re called to make an effort, using whatever tools are most effective for us. Because at our baptism, we made a vow to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. There is much wisdom in the teachings of the world’s religions about how to do that, and taking the time to find a practice that works for us is part of the way we keep our baptismal vows.

We’ll close with our 3 minutes of silent meditation that normally comes before the sermon. During that time, I invite you to try out these techniques more extensively, directing the phrases first toward a friend and then toward an enemy.

REFERENCE SHEET:

Metta (Lovingkindness) Phrases:
May you be safe.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you live with ease.

Metta Sequence:
1. Yourself
2. Benefactor or mentor
3. Friend
4. Neutral person – someone for whom you do not feel an immediate attraction or repulsion, someone who you do not like or dislike
5. Enemy or difficult person
6. All people/all beings


[1] “Sharon Salzburg & Robert Thurman: Meeting Our Enemies and Our Suffering,” On Being with Krista Tippett, 15 December 2016, http://onbeing.org/programs/sharon-salzberg-robert-thurman-embracing-enemies-suffering-2/ Accessed 17 February 2017.
[2] Sharon Salzburg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1995): 18-19, 21.

Tradition without ethics is worthless, but ethics without tradition is exhausting

Sermon delivered Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017 (Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part five of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13:20, Baptismal Covenant Question #1

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” (Matthew 5:17)

Today’s scripture readings raise questions about what it means to keep tradition. Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount about not coming to abolish the law but to fulfill it may sound surprising to some Christians, who tend to think the Jewish law is irrelevant for us. The early church decided that Gentile converts to the faith did not have to keep the entirety of the Jewish law, and many Reformation-era theologians wrote volumes on how the law was a prison from which Jesus released us, drawing mostly on Paul’s thought. But Jesus himself kept the Jewish law and observed Jewish traditions. He criticized those who focused on the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit behind the law; those who were so concerned about not breaking a commandment that they wouldn’t help someone in need because doing work was forbidden on the Sabbath, for instance. But he never advocated for entirely throwing out the traditions and law of his religion.

“I have come not to abolish but to fulfill,” he says, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)

Our reading from the Hebrew scriptures today also speaks to the question of what it means to keep tradition. The people are questioning why God is not responding to their fasting:

“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” (Isaiah 58:3a)

And God’s answer, coming through the prophet Isaiah, is that the people may be keeping the letter of the law, going through the motions of the correct rituals, but their behavior is not in line with God’s ethical commandments:

"Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high…

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?” (Isaiah 58:3b-4, 6)

Now, God has previously commanded them to do just the things they were doing: to “lie in sackcloth and ashes” and to humble themselves. So when he dismisses their actions, saying that is not the fast he chooses, that the fast he chooses is to “loose the bonds of injustice,” he’s not saying that he doesn’t want them to ever observe ritual fasting. He’s not saying lying in sackcloth and ashes and humbling oneself is a BAD thing – he’s just saying that without the ethical behavior it is intended to bring about, it’s worthless. If ALL you do is lie in sackcloth and ashes and don’t help your brothers and sisters in need, your fasting is worthless and God’s not going to take your piety seriously – because you’ve shown by your actions that you don’t really get it.

As we enter week five of this preaching series on baptism, these themes in our readings today invite us to consider the first question of our Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”

At its core, this question is about keeping tradition, about “following the law,” to the extent that Christians have a concept of religious law. Will you keep teaching what the apostles taught, keep meeting together as the apostles met, keep breaking bread together in the holy meal of the Eucharist as the apostles did, and keep praying as the apostles prayed?

This vow actually comes directly from Scripture – the Book of Acts tells us that after the Gentiles received the Spirit of God at Pentecost and Peter preached to them explaining the significance of all they had heard and seen, about three thousand people were baptized. Acts 2:42 says of these new converts, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

It is significant that this call to keep tradition comes directly from the description of what the earliest converts to Christianity did right after they were baptized. Even the words used to ask this question are part of church tradition!

So what is it exactly that we’re being asked to keep and pass along? What is “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers?”

The “apostles teaching” refers to the message about Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection that we talked about a few weeks ago, that “good news of God in Christ” that we are called to proclaim: that Jesus is raised from the dead and has defeated death. It is summarized in the Creeds, and the church has continued to expand upon these foundational beliefs through its doctrine and teaching throughout the centuries. When we vow to “continue in the apostles’ teaching,” we are vowing to study the church’s teaching, both what it has taught historically and the way that is taking shape in our own day, and to pass that teaching on to a new generation. When you come to Bible study, when you instruct children in the faith, when you read scripture or books about Christian history or theology, you are “continuing in the apostles’ teaching.”

What about the “apostles’ fellowship”? The church has always been clear that you cannot be a Christian by yourself. Fellowship, community, connection with other Christians is of utmost importance. The apostles came together on a regular basis to encourage one another in their faith and to worship together, and Christians have continued to do that throughout the ages. Even monastics who choose a cloistered life, away from “the world,” have shared the community of other monks or nuns, with only very few choosing a life of solitary hermitage, and even those who did choose that life were connected in some way to a larger praying community. Fellowship is critical. We cannot do this faith thing alone. We need each other.

“The breaking of the bread” is the celebration of the Eucharist – the ceremonial meal that Jesus commanded us to continue “in remembrance of him” until he comes again. It is the central act of worship of the church, and when we are baptized we make a vow to continue in that tradition, to regularly attend and receive Eucharist.

And finally, “the prayers” are the prayers the church has taught us – the Lord’s Prayer, the various litanies and liturgies that the church has passed down to us – as well as individual, personal prayers offered up to God spontaneously from our hearts. We vow to maintain an active prayer life as part of our commitment at our baptism.

This vow – to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers – this vow to preserve and pass on the rituals and traditions of the Christian faith – is foundational to what we vow to do when we are baptized. It is the first question we are asked after we recite the Creed. But it does not stand alone. It is grouped with the other four baptismal vows to show that observing ritual and “maintaining tradition” alone are not enough. This affirms the message of Jesus and the prophets: that ritual observance without proper ethical behavior is meaningless. We can teach the doctrines of the church and come to Eucharist all day long and say all the right prayers, but if we’re not also “seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves,” and “striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being,” then we’ve entirely missed the point.

Unfortunately, much of our society has seen too much of the ritual observance and too little of the ethical behavior from the church and has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the only important thing is the ethical behavior piece. “What has ritual behavior done for anyone except make them hypocrites? Just ‘strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being’ and you’ve pretty much got it covered.”

But from the church’s perspective, it’s not a question of either/or, but of both/and. It’s not ritual observance OR ethical behavior, it’s ritual observance AND ethical behavior. We can do ethical behavior without ritual observance, sure, but it’s a lot more likely to lead to burnout if we do. Because the ritual observances of the church are there to feed us, to guide us, to sustain us as we do that ethical behavior we’re called to do. We come to Eucharist not just for the sake of coming to Eucharist, not just to blindly obey a rule of the church, but to be renewed and recharged for the work God calls us to do in the world. We read the scripture and church theology not because the church gave us a homework assignment, but because the teachings of the church inspire and motivate us to work for justice and peace, and connect us with the saints who have gone before us, who have walked this path before, who know something about standing up against injustice. In our current day, the voices of Christians who have stood up against injustice in the past: from the earliest apostles who said to the Roman courts, “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29) to the modern-day prophets like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1930s Germany, who challenged his church’s complicity in the Nazis’ rise to power, can inform our own struggles in this new era of American history, providing us with a sense that we are not alone in this work.

We gather in community with other Christians, we receive the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and we study the teachings of Christians who have gone before us to support and facilitate the hard work of ethical living and advocating for justice that God calls us to in our own day. Because if ALL we do is come to church and receive Eucharist and study scripture and we don’t offer sanctuary to refugees or feed the hungry or advocate for just governance in our land, our tradition is worthless and God’s not going to take our piety seriously – because we will have shown by our actions that we don’t really get it.

Striving for justice and peace means never giving up on anyone

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017 (Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part 4 of a 7-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Micah 6:1-8, Matthew 5:1-12, Baptismal Covenant Question #5

The themes emerging from our collect and the lectionary readings today are related to peace and justice – we heard the Beatitudes in the Gospel reading, and our Hebrew scripture was a passage from Micah 6 often quoted in social justice work by both Christians and Jews:

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

So this week, as we continue our preaching series on baptism, we’ll consider the fifth and last question of our Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

It is interesting to note that this is the only question in our Baptismal Covenant that does not say anything about God, Jesus, or the Christian faith. It is a question that people of all faiths and none could answer affirmatively:

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

Yes, they will, and yes they do: Jews and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhists and Baha’is and Hindus and indigenous people and agnostics and atheists – I know people who identify with all of those theological perspectives who “strive for justice and peace among all people” and “respect the dignity of every human being” in their daily lives, people for whom these values are the bedrock of their activism and their advocacy for vulnerable and marginalized communities.

But as part of our Baptismal Covenant, this question is asked of us in the context of a ceremony that marks our commitment to following in the way of Jesus. Even though the question doesn’t specifically mention God or Jesus or say anything about being a Christian, it is, in a sense, the culmination of all the questions that came before it. It is a summary of our church’s understanding of what it means to follow Jesus: to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

We come to this understanding from the example and teachings of Jesus in the scriptures. Jesus consistently advocated for a peaceful ethic in the form of nonviolence, teaching his followers “not [to] resist an evildoer” (Matthew 5:39), to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), and to “love [their] enemies” (Luke 6:28). He said, as we heard in the Beatitudes today, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”

But as the phrasing of this question in the Baptismal Covenant makes clear, the kind of peace Jesus advocated was not one that allowed the continuance of injustice. It was not a peace that stood back quietly and did nothing while God’s children and God’s creation were abused and misused, denigrated and destroyed.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is famous for saying, “There can be no justice without peace, and there can be no peace without justice.” In doing so, he was articulating a deeply biblical truth: that peace and justice are inextricably connected. You can’t have one without the other. And that’s why our Baptismal Covenant words the question this way: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people” – it doesn’t allow us to squirm out of the hard work of justice by saying we’re advocating for peace in not stirring things up, not rocking the boat.

Last week, Mark and Tom performed a hymn during communion about the calling of the first disciples. The text is a poem by William Alexander Percy, and it describes how God called Peter, Andrew, James and John from the “peaceful” lives they had known as fishermen to a life where they knew a different kind of peace, “the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too,” [1]  recounting the suffering they experienced as a result, even unto death. The final verse is a powerful summary of the cost of discipleship and the type of peace to which God calls us and offers us:

“The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife cast in the sod.
Yet let us pray for but one thing: the marvelous peace of God.”

When we vow to work for “justice and peace,” we acknowledge that one does not come without the other, and that working for peace sometimes brings no peace, but “strife cast in the sod.” We will encounter conflict and sometimes even violence directed at us as we strive for justice for all God’s creation.

The second part of the question asks,
“Will you respect the dignity of every human being?”

Including this question along with the question of striving for justice and peace again reminds us that the peace we seek is a peace that comes with justice. If peace comes at the cost of the dignity of our brothers and sisters, it is not a peace we can accept as Christians.

This week, our new President signed executive orders banning citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for the next 90 days and suspending the admission of all refugees for the next 120 days. He did this in the name of peace, in the name of making America safer. But these actions and the chaos that have resulted from them over the last several days have not brought true peace, nor will they, because they do not respect the dignity of every human being. The peace President Trump seeks comes at the cost of the dignity of our Muslim brothers and sisters, and the dignity of citizens of those countries or refugees who aren’t Muslim, but will also be denied entrance to our country by the so-called “Muslim ban.”

For me, this vow of our Baptismal Covenant is why I signed a petition against this ban and while I plan to continue to be a vocal critic of it. It’s why the Bishop’s Committee voted to accept John and Milene Rawlinson’s donation of a large banner that states, “Refugees and immigrants welcome,” with a depiction of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt, which I’d love some help hanging up on the front of the church after the service today.

But this vow is also why I carried a sign in the Women’s March with quotes from Jesus and the Buddha about loving your enemies, and why I continue to use the lovingkindness meditation techniques I’ve learned from Buddhism to try to direct kindness and goodwill toward our new President, toward the members of ISIS, and toward any person or groups of people I have begun to nurture ill-will or hatred toward. Because respecting the dignity of every human being means EVERY human being, not just the ones I find it easy to respect. It means respecting the dignity of the oppressors as much as I respect the dignity of the oppressed.

And for me, that’s where it gets really hard. That’s where I’m reminded that it’s called “spiritual practice” for a reason – because in order to live it out, we need practice. We need training.

This week, Krista Tippet’s show On Being on NPR aired a repeat of an interview she did with Congressman John Lewis in 2013 where he talks about the training he got in nonviolent resistance during the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s:

“It’s just not something that is natural,” Lewis said. “You have to be taught the way of peace, the way of love, the way of nonviolence… We, from time to time, would discuss - if you see someone attacking you, beating you, spitting on you, you have to think of that person — years ago, that person was an innocent child, innocent little baby. And so what happened? Did something go wrong? Was it the environment? Did someone teach that person to hate, to abuse others? So you try to appeal to the goodness of every human being. And you don’t give up. You NEVER give up - on anyone.” [2]

That’s what it means to “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being” – to never give up, on anyone. And as with all our baptismal vows, we can commit to keep them only “with God’s help.” When we find ourselves starting to give up on someone, starting to hate, starting to hold a grudge, starting to think that peace for some is ok because peace for all is impossible, we must call out for help from God – from the God who calls us to never give up on anyone because he never gives up on us.

[1] Hymn #661 from The Hymnal 1982, Words: William Alexander Percy (1885-1942), alt. Music: Georgetown, David McKinley Williams (1887-1978)

[2] Congressman John Lewis, “Love in Action,” On Being with Krista Tippet, NPR, Jan. 26, 2017, http://onbeing.org/programs/john-lewis-love-action/ Accessed Jan. 28, 2017.

Do our divisions within Christianity compromise our witness?

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 22, 2017 (The Third Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part three of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): 1 Corinthians 1:10-18, Baptismal Covenant Question #3

As we enter week three of this preaching series on baptism, we’re going to spend another week on the third question of the Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

Why are we spending two weeks on this question? Well, the collect and the scriptures for today continue to focus on God’s call to us to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. The opening collect says:

“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works…”

For our reading from the Hebrew scriptures we have that famous passage from Isaiah that we just heard during Advent and Christmas – “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light!” – and in the Gospel passage we have a narrative about how Jesus fulfilled that scripture and called his first disciples by the Sea of Galilee. But as we continue to consider the topic of evangelism this week, we’ll look at it from a slightly different angle, from the perspective represented in our second reading from 1 Corinthians. Paul writes to the church at Corinth:

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

This passage takes on particular meaning in light of the fact that this week is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. So today, I’d like to think about Christian unity and in what ways our division compromises our witness.

Many people look at the mind-boggling number of different churches and denominations in Christianity, particularly in the U.S., and become disillusioned. All this infighting, all this disagreement! So much for Christians being “one body in Christ” and having “all things in common,” as the scriptures tell us the early church did. Instead, we’ve got bishops excommunicating each other, fights over whether one particular phrase is included in the Creed or not, parishioners refusing to receive communion from certain priests, arguments about predestination and free will – and that’s just a small section of our dirty laundry! For all our theology about being “one in Christ,” we seem pretty divided. How can we “proclaim the Good News of God in Christ” to the world if we can’t even agree amongst ourselves?

Our passage from Paul’s letter reminds us that the church has always had to deal with conflict and division.

“It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters,” Paul writes to the church at Corinth.

What? Quarrels? In the church?
Oh, yes.

He continues, “What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’, or ‘I belong to Apollos’, or ‘I belong to Cephas’, or ‘I belong to Christ’” (1 Corinthians 1:11-12).

He chastises those who identify with the person who baptized them rather than with Christ, who is the proper object of their faith.

“Has Christ been divided?” he asks. “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” (1 Cor. 1:13)

Later, in chapter 3 of the letter, he drives his point home:

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” (1 Cor. 3:5-7).

This critique of the Corinthians is certainly relevant to the church today, with so many denominations centered on the person who started that movement. Lutherans, Wesleyans, Calvinists… by identifying ourselves in this way, aren’t we doing the very same thing the church at Corinth was doing and saying, “I belong to Luther” or “I belong to Wesley” or “I belong to Calvin” rather than “I belong to Christ”?

It’s gotten to the point that the church is so divided that we don’t even recognize one another as being part of the same religion anymore. When I talk about interfaith dialogue in Christian contexts, inevitably someone will say, “Oh, yeah, we did some interfaith dialogue one time! We had a meeting with the Baptists!” or “We held a joint service with the Lutherans!”

But guess what, people? That’s not interfaith dialogue! Christians talking to other Christians is not interfaith dialogue! Interfaith means talking to someone of a different religion -- a Muslim, or a Sikh, or a Jain, or a Jew, or a Buddhist -- a different religion. All of these denominations of Christianity -- Baptists and Lutherans and Methodists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and Charismatics and Evangelicals – they’re all Christians! Their denomination may be Lutheran or Baptist or Methodist, but that's not their religion. Their religion is Christianity. Unfortunately, we often talk of our denomination as if it is our religion. If someone were to ask you, "What's your religion?" We might say, “I’m an Episcopalian.” Our friends at United Lutheran might say, “I’m Lutheran.” Our friends at Church Without Walls might say, “I’m Baptist.” But really, we should all have the same answer to that question: What religion are you? “I’m CHRISTIAN!”

It’s not an accident that when we are baptized in the Episcopal Church, we don’t profess faith in the Episcopal Church or in the Presiding Bishop or the Archbishop of Canterbury. We profess faith in JESUS CHRIST. Period! Our baptismal vows don’t say anything about the Episcopal Church. We don’t vow to follow the canon law of the Episcopal Church (priests and bishops may, but lay people don't!), we vow to follow Jesus! And so do each and every one of our brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of which denominational structure oversaw the ritual of their baptism. What unites us as Christians is our common desire and commitment to follow Jesus, regardless of our disagreements over how the church should be structured or governed or who should be allowed leadership within it, or any number of other things over which we disagree.

As the testimony of the early church shows, it’s unlikely that we will ever be “of one mind” on all things, however much our leaders may urge us to be. But we must continue to work toward the ideal of “Christian unity,” even if we never reach it, because Jesus prayed for his followers to be “one, even as [he] and the Father [were] one” (John 17:11). “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me,” Jesus prays the night before his death (John 17:20-21). Jesus believed that our oneness – with each other and with God in Christ – was key to our witness – we are to be one so that “the world may believe.”

But perhaps we’ve been thinking about “Christian unity” all wrong. Maybe unity doesn’t mean that we all become members of the same church or govern ourselves in the same way or worship in the same style. Maybe unity doesn’t mean that we share similar political opinions, similar cultures, similar backgrounds, or even similar interpretations of scripture. Maybe “Christian unity” is as simple as remembering who we were baptized into. Were we baptized into Paul or Apollos? Were we baptized into Luther or Wesley or Calvin? No, these were all merely servants of God who brought us to know Jesus. Maybe “Christian unity” is as simple as the affirmations at the beginning of our baptismal service:

"Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?

Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?

Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?"  (BCP 302-303)

Our unity as Christians comes in the form of our answer to those three questions. Those of us who answer “yes” to those questions (or “I do,” as we say in the liturgy) are united with all others who answer those three questions the same way, regardless of whether we agree on anything else!

Ronald Rolheiser, a Canadian Roman Catholic theologian, describes the essential unity of the church in this way:

"To be in apostolic community, church, is not necessarily to be with others with whom we are emotionally, ideologically, and otherwise compatible. Rather it is to stand, shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand, precisely with people who are very different from ourselves and, with them, hear a common word, say a common creed, share a common bread, and offer a mutual forgiveness so as, in that way, to bridge our differences and become a common heart. Church is not about a few like-minded persons getting together for mutual support; it is about millions and millions of different kinds of persons transcending their differences so as to become a community beyond temperament, race, ideology, gender, language, and background." [1]

If we can truly do that – if we can form the kind of community that transcends differences through our shared love of Jesus and commitment to follow in his way, if we are intentional about forming that community with people of other denominations – then our witness will not be compromised. Despite our apparent divisions, we can still “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” – by showing that even in the midst of the messy human diversity in the church, a sense of shared consciousness and an acknowledgement of oneness in our Lord is possible, thanks be to God.

[1] Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999): 115.

Our call to God-led evangelism

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017 (Second Sunday After the Epiphany, Year A) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, as part two of a seven-week preaching series on baptism and the Baptismal Covenant.

Sermon Text(s): Isaiah 49:1-7, Baptismal Covenant Question #3

Last week, we remembered Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River, heard about the implications of baptism for our own lives, and renewed the vows of our Baptismal Covenant. This week, we begin exploring the Baptismal Covenant in more detail. From now through the end of the season after the Epiphany, we’ll consider one question from the Baptismal Covenant each week, digging more deeply into the meaning of it and how we are called to keep that vow in our lives as Christians. We won’t be moving through the vows in the same order that they appear in the prayer book because I structured this series so that the question we’re considering each week connects with the scriptures from the lectionary for that day. So today, because the scriptures relate to the subject of evangelism, we’ll start by looking at the third question in the Baptismal Covenant:

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

The first thing we must define with regards to that question is: what exactly is the “Good News of God in Christ?” What are we proclaiming? What is the message we are called to share with others? The passage we heard from Acts last week offers us a good summary. Peter says this to a group of Gentiles gathered in the home of Cornelius, a Roman solider:

“I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” (Acts 10:34-43)

That is the good news we are called to share: that Jesus was raised from the dead, that all the powers of this world and even death itself could not stop the message he came to bring. That message was not so different from what all the prophets throughout the history of Israel had taught: that we should love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. But the one who brought the message this time was different than those other prophets who had gone before: he was the promised Messiah of Israel, the chosen one foreseen by all the prophets, and in him the prophecies of old were fulfilled. And his message reminded the people of Israel that God’s favor and mercy are available to all people, not just the Jews.

And although Jesus’s followers took that to heart in such a way that the Jesus Movement became primarily a movement of Gentiles rather than Jews, this message of inclusiveness was not new with Jesus. In fact, the Christian concept of our call to be a “light to the nations” actually comes from the Hebrew Bible, from the scriptures of the Jews before the time of Jesus. Today’s reading from Isaiah contains that phrase, a phrase that became one of the theological underpinnings of Christianity’s worldwide missionary outreach: God says to the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).

"I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

In a context where the prevailing assumption was that each nation had their own god or gods, who were concerned only with the people of that nation, the idea that the God of Israel would care about the people of other nations was a revolutionary idea. This passage is one of several in Isaiah and in other writings dated to this period that represent a significant theological shift – from a view of salvation as being “all about us” to a view that included “them” as well – the other, the outsider, the stranger. No longer did the word “salvation” mean that our side had won, and to hell with everyone else. Isaiah – and Jesus after him – said that the goodness and mercy and blessings promised by God to Israel are available not only to Israel, but to all people. Israel’s role as a “light to the nations” is to share that goodness and mercy and blessing with everyone.

Unfortunately, the way both Jews and Christians have read and interpreted this passage has often presumed that only Israel – or in Christian thought, only the church, the “New Israel” – has the light. As we sought to be a “light to the nations,” we thought we were bringing “light” to “primitive” or “uncivilized” people who we thought were in darkness without us. I requested our opening hymn (#539 in the 1982 Hymnal; "O Zion haste; thy mission high fulfilling") because it has some of that flavor to it. That last verse:

"make known to every heart his saving grace.
Let none whom he hath ransomed fail to greet him,
through thy neglect, unfit to see his face."

-- the assumption being that without you, O Enlightened Christian, those poor peoples of the rest of the world will perish. Through our actions and our theology we asserted a belief in our superiority over other nations and peoples. We forgot the inclusive flavor that this passage had in its original context, and in many cases, instead of bringing light, we brought more darkness. Instead of inclusion, we brought rejection and condemnation.

So how can we be obedient to our baptismal covenant, to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ,” without falling into the same mistakes that some of our forefathers and foremothers made? How can we share the good news so that it is actually received as good news, rather than as rejection and judgment?

Well, one way to do so is to follow the example of Peter and Cornelius in last week’s passage from Acts. Both Peter and Cornelius receive visions from God telling them to seek each other out. Peter receives a message from God that sends him to Cornelius, and Cornelius receives a message from God asking him to seek out Peter. The key here is that it is God’s initiative on both sides to bring the two people together. There have been plenty of cases in which Christians have thought, “God is sending me to bring a message to those poor, backward people and tell them how to live and worship correctly!” – but when they arrived, the “poor, backward people” weren’t so interested in hearing their message. Rather than paying attention to this, the missionaries pushed on, convinced they were right, that God was “on their side,” rather than trying to discern whether or not God was indeed behind their missionary impulse by assessing the situation among the people when they arrived. In contrast to that kind of stubborn one-sidedness, in the biblical story, Peter confirms first that God has been moving among the people he’s about to speak to before he launches into his “pitch” about why Jesus is Lord of all. He asks why Cornelius sent for him, and only after he has taken the time to listen to Cornelius’s experience and hear his story does he make that great speech in Acts 10, summarizing the Christian message.

I find it interesting that although Christian theology names Jesus as the “light of the world” (John 8:12), Jesus also says that we are the light of the world! In the Sermon on the Mount, he says to those gathered to hear him teach, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16). Jesus, the very light of the world himself, did not tell his followers that he was the only light, but taught them to see the light in themselves.

The true lights of this world do not judge the darkness, because they see only light. They see the light in others, and they help others to see that light in themselves. And as they do so, the light becomes much stronger than if it were proceeding from only one person or one group. To me, that is what it means to be a “light to the nations.”

So how can we keep our vow to “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” We can live an authentic life of faith modeled on the teachings of Jesus, one in which our actions testify to something greater than ourselves. And when people ask us about it, when God sends them to us through God’s initiative, we can share with them the witness of scripture, passages like Peter’s speech in the book of Acts. And we can tell them our own story. We can tell them about why Jesus’s story and teachings mean so much to us, how the Gospel has touched our lives, and about any experiences we have had with Jesus directly or any moments we had when we knew God was truly with us. And rather than telling people we have the light and they don’t, we can affirm that we see light in them, too. We see it, we name it, we affirm it, and we invite them into a relationship with Jesus. And then, we wait for them to make their own decision -- and leave the rest to God.

Remember, we promise to do these things in our Baptismal Covenant only “with God’s help” – so we must take that to heart. We can’t keep these vows entirely on our own. It isn’t our job to “save” others. “Through your neglect, they will be unfit to see his face?” No. It’s not our job to save. It’s God’s job to save.

So, will we proclaim the Good News of God in Christ to the world?
Yes, we will – with God’s help.

Through baptism, we commit ourselves to God and accept God's will for our lives

Sermon delivered Sunday, Jan. 8, 2017 (The First Sunday After the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord), at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s): Matthew 3:13-17

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Fast-forward about 30 years from where we last left Jesus, fleeing with his parents from Herod into the desert and returning to grow up in Nazareth. This week, in an instant, Jesus is all grown up.

We begin the season after the Epiphany, the season after Christmas, with the story of Jesus’s baptism because it marked the beginning of his public ministry as a teacher and prophet. And while we might feel like we’ve gotten a little chronological whiplash from jumping so far forward in the story so quickly, we actually know very little about Jesus’s life between the time of his birth and the day of his baptism. The Gospel writers didn’t include many details about that in-between time, perhaps because from their perspective, this moment, the moment of Jesus’s baptism, is when all the really important stuff started happening. This is when he started publicly reminding Israel of God’s call to them. This is when he began to open himself to be used completely by God to the point of losing his earthly life. This is when the heavens opened a second time, as they did at his birth, and proclaimed him as the one chosen and anointed by God.

Many people in mainline churches today tend to think that baptism is primarily about washing away sin. That understanding is a product of the emphasis the church placed on original sin beginning in the 5th century. The doctrine of original sin stated that all human beings are inheritors of the original sin of Adam and Eve, and we are therefore born in a state of sinfulness, even before we have a chance to actually do anything that might be categorized as sinful. That belief combined with the high infant mortality rate at that time meant that baptizing babies was seen as a matter of life and death. If a child were to die without having been baptized, they believed that child would be condemned to hell based on that original sin with which they were born. But in the first few centuries after Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, baptism wasn’t primarily about saving babies from hell. It was about a conversion of life, a commitment, a choice to follow God’s will.

When John the Baptist began baptizing people in the River Jordan, he called them to come and be baptized “for the forgiveness of sins,” so certainly forgiveness of sin is an important part of baptism. But neither John the Baptist nor the disciples of Jesus who later baptized people in Jesus’s name understood sin as a “thing,” a physical stain that could literally be washed off like a coating of dirt. Sin was a state of being, a way of life. It was about your actions, and forgiveness required repentance and amendment of life. John scoffs at some who come to him seeking baptism as a kind of quick fix, like a “get out of jail free” card. He tells them that it is not enough to go through the motions of a ritual; to truly connect with God, to participate in the life he is offering them, they must “bear fruits worthy of repentance.” Their lives must bear witness to their faith in their actions. Besides, if baptism was ONLY about washing away original sin, why did Jesus, whom the church teaches was “without sin,” come to be baptized?

When Jesus is baptized, he’s orienting the human part of himself completely toward God. He’s affirming all the things that have been said about him since his birth. He’s saying “yes” to God’s call. The baptism Jesus underwent wasn’t a kind of Clorox for the soul, a heavenly stain-remover. It was an expression of commitment, of pledging his life to God, of accepting God’s will for his life.

And ideally, we do this when we are baptized as well. When our Book of Common Prayer was revised in 1979, the theologians who worked on that project intentionally moved us away from the theology of baptism as washing away original sin and back to the much earlier theology of baptism as a sacrament of commitment, a sacrament of conversion. This is why the liturgy itself, the order of the service, sets out adult baptism as the “liturgical norm” for the rite – adult candidates are presented for baptism first, and the entire service is framed as one of commitment, one in which those being baptized take vows to act in a certain way, to live out the faith into which they are baptized in deed as well as in word.

Infant baptism is still the “statistical norm” in the Episcopal Church – meaning that there are more people baptized as infants than as adults in the Episcopal Church – but we do not require that infants be baptized, and the theology of our prayer book emphasizes that baptism is a sacrament of conversion, of commitment, of a public declaration of faith. This is why if we do baptize babies or younger children, we require and take very seriously the vows on the part of the parents and godparents: those people must be wholly committed to the faith themselves and raise the child to know Jesus, so that one day that child might come to affirm the faith that was chosen for them as an infant.

When we are baptized, we say “yes” to God’s call on our lives. We pledge to follow Jesus, to live the way he taught us to live. At Jesus’s baptism, he heard words from heaven that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with him I am well pleased.” At our baptism, we hear words from the priest that say to us: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

We don’t hear the words “This is my Son or Daughter, the Beloved,” because we are not THE Son in the way Jesus was the Son, but at baptism we become part of the Son. While some of our theology says baptism is the means through which we become “children of God,” I see all people, regardless of whether they are baptized or not, or even whether they are Christians or not, as “children of God.” When someone is baptized in a Christian church, they don’t just become a “child of God,” they become part of Christ, joined to his very life, death, and Resurrection. When Jesus used the term “baptism” in his own teaching, he didn’t refer to when he was washed in the river Jordan, but to his impending death. “Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” he asks James and John when they are arguing over who will get to sit at his right and at his left when he comes into his glory. Jesus understands his baptism to be a baptism of suffering, which is perhaps why John the Baptist says that the one who will come after John will baptize “with fire.”

At our baptism, we are joined with Christ’s resurrected life, but we are also joined with the suffering he underwent at the Crucifixion. The commitment we make is one that may very well bring suffering into our lives, for if we live in the way Jesus lived, we will likely meet the same kind of resistance he did from the forces of this world that, as our Baptismal liturgy puts it, “rebel against God” and “destroy the creatures of God” (BCP 302).

But while we face uncertainty and danger in this life, through our baptism we are given a bond with God in Christ that is indissoluble (BCP 298). We are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Those are powerful words! “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” The Apostle Paul wrote that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus,” and nothing reminds us of that truth like our baptism.

Baptism is about commitment, but it’s also about being given an identity. We choose to follow Christ, and we are marked as “Christ’s own forever.” We become part of that wonderful “paschal mystery;” we are joined to the mystical reality of the living, risen Christ that takes us over, indwelling us, inhabiting our very souls so that we begin to transform more and more into the likeness of him who made us.

We belong to Christ. That is the truth of who we are. And our lifelong task is to claim that identity, to keep reaffirming that identity, to say “yes” to God’s call on our lives by striving to live into the vows we made in our Baptismal Covenant.

Today, in place of the Nicene Creed, we will reaffirm our Baptismal Covenant, in the words of the Apostle’s Creed and the five vows that we took at our baptism. If you haven’t been baptized, you are still welcome to join us in reciting these words if they reflect your true belief and commitment, and we can talk later about baptism if you are interested in making that public commitment. If you have been baptized but you don’t remember making these vows and would like to make them again in an intentional, public way, there are several opportunities throughout the year when you can make a reaffirmation of faith. You can talk with me about that after the service as well.

Now, if you would turn to page 6 of your bulletin for the Renewal of the Baptismal Covenant, and please stand as you are able...

Choose life -- even when it means choosing death

Sermon delivered September 4, 2016 (The Sixteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 18, Year C)) at St. Cuthbert's Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA.

Sermon Text(s):  Deuteronomy 30:15-20, Luke 14:25-33



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

Our reading from Deuteronomy today comes near the end of that book, as the Israelites are preparing to cross into the Promised Land after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. As they stand on the brink of the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them, Moses is near death, and these last several chapters of Deuteronomy detail his “parting words” to the people before naming Joshua as his successor.

After a long recounting of the laws given at Mount Sinai, Moses reminds the people that if they obey the laws God has given them, they will prosper, but if they do not, they will perish. Although only one of these choices offers a desirable outcome, inherent in this exhortation is a reminder of their free will: the Israelites actually do have a choice in the matter of whether they will love God and follow his commandments or not. God does not make them obey him, controlling them like puppets; he grants them the freedom to choose disobedience, even if it leads to their destruction.

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

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

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

But as Jesus reminds us in our Gospel passage, these choices are not always easy. He reminds the crowds that the cost of following him is high, that sometimes it feels more like choosing death than choosing life: "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,” Jesus says to the large crowds that begin to follow him. “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

In all the hypothetical examples I just gave of ways we might break our baptismal covenant, the things I spoke about as “choosing death” instead of “choosing life” are all essentially ways in which we “choose self” instead of “choosing others.” So, even though Jesus’s words about carrying our cross might at first glance seem to be in conflict with God’s exhortation in Deuteronomy to “choose life” rather than “choose death,” in the paradoxical way of the Gospel, sometimes it is through choosing death that we choose life. As the prayer of St. Francis that we’ve been using at the end of the Prayers of the People says, “It is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are reborn to eternal life.”

That “dying” is not primarily referring to our actual physical death, but a spiritual death of ego that allows us to become more authentically ourselves, to flourish as we become truly awake and alive as we are connected on a spiritual level with everything around us.

There’s a scene in the film “Peaceful Warrior” (2006) where Dan Millman, a college student at UC Berkeley who is struggling to recover from an injury that has taken him out of competitive gymnastics, a sport that had been his whole life, goes to the top of the clock tower in Berekely and crawls over the railing onto the ledge.

As he stands there contemplating suicide, he is confronted by a second person, also on the ledge, who begins taunting him, encouraging him to jump. When he sees this person’s face, he realizes it looks exactly like his own. He’s come face to face with himself – a self-absorbed jerk who sees value only in winning, in amassing more trophies, medals, and accolades, who can’t find a reason to live if he can’t be the best in the world, whose self-worth comes from beating everyone else.

Suddenly, it clicks, and he realizes that in order for him to truly live, “ego Dan” must die – this force, this voice that tells him he is worthless if he can’t succeed or produce.

As he tries to pull away from “ego Dan,” who has a strong hold on him and is pulling him toward the edge, ego Dan suddenly looks fearful.

 “Do you know what you’re doing?” Dan’s ego asks.

 “No,” the real Dan responds.

 “DO YOU KNOW… WHO YOU ARE… WITHOUT….. ME?!?!?!” Ego Dan screams, his face angry and contorted, in an expression that can only be described as demonic and evil.

 “No,” the real Dan says again, shaking his head and trembling. But despite his utter terror about the uncertainty of what will happen if he lets go of “ego Dan,” he pulls away from him anyway, taking a leap of faith as he sends everything he’s built his self-understanding on falling backward over the edge of the tower, screaming as he falls to his doom stories below.

To choose life for oneself and for the world means choosing death for one’s ego. It means dying to self in order to be raised in the new life of Christ. It means actively seeking to destroy the parts of ourselves that seek self-interest so that the light of Christ within us can shine unabated. It means allowing our egos to be replaced by the “mind of Christ,” as the apostle Paul encourages us in his letter to the Philippians:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)

 Jesus is constantly telling his followers that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). The choice is always before us, although it may not be as clear-cut as we might think at first glance. Will we choose the way that leads to true and abundant life, even if that comes through death? Or will we choose the preservation of self at the expense of all else, the way that leads to destruction even if it seems to be leading us to life?

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