________________________________________________________________________________
After
we celebrate the miracle and the mystery of the Incarnation,
we pause to remember what the
Incarnation means,
and to consider the difference it makes
for how we live each day.
The
wise men are examples of how to live
in a world where God has become human.
They
are pictures of how we keep two of the vows
in our Baptismal Covenant.
Today
we look especially at those two promises:
First, “to seek and serve Christ in all
people.”
Second, “to respect the dignity of
every human being.”
When
God takes on human nature,
it changes how we think of other humans.
It
changes how we look at each other
and how we treat each other.
Today’s
opening Collect sets out the theme of our lessons.
“O God
who wonderfully created
and yet more wonderfully restored the
dignity of human kind.”
The
wise men didn’t just kneel before the divinity of Jesus.
They
knelt before his humanity,
because God made humanity holy.
Bishop
Tutu says that if we really believed
what the Bible teaches about human nature,
we would genuflect before each other as
we do
before the Blessed Sacrament.
The
wise men showed us how to respond to Jesus.
The
Baptismal Covenant tells us where we find him – in each other.
We
“seek and serve Christ in all people and respect the dignity
of every human being.”
The
wise men’s bringing gifts to the stable
shows how we are to treat each other,
honoring the dignity of humankind,
which God created in the beginning
and more wonderfully restored
in the Incarnation.
But what
would that look like?
The
wise men brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh
to honor Christ in the stable of Bethlehem.
How
shall we honor the Christ in the stables of each other’s lives?
Donna
Hicks mediates conflicts around the world.
She has
worked with insurrections in Latin America,
civil wars in Africa, and religious
strife in Ireland.
In her
book, Dignity, Hicks says that
wherever conflict rages in the world,
if you scratch the surface you’ll find
a dignity violation.
Somebody
has felt disrespected.
From
wars between nations to fights in the family,
most of our conflicts boil down to
dignity.
Hicks
says that respect can be different for people
who have done something to earn our respect.
It can
depend on what someone has done.
But
dignity belongs to who someone is.
Dignity
goes with the turf of being human.
The
baby in the Bethlehem stable hadn’t done a thing.
The
wise men paid him homage for who he was.
Respecting
someone’s dignity isn’t about his or her resume.
It’s
about their humanity.
Christians
vow to respect the dignity of every human being.
But
how? I am still looking for concrete actions.
Just as
the wise men brought three gifts to the stable,
Hicks says there are 10 gifts we need
to give people
to
respect their human dignity.
She
calls them “The 10 Essential Elements of Dignity.”
I’d say
her list adds up to a pretty good 10 commandments
for how we treat each other at home, at
work,
at church, and in the world.
Number
1 is Acceptance.
Approach people as neither inferior nor
superior to you
Number
2. Inclusion
Make others feel they belong.
3.
Acknowledgement
Give people your full attention by
listening and responding.
Give others the freedom to express
their authentic selves
without fear of being
negatively judged.
4.
Safety
Put people at ease at two levels:
physically so they feel safe from bodily harm;
and psychologically so they feel safe from being humiliated.
5.
Recognition.
Recognize others for their talents,
hard work,
thoughtfulness, and help.
6.
Fairness
Treat people in an evenhanded way
according to agreed on rules.
7.
Benefit of the Doubt
Start with the premise that others are
acting with integrity
and good motives.
8.
Understanding
Believe that what others think matters
so try to understand
their point of view.
9. Independence
Encourage people to act on their own
behalf
so they can feel in control of their
lives.
10.
Accountability
Take responsibility for your actions.
When you have violated the dignity of
another person,
apologize.
The
rules are perfectly simple.
But
putting them into practice is hard.
It
takes constant discipline.
It
takes attention and effort.
It’s
work.
It’s
hard work because all of us have had our dignity violated
at one time or another, probably a lot
of times.
Those
wounds to our dignity could make us compassionate.
They
could make us into guardians of the dignity of others.
But 19
times out of 20 they make us try to build ourselves back up
by taking someone else down.
It
would be great to take down the person who disrespected us,
but usually we have to find someone
else to pick on.
Defensiveness
and contempt easily become habits.
I can’t
tell you how many marriages I’ve seen start well,
until one spouse steps on the other’s
dignity,
then the second spouse stomps back, and
so on
until they have done a 20 year tap
dance on each other
leaving a couple of embittered
pancakes before the divorce.
The
Church is as fallible as any human organization,
maybe more so.
But our
purpose is to be a model for godly life.
Here,
in our church relationships, this is where we practice
the 10 commandments to honor
the 10 Essential
Element of Dignity.
If we
practice those 10 things here,
it will change our marriages, our
businesses,
and even our government.
Our
diocesan slogan is: Together we can change the world.
If we
church folks seriously put those 10 commandments in practice,
the world would change.
But we
don’t have to do it all at once.
We can
take baby steps.
We
could change the world this year with one simple practice
-- not an easy practice, but a simple one.
Whenever
we hear someone say something that strikes us as wrong,
instead of saying, “how could you think
anything so idiotic?”
we would say, “Tell me more about
that.”
With
the simple practice of asking curious questions
instead of vainly trying to argue
others into agreement,
we could break down walls of
defensiveness and contempt
that separate us from godly
relationships with one another.
That
alone, just that, would be a critical breaking in
of the Kingdom of God into a fallen world.
Our Gospel
lesson is downright peculiar viewed from the angle
of spirituality and religion today.
It is
currently a popular notion that spirituality
is best done privately, by the
individual,
using his or her own critical
thinking.
That is a
very attractive way to go about spirituality.
I get to
figure it out for myself.
Knowing that
I am smarter than St. Thomas Aquinas,
holier than St. Athanasius, and
humbler than St. Francis,
I can devise a better spirituality
than Christianity.
I can invent
better rituals than the ones practiced by millions
of lesser people over the millennia.
I can make
up better stories than the Bible and craft a better Creed
than the Council of Nicaea.
The most
convenient thing about private spirituality
is that I basically get to make up
my own God.
And that is
great.
The God I
create will not ask for any of my money,
or even any time I do not already
want to give.
The God of
my making will not infringe on my political convictions
with Biblical social morality.
The God I
invent will never ask me to take up my cross.
No, the God
of my creation will be the shield and sustainer of my ego.
There are a
few problems with my private little God.
First, as I
say, he works for me because he works for me.
He is the
shield and sustainer of my ego.
But all the
name brand religions – Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and the
rest say
that my ego is the problem.
My ego is
the prison of my soul.
So my
private little God is on exactly the wrong side
of the spiritual project
that should dismantle ego,
not fortify its prison walls.
Second, when
I die, the God of my creation dies with me.
In the world
of private individual spirituality,
I am the Alpha and the Omega.
So when I
turn the lights out, that’s all she wrote.
Third, the
God of my own creation won’t connect me with other people.
Worshiping
my own God in my own way in my own place
at my own time is convenient, but
lonely.
St.
Augustine said what we all know from experience.
The joy of
life is found in human friendship.
We don’t
make friends in a private spirituality.
So let’s
flash back to 30 A. D.
If anyone
had the qualifications to do private spirituality,
it was Jesus.
But he
didn’t do it.
He prayed
and studied at synagogue,
worshiped in the Temple,
and was baptized by John.
He wasn’t
too good for the faith of his ancestors
or the seekers of his own day.
Jesus didn’t
have his Holy Spirit experience off by himself.
He had it in
the Jordan River with John.
So John also
saw the Spirit descend on Jesus.
When Jesus
came up from the water,
John heard the voice of God
When Jesus
was baptized, when Jesus had his encounter with God,
it wasn’t just so he could get
himself in the zone.
It was for
the sake of others, including John.
The next
time John saw Jesus, he didn’t say
“Master let’s go off and have a
private guru and disciple chat.
Tell me your secrets so I can be a
spiritual hot shot too.”
Instead he pointed
Jesus out to his friends and said,
“If you are looking for God, go
follow Jesus.”
So they
followed him, and when Jesus asked then,
“What do you seek?”
they said, “Where are you living?”
They just
wanted to be where he was.
So he showed
them his place and they stayed with him.
One of those
disciples, Andrew,
Immediately brought his brother
Peter to Jesus.
They were
forming connections.
Jesus shared
his experience with John,
John passed it on to Andrew
then Andrew brought in
Peter.
They were
all looking for God together.
They weren’t
each making up their own God.
They were
looking for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
the God of Sarah, Rebecca, and
Rachel.
They were
looking for the God of Moses, Samuel, David, and Isaiah.
Their hope
was grounded in promise made to their ancestors.
Nothing
private about this.
It’s a group
project with the group spread through the centuries.
And Jesus
taught them about the Kingdom of God.
He told them
where to look for it.
In the 1960s
we started privatizing the translation.
We had Jesus
saying “The Kingdom of God is within you
(2nd person singular)”
-- meaning look inside yourself to find God.
But actually
Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is among you
(2nd person plural).”
The Kingdom
of God is in the relational space between you.
It’s about
the relationships.
If you are
on your way to the altar with your gift to God
and you remember you are at odds
with your brother,
stop right there and make peace with
your brother first.
Forgive.
Share. Tell the truth. Give more than is asked.
God on earth
resides in human connections.
All of this
adds up to three things for us.
First, it
makes a difference for how we treat each other
in the Church.
The other
people in Church with are not just fellow consumers
of the sacraments.
They are the
sacraments. They are the body of Christ.
They are the
face of Jesus.
If we want
God the way we want him, we have to keep him private.
But it we
allow the God of Jesus to appear to us,
he will show up in the curious guise
of each other.
Second, if
our faith is relational, we have to share it.
Like John
the Baptist, we naturally point people toward Jesus.
Like Andrew
we go find someone we care about and tell them
where to find Jesus.
We know
where that is. It’s right here.
One of our
parishes recently reported that 85% of their newcomers
found their church through their web site.
But we still
have churches that don’t have web sites.
That may
reduce their chances of meeting a newcomer by 85%.
But it gets
worse.
We have churches
you can’t find on a GPS,
churches that aren’t even in a phone
book,
churches with small signs hidden
behind shrubbery.
I am very
pleased to see St. Christopher’s beginning
to let Boulder City know you are
here.
In one of
our congregations a middle school boy
was listening to a classmate tell
him about her unhappiness.
He said to
her, “You need Jesus” and he invited her to church.
She’s now a
regular at the communion rail.
Maybe you’re
not that bold,
but can you wear a cross?
If you find
anything good about this Church,
could you mention that in a
conversation?
We meet God
in the connections we make with people.
When we
don’t make those connections, we are missing God.
The third
thing about relational faith is that it calls us to care for people
who are not like us, people we don’t
even know.
Like Deacon
Ann Langevin’s project to buy solar lanterns
for our companion diocese in Kenya
so they can have light
in rural villages with no electricity.
We have two
ways to share the light of Christ.
One is the
send people solar lanterns.
The other is
to invite someone to church.
Both ways
are connecting to people in caring ways,
looking for Christ in them and with
them.
That’s the
Christian religion.
It’s often
inconvenient.
It costs
money – like $9.50 for a solar lantern.
It costs
time. It costs attention.
Eventually,
it costs us our whole life.
But that’s
where the love is. That’s where the joy is.
That’s where
we find our hope for all eternity.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First
Corinthians is hands down my favorite Epistle.
Paul is
trying to help the Church in Corinth
work though their human frailty
to become
the Body of Christ and carry out his Kingdom Mission.
Paul is
teaching the Corinthians how to be the kind of community
that attracts people to Jesus by
showing them
who Jesus’ followers
become.
Paul wants
people to see Christians and say two things:
“I want to be with them” and “I want
to be like them.”
Jesus said,
“This is how people will know you are my disciples.
By your love for one
another.”
St. John
said, “Dear friends, let us love one another for love
comes from
God. . . .
If we love one another, God lives in us
and his love
is perfected in us. . . .
God is love and those
who abide in love, abide in God. . .
Those who say, ‘I love
God’ and hate their brothers or sisters
are liars,
For those who do not love their
brothers or sisters
whom they have seen
cannot love God whom
they have not seen.”
200 years
later, the Father of Western theology, Tertullian,
summed up the basic strategy of how
to show pagans
the beauty of the
Christian way. He wrote:
“’See how
these Christians love one another,’ the pagans say,
for they themselves hate one
another,
‘and how they are ready to die for teach other,’
for the pagans are ready to kill each other.’”
But to turn
to another kind of Scripture,
in the words of Diana Ross, “Love
don’t come easy.”
It didn’t
come easy to the saints in Corinth.
The first
thing we hear about is the faction
over some folks being fans of one
apostle
while others were followers of
another.
Paul urges
them to put aside those divisions. He says,
“As long as there is jealously and
quarrelling among you
are you not of the flesh
and behaving according to human
inclinations?”
So stop
dividing up according to which apostle you like best.
Then he
turns to lawsuits between church members
and says it is better to be
defrauded than to sue a brother.
Then there
was the biggest fight of all.
It was about
eating food that came from pagan sacrifices.
1st
Century Christians were as worked up over what they ate
as 21st Century
Christians are worked up over sex.
Paul says
that the ones who eat the meat are right theologically
but he tells them to abstain anyway
out of love for those who are
offended by it.
And so the
letter to the Corinthians proceeds
petty issue by petty issue, church
fight by church fight,
until he breaks into a spiritual
aria to explain his point.
That’s the
famous 13th Chapter of 1st Corinthians,
the hymn to love we always read at
marriages,
but it isn’t about marriage.
It’s about
being a congregation.
“If I speak
in the tongues of mortals and of angels,
but have not love, I am a nosy gong . . . .
Love is
patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful
or arrogant or rude.
It does not
insist on its own way.
It is not
irritable or resentful.
It does not
rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth.
Love bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all things,
endures all things.”
That’s what
love means.
God is love.
Those who abide in love,
those who follow the discipline of
love
–
and
it is a discipline because Diana Ross is right
– love don’t come easy –
those who follow the discipline of love, abide in love,
God lives in
them and they live in God.
And when we
abide in love
the 87% of Nevadans with no faith of
any kind
will say, “I want to be with them
and I want to be like them.”
Paul never
again wrote anything so beautiful as 1st Corinthians.
But I’m
sorry to say they didn’t get it.
This story
doesn’t have a happy ending
When we get
to 2nd Corinthians, things have just gotten worse.
40 years
later, decades after Paul was dead and gone,
the Corinthians were still fighting.
By then,
Clement, the bishop of Rome, had taken over Paul’s job
and was still pleading with them to
just get along
and treat each other in Jesus’ way,
not the world’s way.
Corinthians
is pretty straight forward,
but the Epistle to the Romans gets
misunderstood
and misused most of the time.
Actually, it
isn’t the theological treatise people think it is.
It’s just
like Corinthians, an effort to smooth out a church fight.
In Rome the
Jewish Christians and the gentile Christians
were going at it.
It got so
bad the Emperor Claudius threw the whole lot
of them out of town kit and
caboodle.
Paul wrote
Romans to try to show them that it is better to be kind
than to be right.
The Romans
may not have gotten it right away.
But I think
the point eventually sank in.
Here’s why I
think they got it.
Between 165
and 180, a plague swept through
the urban centers of the Empire,
killing one-third to one-half of
city populations.
The city of
Rome was particularly hard hit.
It’s named
Galen’s plague after Galen,
the Emperor’s personal physician.
Galen is
famous because he figured out
that people were catching the plague
from contact with each other.
It was the
first discovery of contagion in the Ancient World.
So Galen
told everyone who had the wealth and ability
to get out of town.
Well, that
was fine for the people who could do it.
But it left
the sick and the dying to their own devices.
It wasn’t
pretty, a city of the sick, the dying, and the dead.
And everyone
ran away – except the Christians.
The
Christians had an odd notion that the love of God,
that is God’s love living in their
own hearts, would protect them.
And if it
didn’t, then they’d just die in God’s service and go to heaven.
So the
Christians stayed and nursed the sick, prayed with the dying,
and buried the dead.
The pagans
looked on in wonder.
They said,
“See how these Christians love one another.
See how they even love us.”
Christianity
remained illegal in the Empire for another century.
But by the
end of that century, one third of the Empire
had converted to Christianity
largely because of the
love
Christians displayed during Galen’s
plague.
For us human
beings, love don’t come easy.
But you know
what G. K. Chesterton said,
“Christianity has not been tried and
found wanting.
It has been found difficult and not
tried.”
Nothing good
comes easy.
What is best
may be hardest of all.
But the
reward is to live in God
and have God live in us.
The hardest
thing is the thing most worth doing.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When
Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple,
they were kick-starting his
spiritual journey as a member
of a faith community.
When
Chrisit is confirmed today,
she will be taking her place as a
member
of this faith community.
To
join such a body of believers in the year of our Lord 2014
is a countercultural act.
Most
people prefer to figure it out on their own.
Popular
spiritual writer, Thomas Moore, has a new book called
A
Religion of One’s Own.
It’s is a do it yourself guide to religion
so we can skip the messy complication
of human relationships.
I
get it. Church is hard because it has people in it.
Last
week a seminary professor I know
shared on Facebook her heartfelt
protest against a Church
that was hurting her friend.
She
said the way Church people treat other Church people
is why young adults avoid the church
like the plague.
She’s
right. The downright cruelest behavior I have ever seen
has been in church.
A
Methodist pastor was saying to me week before last,
she just couldn’t understand why
people do and say things
in Church they could
never get away with at work.
We
check our guns at the doors of bars
and our manners at the doors of
Churches.
it’s no wonder people don’t want to
hang out with us.
We
aren’t a safe place.
So
were Mary and Joseph wrong to expose their son
to the social perils of organized
religion?
Or
were the synagogue and temple kinder, gentler places
than the 21st Century
Church?
Well,
apparently not.
1st
Century Jews were divided up into feuding factions:
intellectual Pharisees, high church
Sadducees, mystical Essenes,
Apocalyptic Survivalists, radical Zealots, penitential
ascetics,
just
to name a few.
And
except for the Essenes who were too spiritual
to be seen with ordinary Jews,
they were pretty much all there at the synagogue and temple.
It
was just as much of a zoo as the Episcopal Church today.
Even
so, Mary and Joseph made Jesus a member
of that mixed up faith
community.
More
remarkable still, we have Christi here today
ready to stand up, take vows, and
join this Church.
What
is that about?
Why
are we still here in the thick of organized religion
reciting “How lovely is thy dwelling
place O Lord of Hosts to me”?
After
thousands of years of faith communities
behaving in “all too human” ways, we keep doing it.
Maybe
we are just gluttons for punishment;
or
maybe there is something holy and mysterious at work here.
You
could make a good case for the gluttons for punishment theory.
But
I’m going to go with answer number two:
something holy and mysterious.
It’s called the Incarnation.
When
God became human in Jesus,
God showed us that God lives in
humanity,
in the mixed up messy milieu of the
human race
with all our frailties,
foibles, and faults.
My
first Christmas as a priest, the congregation drove me to distraction.
I
knew how Christmas is supposed to be done.
But
they just wouldn’t do it.
So
I called a wiser older veteran pastor and whined
about how my congregation was screwing up Christmas.
He
said, “Well, I guess Jesus will just have to be born
in a stable again this
year.”
And
so it is.
Jesus
is always born in a stable. It’s messy.
God
shows up in the stable of humanity,
not in the palace of an idyllic
spirituality,
not in the Southern Living mansion
of propriety,
but in the neurosis, addiction, and
just plain orneriness
that make us such an
untidy lot.
Jesus
said, “The Kingdom of God is like a net
that was let down into a lake
and caught all kinds of fish.”
All
kinds of fish, including the bottom feeders.
Jesus
said the Kingdom of God is like a farmer who planted
his field with good wheat but there
were also weeds.
His
workers wanted to pull the weeds.
But
the farmer said, “No, we’ll wind up pulling up wheat too.
Let
the wheat and the weeds grow together.”
So
here we are, the Church.
A
net with all kinds of fish.
A
field with wheat and weeds growing together.
We
are a mixed assortment of fruits and nuts.
But
that makes a pretty good trail mix.
And
this, friends, is where God hangs out.
Three
decades ago I rediscovered Christianity so I went back to Church.
I
was looking for God – not friends – I didn’t much like people.
I
thought Church was just something I’d have
to put up with along the way.
Sometimes
it has felt like that.
But
the truth is I’ve come to love this motely crew.
They
have been the human channel of God’s grace to me
over and over.
They
have been channels of grace by being good to me,
but just as often by difficult.
Martin
Luther said,
“God carves the rotten wood and rides the lame horse.”
We
grow here through the slow hard work of relationships,
including difficult relationships.
This
is the crucible where we are changed into the likeness of Christ.
Because
the church has people in it,
we have to deal with them.
We
learn patience and forbearance.
We
also learn how to set boundaries
so that the personal foibles of some are not allowed
to wreck
things for the rest.
This
is where we learn how to tell the truth in love.
We
learn how to ask a question out of sincere curiosity
instead of trying to manipulate
someone into our opinion.
We
learn the difference between being kind and being nice.
In
the Church, we practice a balance of wisdom and compassion.
We
cultivate the ability to imagine how things look
from someone else’s point of view.
We
may even learn to trust each other.
500
years ago, St. John of the Cross said,
“God has ordained that we are sanctified
(made holy)
only through the frail
instrumentality of each other.”
We
need each other’s strength and courage.
We
also need each other faults and foibles.
But
the goal is that we change, we all change, we change together.
By
hard work, by patience and discipline,
we transform ourselves into the kind
of community
that attracts people to Jesus
instead of chasing them
away from him.
Our
salvation happens through this process of change.
And
it is not our spiritual well being alone that depends on it,
but the well being of all those lost
people
who will never see the face of Jesus
except in us,
and the only gospel they will ever
read is the one they see
in how we treat each
other.
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